Kunwar Dhruv Raj Singh of Dungri Marries Countess Maria Ghislaine von und zu Eltz in the Parish Church of Pauli Bekehrung

If you are wondering why you should be burdened with this pile-up of strange names, I shall say that, true, these persons are of no great importance, but the fact itself is interesting: in the Austrian town of Bad Aussee a wedding has taken place that united Indian and European nobility. It does not matter that we are speaking of aristocracy of no great magnitude; what matters is that, if one looks closely, such small, unobtrusive incursions by natives of India into the world's elites can be noticed everywhere.

Through her mother, Countess Maria von Eltz is a great-great-granddaughter of King Ludwig III of Bavaria. Kunwar Dhruv Raj Singh comes from the ancient Rajput noble house of Dungri and is a close friend and distant relative of the Maharaja of Jaipur. Among the guests from India and Europe were Maharaja Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur and Princess Gauravi Kumari, Prince Jaime of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Noto, Prince Rafael of Orléans-Braganza and Prince Max Windisch-Graetz.

The title "kunwar" is the Rajput designation for the son of a noble house, an analogue of "young master", and refers to the non-ruling nobility.

And now let us recall other examples of Indians' integration into the world's elite circles.

The wife of JD Vance, Usha Chilukuri, is the daughter of Indian immigrants from Andhra Pradesh. Kamala Harris, though she latches on to her African-American heritage, is in fact the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan, who came from Madras; her father was born in Jamaica. The Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, was born in Kampala into an Indo-Ugandan family. The Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, was born Nimrata Randhawa; the former Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, whose real name is Piyush Amrit, is a pure-blooded Indian. FBI Director Kash Patel, naturally. And also the conservative activist Vivek Ramaswamy, and the congressmen Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ami Bera, Shri Thanedar and Suhas Subramanyam.

That is just the United States, off the top of my head. In Great Britain there was an entire Prime Minister of Punjabi origin, Rishi Sunak, and besides him the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, the former Home Secretary Priti Patel, the MP Suella Braverman, the member of the House of Lords Alok Sharma, the Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho; in the House of Commons there are some 28 MPs of Indian origin,

Further, in this cosy circle of maharajas on a modest scale we have the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, the Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand, the former leader of Canada's federal New Democratic Party Jagmeet Singh, the President of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the President of Guyana Irfaan Ali, the Prime Minister of Trinidad Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the former Prime Minister of Mauritius Pravind Jugnauth, and the former President of Suriname Chandrikapersad Santokhi.

Nor let us forget the masala party of the corporate world: Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Sundar Pichai at Alphabet, Arvind Krishna at IBM, Shantanu Narayen at Adobe, Leena Nair at Chanel, Ajay Banga at the World Bank, Neal Mohan at YouTube.

Against this motley Bollywood backdrop, the dynastic marriages of Aga Khan IV Karim to Princess Gabriele zu Leiningen and of Aga Khan III to the Frenchwomen Andrée Carron and Yvonne Labrousse look rather modest. Just wait and see.