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The world's richest man in 1937 was His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad, an Indian potentate. TIME featured him on its cover that year, estimating his fortune at $1.4 billion, including "$150,000,000 in jewels [and] $250,000,000 in gold bars." Such fabulous wealth enabled free-spending Indian princes like the nizam to fill the best hotels in London and Paris with massive entourages that made impossible demands and gave outrageous tips—long before Arab sheiks got into the habit. The nizam and his ilk have disappeared from the world's glamour magazines and gossip columns, but a new coffee-table book, The Unforgettable Maharajas, reminds us that in their heyday India's royals built palaces, collected Rolls-Royces, and hunted exotic animals like no one else on earth.

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Showcasing an extensive range of photographs from India's princely states, the book opens a window into the private lives of the maharajas, who collectively constituted one of the most pretentious—and powerless—aristocracies in history. During the raj, the British directly ruled about half the Indian subcontinent. The rest it subcontracted to a colorful crowd of nawabs, rajas and maharajas, allowing them all the pomp and ceremony they wanted and even some autonomy—but no authority over issues like defense and foreign affairs. Some royals, such as the Kings of Mysore, Baroda and Travancore, were enlightened rulers who promoted the arts and built colleges and irrigation works. But most, as the photos in this book amply testify, spent their time hoarding diamond necklaces of breathtaking size, playing polo and cricket, and nearly shooting India's tigers into extinction. In 1939, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's future Prime Minister, lamented that most of the princely states were "sinks of reaction and incompetence." A mass of desperately poor peasants tilled the land for the benefit of a small group of landowners; at the top of the pyramid, skimming the landowners' profits for his gilt-plated cars and Cartier necklaces, sat the maharaja, the parasite in chief.

The pictures in The Unforgettable Maharajas are accompanied by a commentary that delightfully lists the royals' idiosyncrasies. The King of Jodhpur had to be called "Father" by all his subjects, including his mother. The ruler of Alwar preferred the title "God." A well-stocked harem was a vital component of many a maharaja's ego, but the considerate treatment of women was not always a high priority. When he abandoned his kingdom, the nawab of Junagadh, a great fan of hunting dogs, "left many weeping wives behind so that his pampered canines could fly with him on his plane." Despite their claims to divine status, India's maharajas knew they were just paid-up domestic help for the British, as one anecdote tellingly reveals: when he took the British viceroy of India out on tiger hunts, the maharaja of Gwalior measured the animals shot by his guest "with a special tape that had eleven inches to a foot," so that the Englishman would never suffer the ignominy of having bagged the smaller tiger.

In 1947, when India won its freedom from Britain, the first act of its new leaders was to demand that the maharajas hand in their crowns. While many princes withered away into penury, a few adapted to democracy, refashioning themselves as politicians and diplomats. Others, such as the enterprising Kings of Rajasthan, converted their palaces into magnificent five-star hotels and turned themselves into successful businessmen. But as The Unforgettable Maharajas shows, India's royals will be best remembered for their pomp—and pomposity.

• Aravind Adiga | New Delhi
• A new photo book revisits the splendor and decadence of India's princes