Right royal: Prince Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar and Princess Padmaja Kumari Mewar of Udaipur

The making of modern Maharajas

One Janardan Dwivedi, who is the AICC general secretary no less, has confirmed the decision of the Congress high command to outlaw royal titles such as Kunwar, Raja, Rani, Begum and Srimant.

In London, where the V&A’s exhibition, Maharaja: the Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, remains open to the public until January 17, the idea of forced equalisation was treated with a certain amount of scepticism last week at a seminar, Maharaja: Representation and Reality.

Sitting under an enlarged Graphiti cover from The Telegraph, bearing a photograph of Shriji Arvind Singh Mewar, erstwhile ruler of Udaipur, his impeccably mannered children, Padmaja Kumari Mewar, 29, and Lakshyaraj Singh Mewar, 24, discussed the moral responsibilities of the next generation of royals.

“We are not a family stuck in the past,” Padmaja assured me. “We are proud India is an independent country. We move with the times.”

Brother and sister seemed aware that their father is the 76th in a line which goes back to 734AD, making the Mewars the oldest dynasty in the world. The love and respect they enjoyed came unsolicited from the ordinary people of Udaipur who “have seen the work our forefathers have done”.

“This is not something any amount of money can buy,” Padmaja told the seminar.

Lakshyaraj wondered: “Why are the Congress interested in asking royals to fight elections? People who hold political power need to make up their minds as to what it is they want.”

The third panel member, Barbara Ramusack, a professor from the University of Cincinnati who has written on The Princes of India for the New Cambridge History of India, argued that “Nehru started it” when he used royals for electoral purposes. “Nehru realised the princes were an important part of India’s heritage.”

Since the Maharaja exhibition will travel next year to Toronto, San Francisco, Virginia and one other US city, many believe it would be wiser to use the current celebrity cult and deploy their Highnesses to promote India to the Americans.

“Americans have a love affair with British and Indian royalty since we don’t have royalty ourselves,” Ramusack pointed out.

One thing is clear: the world outside is not captivated by the likes of Janardan Dwivedi, though he is no doubt kind to animals and works for uplift of masses.

Dressed in green: Pinky Lilani (top, left) launches her book on coriander at Harrods (above) which is all lit up for Christmas

Coriander queen

Former Calcutta girl Pinky Lilani has followed up her first book on Indian cuisine, Spice Magic, with her second, Coriander Makes the Difference, which she launched last week at Harrods (“the top people’s store” in Knightsbridge looks very pretty,

lit up in green lights for Christmas).

Back home in Calcutta, my brother-in-law buys dhaniya most mornings from the pavement stalls without thinking too much about it but here in London, in the technologically advanced German Poggenpohl Kitchens on the second floor of Harrods, coriander was entering high society.

Ten women, including, Heini Wathen, the down to earth Finnish-born wife of Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods, and myself had turned up to witness Pinky liberally sprinkling chopped up fresh coriander on Cumin Rice, Chick Peas with Spinach and Smoked Salmon Tikka.

Fish cakes, Vegetable Couscous, Carrot and Coriander Soup and Spring Vegetable Omelette are among the 20 recipes in Pinky’s book.

They reveal one of the fundamental truths of London life — if a gathering needs just that little extra touch of something, sprinkle liberally with Pinky.

Notes on India: Anthony Good jots down the details of his 352nd trip to India

Good news

The last time I chatted properly with Anthony Good, chairman of Cox & Kings, we were in Delhi in January this year when, as he had jotted down neatly in his black notebook, he was on his 345th trip to India since his first one back in 1970.

Last week, coming out of Harrods, I bumped into him.

“I have just come back from launching our IPO in Bombay, Ahmedabad and Delhi,” he explained.

The funds were needed to pay off debts incurred when Cox & Kings in India, once the child, bought out the parent, Cox & Kings in the UK.

Anthony opened his notebook to reveal he has just completed Trip No. 352.

The Sachin Tendulkar of the travel trade tells me: “I am proud to be the chairman of the first Indian multinational travel company.”

We agree something must be done to promote British heritage tours to Calcutta and simultaneously give locals a chance to escape (incidentally, the walls of the departure lounge at Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport are so filthy I am bringing a brush and disinfectant next time so I can do the job myself).

Back in London, Heathrow’s Terminal 2 was shut down last week for a £1 billion refit that will take until 2014. The last passenger to fly out of Terminal 2 was Sagar Patel.

Crime in Calcutta

Several authors from the UK are on their way to India, I am told by Debanjan Chakrabarti, the British Council’s head of intercultural dialogue in Calcutta.

He hopes to focus on some of the crime writers, among them Ian Rankin, Denise Mina and Mark Billingham.

Personally, I would try and gatecrash any sessions held by Michael Frayn, who is today a celebrated playwright and author. But among British journalists he is acclaimed for his classic and very funny 1967 novel about the heyday of the national newspaper industry that used to be based in Fleet Street — Towards the End of the Morning.

Survivors’ tales

There were two British television documentaries last week about foreigners whose lives had been changed for ever by their Indian experiences.

Terror Attack: Mumbai spoke to people who had survived 26/11, focussing in part on a Turkish couple, Seyfi Muezzinoglu and his wife Meltem, who were spared by gunmen at the Oberoi because they were Muslim, and an American, Michael Pollack, and his Indian wife, Anjali, who got out alive from the Taj.

Their accounts were chilling but the Scotsman newspaper’s review reflected my own feelings: “This documentary didn’t seek to analyse the terrorists’ wider motives.”

The truth is that had the Pakistanis stuck to killing only Indians, 26/11 would have fallen off western radar by now. It was a strategic error to seek out tourists with British or American passports for this confirms the stereotype of Pakistan as a “terrorist state”.

A superior documentary, it seemed to me, was the nostalgic return by actor Brian Cox to the jute mills of Howrah where his parents had once worked — as had many Scottish folk from Dundee. Without exception, all said they had been enriched by the years in Calcutta.

Tittle tattle

Somewhat surprisingly, President Obama’s banquet for Manmohan Singh got generous coverage as a celebrity event in British newspapers. In comparison, Shilpa Shetty’s marriage basically received the photo caption treatment. I noticed the Indians on the guest list for the White House banquet were much more high powered (Amartya Sen, Ratan Tata,Mukesh Ambani) compared with their Windsor Castle counterparts (Sanjeev Bhaskar???) invited by the Queen in honour of President Pratibha Patil.

But the Americans served “Red Lentil Soup with fresh cheese” (nourishing no doubt if you are recovering from swine flu), which makes me think the Queen beat Obama hands down on menu.