Why the last king of Kandy had to spend his final years in an Indian fort
Sri Vikrama Rajasinha faced the same fate as Bahadur Shah Zafar and Burma’s Theebaw Min would later.
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
On a warm February morning in 1816, large crowds gathered by the seaside in Pulicat, north of Madras. Word had spread in the town that the king of Kandy was arriving on a ship along with his royal entourage. The crowds anticipated a spectacle and a spectacle is what they got.
Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, who had spent the month-long journey from Colombo on board the HMS Cornwallis, mostly just wearing a sarong, decided to dress in full regalia before getting off the ship in India.
“It would be difficult to describe this dress,” William Granville, a British civil servant who was tasked with looking after Sri Vikrama, wrote. “He wore enormously white trousers of satin striped yellow, green and red, with a multitude of gold buttons down their outward seams from the hip to the ankle. A white satin waistcoat richly embroidered with gold flowers, a gold band encircled the edge round the neck. The sleeves were short, widely puffed and slashed after the Spanish fashion.”
Sri Vikrama had been the last holdout against European imperialism in Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon. But once the British fully occupied the island, he was deposed and exiled to India.
When he stepped off the HMS Cornwallis, Sri Vikrama “wore a...
