Maharaja Raol Takhtsinhji Jaswantsinhji (6 January 1858 - 29 January 1896), was Maharaja of Bhavnagar, a Rajput chief of the Gohel clan, and the ruler of a state in Kathiawar. He succeeded to the throne of Bhavnagar on the death of his father, Jaswantsinhji, in 1870.
He attended the Delhi Durbar in 1877 and was granted a personal gun salute of 15-guns.[1] During his minority, which ended on 5 April 1878, he was educated at the Rajkumar College, Rajkot and afterwards under an English officer, while the administration of the state was conducted jointly by Mr. E. H. Percival, a member of the Indian Civil Service, and Gaurishankar Udayshankar, C.S.I., one of the foremost native statesmen of India, who had served the state in various capacities since 1822.
At the age of twenty Takhtsinhji found himself the ruler of a territory nearly 3,000 square miles (7,800 km2) in extent. His first public act was to sanction a railway connecting his territory with one of the main trunk lines, which was the first enterprise of its kind on the part of a raja in western, if not in all, India. The commerce and trade, and the economic and even social development of the state, which came in the wake of this railway, confirmed Takhtsinhji in a policy of progressive administration, under which educational establishments, hospitals and dispensaries, trunk roads, bridges, handsome edifices and other public works grew apace.
Takhtsinhji was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal in 1877, and knighted as a KCSI in 1881.[2] In 1886 he inaugurated a system of constitutional rule, by placing several departments in the hands of four members of a council of state under his own presidency. This innovation, which had the warm support of the governor of Bombay, Lord Reay, provoked a virulent attack upon the chief, who brought his defamers to trial in the High Court of Bombay. The punishment of the ringleaders broke up a system of blackmailing to which rajas used to be regularly exposed, and the public spirit of Takhtsinhji in freeing his brother chiefs from this evil was widely acknowledged throughout India, as well as by the British authorities. In 1886 he was promoted to GCSI; and five years later his hereditary title of Thakur was raised to that of Maharaja. In 1893 he took the occasion of the opening of the Imperial Institute by Queen Victoria to visit England in order to pay personal homage to the sovereign of the British Empire, on which occasion the University of Cambridge conferred on him the degree of LL.D.[3]
As the first pupil of Rajkumar College, Takhtsinhji became its greatest patron and benefactor following his accession to the throne of Bhavnagar. He was also a great benefactor to Gujarat College, Fergusson College and the Wadhwan Girassia School, as well as several girls' and women's schools. Undertaking an intensive development and modernisation of Bhavnagar during his reign, he reformed the revenue department, erected water-works and modern docks, extended medical relief and built a port, bridges, hospitals and schools. Celebrated as a "model ruler of a model state", during his own lifetime, the Maharaja died at the Moti Bagh Palace on 29 January 1896 at the age of 38.[4] He was succeeded as Maharaja of Bhavnagar by his eldest son, Bhavsinhji II.
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