Gaekwads of Baroda
Gifted by nature with a remarkable power of brain and a very strong will; deprived by circumstances of education of any kind up to his 12th year; lifted entirely beyond expectation, from the life of a peasant boy to a throne and great riches; thereafter subjected to a course of intensive culture which left him with a sense of his deficiencies and a determination to make them good; invested with full powers at the age of 18 – His highness Maharaja Sayajirao III was marked out for a human experiment of the highest interest. Apart from the question what his personality might effect, the odds were that the experiment would fail. Tradition was against success, but Sayajirao III flouted tradition.
Sayajirao was a born ruler; he turned his attention to bringing in social reforms for the benefit of his people. He modernized his poor feudal state into one worthy of a 21-gun salute.
