"Privileges are only a paltry make-believe, if not a fool's paradise," wrote Shri Hanwant Singh Bahadur, the titular Leader of Kings, King of Kings and Maharaja of Jodhpur. "Shorn of old feudal and autocratic character, a prince in free India should now rise to the level of Common Man."
Last week, the burly young (28) Maharaja, known to his friends as "Funny Face," was busy as a beaver rising to the level of common man in company with some 30 other bejeweled ex-potentates of India. All of them, stripped of princely power by their nation's republican constitution, are running for...