Of the Raj, maharajas, and me / M.A. Sreenivasan.

Reminiscences of a civil service official with the princely state of Mysore and Gwalior, and later with the government of British India.

Comparatively few people have lived through the ninety years of the twentieth-century thus far and been witness to the enormous changes that have taken place in India and elsewhere in this extraordinary period. Mr M. A. Sreenivasan belongs to that select group, not only as a witness but also as an active participant in some major events of the times. Born in 1897 in Madras, he now lives in his garden house in Bangalore, having travelled far and wide in many senses during the intervening years.

Belonging to a family that traces its known origins to about a thousand years ago, and descended from an ancestor who was a disciple and associate of the great sage Ramanuja, subsequent generations of Mr Sreenivasan's forebears were Pradhans (ministers) of successive kings of Mysore over some 150 years, until the latter half of the eighteenth century.

Mr Sreenivasan himself joined the Mysore Civil Service in 1918 and, after a varied career as a civil servant both with the Mysore Government and the Government of British India, became a Pradhan of the Maharaja of Mysore in 1943. In 1947, the year of Independence, Mr Sreenivasan was invited by the Maharaja of Gwalior to become the Dewan of that State. During that momentous year he was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India and of its States' Negotiation Committee, and in regular touch with many of the leading figures (including Mountbatten) involved in the transfer of power from British to Indian hands.

On leaving Gwalior in 1948, Mr Sreenivasan was closely involved with industry as Chairman or Director of some major firms, including the Kolar Gold Mining Companies. He retired from all these in 1984.

This book is not intended to be an autobiography, although it dwells lightly on many episodes and phases in Mr Sreenivasan's considerable life, up to the present day. It is, rather, an elegant, sage-like, evocation of, and reflection on, the times in which he has lived and participated, beginning with a childhood in Thiru-Alli-Keni ('sacred lily tank'; anglicized to Triplicane) in Madras at the start of the twentieth century.

Of the Raj, Maharajas and Me will also be of particular interest to scholars of modern India. The former princely States of India have been comparatively neglected by scholars, and available accounts of them tend to be unfairly critical. There is much in this book on the style, culture and effectiveness of administration in two major princely States, which redresses the balance and makes the book a valuable document on the subject.

Further, Mr Sreenivasan provides sharp insights on the negotiations that led to the demise of the British Raj and the people involved in working out a new policy for India. In a trenchant Retrospect that concludes the book, the author deplores the many things that went wrong with the policy that has emerged in India after Independence.

Even though impressive achievements have been registered on several fronts, he points out that the losses, particularly in values and standards, have perhaps been greater and graver.