Australian CWG delegate on Cinderella hunt

NEW DELHI - A pair of 200-year-old embroidered Mughal slippers belonging to an Indian “princess” has set an Australian delegate to the Commonwealth Games on a Cinderella hunt in India.

The pair of traditional hand-crafted “jootis” had been passed down to Australian delegate Eric Ronald’s family in the early 1800s.

It is believed that the shoes belonged to an Indian woman, an early family ancestor, who was “quite possibly a princess”, Ronald said.

The Indian princess had married an English officer during the British Raj. Their wards later settled in Australia.

Briefing the media in the capital Wednesday, Ronald said: “For generations, my family in Australia had treasured a pair of beautiful slippers, knowing only that they once belonged to a distant ancestor, an Indian princess, the daughter of a maharajah or a nawab.”

“Although her name has been lost in time, she was remembered as the daughter of an Indian ruler (perhaps Saadat Ali Khan II, Nawab of Oudh between 1798-1814, according to oral history),” Ronald said.

However, much was recorded about the family of Ronald’s ancestor, an English officer Samuel Need, who served in India, in the early 1800s.

“Samuel Need’s second son Johnston Need was settled in Australia and was buried at Tower Hill, Victoria. Johnston’s birth details (and those of his siblings) list his mother only as ‘a native’ - the princess, who probably owned the shoes,” Ronald said.

“I hope we can uncover the mystery of the slippers while I am here,” the CWG delegate from Australia said.

Ronald added that his filial ties with India probably explained his “love for garlic naan and dal makhani”.

Australian High Commissioner Peter Varghese, in a statement here, said: “The shoes and the magical story have been cherished by an Australian family for generations”.

“It is family history at its best and shows the longstanding links that bind our two nations together. I hope the riddle of the slippers can be solved during Erics visit to India for the Commonwealth Games, Varghese said.

Tracing the Need family tree, Ronald said: Apart from Johnston’s many descendants living in Australia, the only physical reminder of Samuel Need’s Indian wife was the beautiful pair of royal slippers.

They were passed into the care of descendant Eric Jones’ grandmother Flora Ronald. The intricate detail in the slippers sports an unusual motif, a symbolic ‘katar’ or ‘buta’, believed to be emblematic of ‘Nawabi’ heraldry, Ronald said.

Citing family records about Need and his princess, Ronald said: Major General Samuel Need (1765-1839) of Nottinghamshire was believed to have married a native in India sometime between 1796 and 1810.”

Given that Samuel later married Annie Grant in 1815 in Cawnpore (now Kanpur), it is reasonable to conclude that by then, the ‘princess’ had died. Annie Grant was a daughter of Col. Grant of the 42nd Regiment stationed in Kanpur, Ronald said.

Need and his princess had four children who were baptised, Ronald said.

It is possible that the princess died at the birth of her fourth child, he said.

Can you help me identify the Cinderella of the slippers, Ronald appealed to the media.

He said details of the births, baptisms, weddings and burial in the Need family were available online at the British Library archives.