Alwar

R C Mody is a postgraduate in Economics and a Certificated Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. He studied at Raj Rishi College (Alwar), Agra College (Agra), and Forman Christian College (Lahore). For over 35 years, he worked for the Reserve Bank of India, where he headed several all-India departments, and was also Principal of the Staff College. Now 81 years old, he is busy in social work, reading, writing, and travelling. He lives in New Delhi with his wife.

Lahore

I was a student at Lahore in early 1947. While large parts of India were suffering from communal violence, starting with the great Calcutta killings of 16 August 1946, Lahore was singularly free from it.

Until, all of a sudden, riots broke out on the morning of 4th March 1947, and soon took a virulent turn. My hostel warden advised us to go home until the situation became normal. 

My hometown Alwar, a Princely State at that time, was some 400 miles away, and a long rail journey to get there was considered unsafe.

R C Mody is a postgraduate in Economics and a Certificated Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. He studied at Raj Rishi College (Alwar), Agra College (Agra), and Forman Christian College (Lahore). For over 35 years, he worked for the Reserve Bank of India, where he headed several all-India departments, and was also Principal of the Staff College. Now 82 years old, he is busy in social work, reading, writing, and travelling. He lives in New Delhi with his wife. His email address is rmody@airtelmail.in.

India would be independent one day. This was the fond hope, in fact a dream, with which most Indians of my generation grew up. But this dream kept on eluding us.

Every time freedom appeared to be close in the 1930s and early 1940s, there would be a setback, with the British throwing back the leaders of the Independence movement back into jail. And then for long, nothing would be heard about it. The cynics would say, “The British will never leave India.”

When World War II ended in 1945, it seemed that the British had finally decided to leave. There was only one lone protestor in Britain, Winston Churchill, who was ignored by the new British Government formed at the end of the war.

R C Mody is a postgraduate in Economics and a Certificated Associate of the Indian Institute of Bankers. He studied at Raj Rishi College (Alwar), Agra College (Agra), and Forman Christian College (Lahore). For over 35 years, he worked for the Reserve Bank of India, where he headed several all-India departments, and was also Principal of the Staff College. Now 81 years old, he is busy in social work, reading, writing, and travelling. He lives in New Delhi with his wife.

I had my initial schooling at home under private tutors as my father was not inclined to send me to any school in Alwar, where my parents lived, because he thought none of them offered a good education. Editor's note: Alwar was a Princely State at that time, not part of British India.

But, my father changed his mind when a new school, named Model School, opened in 1936. Model School, with classes up to Standard VIII, had a well selected staff, and a very forward-looking Headmaster, Mr Ram Narain Sharma, who went on to become Joint Director of Education in Rajasthan.

I took a rigorous admission test. To my great delight, I was found fit for Class VII, even though I was only 10 years old. Straight away, I was a senior student! Some of my teachers, though not highly paid, were excellent: they were dedicated and they knew how to teach.

Kailash Mathur, called Chanda by his parents, is an electrical engineer, who was born in in 1942 Tijara, which is even now a very small city in Rajasthan. He lived in East Germany from 1965 to 1971, where he married Annemarie, a German, in 1969. Since 1971, he has lived in Vienna, Austria. He became a widower when Annemarie died of cancer in 2004.

Long, long ago, once my father asked me to come with him for Shikar (hunt). It was a special event. As a senior government officer responsible for the safety of the people, he had been asked to kill a tiger. This tiger must have been a menace to some village, and the tiger had to be killed. It may have been the jungle surrounding Alwar or may be Jhalawar. I was barely old enough to go with Daddy, and do not remember the exact year, but it was in the early 1950s.

Before we went for Shikar, Daddy’s gun (a two barrel 0.12 bore gun) had to be cleaned. It was a regular activity at our home\; an unclean gun can kill the shikari (hunter) rather than the Shikar. There were special tools for doing that\; I remember a rod and a flannel cloth. The gun also needed oiling, as all joints of the gun must function perfectly.

Subodh Mathur was born in Alwar, and educated in Jaipur, Delhi, and Cambridge, USA. He taught Economics for one year (1972-73) at Rajasthan University, Jaipur, and later (1981-88) at American University, Washington, D.C. He has been an independent consultant since 1988, occasionally teaching Economics at the American University, D.C. He lives with his wife, Anuradha Deolalikar in a suburb of Washington, D.C. In his spare time, he is an avid gardener, and the editor of this website.

Dayawanti, my mother, 1937 wedding proposal photo

Chamber of Princes
New Delhi
4^th March 1937

Dear Mr. Khem Chand,

Dr. Hari Kishor Mathur who is practicing in New Delhi gave me to understand that you were a bachelor &amp\; could be approached for a matrimonial alliance. My daughter's daughter is over 18 years of age &amp\; has passed the Matriculation Examination of the Agra University in the II Division.  In other aspects also she is an accomplished girl.

Subodh Mathur was born in Alwar, and educated in Jaipur, Delhi, and Cambridge, USA. He taught Economics for one year (1972-73) at Rajasthan University, Jaipur, and later (1981-88) at American University, Washington, D.C. He has been an independent consultant since 1988, occasionally teaching Economics at the American University, D.C. He lives with his wife, Anuradha Deolalikar in a suburb of Washington, D.C. In his spare time, he is an avid gardener, and the editor of this website.

My father's name was Khem Chand. He did not use Mathur, a sub-caste identifier, as his last name. He was born in 1911 in Alwar, which was a Princely State at that time. He attended St. Stephen's College in Delhi, which was, and still is, one of India's leading colleges.

His father (my grandfather) Shri Ram Chand was also a student at St. Stephen's College, where he got a Faculty of Arts degree. This was one level lower than a B.A. degree, but a high level of education in the early 1900s in India. He served Alwar State as the head of Baagaat (Garden Department). He also had his training at the Forest Training Institute in Dehradun. We have a book on Forest Engineering on which he has signed his name with the date as 26.11.1905.

In the last row, at the extreme right is Prof. Spear, an accomplished historian of modern Indian social history who had a great influence on my father.

Introduction

I hail from a well-known family of the erstwhile AlwarState called “Modis.” The family was close to the Durbar for many years. The initial part of this narrative is based on stories I heard from my grand uncles. By 1933, however, I was grown up enough to see and assess events for myself. My description from that year onwards is an eye witness account.

Formation of Alwar

The Princely State of Alwar was one of the 22 Princely States (baais rajwade) of Rajputana on the eve of India's Independence, ranking 6^th in Rajputana, and about 20^th among all of the Princely States of India. Unlike many other Princely States, Alwar was not one of the ancient Indian kingdoms.

It was at some stage during his 30 years’ reign (1903-33) that Maharaja Jey Singh, a great builder, found that his capital city Alwar had great potential of extension, modernisation and beautification. The city was encircled by am old wall which was surrounded by a moat. The moat was expected to remain filled with water, thus giving the city protection against an invader. But the moat was for long without water and with the advent of 20^th century, there remained no possibility of any military invasion. Thus, both the wall and moat became anachronistic, and, in fact, an obstruction in growth of the city. 

Meenakshi Hooja (nee Mathur) was born at Jhalawar on 26th June, 1952 and after spending early years of her childhood at Jhalawar, Bikaner and Ajmer moved to Jaipur with her parents and family.
Meenakshi taught Political Science at the University of Rajasthan before joining the Rajasthan Cadre of Indian Administrative Service in 1975.  She served on many important positions in Government of Rajasthan and Government of India.
She is widely travelled in India and abroad and was a visiting fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford in 1999-2000.  Post retirement, she was a Member of the Central Administrative Tribunal.
She has written on a number  of development and administration  related subjects  She has also so published books of poetry in Hindi and English.

My father, Shri Khemchand, was born on 10th April 1911 in a leading family of Alwar to his parents Smt Lakshmi and Shri Ramchandra.

Shri Ramchandra. My grandfather. Alwar. About 1920s.

Smt. Lakshmi. My grandmother. With her great-grandson, Gaurav. Front of our home B-87 Ganesh Marg, Bapunagar, Jaipur. September 1979.

Dr. Pramod Wanchoo, born 1938, studied in Happy School, Alwar and Royal High School, Edinburgh. He got his medical degrees from SMS Medical College, Jaipur. He retired as the Senior Professor and Head of Department Surgery, SMS Medical College, and then shifted to private practice in Jaipur. He retired in 2012, and shifted to Gurgaon to be near his children. Likes to spend time reading and writing, and is active on Facebook.

Dr M S Katre, Chief Medical Officer, Alwar State

Dr Madhav Sadashiv Katre, was Chief Medical Officer, Alwar State, in 1940, when my father joined as Medical Officer, in charge of Alexandra Hospital Alwar. Father had spent seven years as Captain, Indian Medical Service, in NWFP and Singapore. Father and Dr Katre did not get along particularly well. However, Dr Katre did not interfere with father in the running of Alexandra Hospital.

The reason was that Dr Katre and my father were often not together. In particular, Dr Katre went to the Vijay Mandir Palace every evening to meet and check-up on Alwar Maharaja Tej Singhji and his family, and spent a couple of hours there. Further, Dr Katre spent 2-3 months in Mount Abu in the summer with the Maharaja. Still, inevitably, Dr Katre rang up father at 9 pm, every day to enquire "Sab theek hai (Is all Ok)?" And the inevitable answer had to be "Sab theek hai (All is Ok)."