The Indian Diary of Vera Luboshinsky (1938-1945)

The Indian Diary of Vera Luboshinsky narrates life at the Indian princely court of Bhopal, during the 1940s. Vera was the daughter of Professor M. J. Herzenstein, a member of the State Duma in pre-revolutionary Russia, and married to Count Mark Luboshinsky. After the Bolshevik revolution, they emigrated to Czechoslovakia where they met Hamidullah Khan, Nawab of Bhopal, an important political figure during the last decades of the British Empire and India''s fight for independence. Impressed by Mark Luboshinsky''s managerial abilities, the Nawab invited him to come to India to manage his estates. The couple spent seven years in India (winter 1938 - winter 1945). They stayed in and around Bhopal taking part in palace business or travelling across India accompanying the Nawab''s family on long journeys. The Diary is a unique and completely unknown text to the Anglophone world: a rich primary source for historians of India''s princely states, providing an interesting and uncommon depiction