Word: baroda
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After a heart-to-heart talk, his legislature formally quit suggesting abdication to the sporting Gaekwar of Baroda (TIME, Aug. 23), who, it said, had managed to run up an estimated $10 million tab on a six-week spree. The chastened gem collector agreed to grant "complete, responsible government" to his 3,000,000 people, and to pay back whatever the state's ministry decided he had spent...
...money on rearing horses and running races . . . Your Highness [should] have looked after the proper administration of the state ... I need not say more. It is only the blind that ignores the signs and portents." The Maharaja went to the U.S. to buy some more horses. Last week, the Baroda legislature let go. "His frequent and prolonged absence from the state resulting in complete neglect of his duties," said a majority resolution, "and the conduct and actions of His Highness ever since his so-called second marriage have filled his people with misgivings about his fitness to rule...
...little later he called for the check ($100) and tried to get off with a $5 tip. Under icy stares from the waiters, he fished out another $5. Next day, Major General Maharaja Sir Pratapsinha Gaekwar* of Baroda, one of the world's richest men, started his long voyage home to defend himself against charges that he had spent $10 million of state funds during a single six-week spree...
Fitness to Rule. In 1939, when he assumed the throne of Baroda, the Maharaja's personal fortune was estimated at $300 million. Much of it was in precious stones, golden cannons, leopard-skin-lined Rolls-Royces, sacred elephants and palaces with alabaster corridors. In 1942 he approved legislation outlawing polygamy. Soon afterwards, at the race track in Madras, he met beautiful Princess Sita Devi of Pithapuram. He promptly broke his new law by taking her for his wife although both she and he were already married. (Under Hindu law, the Princess could not divorce her husband; so she simply...
Then he stepped aboard a plane for Baroda. "What happens to me is all up to my people," said the Maharaia. "Politics are never fair, are they?" He added that he hoped to be back in Britain in time for the fall racing season...