Puars of Dhar and Dewas

Maratha Malwa

The Puar or Pawar family were among Bajirao I's commanders in the conquest of Malwa and were granted territory there in the 1720s. They claimed descent from the Paramāras who had ruled the same region until 1305, and settled at Dhar, the Paramāra capital — a claim of return rather than of conquest.

Dewas was divided between two brothers, and the partition was carried to an extreme that became notorious: the town itself was split between the two states, with separate administrations, police and revenue systems operating on opposite sides of the same street.

Dewas and Forster

E. M. Forster served as private secretary to the Maharaja of Dewas Senior in 1921 and wrote about it in The Hill of Devi, an affectionate and exact account of the working of a small princely state — its finances, its ceremonies, its chaos. It is among the few first-hand English descriptions of princely India written without either contempt or romance, and the Dewas experience fed into A Passage to India.

Both states acceded to India in 1948.