The name Ranakpour went two ways. The city at the edge of the Rann that Raja Fateh Singh of the Suryavanshi clan had conquered from the tribal Bhil people. Pura, meaning city, would always come out as ‘pour’ when spoken by the Bhil population, and since Fateh Singh was a benevolent king, he named the city Ranakpour as a mark of respect towards the valiant enemy he had defeated. This mark of respect was paid back in full when the Bhils fought alongside him to defeat the marauding Arab tribes as they headed eastwards. Hence, Ranakpour remained unscathed. After the victory, Fateh Singh went much further to cement his newfound kingdom’s longevity by marrying Renouka, the queen of the Bhils. Renuka, the pandits might correct, meaning born of dust. But the strategic yet forbidden marriage was kept a secret, for how could the sun-worshipping Suryavanshi king be associated with the queen of dust! It had to be denied at all costs, even as the queen’s blood flowed through the royal dynasty and her name forever etched in their identity – Ranakpour, the city of dust.

It didn’t matter that the Singhs and Bhils had been allies and had interbred for centuries when their history was revisited and liberally revised during the elections of 1952. When the Mewad Mahasabha’s opposition party stirred up anti-royal sentiments with made-up charges of suppressing and abusing the backward caste, all Uday Singh could do was offer dry talking points about how the royal family had always tried to do their best for all their subjects, when in fact, he could have pointed to the insignia of Ranakpour that adorned many a flag from across the state – the rising sun in the middle, a sword on the right and a bow on the left. The sword, of course, was the weapon of choice of his ancestors. But a bow? Why couldn’t there be a sword on either side, creating a perfect balance? A Ranakpour king had never ever picked a bow in training, let alone on the battlefield. But Fateh Singh had chosen the bow as a symbolic gesture to signify the family’s intertwined destiny with that of the Bhils, a tribe whose name itself meant bow. The same bow the Bhil ancestors had mastered, a skill traced all the way back to Eklavya. As the Bhils thumbed their noses at royalty and deserted the party in hordes, Uday Singh countered the opposition’s arguments with fiscal facts, since the stories that lurked behind the pages of their collective histories had to stay hidden at all costs.