Keeper of the Cattle

In the opulent glow of El Morocco's Champagne Room in Manhattan, sat a swarthy pop-eyed man with a vast double chin. His companion was a beautiful young woman. "My dear," he was heard to say, "you just don't know what I could do for you."

A 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 announced that she had abandoned her faith and become a Moslem, which automatically dissolved her Hindu marriage. Immediately afterwards she announced that she had been reconverted to Hinduism.)

The couple spent most of their time in Britain, where they lived in lush disregard for austerity. The Maharaja lengthened his fabulous string of race horses (estimated to be worth $1,000,000), built a chromium-studded training establishment atop Warren Hill, Newmarket, Cambridgeshire (despite local indignation over this use of scarce building materials).

Last month, austere, frugal Premier Jivraj Mehta (friend and personal physician to the late Mohandas Gandhi) wrote his sovereign a letter. "Instead of spending time and 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."

Unfairness of Politics. In the waiting room at Paris' Orly Airport, the Maharaja, toying with the remains of a ham sandwich, talked to the press. "Why should I take any money from my country's treasury?" he asked. A gold and ruby bracelet glittered on his chubby wrist as he lit a Dunhill Cedros de Luxe. "I have no idea what is behind the charge . . . India is going from Socialist to Communist, as you know. But I suppose we shouldn't say that, should we?"

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.

* An honorary title meaning "Keeper of the Cattle."

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