The Unheard Romantic Past Of Odisha's 200 Year Old Belgadia Palace

This simple looking palace from the outside has a lesser known romantic story behind it that many of us do not know about. The palace which is now home to the descendants of the kings of Mayurbhanj, the Bhanj Deos, is as of now taken care of by Praveen Chandra Bhanj Deo who belongs to the 47th generation. He lives with his wife, two daughters and his 91-year-old mother.

Thanks to his daughters, most of this 215-year-old palace is now open for public viewing. Akshita, one of his daughters quoted in Sucharu Devi’s biography written by her daughter, Joyoti: "We want to make people aware of the legacy of our ancestors in the district as well as in the state of Odisha.”

Before throwing open the palace doors, the sisters revealed a lot of hidden gems. One of them was the beautiful romantic story of their ancestor Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo and Sucharu Devi, who is the third daughter of Keshub Chandra Sen, a philosopher and social reformer of 19th century Bengal.

Sriram Chandra met Sucharu Devi in Darjeeling. She was educated and a 15-year-old girl while he was 18 and looking for a wife who would be his companion. They did court each other for a brief period of time and then got engaged and this all happened in 1889.

Like any other romantic tale, there had to be people who had issues with the budding romance and here we had the crown prince’s family which opposed the match.

“The daughter of Keshub Chunder Sen as Maharani of Mayurbhanj! The daughter of that rebel, that revolutionary! To the conservative, orthodox powers in the Hindu state this was preposterous,” says a paragraph in the book.

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The young prince was not a rebellious kind of a person. He married a girl from a local royal family. But the romance between him and Sucharu Devi did not die. As they say, true love never dies?

“We tried to persuade her to marry but nothing would induce her to forget her lover,” wrote Suniti Devi, her elder sister — the queen of Coochbehar — in her autobiography.

Sriram Chandra’s first wife, Lakshmi Devi, gave birth to two sons and a daughter and later she died of smallpox.

Suniti Devi wrote: “The Maharaja’s wife died, and he came back to ask my sister to marry him. The marriage took place in Calcutta, and for some time they led the happiest lives.”

This entire episode took place in 1904.

Since the Maharaja never dared to take Sucharu Devi to his native state, he built for her the Rajabagh Palace on Mayurbhanj Road which is now the J.C. Ghosh Polytechnic. The couple had two children — Dhrubo Narayan and Joyoti. Sriram Chandra mysteriously died in 1912. But most say or what is mostly accepted is that he was accidentally shot while he was out on shikar (hunting).

Even though the palace was constructed in 1804the construction of the palace began in 1804, it was developed in several phases. The present interiors that you get to see were designed for Sucharu Devi since she was not welcome in the main Mayurbhanj Palace.

However, she visited Mayurbhanj and her palace for the first time only after her husband’s death, when she was invited by her stepson, Purnachandra Bhanj Deo.

She continued to visit Mayurbhanj occasionally and was associated with social work and spiritual work in Baripada. She was the torch-bearer of feminism in India, and was elected president of Bengal Women’s Education League in 1931.

Sucharu Devi died in 1961 in Calcutta.

Coming down the palace, since Sucharu Devi was an ardent lover of art, it is believed that artists like Jamini Roy and Hemendra Nath Majumder had visited the palace. Akshita says in the book: “She had a deep influence on most of the activities of the Maharaja, who was known as the philosopher king and also revered for his public welfare efforts.”

Interestingly, there is no portrait of the woman herself on display at Belgadia Palace.

“This happened probably because she was never accepted wholeheartedly by the larger family and state subjects because of the difference in caste, creed and religion,” Akshita continues.