Power source story

In 1966, the late Madhav Rao Scindia's wedding reception was held in what was then a hockey stadium and is now Gwalior's cricket ground. It was directly behind my father's house in the Civil Lines, renamed Gandhi Road after independence.

I watched the event from our terrace. Later as they all drove off, I saw people bowing deeply before Maharaj, as Madhavrao was known. As a 15-year-old brought up on the anti-feudal, pro-socialist zeitgeist, it all seemed very odd to me.

A few years later, in a fit of typical socialist meanness, Indira Gandhi abolished the privy purses. What an irony, then, that the Congress has acquired its own royalty now in the Gandhi family!

The purses had cost the exchequer, say the authors, no more than Rs 5.68 crore annually. They also say that if the government had done no more than to put the money it received from the Jaipur treasury in 1948 in a deposit that yielded a mere 0.25 per cent, the full cost would have been covered.

But then it was never about economics, only politics. In this biography of one of the most important""and the last""rulers of Rajasthan, we get a glimpse of the goings-on.

The fact was that people in nearly a third of India (the princely states covered 48 per cent during British rule) saw their former rulers as the only legitimate source of authority, and not the upstart Congressmen. This hugely annoyed politicians, who, the authors point out, offered a simple deal: if you join the Congress, you will be all right. If not, watch out.

Savai Man Singh II of Jaipur, who died in 1970 while playing polo in England, had no time for this sort of thing. He remonstrated with Nehru, who had started off writing obliquely in 1955 that the privy purses were an "anachronism" and then in October 1956, had decided that the former ruler would no longer be the Rajpramukh of the state. He once even remonstrated with Savai Man Singh over a reception that the latter was holding for calling it a "durbar". Savai Man Singh denied it.

Then came the general election of 1957 and Savai Man Singh wrote to Nehru practically asking for a ticket. Nehru passed on the letter to the election committee and that was the end of it. Or was it?

A few days later the chief minister asked Savai Man Singh's wife, Gayatri Devi, if she would contest on a Congress ticket. She instead went off to England with the polo team and later joined the Swatantra Party, which enraged the chief minister so much that he issued threats about abolishing the privy purses. Gayatri Devi went on to win by 175,000 votes and her two colleagues, both "royals" , also won. The Congress lost all the seats in Jaipur district.

R P Singh and K R Singh have written a tidy little account of Savai Man Singh's life and times, and fortunately it is not the usual gushy stuff. As such, it ought to serve as a starting point for historians in Rajasthan to delve a little more deeply into the 1948-1970 phase of relations between Savai Man Singh and Gayatri Devi, on the one hand, and politicians, on the other.

Hopefully, historians in other parts of India will do the same for their own states. Such an investigation is overdue.

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SAVAI MAN SINGH II OF JAIPUR
THE LIFE AND LEGEND

R P Singh and K R Singh
Roli Books
Price: Rs 350; Pages: 214