H. H. Raj Rajeshwar Maharajadhiraj Shri Hanwant Singh of Jodhpur
(16 June 1923 - 26 January 1952)
Hanwant Singh was born on 9th June,1923. He first visited England when he was two years old and then again when he was ten. When he was thirteen he was sent off to Ajmer to attend the Mayo College, much to the grief of his mother who could not bear to be parted from her affectionate first-born. In 1936, in spite of the changes then sweeping through India, the Mayo College remained very much a Princes' College. Rao Raja (then Kanwar) Nahar Singh, Rao Raja Narpat's younger son, who was then leaving for his school in England, remembers being asked by his young prince, "And what are you taking to school?" "Two very large trunks", replied Tiger Nahar Singh proudly, but felt compelled, when Hanwant expressed disbelief, to ask, "Why what are you taking?" "Well", said the heir to the Gadi of Marwar, "a couple of cars, a few horses, some guns and, of course, my servants." (Including a barber and a tailor.) Fortunately the college with all its stern guardians and proselytizing tutors, and its Hurray Henry vision of the Empire, was not able to impress Hanwant Singh who, unaffected by the indoctrination, grew up not only one of Marwar's most interesting rulers but also a champion of his order.

That he would never quite be the patronizing english colonel's "beau ideal of a native prince", as had been his great-grand-uncle and, to a lesser extent, father, was clear from the beginning. "Even in school", recalls a class-mate, "his anti-British views were well known." And these hardened into something considerably stronger during his year at the Government College, also in Ajmer, where the young Rathore encountered the freedom movement for the first time. Ajmer, a part of British India and home to many popular leaders seeking refuge from the States, including Marwar's Jai Narain Vyas, was a hotbed of nationalist activity at the time and that was where, a world away from the classrooms of Mayo, the nineteen year-old prince learnt his politics.

Such was the man destiny placed on the Gadi of Jodhpur on 21st June, 1947.

Jodhpur's accession to the new Dominion of India two months later was the most tempestuous of all and remains, understandably, a moment of some pride for the Rathores. It may have been something of a submission; though there is no doubt that Hanwant Singh was excited by Jodhpur being part of a free and united India, but it was not an ordinary one, not humiliating. It revealed the man too; passionate, emotional and brave.