A Maharajah in Marylebone

The Maharajah of Baroda could afford to feed 220,000 people in Birmingham every week, the Daily Mirror announced in 1948.

His elephants, decorated with diamond earrings, allegedly ate better than his peasants.

The Maharajah's 744 acres, studded with marble nymphs between banyan trees, include one of the most beautiful cricket grounds in the world, one where players get gnawed by crocodiles if they wade too far into the lake for lost balls.

The Maharajah is one of fi ve men in India entitled to a hereditary 21-gun salute. I think I heard it last month in Hyde Park.

Before meeting the Maharajah, I had to scan the map to fi nd where Baroda was.

It is a paradise on the northwest tip of India, 200 miles north of Bombay.

Its joys, says Baedeker, are its sleepy suns, mad moons, spice-laden air, harsh heat, furious flies that mist the mind and gaudy, tormented streets'.

It is also blessed with parrots, forests, cotton and lush black soil. Baroda' is, however, a name from mythology, not from the realworld.

The Maharajah forgave my unforgivable Gaekwad, his surname meaning cow-door' or protector of cows' while Maharajah means great king'– appears in a white suit, sunglasses and with a generous head of hair that belies his 72 years.

He is small, lean and slim from much cricket in his youth, being a fi rst-class player who captained the Baroda team. His Maharani, Shubhangini Raje, sips Earl Grey. She is non-royal, by origin from Gwalior, pretty, gracious and of his vintage; they married in 1964.

Their son and heir is Samarjitsingh, 42, who was educated at Uppingham, plays cricket and runs the Baroda Golf Club. Their daughters are the Princesses Alaukika, 43, and Anjana, 40.

As warlords, the Barodas overran northwest India in the mid-18th century, earning huge wealth. The
Raj assumed supreme power but left them in local command. But the British have departed and the Barodas' sky-high royalty is over.

The Maharajah may be India's most kingly figure but he is no idler on a chaise longue on the Côte d'Azur.

Born in Ootacamund in the hills to the south, educated at the Royal Academy Schools in London after taking a fine art degree in Baroda, he has painted and sculpted for 40 years bar eight years' interruption to serve parliament.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ended 150 years of partying for the maharajahs in 1971 when she seized most of their assets. Steep taxation followed in the 1980s.

No doubt the Maharajah has no need to beg NatWest for a mortgage but he survives by popping into Christie's to sell the odd heirloom.

After the $7.1 million pearl necklace, the Barodas' pearl and diamond carpet followed last March for $5.5 million, sold at an auction in Qatar.

It was made to decorate the prophet Allah's tomb in Medina. Rumour has it that the Barodas' finest jewel, the enormous 128.48ct oval diamond called

The Star of the South, with them since surfacing in Brazil in 1853, vanished to Bombay and then to Amsterdam around 2002.

If that, too, has been sold, add another $20 to $25 million to the bank account.

The Maharajah may still have in his treasury two solid gold cannons of 280lb each and two more in solid silver, plus two diamonds of 78 and 70 carats called the English Dresden and the Akbar Shah, worth around $10 million each, so all is not lost. But these are hard times in Baroda.

A guest who has stayed at the Laxmi Vilas palace reports that when he drew his bedroom curtains at dark, a bird's nest fell on his head.

It is no fun being the Maharajah, I decide over tea. Problems far heavier than bird's nests in the curtains lie upon him.

They start with rain through the roof of his immense palace whose architect, Major Charles Mant, committed suicide in the 1890s for fear he had got his calculations wrong and that the place would fall down. But there are bigger issues.

The war with Sangramsingh is just the start. His brother lost his case in the Supreme Court so, says the Maharajah wearily, he has started another in the High Court.

It goes on and on. The lawyers are the only people making money. They are fooling my brother.'

The estate is presently unrestricted by any court so when Ranjitsingh dies, his son Samarjitsingh will succeed and doubtless inherit ever more litigation.

This case has no meaning,' the Maharajah adds. The principle in India is primogeniture – simple as that.'

He hints that judges in the lower courts are either short on learning or short on probity.

But the major change for the Barodas is that Laxmi Vilas is to go.

There is just not enough money to keep it. Like many Indian princely homes, it will be turned into a luxury hotel.

The Maharajah is retreating to one of his smaller houses, closer to the Art Faculty of Baroda.
Hundreds of staff are leaving.

The Maharajah looks sad. He says he is sadder for Baroda, explaining that the grounds of Laxmi Vilas include a hospital, a school, a stud farm, a golf course built by Samarjitsingh and the cricket field.

The Barodas have contributed to every Indian Test cricket team. A third of the 744 acres now have houses on them.

This is a caring state, where education is a priority and where art, music and dance fi gure high – brought in a century ago by the noblest and longestliving of all his forebears, Sayajirao III.

The Maharajah became an MP in the 1980s, before succeeding his brother Fatehsingh Gaekwad in 1988.

He feared defeat at every election but won ever bigger majorities. He says he does not want to go back to politics.

I didn't enjoy it much.' Art is all. I want to be an artist and to be known as such,' he says firmly. He is still learning – attending Heatherley school of Fine Art in Chelsea and heading to Durham later this year to take a fellowship in art.

The Maharajah, who teaches art at Baroda University, is a signifi cant talent. His bronze sculptures of fi ghting female goats, his goat drawings and his ink-and-wash landscapes of the park at Laxmi Vilas are deft, keenly observed, intense and hard-worked.

They are also psychologically acute, a million miles from the hello it's springtime!' animals of Sir Edwin Landseer. I am not a sculptor,' he says with exquisite understatement and perfect manners. I nod.

His sculptures are quite remarkable, like nothing you have recently seen in London. And this Maharajah is also a musician.

He sings Hindustani music and gives concerts across India. He is also writing a thesis for a PhD on Indian headgear.

Connaught Street is currently thick with goats. One of the odd things about Indian Royals is their closeness to animals and the earth.

His Exalted Highness, the 8th Nizam of Hyderabad, with his 30 palaces and 11,000 servants, lived on a verandah with a goat.

He knitted his own socks and rolled his own cigarettes. The Maharajah of Baroda admits a flock of goats into Laxmi Vilas palace every March for the Muslim festival of Bakra Iid.

They stay indoors for a year and sleep next to humans. On their day of sacrififce, they are painted saffron yellow, which explains the colouring of many of the goats in Connaught Street.

I try not to find this odd, given that the MMaharajah is an aristocrat more obviously seen at the bar of White's than in the close company of a goat.

But look back. His family in the 1940s was one of the most sophisticated in the world. His father,
HH Sir Pratapsingh Gaekwad, was an habitué of Monte Carlo.

Prat ran his own royal train on his own track and allowed his children to drive a miniature train through the Laxmi Vilas gardens every morning to get to school.

Yet even the ne plus ultra Prat could not forgo the society of wild animals at close quarters. When he and his wife Sita Devi flew a de Havilland to Croydon in 1949, a tiger travelled in the lavatory and tore up the carpet.

It occurs to me that the Maharajah is a Hindu but he is celebrating goats sacred to a Muslim ritual.

We belong to all religions,' he explains on behalf of Barodas past and present.

We are Hindus but, as the ruling family, we practise all religions.

As Head of State [the Maharajahs ruled until 1948] you participate in all.' Quite so. This may be where the Prince of Wales hit on the idea of Defender of Faiths'.

Worship of all gods has been convenient for the Barodas, most of all in 1942 when the already married Sir Pratapsingh was seduced at the races in Madras by a cigarsmoking temptress, Sita Devi (a robber', the present Maharajah calls her). Progress seemed impossible since Hinduism forbade divorce and Baroda forbade polygamy.

The problem was solved at the snap of a finger by Prat's membership of all faiths and Sita going
Muslim for a week.

Does the current holder of the title enjoy being a maharajah?

I wonder out loud. I'm not very comfortable with it,' he admits. I have not earned it. I feel it is not enough to live off an inheritance. I believe everyone should work and achieve in his own right.'

But is he nostalgic for days of yore? Oh yes,' he says instantly. But this is not for himself.

The people were much happier then. We, the family, looked after them; we were one of the most advanced states in India.

Industries and bureaucracy in 2009 do not have the same feeling for the city or forthe people.

I enjoyed helping people, especially poorer people.

If somebody needs help, I help them.' The past, even for the poor, was, he assures me, a better place. The people preferred horse-drawn carriages to modern public transport.' That said,

Baroda was one of India's fi rst states to build railways and to connect to India's internal air system.

So what's good in life? The Indians are kind to him and kinder towards royalty in general. In the
1960s and 1970s you had to apologise for being royal. Cinema portrayed us negatively. Now, I am glad to say, there is a difference.'

It remains to be seen how the art students of Durham University respond to their very own Maharajah.