Sita Devi of Baroda: The 'maharani' who never was

Mint

03-08-2025

On 6 November 1943, Meka Rangaiah Appa Rao—zamindar of Vuyyuru in today's Andhra Pradesh—received a letter from his wife of ten years. It was a short paragraph, probably worded by a lawyer, and carried important news. 'I have become a Moslem," the lady announced, and taken the name Sheherazade. But the crux of the matter was this: 'in order that our relationship of husband and wife might continue," she wished for Appa Rao to follow her into the new faith. When the man said no thank you, Sheherazade moved the city courts to pronounce their union invalid—a wish that was granted by Christmas Eve.
With that she terminated a marriage she declared had always been unhappy. But then there was a twist, or in a colonial official's words, a 'first class scandal". For it suddenly dawned upon Sheherazade, who only days ago proclaimed to a judge that she did not 'like the Hindu faith", that she did, in fact, like it. Making use of Arya Samaj rituals, she reconverted to her ancestral religion, retired her Muslim name, and on 31 December at 9pm acquired a fresh (Hindu) husband. Her conviction in Islam had lasted under three months; the moment her divorce was confirmed, Sheherazade became, once again, Sita Devi, princess of Pithapuram.
The marriage of Pratap Singh Rao Gaekwad, maharaja of Baroda, and Sita Devi was one of princely India's most entertaining—but also legally complicated—episodes, sparking all species of bureaucratic nightmares and the loss of some tremendous jewels. Things looked unpromising from the start, what with the bride's father denouncing her. Sita Devi was the daughter of Surya Rao of Pithapuram, a princely patron of the Telugu language. In a press statement, he expressed 'unqualified condemnation" of his daughter, noting the 'grief and horror" caused by her 'outrageous abuse" of Islam and Hinduism to discard a husband. Many nostrils flared in indignation also at the thought of her nine-year-old son. Of course, her new husband was resoundingly criticised too: as the British representative in Baroda noted, the maharaja had breached his own state's monogamy laws, betrayed its tradition of progressive rule, and public sympathy was unequivocally with his wife, Shanta Devi—the mother of eight children. Though 'greatly shocked", her willingness to 'acquiesce patiently in anything which contributes to her husband's happiness" only made him look worse.
It was not as if Indian princes had not taken multiple wives before—one maharaja is said to have been ribbed as 'His Exhausted Highness" because of his numerous romantic conquests. But Pratap Singh's grandfather, Sayaji Rao Gaekwad, had been famous for his modernity, enlightened public policy, monogamy (though he did allegedly have the odd extramarital affair) and for taking Baroda to the top ranks of Indian states. As a result, the people of Baroda, who prided themselves 'on being in advance of (their) neighbours", felt Pratap Singh had let them down. His defence that the Baroda Hindu Monogamy Act—which he himself had passed into law in 1942—applied only to his subjects, not to him, was preposterous. In truth, he simply did not expect the backlash.
In February 1944 the British noted how the maharaja was under the impression that 'everyone would (simply) accept his right to marry when and where he liked". On being proved wrong, he maintained an air of defiance, but in private, 'His Highness' conscience is not altogether easy." It probably didn't help that his lively private affairs allowed the Indian National Congress to slam the maharaja politically as well.
But neither Sita Devi nor her second husband was easily defeated. A desperate campaign was launched to win support. For one, the maharaja began to collect letters of approval from other princes like the rulers of Indore and Gwalior to demonstrate, that 'from the Maratha point of view" at least, the marriage was 'perfectly in order". Baroda law too was amended to resolve the maharaja's polygamous conundrum retrospectively.
Backing for Pratap Singh arrived from one or two unexpected quarters: the Baroda State Muslim League, and V.D. Savarkar of the Hindu Mahasabha. In the latter's case, it was not so much approval of the union that led to support as fear that the scandal might become an excuse to topple a leading Hindu prince and prove 'extremely harmful to…Hindu interests". Pratap Singh also stockpiled a set of favourable legal opinions, including from stalwarts like Chimanlal Setalvad. But the situation remained hopeless: the British considered the marriage a 'fraud upon the law". The advocate general pronounced its legitimacy 'doubtful", while another top viceregal adviser argued that applying the term 'marriage" to the case was a stretch.
What made things worse was blows at home. The maharaja's own minister, the celebrated V.T. Krishnamachari, baulked at the thought of kowtowing to Sita Devi. Like her father, he was horrified by the conversion charade and her first husband's ejection. So, after over 16 years of service, Krishnamachari packed his bags and left.
Shanta Devi, meanwhile, although she never openly criticised her husband, was said to be in favour of withholding recognition. The idea was that these complications would cool the maharaja's 'infatuation", and that Sita Devi could be 'discreetly pensioned off".
Indeed, Sita Devi was never acknowledged as either a 'Highness" or a maharani—the best the British establishment could offer in a 1945 passport was a watered down 'Lady Sita Devi". But Pratap Singh would not give up trying; with the British set to depart, he began to lobby Congress politicians. His new minister, B.L. Mitter, for example, attempted to persuade Sardar Patel in 1947 to let Sita Devi use the title of maharani, albeit without 'Her Highness" prefixed, or 'of Baroda" suffixed. She would be the maharani of nowhere, but at least a maharani of some variety. The request fell flat again.
Predictably, given the age in which they lived, the couple faced a social boycott. Honeymooning in Kashmir in 1944, they found that while the state's ruler would receive Pratap Singh as a fellow maharaja, his queen refused to entertain Sita Devi. Sita Devi was forever tarnished as a 'bad" sort of woman, with an 'unsavoury past". Or as a home ministry official would put it in 1957, Sita Devi was 'a modern Cleopatra who has debauched the mind and body and caused the complete ruin of Maharaja Pratapsinh Gaekwar of Baroda." There is, of course, a whiff of sexism here, not least because Pratap Singh was hardly the ideal man or prince before Sita Devi erupted on to the scene. Indeed, at the time of their marriage it seemed already clear that he was unable to fill his illustrious grandfather's shoes. The general consolation had been that he was at least a 'model husband and father". But the moment he got handsy with a married woman, he forfeited that distinction too. If anything, official support remained firmly with Shanta Devi, who is described in the files as embodying 'the true spirit of a Hindu Dharmapathni".
In the end, things doddered to an expensive anti-climax. When the princely states acceded to the Indian Union in 1947, Pratap Singh was among the first to join. But as Sita Devi's brother noted, he was a 'foolish person, and a dangerously foolish one at that." Thus, when Junagadh opted for Pakistan instead of India, creating a crisis for the government, the maharaja was asked to help maintain law and order in the region. Doing so would have won him favour—perhaps even recognition for his 'lady". But instead, he demanded that six Indian territories abutting Baroda first be handed to him (for historical reasons), and he be recognised as 'King of Gujarat and Kathiawar"; in this position, he would assist India as a 'faithful ally".
Sardar Patel never forgave Pratap Singh: 'You bargained about your own position at a time when India was in difficulties." Later it was discovered that the maharaja had been pocketing crores of rupees—including from a fund his grandfather founded to back big infrastructure projects. In 1951, after he launched an ill-fated campaign for the resurrection of royal rule, including by collaborating with certain princes who had flirted with Pakistan, Pratap Singh was deposed.
Sita Devi, too, was accumulating fresh layers of infamy. It appears she had been merrily taking jewels from Baroda's vaults, and when some pieces were returned under strict orders from Delhi, parts were missing. In 1955 there was furious chatter in official circles after Pratap Singh's son asked for assistance in recovering treasures she had shipped abroad. Some items were said to be in Europe, others in the custody of the American jeweller Harry Winston. The value of Sita Devi's hoard can be estimated from the fact that a single artefact that vanished from Baroda—a canopy with 950,000 Basra pearls, emeralds, rubies, etc.—was auctioned in 2019 for over $2 million. In 1956 India's deputy home secretary complained that 'Lady Sita Devi" had no right to these articles, especially after her husband was dismissed from his post. Yet, 'in spite of all efforts she did not return the jewellery to the present Ruler of Baroda". A partial list of valuables in her custody shows that she possessed everything from strands of the famous Baroda pearl necklace to milk jugs, coffee pots, and even a strainer made of gold. The sale of these pieces kept Sita Devi afloat for the rest of her days.
She certainly needed the cash. For after all the drama of their marriage, in 1956 Pratap Singh and Sita Devi divorced (no high-speed religious conversion was needed this time). She moved abroad, posing among society elites as Baroda's maharani, managing to even get this entered briefly into a British passport. That same year, learning that she had also obtained a diplomatic visa for the US (allowing her to deposit jewels there, uninspected by customs), India informed the Americans that this was a grave mistake. In 1957, Sita Devi was seen at an official event in Colombo, where the Indian high commissioner noticed her in a 'place of honour…with Chou En-Lai to her right and Mrs Bandaranaike to her left". She was presented as a 'Highness", and when the diplomat came face to face with her, she was 'cold and unfriendly". Apparently, Sita Devi—who doesn't appear to have returned to India again—was aware she was out of favour for 'having smuggled out the Baroda State jewels worth several million pounds." In the end, still living off the Baroda treasures, she settled in Paris, dying in the 1980s.
In all the files around the saga of 'Lady Sita Devi" and Pratap Singh, her own voice is absent. It is difficult to determine how she might have defended herself—the divorce stunt in 1943, her remarriage, and the question of an 'unrecognised" woman's claim to the dynastic riches of her second ex-husband.
To the British, she posed a unique kind of difficulty. Typically, it was when maharajas married white women that they confronted problems around recognition and titles. Sita Devi's case was a rare occasion when a brown woman marrying a brown man caused a scandal. To Indian babus, she looked venal and treacherous, the opposite of the forbearing wife they saw in Shanta Devi. In any case, Sita Devi, for all the wealth she acquired, ultimately had a gloomy end: her son with Pratap Singh, 'Princie", killed himself a few years before her death.
There is, though, a strange victory she enjoys in her afterlife. All her goods—from art to jewels and furniture—ended up in alien hands, appearing in auction catalogues across the world. But in what might have pleased our queen-who-never-was—and left her critics incandescent—these brochures uniformly style her as Sita Devi, maharani of Baroda.
Manu S. Pillai is a historian and author, most recently, of Gods, Guns and Missionaries.