 "Princestan")
Princestan: How Nehru, Patel and Mountbatten made India
Author: Sandeep Bamzai
Publisher: Rupa
Price: Rs 600
Pages: 247
Had Indira Gandhi not abolished privy purses in 1971 how would we have viewed the old rajas and maharajas? Sympathetically, as we do now? Or with revulsion, as we did before then?
Privy purse was the name given to the constitutionally guaranteed, fixed, tax-free income paid by other taxpayers to the 565 rajas and maharajas who had ruled areas not ruled by the British. It was a nonsensical and had to go.
The rulers of these princely “states”, with some exceptions, were awful fellows given to
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