Although some stellar monographs exist on South India and the princely states, these topics hover at the periphery of South Asian historiography. This analysis of the Wodeyar family of Mysore state persuasively argues that these South Indian princes adroitly synthesized Hindu orthodoxy, outreach to low-caste groups and their deities, and modernization projects to reestablish and maintain their autonomy within the British imperial structure and into the early decades of independent India. This historical narrative over two centuries is enriched by an astute assessment of the caste structure within a princely state where distinctively south Indian practices existed.

Because the British restored Mysore state to Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar III after they defeated Tipu Sultan in 1799, administered it from 1831 until 1881 when they returned it to the minor Chamarajendra Wodeyar X, and retained the state administrative offices in Bangalore while the Wodeyar princes were sequestered in Mysore city, Mysore state and its rulers are sometimes dismissed as British creations. By untangling complex and evolving relationships among castes, major religious rituals, and the sacral and urban evolution of Mysore city, Ikegame emphasizes the agency of the Wodeyar family within a modified segmentary state that Burton Stein argued was the basis for the earlier Vijayanagar empire.

As political leaders, the Wodeyar rulers intertwined Brahmanic Hindu orthodoxy with village deities of lower castes, strengthened their relatively small Urs caste group, courted the dominant landowning non-Brahman Lingayats and Okkaligas, and utilized modern modes of urban planning and industrialization to enhance their political agency. Primarily focusing on the palace complex in Mysore city, Ikegame analyzes how the Wodeyar princes practiced rajadharma (duties of kings) with gifts of land, money, and symbols of honor such as banners, carts, and seating at their durbars. The sacral recipients were primarily Brahman and to a lesser extent non-Brahman temples and their gurus but even included Christian mission hospitals. The most prominent secular beneficiaries were members of the Wodeyars' Urs caste group. Besides providing monetary stipends, the Wodeyars established schools to educate elite Urs boys to produce a social and administrative class to replace the Tamilian Brahmins whom the British had installed in the state administration.

Carefully mining the Palace Records held in Mysore city and the state administrative records in Bangalore, Ikegame incisively documents how the Wodeyars retained their Hindu orthodoxy while achieving their reputation as progressive in the secular realm. Their modernizing initiatives ranged from a Representative Assembly established in 1881 and the Krishnasagar Dam that provided electricity and public lighting to Bangalore city to support for indigenous manufactures such as sandalwood soap and silk crepe saris. As in European and American cities and Bombay, in the early twentieth century the Wodeyar family cleared the congested Fort area to provide better light, air, and sanitation for its inhabitants and established suburbs called extensions. Simultaneously Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV (r. 1894–1940) manifested his orthodoxy with diverse temples within the newly opened spaces surrounding his new palace. More dramatic was his sacral participation in the Dasara festival that celebrated the village goddess Chamundi's slaying of the buffalo demon. The Wodeyar synthesis of sacred and secular, orthodoxy and modernity is evident with the Representative Assembly convening immediately after Dasara and the European Darbar where the Wodeyar ruler received British officials and other Western guests after his sacred duties ended.

Although Ikegame skillfully engages with the extensive debates among anthropologists on caste in South India, her chapter on “Marriage Alliances in Imperial Space” is particularly innovative. To gain new blood for the royal family and possibly affirm their kshatriya status, shortly before his death Chamarajendra Wodeyar X sought a north Indian, Rajput bride for his son, the future Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV. Utilizing the colonial network, his widow Vani Vilas asked the British resident to solicit his colleagues in north and western India for suitable candidates. Because of their custom of uncle-niece marriages, the Wodeyars were unwilling to send a bride north in exchange for the desired Rajput bride to come south. Consequently Krishnaraja had to be content with a bride from a miniscule Kathiawar state who triggered some popular dissatisfaction because of her “foreign” blood.

Although not all Wodeyar initiatives, such as their marriage negotiations or steel mill, were successful, Ikegame has cogently demonstrated that the acceptance of colonial practices, such as Western education and urban planning, by the Wodeyar princes enabled them to recast “traditional” practices into new forms of sovereignty. Her monograph is a theoretically sophisticated, accessible, and significant contribution to the historiography of princely states and South India.