Yaduveer is not the first royal scion to enter the rough and tumble world of Indian elections. His great-grand-uncle and predecessor, Srikantadatta Wodeyar, was the first; he contested from the royal city of Mysuru, about 140 km southwest of Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka, known as India’s silicon valley.
Srikantadatta Wodeyar served three five-year terms as a member of the Indian National Congress. In 1991, however, he contested as a BJP candidate and lost. He switched back to Congress, won in 1996 and 1999, but lost in 2004 as a BJP member.
A 500-year-old dynasty
The Wodeyars are one of India’s most prominent royal families and respected by the people of Karnataka for their welfare measures, development, and reformist approach over the centuries. They built the first-ever reservoir in central Karnataka, named the Vani Vilas Sagar, built the more famous Krishna Raja Sagar Dam across the river Cauvery, and established educational institutions, including the University of Mysuru and Mysuru Medical College.
The Wodeyars sowed the seeds of India’s public sector defense undertaking, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), and generously donated funds and land to set up the premier Indian Institute of Science. They were responsible for the first hydroelectric power station in Asia. Bengaluru was the first city in Asia to have streetlights in the early 20th century. They also established the first steel and iron factory.
The Wodeyars were also the first in the country to give women the equal right to vote. They established a representative assembly in 1881. They revived the world-famous Mysore Silk.
The role of the Wodeyars is now largely ceremonial; the princely states were abolished after India gained independence from the UK.
Citizens in the old Mysuru state, the geographical part of Karnataka, which was under Wodeyar control prior to the 1956
reorganization of States, still revere the Wodeyars as being on par with God. (In 1956 Karnataka, comprised predominantly of Kannada speakers, came into existence).
Yaduveer’s rival M Lakshmana, an engineering graduate, says that it is a
fight between the King and a commoner. The scion, however, responded by saying both have equal rights.
“I am also going to people seeking votes and have tried to understand their problems,” Wodeyar says.
“Elections give me that opportunity. It is for the people to accept or reject me.”
Jettisoned MP Pratap Simha sarcastically remarked that now the king will come to hear the people’s grievances, and that he has to come out of the palace. He also said the king would resolve a number of properties in dispute between the government and the palace, in favor of the government.
Dayashankar Maily, a senior journalist closely associated with the royal family, says that the reverence for the royals remains the same.
“People will for sure vote for him this time, because he is the royal scion,” he says. “But if he is to get re-elected, Yaduveer has to perform.”
A number of people, the young, the aged, both men and women, and even minors too young to vote, have come to see Yaduveer during his campaign. Most people who spoke to RT were surprised to see the ease with which the
“Maharaja” mingled and spoke.
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The ancient Curse on the Royals
The 500-year-old dynasty was
cursed in 1612 by Queen Alamelamma. The story is that Raja Wodeyar, one of the vassals of the later Vijayanagara kings, dethroned Tirumalaraya, the representative of the
Vijayanagara empire, and declared himself king.
After hearing about this, Alamelamma, who was decorating the deity
Adinayaki at the Sri Ranganatha temple every Tuesday with her gold in Srirangapatna (about 15 km from Mysuru), fled with her ornaments to Talakadu.
Raja Wodeyar sent his soldiers to capture her. Seeing the soldiers, Alamelamma jumped into the Cauvery river and cursed them:
“May Talakadu become a barren expanse of land, Malangi turn into a whirlpool, and may the kings of Mysore never beget children for all eternity.”
Raja Wodeyar installed a golden statue of Alamelamma in the palace, where she is worshiped even today. Legend has it that Raja Wodeyar’s only son died a few months after the curse.
Even in the modern era, the Wodeyars have a male child only once every two generations.
He adopted one of his nephews to succeed him. The successor had an heir, but not his son. This is how Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wodeyar had no heir; his father Chamarajendra Wodeyar (whose 1970s durbar was mentioned earlier) was adopted by Krishnaraja Wodeyar the fourth.
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