Thibaw
the last king of Burma (now Myanmar) under house arrest kept in this palace.
Thibaw ruled the Burma for 6 years. Burma was partitioned from India in 1935.
British took over the Burma kingdom and arrested king Thibaw. To keep him far
away from his kingdom i.e. Burma he was kept under house arrest at Ratnagiri.
Though the king was under British rule, he was given legal rights and was
treated with the state honors. King died at the age of 58 in Ratnagiri. His
grand-granddaughter Tity was the last living heir of the king. She got married
to a local resident Shankarrao Pawar.
THIBAW
PALACE
The palace is a beautifully constructed three storied
structure with sloping roofs. Semi-circular wooden windows with beautiful
curving are the main attraction of this structure. On the first floor one
dancing hall with a fully marble tiles floor is in the palace. One Buddha idol
is installed at the back side of the palace. This idol was brought to India by
king Thibaw. Presently the palace is maintained by archaeological depth. The
plans are afoot to convert the palace in to museum and providing tourist accommodation there. Thibaw palace
is best situated on a hillock and panoramic view from this point is most enchanting. This is a point worth –
visiting for Ratnagiri tourist.
The year 2010 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the construction of the famous edifice known as the Thibaw Palace at Ratnagiri, 225 kilometres from Mumbai.
Let’s have look at wikimapia
This is verily a portion of India that is Burma. For as per agreement between the governments
of India and Burma (now Myanmar) this mansion will be maintained in good
condition in memory of King Thibaw of
Burma (1859-1916)) who was exiled here
by the British, just like they exiled to the Burmese capital of Rangoon,
Emperor Bahadur Shah (1775-1862) after
their victory in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.
After the British took away his kingdom, Thibaw had been
deported to India in early 1886, first to Madras and then at the muggy seaside
town of Ratnagiri on the Konkan coast.
Thibaw was given a substantial house, and later he was allowed to build
his own small palace, now known as Thibaw’s palace, in 1910.
This palace with teak finishing and Italian coloured glass
placed against the setting sun is set on twenty three acres of land on a promontory overlooking the
green Arabian Sea. The palace itself
cost 136 thousand rupees and is a unique example of pagoda style of
architecture and took two years to complete. The main building is 60 metres
(197 feet) long and 43 metres (141 feet) broad, with an area of 25 thousand
square feet is two storey structure, constructed in red stone.
By all accounts Thibaw and his family lived a life of
intense boredom. He seemed never to have
accepted his fate and, hoping for some sort of improvement in his status, wrote
several memorials to the Viceroy of India.
At the very beginning this amounted to a request to return
to Mandalay and rule as a British puppet.
This would of course have been more than acceptable back in 1880, but
was now out of the question. In
later times Thibaw’s requests became more modest, asking, for
example, to attend the 1905 Delhi durbar
with King George Vth
together with the other Indian
princes.
Money was a constant problem. Thibaw and his queen Supayalat had brought
with them precious stones as well as other valuables, which over the 1890s were
almost all sold to local merchants.
Their pensions were small. Again
and again Thibaw petitioned the British for more funds. They in turn worried that he was being irresponsible, and a number
of tiresome attempts were made to better supervise Thibaw’s spending, as if the
former king were a young child with an allowance.
And then there was a scandal during the hot weather of
1906. Out of three princesses - the
daughters of Thibaw- the first princess became pregnant with the child of the
Indian durian, the gatekeeper. Thibaw
and Supayalat soon reconciled themselves to the situation, and their first
granddaughter became their new focus of attention. She was nicknamed Baisu.
Then in 1916 something happened that the royal couple could
not accept. The second princess, always
known for being strong –willed, fell in
love with a man named Khin Maung Gyi. He
was Burmese and King Thibaw was not willing to let an ordinary citizen of Burma
marry his daughter. Then the daughter escaped from the Thibaw palace with her
lover and when Thibaw found that she would not return, he had a heart attack
and soon died. He was buried in a mausoleum within the compounds of Thibaw
palace. Supayalat returned to Burma
with her two younger daughters.
The first princess stayed behind with her little daughter
Baisu and slowly fell into poverty. Baisu
herself married and had a sizable family, with several children and
grandchildren, moved to Bombay, and merged into the great urban poor of
Bombay’s slums. She was still alive at
the beginning of the twenty first century, then in her late nineties, and journalists who went to visit spoke of
her generosity and kind manners. A little picture of Thibaw and Supayalat
tacked onto the wall of her shack and a hint of upper class Burmese features
being the only thing to distinguish her from her neighbours.
The fate of the second princes is something of a mystery.
Her sibling (with whom she had no contact after her elopement) says that she
and her Burmese husband Khin Maung Gyi had no children. Apparently, the couple
wound up at the hill station of Kalimpong, near Darjeeling, and bought a dairy
farm, where thy lived out the rest of their lives in the cool pine scented air
of the Himalayan foothills. The only surviving descendant of King Thibaw was Taw Hpaya, his eldest
grandson, who was alive in 1997 at the age of 84 in the town of Maymyo in Burma
After decades of being one of the government offices at
Ratnagiri, the palace was made into a Bombay University sub-centre and was
leased to it by the government, for Rs.60, 000 per year for a two-year period
which ended in 1999.
The Archaeological Survey of India has however reclaimed the
palace in 1999. It has also been partly converted into a museum. The museum is
rather pitiful as it has only 4 rooms. The 3 rooms on the first floor have some
old, badly damaged copper vessels, old photographs and the last room is an
attempt to recreate the grandeur of the palace... These 4 rooms and 2 used for
offices are currently the only usable rooms in the edifice. At present, the
condition of palace is precarious and some portion of the roof and walls may
collapse at any moment.
Meanwhile, the Government of Burma (Myanmar) has conveyed to
the Government of India, their concern, that since they have preserved and
maintained carefully the mausoleum of the last emperor of India, Bahadurshah in
Rangoon; why is the Government of India not taking same interest in the
monument of Thibaw, the last king of Burma?
Thibaw
Point – Jijamata Udyan
One of the major attractions of Ratnagiri city situated on a
small hillock. There is also a best sunset point from here. One can have a
panoramic view of Someshwar creek, Bhatye bridge to pawas and Arabian sea. This
palace was used for keeping the King Thibaw,
Source
Info : Internet
Photos : Sulekh
