‘Maharaj’ by any other name: High court orders to take down ‘titles’

In property disputes lingering in courts for the last 30 years between descendants of the last princely ruler of Jaipur, the royal descendants have been routinely addressed with their erstwhile respectful titles.

Justice Mahendra Kumar Goyal of the Rajasthan High Court, however, has threatened to dismiss the petitions before him unless the legal documents were corrected and the honorifics dropped. They have no legal sanctity, he pointed out, having been banned in 1971. Their use in legal documents, he declared, was abhorrent.

Neither the high court registry nor any other judge took note of the aberration during the last three decades. Feudal practices remain so deeply entrenched that the honorifics are used as a matter of course with nobody blinking an eyelid. Justice Goyal’s ruling has naturally caused a flutter and is now a talking point in Jaipur.

When over five hundred princely states merged with the union of India in 1947-48, they were offered a suitable privy purse and certain other privileges including the use of the honorifics.

Since 1971 when prime minister Indira Gandhi abolished privy purses and banned the use of honorifics, the former rulers cannot use titles like Maharaja, His Highness , Nawab, or Maharani and Princess etc ‘officially’.

The union government argued in 1971 that payments and privileges to former rulers was contrary to the socialist and democratic principles of the Indian Constitution.

Special allowances and privileges to a select few based on their birth was a violation of the right to equality guaranteed in the Constitution.

Justice Mahendra Kumar Goyal directed the royal descendants to drop the prefixes “Maharaj” and ‘Princess’ or to be prepared for their pleas to be dismissed.

Such honorifics, he observed, had no place in legal documents. ‘Failure to comply with the court orders would mean automatic dismissal without further reference to the parties’, Justice Goyal’s order read.

The order was passed while adjudicating a petition which was filed in 2001 by the legal heirs of late Jagat Singh, son of late Gayatri Devi, the former ‘Maharani’ of Jaipur and Prithvi Raj, her stepson. They had challenged collection of house tax by municipalities for properties owned by the former rulers of Jaipur.

The prefix ‘Maharaj’ was used for Jagat Singh and ‘princess’ was used to refer to Diya Kumari, the Deputy Chief Minister of Rajasthan, daughter of late Brigadier Bhawani Singh, the last legal ‘Maharaja’ before the privileges were abolished.