Indore Sports

Favorite pastimes of the Maharajas of Indore, wealthiest state in the Central India Agency, are shikar (hunting) and zenana (harem). In shikar, where elephants assist, the Maharajas have never made a serious misstep; but in zenana. they have made mistakes. Last week Indore's incumbent ruler. His Highness Maharajadhiraj Raj Rajeshwar Sawai Shree Sir Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur* indicated that his interest in zenana was over. He was married.

The present Maharaja's father, Tukoji Rao III, once fell in love with a nautch-girl named Mumtaz Begum. So ardent was Tukoji Rao III that Mumtaz Begum wearied of him and fled to Bombay, where one Bawla took her under his wealthy wing. Tukoji Rao III was furious. One day when Bawla and Mumtaz Begum were out driving, a band of thugs hired by the Maharaja set upon them, stabbed Bawla to death, were only prevented from killing Mumtaz Begum by a group of Englishmen returning from a go of golf, armed with drivers, mashies, putters. In the ensuing scandal the Maharaja was obliged to abdicate in favor of his son. He fell in love soon after with a girl from Seattle named Nancy Miller, who was given a Hindu purification and then made his wife.

Like father, like son. At the age of 16, Prince Yeshwant was married--to a girl aged ten. Two years later he left her temporarily for an education at Oxford, where he acquired modern ideas. Back in Indore. a state about the size of Vermont but with 1,300,000 inhabitants (four times as many as Vermont), he built the first air-conditioned palace in India. He did not recondition Indore's archaic tax structure, which gave him one rupee in every three of revenue (estimated annual state income: $5,000,000). Among his reforms have been laws curbing thoughtless extravagance on marriages, and making it illegal for minors to marry.

On a tour of Europe and the U. S. in 1936-37, the young Maharaja picked up 100 trunks full of souvenirs, including a ukulele and a 29-karat piece of the $1,000,000 Jonker diamond. He also picked up a cold in California. The nurse who took care of him while he had it was a broad-mouthed, brunette divorcee named Marguerite Lawler Branyen, who had been a nurse-stewardess on the Union Pacific R.R. In Switzerland in 1937 Indore's child bride died. Last week, in India, the Maharaja announced that, except for abdication, he had just followed the lead of his father and of Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor--married an American woman. Marguerite Branyen. The words the Maharaja chose were strangely reminiscent of Edward VIII's famous last speech as King:

"Without mental peace I cannot properly, discharge my duties as ruler. ... I have married the lady I love from my heart."

Back in Minneapolis, the Maharanee's family received news of the marriage with mixed emotions. Her father, a 64-year-old retired railroad switchman who gets along on a $30-a-month pension, was proud of the way Peggy was getting ahead in the world. But her brother Edward, a WPA worker, could not see it that way. "It's his race," he snapped. "I don't like it."

*Literal translation: His Highness the Lord Paramount, King of Kings, King of Kings, one-quarter-better-than-anyone-else, beautiful Sir Yeshwant, King Holkar, Brave Warrior.

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