Gaj Singh

Gaj Singh Ji (born 13 January 1948) is an Indian politician who served as a member of the Indian parliament and High Commissioner of India. He was the titular Maharaja of Jodhpur from 1952 until the royal powers, privileges and privy purses were abolished by an amendment to the Constitution of India in 1971.

Gaj Singh is the son of Maharaja Hanwant Singh of Jodhpur by his first wife, Maharani Krishna Kumari of Dhrangadhra. He succeeded to the titles and dignities of his father when only four years of age, in 1952, when his father died suddenly in a plane crash. He was enthroned shortly afterward.

The infant and his siblings were raised by their mother, Rajmata Krishna Kumari. At the age of eight, Gaj Singh was sent first to Cothill House, a prep school in Oxfordshire, England, and then to Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Singh's full title as Maharaja was His Highness Raj Rajeshwar Saramad-i-Raja-i-Hind Maharajadhiraja Maharaja Shri Gaj Singhji II Sahib Bahadur, Maharaja of Marwar.

In 1970, Gaj Singh Ji returned to Jodhpur to take up his duties as Maharaja of Jodhpur. In 1973, he married Hemalata Rajye, daughter of the Raja of Poonch, a major feudatory state of Kashmir State and his wife Nalini Rajya Lakshmi Devi, a daughter of King Tribhuvan of Nepal and Queen Ishwari Rajya Lakshmi Devi. They are the parents of two children, being:

1. A daughter, Shivranjani Rajye (born 22 August 1974), and
2. A son, Shivraj Singh (born 30 September 1975).

In 1971, the constitution of India was amended. On 5th November, 1971, the Maharaja and other princes were deprived of their privy purses, the government annuities that had been guaranteed to them both in the constitution and in the covenants of accession whereby their states were merged with the Dominion of India in the 1940s, with the enactment of the amendment. The same amendment also deprived them of other privileges, such as diplomatic immunity. In the Constitution of India promulgated in 1971, the Government of India abolished all official symbols of princely India, including titles, privileges, and remuneration (privy purses).

Later, Gaj Singh Ji served as Indian High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago. He also served a term in the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament.

On 20 July 1992,he founded a day-cum-residential girls' school named Rajmata Krishna Kumari Girls' Public School, named after his mother. It is a CBSE affiliated English medium school with classes from Nursery to XII. It has been named under one of the best schools in India for a long time now.

In 2002, Gaj Singh Ji celebrated the Golden Jubilee of his accession.