Takhtsinhji
Maharaja Raol Sir Takhtsinhji Jaswantsinhji GCSI (January 6, 1858 – January 29, 1896), was Maharaja of Bhavnagar, a Rajput chief of the Gohel clan, and ruler of Bhavnagar state in Kathiawar. He succeeded to the throne of Bhavnagar upon the death of his father, Jaswantsinhji, in 1870.
Takhtsinhji attended the Delhi Durbar in 1877 and was granted a personal gun salute of 15 guns. During his minority studies, which ended on April 5, 1878, he was educated at the Rajkumar College, Rajkot. Afterward, he studied under an English officer, while the administration of the state was conducted jointly by Mr. E. H. Percival, a member of the Indian Civil Service, and Gaurishankar Udayshankar, C.S.I., one of the foremost native statesmen of India, who had served the state in various capacities since 1822.
At the age of twenty, Takhtsinhji found himself the ruler of a territory nearly 3,000 square miles (7,800 km2) in size. His first public act was to sanction a railway connecting his territory with one of the main trunk lines, which was the first enterprise of its kind on the part of a raja in western (if not all) India. The amount of commerce, trade, economic and social development of the state that came in the wake of this railway confirmed Takhtsinhji as supporting a policy of progressive administration. Further educational establishments, hospitals, dispensaries, trunk roads, bridges, handsome edifices, and other public works projects followed.
Takhtsinhji was awarded the Empress of India Gold Medal in 1877, and knighted as a KCSI in 1881. In 1886, he inaugurated a system of constitutional rule, by placing several departments in the hands of four members of a council of state under his own presidency. This innovation—which had the support of the governor of Bombay, Lord Reay—provoked a virulent attack upon the chief, who brought his defamers to trial at the High Court of Bombay. The punishment of the ringleaders broke up a blackmailing system to which rajas were regularly exposed. The public spirit toward Takhtsinhji in freeing his brother chiefs from blackmail was widely acknowledged throughout India, as well as by the British authorities.
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