The story of a man who combined the roles of a modern politician and a maharaja
When in september 2001, in the midst of a fiercely fought assembly election in the key state of Uttar Pradesh, a private plane crashed, it cruelly cut short the life of Madhavrao Scindia. A former maharaja of Gwalior who had successfully turned himself into a competent Congress minister at the Centre, Scindia had achieved much and almost certainly would have played an important role in the subsequent Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. The book under review tells the life-story of this suave and secular man, who could effortlessly combine in himself the roles of a democratic and modern politician and a maharaja enjoying all the feudal pomp and trappings. Its co-authors, journalist and a close friend of Scindia’s, Vir Sanghvi, and his colleague, Namita Bhandare, have done a fine job. Their work is lucid and, by and large, objective.

In his early years, Scindia, like the scions of other princely families, was used to the privileged life, going to races and owning racehorses, taking frequent holidays in foreign lands and generally living it up. But all this changed when he joined politics, a penchant which he must have inherited from his mother Rajmata Vijayraje Scindia. However, their political paths were exactly the opposite. She began as a very influential Congresswoman in Madhya Pradesh but soon parted company with the once grand old party to become a virtual icon of the Jan Sangh, the forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party. D.P. Mishra, the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, told me that she had quit in a huff when he refused her “imperious” demand that Congress affairs “in our riyasat” should be left to her care.

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