Reviving the royal Marwari horses

Photograph by Preeti Verma Lal

Much happened between that impeccable conception and the age when the Rajputs mounted on their horses kicked dust in the sandy terrains and conquered fiefdoms at will. The horses - the Marwaris - that they rode were like the Rajput chieftains - wild, beefy but very brave. And the Rajputs loved them to distraction, minstrels sung paeans for them, stones chiselled to pay tribute to the warrior horses, strokes of chestnut and honey added to the palette of painters as the Marwaris became a glorious appendage to the regal splendour. The pride of the kings was vested in their cavalry and the Marwaris thrived in the royal stables.

It is a very horsy romance; let's call it The Tale of a Marwari. The dramatis personae catalogue: Jealous gods, chaste virgins, kings of all hues, a porcelain skinned half-British and half-French rider, a mustachioed Kunwar who is as handsome as the stallions that he punters around in, assiduous researchers, ordinary farriers, and obscenely rich buyers..... The setting: Fluffy clouds in heaven, the smoke of a yagna, the silken sand of the deserts of Rajasthan, a heated barn in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. The prop: Barouche and blindfolds. The repertoire of emotions: Intrigue, anger, non-chalance, perseverance, arrogance, melodrama… The protagonist: The Marwari horse, with ears that arch at the tips like a lyre, long eyelashes, lustrous mane, flared nostrils, rumps like planets; its mien wild and temperamental with a stroke of valour.

Let's look at the beginning first. The saga begins in heaven with the ochre flames from the yagna kund of Lord Brahma, the Creator of the Universe, wafting and persevering till a white, winged horse miraculously emerges out of the smoke. That perhaps was the first horse that pranced in the heaven and had enough gods twitching in envy. On earth, the first horses came from Saptwasha, the seven-headed stallion who sped with the wind carrying Lord Surya's barouche. But Saptwasha had some terrestrial duties to perform - he had to sire the first horses on earth. The handsome stallion was made to stand in front of seven blindfolded chaste virgins, but he did not mate with these virgins. One by one their blindfolds were removed so that they could have a brief glimpse of the horse - that is how the first seven horses were conceived.

Much happened between that impeccable conception and the age when the Rajputs mounted on their horses kicked dust in the sandy terrains and conquered fiefdoms at will. The horses - the Marwaris - that they rode were like the Rajput chieftains - wild, beefy but very brave. And the Rajputs loved them to distraction, minstrels sung paeans for them, stones chiselled to pay tribute to the warrior horses, strokes of chestnut and honey added to the palette of painters as the Marwaris became a glorious appendage to the regal splendour. The pride of the kings was vested in their cavalry and the Marwaris thrived in the royal stables. When war bugles were sounded, the maharanis not only anointed the kings but also their steed and many a folk song record the maharanis' pleading to the horse to bring back the maharaja safe from the battlefront. The Marwari was the custodian, the protector of Rajput honour.

The arrival of the British spelt doom for the Marwaris. The prim and propah English mems took an immediate aversion to the rather wild Marwaris and the slobbering heads of Indian principalities eager to please the gora sahibs gave away their horses to their syces. From the royal stable the Marwaris moved to the farms becoming an asset for the farmer and leading ordinary lives. Hundreds of stallions were gelded to gratify the British.

The breaking of British shackles did not change things; with the privy purse gone the royals had to shed a lot of their imperial accoutrements, the large retinue of Marwaris being one of them. Life chugged along and with inbreeding and crossbreeding their numbers dwindled, their gene pool depleted.

And then as if to change the fate of the Marwaris, one day a half-British half-French waif-like poet and painter who grew up as the stepdaughter of Sir Harold Beeley, England's ambassador to Cairo, decided to take a safari through Rajasthan. The rumour of a plague almost scuttled the plan, but Francesca Kelly defied the ogre and the rumour and flew into Dundlod, a 300-year old fort owned by Kunwar Raghuvendra Singh Dundlod (Bonnie). It was Kelly's first visit to India but horses she knew, for many a night she had walked out of the Bedouin tents in Cairo for a midnight gallop.

Bonnie's tryst with horses was not so seeped in serendipity. As nobles of Dundlod, the family stables were always studded with prized equine possessions, his grandfather had 200 horses, mainly English and Polish mares. But between the hoary past and dwindling fortunes, the horsy connection skewed to more mundane reasons - Bonnie became the location liaison head for Ismail Merchant's The Far Pavilions. When the unit packed its bags and cameras, it gave away the 25 Marwari horses to Bonnie. Between tending these horses and playing polo, Bonnie took some Australian polo players on lazy safaris. On an ordinary afternoon somebody suggested a safari for riders from the West and that stray remark started the safari business in Rajasthan. Bonnie spearheaded it and soon became the outfitter for Bayard Fox, the largest riding company in the world.

It was on one such safari in 1995 that the Kunwar and the petite poet came together to save the maharajas' horse. On the third day of the ride, Kelly fell for the chestnut-white mare Shanti and decided to take her to her eight acre farm in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. But she did not know that the innocuous desire would hit against a wall - three years ago the government of India had issued a complete ban on the export of indigenous horses, though there were no restrictions on import of any breed from anywhere in the world. The logic was simple: Barely 500-600 Marwaris were left and out of them not many could boast of a pure gene pool and the government did not want this 'national wealth' to cross the native boundary. Even if the Indian government relented there were other hurdles across seven seas - so paranoid are the Europeans about equine diseases that they refuse permission to an airline even to refuel if there are horses in its pallet. It is no better in the US where it is imperative to quarantine the horses outside its land before letting them in.

If you meet Kelly you'd see a trace of obstinacy and keeping with that stubborn streak she refused to hang her boots. She had to take Shanti to the US, no matter how large a gauntlet she had to wear. The next five years were replete with petitions, reasons, perseverance and loads of frustration. In between fighting the battle and breezing in and out of India at least three times a year, Kelly partnered with Bonnie to set up Marwari Bloodlines, a company that would breed and export horses. In 1999, the two were also instrumental in cutting through the fractious breeders' associations in Rajasthan to form the Indigenous Horse Society of India, the only such body recognized by the government of India.

The biggest challenge for Indigenous Horse Society was to list breed standards for the Marwaris. In several meetings and fora, members brainstormed to define a horse that would fall into the category of a Marwari (see box). Once that was done, it was a huge headway towards saving the Marwari. Meanwhile, the government relented and granted restricted license for export of indigenous horses, including the Marwari. The petite poet had won a major battle and with the recognition of Indigenous Horse Society it became imperative for all breeders to register their horses before exploring the export idea. The Society has also done a lot to ameliorate the rather meagre veterinary facilities to horses, including a mobile hospital and prepare a studbook (the horse's family tree). There's much more on the agenda but the change is already evident.

Much before Kelly walked onto the stage, a Marwari could be bought for anywhere in the Rs 5,000 range, but the recent prices have soared to nearly Rs 2 lakhs. In the US, Kelly is asking for $ 50,000 for Dilraj, her stallion. She has not found a buyer ready to loosen the purse strings that much but Kelly is doing all she can to spread word about her Marwaris (she now has six, with two foals on way) - she even hired an equine photographer to make her horses look gorgeous so that she could advertise in equine magazines, directories and breed encyclopedia.

At the Pushkar Fair in Rajasthan, a horde of riders from the United States jump off their Marwaris in the temporary stable of the Dundlod Camp; their jodhpuris crumpled, their boots laden with dust, their joys spilling, their tongues wagging in praise of the amazing endurance of this breed of indigenous horses. Some of them had earlier traversed varied terrains on the Criollo in Chile, the Lusitano in Portugal, the Welsh Cob in Belgium but they say the Marwari beats them all in endurance. Amidst all the praise sits Kelly talking of her how the Marwaris adapted so well in the snowy Massachusetts. In their first winter they grew a shiny coat to shield themselves from the cold, and the Marwaris who loathed the sight of a river in the desert now swim in the bay and loll in the snow. Buying blankets for the horses, heating the barn and hiring a stable manager is not all that Kelly indulges in, she has also bought a book of Hindi/Sanskrit names to christen the foals. She would not call them a John Smith or a Maria Augustin, she has Zubeida, Mehrunissa, Nazrana and Ghungroo in her barn. She draws a lot of crowds in national fairs and exhibitions where her Marwaris enthrall the audience with their tent-pegging skills. One of her Marwaris also shared the stage with dancers in Ride, a theatrical production… That's Kelly's PR efforts at best and most innovative.

It has been 10 years since the moment Kelly fell for Shanti, the chestnut-white mare, but she has not lost that streak of stubbornness. She says she is no Joan of Arc, nor are intentions mercenary, but she will wear the gauntlet till the Marwaris regain their lost glory for the "reward is in doing something for them." Back in his fort, Bonnie is planning to set up the country's first institute where breeders, grooms and farriers would be trained. Several dreams and ideas are being incubated by the petite poet and the mustachioed Kunwar, some of them might be a scribble on the horizon, but when you see the Marwaris merrily canter across a sand dune, you know the very horsy romance calls for an encore and the curtain would fall on a heartening "…. And they lived happily ever after…."

Published in Swagat magazine, April 2006.

Contact: Preetivermalal@gmail.com