Private life of an Indian prince; by Mulk Raj Anand

Private life of an Indian prince; Reviews

• 
  Philip Lane

  Very enjoyable tale of the final days of the Maharajahs as the Indian Union is formed. The important historic events provide the background for the story of one Maharajah's private life. His obsession with one of his mistresses is all encompassing and to some extent this created a flaw for me, it began to get rather tedious to hear about him obsessing about her once again. However there are enough other incidents, including a tiger hunt and a shopping spree in London, to make the thing move along. The narrator, the prince's personal doctor, is in many ways the more interesting character as he philosophies about the moral issues of governance. An interesting and somewhat unusual setting.
• 
  Prabhat sharma

  Private life of an Indian Prince (Hardcover) by Mulk Raj Anand- novel- Mulkraj Anand is an Indian writer- a humanist- this book scribes the time of independence of India from British. During this period, on one side the country was partitioined into India and Pakistan while on the other side, Princely States were provided an option to merge with either India or with Pakistan by signing an instrument of accession with either government. The story is about Prince Victor Ashok Kumar of Shampur. As usual, lust is his primary nature. Sardar Patel has invited him to sign an the Hiinstrument and inform him about the faciliies which can be ofered in independent India. It is found that he has eloped with a eur-asian girl in Simla. In his State, Praja Mandal and the communal forces want to merge with India as the governance of the state law and order his not been able to be restored. Dr Hari Shankar a medic is his advisor who is aware of the reality for partition and accession and tenders proper advice but the Prnice has no time to bother about this. He knows about the petty bad postion of jails and poverty of his people, and the brutal ways of the police handling people, still he is bothered about his lavish life. He is more interested in arranging Shikar with his Amerian friends. With changing circumstances, his lady Ganga Dasi beds with his Amerian friend and later elopes with his friend. Prince visits London and plan to murder his friend with whom Ganga Dasi is living. He succeeds but the crime is caught. He is broght back before the authorities where he is declared lunatic and sent to an Asylum in Pune. The book does not create much interest in the reader. People have accepted the life of people who have joined the mainstream of Indian life. It is quite an interesting book about a speicfic period in the life of India.
• 
  Pritam Chattopadhyay

  This novel deals with the disintegration of Princely India following independence and the torment of the Indian Princes.
  
  Victor, the Indian Prince, is one of the six hundred Indian Rajas, Maharajas and Nawabs, who has all the vices of royalty. He has wives whom he pays no attention to or ill-treats, he has a mistress, Gangi, who tyrannizes over him, he has his moods and his musings, and he wallows by and large in lavishness and sloth.
  
  Sardar Patel summons him at last to Delhi, keeps him waiting till he loses his nerve, and then he is made to sign the Instrument of Accession. But the administration of his State continues to be rotten.
  
  Victor has new troubles, and he goes to the United Kingdom on an imposed holiday. He is soon called back, being in the meanwhile caught up in the murder of a rival in love. Upon his return to India, he becomes mad and enters an Asylum where the novelist is content to leave him.
  
  The novel is awash with diminutive intrigues centring round sex, and Anand's aim is to combine modern-day political history with the personal history of a few individuals.
  
  The book, nevertheless rather leaves an impression of cram, like the memory of a terrible dream one has been through.
  
  Truth be told, Anand doesn't know the main character too well. Much of the interest and deception in the novel is centred in Victor's terminal obsession for Gangi. It is much akin to the call of one chamelon for another, for they had both emerge, with comparable temperaments, from the orbits of their individual affairs and mistake their exhaustion for the urgent need of each other.
  
  It is as though they are prisoners of each other, as though they are continuously feeding and eating and destroying each other, and this, maddening aberration in their relationship is appropriately reflected, in ever increasing measure, in the oddity in the state of affairs in Victor's state.
  
  The novel has very little appeal and Anand is not at his best in this novel.
  
• 
  Adam

  It did not grab me.
• 
  Yousuff

  Highly over rate book. A big disappointment from Mulk Raj after coolie.
• 
  Vinod

  life wasnt too easy for the royals in India who cooperated with the Raj.
• 
  Neena

  Though the book is based on India soon after independence, reading the book proves that history repeats itself in India. In the book, the cunning selfish greedy bania and brahmin combine to drive the Rajput prince of Shampur mad, and in 2018 also brahmin, bania intelligence and security agency employees, their associates combine to have honest hardworking kshatriya engineers from top colleges, declared mentally unsound, to steal their resume, savings, correspondence and memory