Jai, sportsman and soldier
Brian Martin
THE LAST MAHARAJA by Quentin Crewe
Michael Joseph, £12.95
For centuries the maharajas stole the limelight on the stage of princely India with their gaudy magnificence. Occasionally, there were colourful women, with charac- ter and power enough to exert influence and their own sway. The 'beautiful and frolicsome' Maharani of Cooch Behar was a legend in the Twenties and early Thirties. And it was a woman who finally despatch- ed the maharajas. Indira Gandhi, tough, intellectual, and yet not without austere beauty, delivered Congress's coup de grace to the state princes, and abolished both their positions and power.
Quentin Crewe tells the story of Sawai Man Singh II, Maharaja of Jaipur from 1922 until 1949 when Jaipur was merged into the new state of Rajasthan under the government of Patel and Menon. As the Duke of Edinburgh notes in the foreword, the radical political changes which India experienced during the middle of this century and 'their impact on the life of one of the last of India's ruling Princes' are vividly described in this book: or at least as vividly as the author's sources allow. Crewe has been able to rely heavily on the diaries of General Amer Singh who was commander of the Jaipur State Forces: so much so that he might have been better off writing a biography of Amer Singh. He met with many obstacles, peculiarly Indi- an, in his attempt to research the Mahar- aja's life. After 1949, Jai, as the Maharaja was known mainly to his English friends, became Rajpramukh, the titular governor of the new state. Crewe exasperatedly exclaims, 'Where were the Maharaja's files on his governorship of Rajasthan? Last seen in the carpet store of a house which is now a hotel.' Other files were eaten by ants. With some trouble, he arranged an interview with a neighbouring Maharaja who, when met, was completely unforth- coming, but had been too polite not to see the author.
Jai had no great mind,nor was he an astute politician: he was rather 'sportsman and soldier'. He liked all things military, parades, weapons, uniforms, medals. Af- ter school in India, first at the Rambagh Palace, then at Mayo College, he spent a year at the Royal Military College, Wool- wich. Later, during the war, he would wear, whenever possible, his Life Guards uniform and as a temporary captain would meticulously salute senior officers. With a sense of Indian paradox, he would some- times be required to change into his other uniform, that of a Major-General in the Indian Army: as Crewe wryly comments, `those officers whom he had saluted the day before were now obliged to salute him.'
He especially excelled as a polo-player, and as a wealthy ruler possessed the resources to provide pitches and ponies. He brought highly successful polo teams to England. In 1933 his Jaipur team arrived with 39 horses, 51 grooms and a polo-stick maker. They won the season's three open championships, the King's Coronation Cup at Ranelagn, the Prince of Wales's Empire Cup at Hurlingham, the Rugby Challenge Cup, and the Open and Senior Cups at Dunster: 'It was a feat that was never repeated.'
Jai mixed easily with the English. He had been well instructed, particularly by J. W. C. Mayne, his one-time guardian. When Mayne left India, he wrote Jai a letter revealing much about British atti- tudes to the prince's upbringing. He advised, 'If you really understand "Nobles- se Oblige" I have no fears for you — this and "Ich dien" ("I serve"), the Prince of Wales's motto': who better to advise on noblesse oblige than the British, the arch- practitioners? He went on to observe, 'I am glad to say that you are "princely" in many ways already — e.g. in your kindness to others, especially those lower than yourself and those less fortunate than you — this quality will make you beloved.'
It is surprising that Jai had 'something of a reputation for meanness' in India. In England his hospitality was notable. To his young friend, the Maharaja of Barwara, whom he nick-named Rabbit and addres- sed as Baby, he was generous to a fault.
Yet Crewe records that, constantly wary of falling into the alcoholism of some of his forebears, he drank only champagne: 'He would take a half-bottle of Bollinger to any party at which the host was unlikely to provide champagne.' Only half a bottle! Why not a bottle? Why not a rehoboam? During the war and after it Jai showed that he was persistently coming to terms with modern India; but there was always a conflict between the old world of the princely rulers and the power politics of the modern state. Early in Jai's biography we became familiar with characters who might have stepped out from some Evelyn Waugh novel, the Nawab of Tonk, the Maharaja of Nawanagar, alias the re- nowned cricketer, Ranjitsinhji, or the wealthy, beautiful widow of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar. In 1940 Jai married the second daughter of that Maharani: Gayat- ri Devi, or Ayesha, became Third Her Highness, but also a political power in her own right, eventually leading the Swatan- tra Party.
Jai tried to make himself useful. Under Shastri's government he became ambassa- dor to Spain. Shastri gave way to Indira Gandhi who had no time for the princes and their old-fashioned ways: 'Go and ask the Maharajas how many wells they have dug for the people in their states when they ruled them. How many roads they con- structed?' In 1967 the All India Congress adopted a resolution to abolish the privy purses, and all privileges held by the princes as 'incongruous to the concept and practice of democracy'. By 1971, the princes were no more.
It is an absorbing book, more so about India in transition than about Man Singh II. There are some questions left annoying- ly unanswered: why did Rabbit come back in 1940 'under a cloud' from attachment to the Jaipur Infantry in the Middle East? What was the serious operation Ayesha underwent in 1969? And it would be better to have bracketed English meanings of Indian words at their first appearance than to have a glossary in Appendix III.
Yet these are minor blemishes by corn- parison with the presentation of the Indian sub-continent given here, and this account of one of India's gorgeous occupants, who once flew over Jaipur redesigning the city from his Tiger Moth until its propellor fell off. He survived that occasion to die some years later, more fittingly, on the field of play in the saddle of his polo pony.
Previous page
