ABSTRACT
‘Your Ancestors have chosen my Ancestors’: a Raja in north-western Odisha 1 frequently opened his speeches with this slogan in the election campaign of 2004. It immediately reminded voters – predominantly classified as Scheduled Tribes in this reserved constituency – of the ancient ties between the royal family and the villagers, the bonds between Raja as ‘king’ in the former princely state and Praja as ‘subjects’ (the wider semantic scope including ‘client’, ‘dependent’, ‘ruled’, ‘tenant’ etc., but also denoting a social category in southern Odisha; see also Rousseleau [2008, 2009]). He then usually continued:
Up until today I have served for 55 years [on the throne] and you call me king, but the day after tomorrow you may call me babu or Sir or sriman [various honorific titles – the authors]. That matters little to me; but the love and affection and relations which we have, nobody can cut that.
(Election speech, Kadamba Kesari Chandra Deo, Rajasahib of Bonai, April 2004)