To India, With Love

Fifty years of independence gave India its first official watch edition. Three decades later, those dials have become both cultural mirrors and commercial collaborations, revealing how retailers and collectors now co-author India's place in global watchmaking; balancing patriotism, aspiration, and the ever-so-Indian urge to be seen

- Sharan Sanil

Bombay in the late 19th century fancied itself a city on the rise.

Gaslights were giving way to electric chandeliers, carriages to the occasional motorcar. On Waudby Road, opposite the Gymkhana and with the Arabian Sea as a backdrop, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata commissioned a residence that was less home and more declaration of intent. Esplanade House, designed by British architect James Morris, combined classical symmetry with startling modernity: a marble staircase beneath a glass roof, a banquet hall glittering with chandeliers, even a private lift—an audacious novelty for Bombay in the 1880s.

When the house was complete, Tata's thank-you to Morris came in the form of a custom Patek Philippe five-minute repeating chronograph in pink gold. The caseback was engraved with one simple line; “Presented by Jamsetjee N. Tata to James Morris, the architect of Esplanade House Bombay, 1890.” Both house and watch belonged to the same world: fusions of European technique and Indian ambition, built to outlast their owners.

That act of gifting captured a wider truth about the time. Before global editions and commemorative dials, Swiss watchmaking in India was an affair of correspondence and personal persuasion. The Maharaja of Patiala commissioned gem-studded Cartier timepieces to match his commissioned jewellery from the maison. The Maharaja of Kutch, more technically minded, ordered a platinum Patek Philippe that would resurface generations later at auction. And not far from the courts, Jaeger-LeCoultre found its own muse in the polo fields of Jaipur, crafting custom Reversos for the Sawai Man Guards, their flip sides painted with regimental emblems, portraits of Maharanis, or even scenes of Krishna.