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OFFTRACK:
Wankaner,
Gujarat
 Royal
Recollections
An
old maharaja reminisces about Gandhiji and gentleman cricketers
By
Uday Mahurkar
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| Pratapsinh
Jhala, arguably the oldest surviving royal in India, outside his palace |
Pratapsinh
Jhala is 94. He was once the ruler of Wankaner in Saurashtra but India
made its tryst with destiny and he had to give up his claims to a kingdom.
Today he has neither fawning courtiers nor a principality to rule over.
All that the nonagenarian former maharaja lives with are sharp memories
of fellow maharajas and burra sahibs, shikars and, yes, gentleman cricketers.
And as the oldest surviving raja in the country, he has lots of anecdotes
to recall.
Wankaner
merged with the Indian Union in 1948. Pratapsinh calls the event the "most
memorable moment in my life though not the happiest one". He sinks
into a reverie and then adds, "Just one call from Sardar Patel and
we gave up power which we had won by the strength of our swords. I observe
a fast every year on the day we signed the merger document." And
he does not hide his bitterness about the withdrawal of privy purses to
former rulers by the government in 1969: "That should go down as
one of the worst examples of deception by any government."
History
books may not have recorded the contribution of nondescript Wankaner to
the freedom struggle. But, as Pratapsinh recalls with some pride, Harijans
were allowed in schools in Wankaner and one of their representatives even
had a seat in the darbar on special occasions. But the most interesting
detail that Pratapsinh recalls is about Gandhiji's letter to his secretary
Mahadev Desai. "Please tell Rajasaheb Wankaner," it read, "that
I have got what he had promised me and I thank him for it." Apparently
Amarsinhji, Pratapsinh's father and the then ruler of Wankaner, had sent
funds to Gandhiji for the freedom movement.
Revealing
Untouchability: Gandhiji's father was the diwan of Wankaner for two
years from 1868. Once when Gandhiji visited the princely state, Amarsinhji
offered to escort him to Harijanvas (the Harijans' locality) in his Rolls-Royce.
Talk veered round to untouchability, and the raja pointed out that even
the Harijans practised untouchability among themselves. Gandhiji took
note of the point, and in his speech at a Harijan meet, raised the issue.
But later that evening he chose to stay in a Harijan's house rather than
at the palace.
Other nuggets
concern royal cricketers Ranjisinhji and Duleepsinhji of Nawanagar. Duleep
was Pratapsinh's friend in school and at Cambridge and Ranji, the then
Jam Saheb of Nawanagar, was his guardian during his school days at Cheltenham
in England. Ranji affectionately called Pratapsinh his "nephew".
"On holidays I used to go to his mansion at Staines on the Thames,"
says Pratapsinh. The Wankaner family was always close to Ranji. In 1907,
the year Pratapsinh was born, Amarsinhji decided to begin construction
of the royal residence. The foundation stone was laid by Ranji, and when
the magnificent structure was completed, it was aptly named Ranjit Vilas
Palace after the Jam Saheb. In 1929, when Pratapsinh was getting married,
Ranji landed in Wankaner a week in advance for the pre-marriage ceremonies.
When an elephant on which the groom was to ride through the town went
mad Ranji rushed to Jamnagar, capital of Nawanagar, 150 km away, to bring
another elephant in a special train, declaring, "My nephew will ride
on an elephant."
Ruler and
cricketers aside, the former maharaja has an interesting detail about
the Machhu dam in Morvi which burst and washed away thousands in 1979.
"The great architect, Sir M. Visvesvaraya, and a senior irrigation
official, Sir William Stamp, surveyed the spot where the dam was to be
built. They were against building the dam on the spot on technical grounds.
And they were proved correct."
Pratapsinh
may today live in a world of memories but his mental faculties are as
sharp as they ever were. He can still surprise with his ready wit and
gentle self-deprecating humour. Ask him, for example, what the difference
between kingship and democracy is. Pat comes the reply from a smiling
former ruler: "Kingship is a system in which one family exploits
millions while in a democracy thousands of families exploit the millions."
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In
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