Scindia, Madhavrao

▪ 2002

      Indian Hindu prince and politician (b. March 10, 1945, Bombay [now Mumbai], India—d. Sept. 30, 2001, Mainpur, India), succeeded (1961) his father as maharaja of the ancient princely state of Gwalior (which was absorbed by independent India in 1948 and incorporated into the modern state of Madhya Pradesh in 1956); after the government abolished Indian royalty, he went into national politics. Scindia was educated in England at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He was first elected to Parliament in 1971 as a member of the Hindu nationalist party Jan Sangh (later the Bharatiya Janata Party), cofounded by his mother, Vijayraje Scindia. Later in the decade he switched to the Congress (I) Party. The charismatic and popular “commoner-king” was reelected eight times, regardless of his party affiliation. The switch, however, generated a permanent rift with his mother (who had been imprisoned briefly by the government in 1975) and led to years of legal battles between the two over the family estates. Before Vijayraje died in January 2001, she disinherited her son; her will indicated that he should not have the honour of lighting her funeral pyre—a public ritual he undertook all the same. Scindia held several cabinet ministries in the 1980s and '90s and was deputy leader of Congress (I) at the time of his death. A sports enthusiast, he served as president (1990–93) of the Indian Cricket Control Board and had a cricket trophy named after him. Scindia was killed when the small plane in which he was a passenger crashed during a rainstorm.

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