- Princess Akshita of Mayurbhanj is a descendant of a 1,000-year-old royal dynasty in India.
- But her ancestors, among other
royal families in India, lost their official titles in 1947.
Princess Akshita Bhanj Deo of Mayurbhanj says Indian royal families, including her own ancestors, had to adapt to lives as ordinary citizens "overnight" after losing their official titles when the country gained independence from Great Britain.
Akshita, who previously said the experience of growing up as a royal in India was similar to being a "Downton Abbey" character, told Insider her grandparents and great-grandparents experienced an "identity shift" when they went from being closely associated with the British Raj, meaning the British empire, to essentially becoming regular members of society.
"You were seen as someone who was close to the Raj," she said. "What happened in India was overnight, you weren't seen as anyone." Suddenly, Akshita said,
"I think a lot of these families were kind of taken aback because they didn't know what hit them," she added.
Questions about how to move forward and adapt to a democratic system are what many families faced and some are still facing today, Akshita said.
"Take the Queen out of Buckingham put her in a two-story apartment somewhere else and give her a nine to five job," Akshita said. "If she can still do that with a lot of grace and love, dignity, and all of that, that's hard."
Her own family, descendants of a 1,000-year-old Bhanja dynasty with ties to Nepalese royalty, were one of the last to merge with newly-independent India. In doing so, Akshita said many of their properties were liquidated and given back to the government.
"They were given to become educational institutes in the three different states that they were in. So there was a period of a lot of distress sales and a lot of financial grievances," she said.
But evolving with the times and remaining a fixture in the community without pageantry and excess wealth, much of which was introduced during the course of British rule, she said, shows her family genuinely wanted to use their privilege for good. Some former royals, including her father Praveen Chandra Bhanj Deo — the 47th ruler of the Bhanja dynasty — went into politics and maintained their positions as leaders in their local communities.
Others, however, made what Akshita said is the simpler choice to leave.
"It was so easy for all these families to move because they were already so westernized," she said. "To come and stay in a rural countryside home or population, you know, it is difficult. It is challenging. It is a different social life."
The question, she said, faced by all royals who lose their titles and experience an "identity shift," is would they still work to help their communities if there were no more palaces, forts, and pageantry?
Her own experience of leaving for university in the US and returning to India in 2016, as well as those of other young royals she knows who chose to stay, shows that some are willing to continue the family legacy even after the titles have gone.
"There are a lot of people who are descendants of these families who are trying to sort of make a name for themselves. They take public transportation, they go to work, they have the nine to five, and then five to nine in the evening of figuring out what they can do," she said.