http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006CSOXM/?tag=2022091-20
1969
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8171673074/?tag=2022091-20
1995
Gayatri Devi was born on May 23, 1919 in London, United Kingdom, in the family of Jitendra Narayan and Indiraraje Gaekwar. She was raised near West Bengal, India. Early in her life, her uncle's death led to her father ascending the throne (gaddi).
Gayatri Devi was educated at home by tutors. She then studied at Glendower Preparatory School in London, Patha Bhavana of Visva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan, and later in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she travelled with her mother and siblings, then studied secretarial skills in London School of Secretaries; Brilliantmont and Monkey Club London.
After Partition and Independence Day in India in 1947, Gayatri Devi ran for Parliament in 1962 and won the constituency in the Lok Sabha in the world's largest landslide. She continued to hold this seat on 1967 and 1971, Swatantra Party of C. Rajagopalachari, the second Governor-General of Independent India, running against the Congress Party. When the privy purses were abolished in 1971, terminating all royal privileges and titles, Gayatri Devi was accused of violating tax laws, and served 5 months in Tihar Jail. She retired from politics and published her autobiography, "A Princess Remembers", written with Santha Rama Rau, in 1976. She was also the focus of the film "Memoirs of a Hindu Princess", directed by Francois Levie.
Gayatri Devi joined the Swatantra Party at its inception in 1959 to counter then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party, in 1962, the Maharani was elected to the House of the People, the lower chamber of India’s parliament, where as a voice for the Swatantra Party she sought to promote free enterprise within her country and lobbied for closer ties to the West. She served in the Parliament until 1977.
Quotes from others about the person
The Princess has a lot to tell us, but the glimpses she allows us of her life are formal and carefully posed, arranged like family photos in a presentation album. She means to be discreet, to promote for history views of her family with its make-up all in place. ...On balance, her book seems to me a worthy enter-prise, the kind of story that will perhaps not excite interest in its subject but which adequately repays any interest brought to it.
Gayatri married Sawai Man Singh II Bahadur on 9 May 1940. She had one son, Prince Jagat Singh, Raja of Isarda, who was granted his paternal uncle's fief of Isarda as a subsidiary title. Today, they are her only surviving descendants, and as such, have claimed to be heirs of their paternal grandmother. Maharaj Jagat Singh was thus half-brother to Bhawani Singh of Jaipur, the eldest son of the late Maharaja by his first wife, a Jodhpur princess.
She was Maratha Princess Indira Raje of Baroda, the only daughter of Maratha King, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, an extremely beautiful princess and a legendary socialite.
She first met Jai, when she was 12 and he had come to Calcutta to play polo and stayed with their family. She married Sawai Man Singh II Bahadur on 9 May 1940.
Maharani Suniti Devi was the daughter of illustrious Brahmo social reformer Keshab Chandra Sen.
