Vijayaraje Scindia- An Indian Royalty-Politician with Nepali Heritage

Vijayaraje Scindia
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Rajmata Vijayaraje ScindiaVijayaraje Scindia (1919-2001) born Lekha Divyeshwari and until 1970 styled the Rajmata of Gwalior, was a prominent Indian political personality. In the days of the British Raj, as consort of the last ruling Maharaja of Gwalior, she ranked among the highest aristocrats of the land. In later life, she became a politician of considerable influence and was elected repeatedly to both houses of the Indian parliament. She was also an active member, for many decades, of the Jana Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

Early years
Vijayaraje Scindia was born in 1919 at Sagar in present-day Madhya Pradesh, the eldest child of Thakur Mahendra Singh, a government officer, by his first wife Chuda Deveshwari. She was named Lekha Divyeshwari at birth. Her father was a deputy collector in the provincial administration. Her mother, who belonged to the influential Rana family of Nepal, died at Vijayaraje's birth.

Lekha's maternal grandfather, Khadga SJB Rana, had been exiled to India and had taken up residence at Sagar. It was here that Lekha was born. Her mother's death meant that Lekha never lived with her father: she was raised in the household of her maternal grandparents. The young Lekha was deeply influenced by her grandmother, Rani Dhan Kumari, an exceedingly pious lady of orthodox disposition. The impress of this early influence was to leave a lasting impact on Lekha's personality.

Although her family was aristocratic, their exile status meant that they were not very affluent. To this circumstance may be attributed the fact that Lekha received a relatively normal upbringing and a standard education, suitable to modernizing, upwardly mobile families rather than aristocratic ones. Although she was educated at
home initially, Lekha later studied at the Vasantha College, Benares, and the Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow. She stayed at a ladies hostel during this period and lived largely as other students did. During this period, the Indian independence movement was at it peak, and Lekha was deeply drawn to Gandhian principles. Already drawn towards austerity by the influence of her grandmother, Lekha gave up the use of foreign goods and fabrics.

Marriage
The era of leading a normal life was however destined to end at quite an early age. In 1941, at the age of 22, Lekha was married to Jiyajirao Scindia, Maharaja of Gwalior, one of the largest, richest and highest-ranking 21-gun-salute princely states in India. As per tradition, a new name was chosen for Lekha based upon the matching of the couple's horoscopes, and she assumed the name 'Vijayaraje Scindia'.

Her grandfather having died, Lekha's maternal uncles were instrumental in negotiating the alliance. Her husband family, the Scindias, were among the most prominent Maratha families of the land. The fact that Lekha belonged to one of the hoariest Rajput families in the sub-continent, (albeit to an impoverished cadet branch of such), undoubtedly lent special weight, in the eyes of her husband's family, to the suit that was pressed on Lekha's behalf by her uncles. Nevertheless, Vijayaraje Scindia recollects in her autobiography that she did face some initial hostility from her new family. She sensed that this wariness on their part was based on the fear that her non-Maratha heritage may result in the traditions of the ruling family being impacted. Vijayaraje privately resolved never to allow this to become an issue; by sedulous effort, she becoming utterly acclimatized to the Maratha customs and traditions of the Scindia family and thus won over her detractors.

Children
The marriage was blessed with four daughters and a son, being:

1) Padmavatiraje 'Akkasaheb' Scindia (1942-64), who wed Kirit Deb Barman, last ruling maharaja of Tripura.
2) Usharaje Scindia (b.1943), who wed her distant cousin, Pasupati Rana, a Nepalese nobleman. They are the parent of .
3) Madhavrao Scindia (1945-2001), prominent Indian politician.
4) Vasundhara Raje (b.1953) prominent Indian politician and present Chief Minister of Rajasthan. She was formerly married to the titular maharaja of Dholpur.
5)Yashodhara Raje (b.1955), also an active Indian politician and member of parliament. She was formerly married to a US-based doctor.

Family life
Vijayaraje's relationship with her husband confirmed, by every account, to the Indian ideal of perfect harmony; this is easy enough to believe, as Vijayaraje, the supreme traditionalist, would have deemed it her duty to defer to him, and to family elders, on all matters.

The situation was in every sense reversed where her children were concerned. The demise of Jiyajirao in 1961 left Vijayaraje the only parent for her growing children. True to character, Vijayaraje proved an exacting and somewhat martinet parent; she expected her children to meet her own idealised standards of lifestyle and behavior. This did not make for particular warmth, and in later life, Vijayaraje's relationship with her adult children wavered between the formally cordial and the antagonistic. In her autobiography, she regretfully recounts how little sympathy she was able to extend to her two younger daughters in their troubled marriages, and wonders whether her husband may not have handled those situations better.

Her relationship with her only son was especially troubled; personal problems were exacerbated by political differences, and she sometimes felt moved to attack his character in public. Indeed, when her will was read shortly after her death, it was found that she had forbidden her son from participating in her funerary obsequies. This is the ultimate castigation an orthodox Hindu can mete out to a son. Her children have occasionally attributed these family differences to the baneful influence of Vijayaraje's advisors, but most observers disagree with this assessment.

Entry to Politics
Vijayaraje was initiated into electoral politics in 1962 when she contested the Guna Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh on a Congress ticket. Five years later, she quit the Congress and joined the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Jan Sangh. She won the Kerera assembly seat as the party's candidate and plunged headlong into state politics. She went on to win seven consecutive parliamentary elections. She was jailed by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. In the 1970s, Vijayraje and her son Madhavrao were involved in a public dispute over property. Animosities heightened due to their differing political ideologies.

Vijayaraje came to the forefront of the BJP leadership in 1980 when she was made one of its vice-presidents. She played a key role in propagating the party's Ramjanmabhoomi agenda and was considered a hardliner. She remained a BJP vice-president until 1998 when she stepped down on health grounds and quit electoral politics. She died in January 2001.

References
Scindia, Vijayaraje, with Malgonkar, Manohar. The Last Maharani of Gwalior: An Autobiography, State University of New York Press, Albany (1987). 279 pp.

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Book Review – “The Last Maharani of Gwalior”

An Autobiography Author: Vijaya Raje Scindia 279 pgs. SUNY Press $10.95 pb, 34.50 hc

This is a with book: written with Manohar Malgonkar, like the flock of personality books that are winging their way up the New York Times bestseller list on the hot air of gossip and mean spirit. Thank the Hindu Gods of the Scindia royal family that Last Maharani is not of that distasteful genre. Malgonkar serves the elegant purpose here of creating pungent English prose, not purveying dynastic dirt.

Not that this tale lacks spice and fire. As the Maharani, the elected representative of her Gwalior (Maharashtra, central India) district, ended up on the jail side of Indira Gandhi's 1975 emergency rule, she has plenty of gritty anecdotes and thoughts: her son's sour disaffection from her as mother and in political allegiance; the senseless ransacking and despoliation of her homes (palaces actually) by Keystone Copper tax officials and her hard, but spiritually rewarding, months in a women's jail. There's a velvet dignity even in the Maharani's thrusts of the verbal lance, and the suffering of those years warrants some probing anguish. Her life is tangibly more fascinating than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis', and the Maharani of Gwalior is certainly as well-known in India as Jackie Onassis is in America.

This, though, is much more than women battling it out in the political ring. Vijaya Raje Scindia was the last queen of one of the twilight kingdoms of India, a karmically final period when the British Raj, beaten by Mahatma Gandhi, gave way to the democratic union of India. The diminutive royal kingdoms with their maharajas, maharanis and heirs apparent and fabulous palaces and tiger hunts and horse races didn't fit into the new incarnation of India. The kingdoms were signed away, the royal families given purses and allowed to live in their palaces, but those too were eventually sucked into the political maelstrom of the fledgling republic. All this took several decades, and it is the Maharani's chronicling of this period and the childhood years of her life that is page-turning absorbing.

That Vijaya Raje became the maharani of Gwalior was in itself unlikely. No Gwalior court advisor or astrologer would have foreseen it 80 years ago. For Vijaya Raje was not of the Scindia clan that had carved out and ruled Gwalior for centuries. The blood of the Nepalese royal family - the Bahadur Ranas - flowed in her, a lineage far removed from Gwalior. And the royal lines have always been very fussy about marrying within the family gene pool. But neither did Vijaya Raje scurry about the Kathmandu palaces. She was born on an estate in the town of Sagar in Madra Pradesh, the heartland of India, and a thousand miles distant from Nepal.

It turns out that her grandfather, Khadga Samsher Rana, a key scion of one of two rival royal factions in 1880's Nepal, had been involved in a successful assassination plot of the king, for what apparently he thought were reasons good for the country. He became commander-in-chief of the armies and the virtual ruler, though his brother Bir Samsher was made the new king. But the king's wife poisoned him against Khadga, and he was banished from Nepal, forced in his thirties to take refuge with the British Raj in India and establish an estate in Sagar. Vijaya Raje remembers him, when she was two years old, when he was being bundled off into a car to be taken to Kashi (Shiva's city) on the Ganges to die.

So with that bit of skulduggery history, she begins her life, taking the reader into fascinating glimpses of secret royal talismans that bring great or devastating luck and the opulent lifestyle of the last Hindu royalty. After a broken engagement with another lineage, Vijaya Raje - a reedy girl, cosmopolitan yet religious, vegetarian and wearing Swadesh cotton saris in lieu of Paris silk saris-marries the Maharaja of Gwalior, Jivajirao Scindia. Photos and an index are included.

Article copyright Himalayan Academy.

Note
There are factual inaccuracies in the book review especially pertaining to Vijayaraje Scindia’s maternal grandfather.

Khadga Samsher Rana, the maternal grandfather of Vijayaraje Scindia was the younger brother of Bir Samsher. Both of them were amongst the 17 legitimate sons of Dhir Samsher. Dhir Samsher was the youngest and probably the most ambitious brother of Janga Bahadur Rana. When Janga B Rana came to power in 1846AD through Kot Massacre, he got help from his brothers. After he consolidated his power, he formalized the rule of hereditary Prime ministers with the King as a titular head. To reward his brothers for their help in his accent to power and for their life-long loyalty, he devised a role of succession that went to his brothers first before it went to his sons, Jit Jang Rana et. al. [similar to what’s in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries]. After Jang B Rana died in 1877 AD his brother Ranodip Singh became the PM. By 1885 AD all the brothers of Jang B Rana had passed away so the next in line of succession was Jit Jang Rana. Bir Samsher and his brothers could not wait for their turn to be the PM. So they usurped power in 1885 after killing their uncle Ranodip and Jang B Rana’s sons in so-called 42nd year Massacre. Following the massacre, Bir Samsher became the PM and Khadga Samsher became C-in-C. Within couple of years (1887) there was a conspiracy to do away with Bir Samsher by his own brother Kadhka Samsher but that plot was discovered. Subsequently Khadga Samsher was banished to Palpa and later to India.

Hereditary Rana PMs' Reign (1, 2, 3 generations)
1A) Jang Bahadur Rana (1846 to 25 February 1877) [natural death]
1B) Randodip Sing Rana (25 February 1877 to 22 November 1885) [murdered by his nephews and sons of his youngest Bir Samsher & his brothers]

2A) Bir Samsher Rana (22 November 1885 to 5 March 1901) [natural death]
2B) Dev Samsher Rana (5 March to 27 June 1901) [forced out by his younger brother Chandra Samsher]
2C) Chandra Samsher Rana (27 June 1901 to 26 November 1929) [natural death]
2D) Bhim Samsher Rana (26 November 1929 to 1 September 1932) [natural death]
2E) Judda Samsher Rana (1 September 1932 to 29 November 1945) [resignation]

3A) Padma Samsher Rana, son of Bhim Samsher (20 November 1945 to 30 April 1948,) [resignation]
3B) Mohan Samsher Rana, son of Chandra Samsher (30 April 1948 to 18 February 1951) [end of the Rana regime]