Sri Krishnarajendra Wodeyar

Warm-hearted tributes have been paid to the qualities that shed lustre on the life and character of the late Maharaja of Mysore. His love for the Motherland, his devotion to the well-being and prosperity of his people, the keenness of his eye for the good and the noble in the cultures of the East and the West, his sensitiveness to the appeal of music and sculpture and painting, his delight in the beauties of nature, his devotion to the religion of his ancestors and his understanding sympathy for all sister-faiths, the purity and simplicity of his private life,–all these have evoked praise from a thousand quarters. I should like to dwell on two traits of his character as the Sovereign and Ruler of a State.

The first was his scrupulous loyalty to the traditions of constitutional monarchy bequeathed to him by his great father. The Government of Mysore, as conceived and instituted at the time of the resuscitation of her self-rule in 1881, was a constitutional monarchy. It was no doubt a rudimentary kind of constitution; but there could be no missing of its constitutional character. The Sovereign was to act in all public matters on the advice and through the agency of duly appointed Ministers; and these Ministers had to work in consultation with a body representative of the people. The elements of the Cabinet system were thus present unmistakably, though with no guarantee of permanence and further development. Nothing important could be done by the Sovereign without the instrumentality of the Ministers and without reference through them to the Assembly representative of the public. In other words, the Ministry became the principal means for the expression of the power of the State. Accepting guidance and control from the Sovereign on the one side, and guided by suggestion and criticism from popular representatives on the other side, it was chiefly for the Ministry to bear the burden of public administration, exercising initiative and judgment on its own responsibility in a major part of the field of governance. It was not for the Sovereign to make himself personally responsible, in the eyes of the public, for any commission or omission. This responsibility was, in practice, to be shouldered by his Ministers. It was his privilege to advise them, to caution them and to smoothen their path. But he was neither to compel their hands, nor to hamper them. Subject to his general supervision and control, their movement was to be free and spontaneous. They were no doubt bound to obey his commands; but it was expected of him that he should so moderate his individuality, so restrain his impulse to act by him-self, and so economize the use of authority, that their character as free agents was not impaired. Sovereign authority and ministerial liberty had to work in a delicate state of mutual understanding and adjustment. It was impossible to define their respective spheres in terms so precise and so exhaustive that there could be no need for personal equations and temperamental accommodations. Great thus was the need for imaginative understanding and trustful goodwill on both sides. This psychological demand of the situation, it may naturally be expected to have been more easy for the Minister to meet than it was for the Sovereign. The Minister was after all the servant, appointed and removable from office at will. The Ruler was the complete master of the situation. And yet, such was the good sense and such the regard for constitutional rectitude and such also the capacity for self-restraint which characterized the two Sovereigns who preceded the late Maharaja, that the administration of Sir K. Seshadri Iyer could go on without a hitch for nearly 18 years, and carry out many courageous projects for the building up of the country. There was, however, something special in the circumstances of that period to induce an attitude of self-restraint on the part of the Sovereign. The administration was in a formative stage for a larger part of the reign of Sri Chamaraja Wodeyar (1881-94). Previous policies had to be revised, and programmes had to be framed anew. Everything was in a state of transition. The Maharaja was young. It was thus only natural that he showed much deference to the more experienced Dewan. After him, his Queen who became the Regent was a lady of remarkable shrewdness and circumspection; and she appreciated the need there was for accepting guidance from the zealous Dewan who had already proved his worth. But no such special circumstances were there to recommend a policy of self-restraint to the Sovereign in his relations with the Minister when His late Highness Sri Krishnaraja Wodeyar came to the throne (1902). The administration had by then come into good working order, like a well-oiled and carefully handled machine. The Departments had been rationally organized; and their laws and regulations had been elaborated. The policies and purposes of the Government had come to be generally understood and appreciated. Traditions had been formed both for the Government and for the public. The Maharaja came to his great office perfectly fitted for it by education and training. He was full of energy and enthusiasm for his exalted duties, and had a serious sense of his own "individual responsibility" for the Government of the State, as may be seen from the speech he delivered to the first session of the Representative Assembly that met in his time. Everything thus was conducive to a course of self-assertion on his part in the work of Government. And yet he preferred to tread the path of constitutional self-restraint in the manner of his illustrious parents. The State knows not a single instance of his having acted otherwise than through his Ministers, or of his having interfered with the freedom of their judgment or arbitrarily overruled their recommendations. No doubt, he did often enough see things from points of view different from theirs. His sense of the relative values of things did not always coincide with theirs. But when such differences arose on important issues, he was content with indicating his personal views to the Dewan and asking the Ministers to re-examine the matter in the light of those views and submit their own independent recommendations once again. The responsibility of advising and cautioning was his; but that of deciding after a full consideration was usually theirs. The orders that issued finally represented not the individual opinion of the Sovereign, but the considered opinion of the Council.

He was able togive so much of his confidence to the ministers because of the very great care he had exercised in selecting them for office. It was at this initial point in the forming of an administration that all his insight into the character of men, his evaluation of their merits and his sense of their suitability to the circumstances of the time came into full play. That his choice fell on men not of the usual type and not in the running, according to public expectation, for the Dewanship,–on an engineer like Sir M. Visvesvaraya and on one not in the regular line of general administration like Sir Mirza Ismail,–is eloquent testimony to the independence of his judgment as well as to the keenness of his capacity for evaluation. Having selected men with so much care and judgment, he saw that simple fairness required him to give them free scope to put forth the very best they had in them for the service of his State. Carefully to choose and wakefully to trust–was his motto.

This unfailing sense, in the late Maharaja, of the importance of the Ministry as the instrument of Government appears as something unique when we remember how Ministers have fared in many Indian States. There are Rulers who have tried to do without a Dewan at all. In many States the tenure of the Dewan is a precarious one; and in many others, the functions of that office are barely those of a Secretary. If Mysore in this respect has differed from Bikaner and Baroda, we owe it altogether to the Mysore Maharaja’s ingrained sense of constitutional propriety. It is to this sense that we have to attribute the Mysore Maharaja's refusal of the seat offered him in the Chamber of Princes in 1919. His instinct led him to see the wisdom of Bagehot’s dictum that the monarch should "never seem to struggle."

"When a monarch can bless, it is best that he should not be touched. It should be evident that he does no wrong. He should not be brought too closely to real measurement. He should be aloof and solitary. The nation is divided into parties, but the Crown is of no party. Its apparent separation from business is that which removes it both from enmities and from desecration, which preserves its mystery, which enables it to combine the affection of conflicting parties–to be a visible symbol of unity to those still so imperfectly educated as to need a symbol."

The late Maharaja of Mysore had a firm hold on the truth of this observation; and that saved him from being betrayed into positions that would have exposed him and his actions to the corrosive blasts of public controversy. He realized that the Minister held a place as distinct and vital as the Sovereign’s in the mechanism of the State, and would not put himself forward to fill the role that properly belonged to the Minister. His part rather was to strengthen the Minister for his ministerial role. All the public approbation and prestige which his own personal virtues had earned for him, he was glad to lend for the support of the Ministers. Not unoften when the Government’s popularity had for one reason or another waned or there were premonitions of a demonstration of public disapproval such as might damage the Government’s prestige, it was the Maharaja’s personal prestige that kept the Ministers in countenance and helped them to tide over the situation. The Ministers’ own deserts were a separate matter. If they had done badly, they were dealt with duly, but in a manner that could not affect the standing and reputation of the Government as Government.

The second distinguishing trait of the late Maharaja was the All-Indian range of his patriotism. His own beloved State of Mysore was to him but a single room, though his own room in the vast mansion of Mother India. He had made a pilgrimage of the Motherland from Kailas to Kanyakumari, and felt the charm of every part of it. He had formed personal contacts with representative public men and leaders of thought and culture in various Provinces. The finest blossoming of Mysore’s life was to him in her fulfilling a worthily useful part in the larger life of India. It was in this view that he, –naturally a shy man whose one great anxiety at all times was to avoid publicity,–persuaded himself into accepting the Chancellorship of the Benares Hindu University at its inception. This is what he said, addressing the first Convocation of that University in 1919:

"This University is the most striking manifestation of India’s effort at self-determination and self-expression . . . . The Benares University should develop such a culture in its widest sense as the embodiment of a New and United India, and should aim at a definite preparation for future citizenship in the largest sense of the term."

The same spirit actuated the Maharaja in his thoughts about political reforms for his own State. In inaugurating the 1924 Reforms he observed:

"India . . . . is shaping into a Federation. We in Mysore form, as it were, a nation within a nation. While co-operating with both the Government of India and the rest of the Indian public in measures which lead to the prosperity of the country as a whole, we in our local sphere should promote education etc."

It was this faith of his in the destiny of India as one nation that impelled him to stand up for the idea of Federation earlier than other members of the Princely Order. In July 1927, when no Round Table Conferences had been dreamt of, the late Maharaja, addressing Viceroy Lord Irwin at a banquet in Mysore, said:

"I and my brother Princes have long felt that one of the most urgent, if not the most urgent problem in India today, is the place the Indian States are to fill in the constitution of the future. We had felt, until your Excellency’s advent on the scene, that there was a disinclination to grapple with a problem that seemed to present innumerable difficulties …… And we sincerely hope that, as a result of the conversations which your Excellency is inaugurating in this matter, a way may be found in which it will be open to us to play an honourable part as partners with the British Provinces in whatever form of Federal Government may hereafter be decided upon."

It is making no extravagant claim on his behalf to say that the strength and persistence of the late Maharaja’s advocacy of the cause of Federation helped to make it a live issue and secured for it the serious attention of the British Government and of the Princely Order.

Constitutionalist and Nationalist as he was, his politics had for its basis a certain upward-looking disposition of the soul. He was ever on a quest after Dharma. Life’s experiences had filled him with a vivid and constant sense of the limited values of the things of this world. He was a boy of ten years when he lost his father. Cares fell on him thick with the process of years. Loneliness must be the lot of any serious-minded man in circumstances so trying; and doubly so the lot of one born to sit on a throne. Fancy would like to speculate what might have been his future if his father, Sri Chamarajendra Wodeyar of blessed memory, instead of meeting with an untimely death in 1894 (in his 31st year), had lived on to 1904, and had been persuaded to leave the son free to choose his career. Would not the son have expressed preference for a life of enlightened leisure and reposeful contemplation for himself, recommending his more active-natured younger brother for the onerous duties of kingship? The late Maharaja was a lover of great solitudes and great silences, a man who loved to brood and to penetrate to the mystery of Life, one who sought to commune with Nature and realize the One Essence behind her phantasmagoria. He was such a one among Princes as might have been singled out by Plato for approbation. He belongs to the company of Asoka and Aurelius, with the splendour of the Crown made mellow by the wrinkles on the brow.