India, June 27 -- "We have all different ways of beginning the day. The Englishman starts his day on bacon and eggs, the German on sausages, the American on cornflakes. His Highness prefers a virgin." So wrote KL Gauba of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala and his 350 concubines in His Highness (1930). A lacerating account of the excesses of the princely class, His Highness looked forward to India being rid of "medieval despotism". Its tone was diametrically opposed to that of a book published when Gauba was born. This was Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901), in which Dadabhai Naoroji highlighted the "splendid prospect" held out by Mysore, which had transformed the sizable budget deficit left behind by British administrators into a healthy surplus - even while spending heavily on development. These contrasting views come to mind because Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently laid the foundation stone for the Museum of the Royal Kingdoms of India, which is intended to redress "neglect" of the Native States by highlighting their role in shaping India's "political identity". This invites the question: Why did public opinion turn from admiration to dismissiveness? How did we go from Naoroji to Gauba? To understand Naoroji's view, recall a principality he knew intimately - Kutch. Having seized the principality in 1819, the East India Company placed the infant ruler, Deshalji, under the tutelage of James Gray, its storied chaplain in Bhuj. In 1834, Deshalji, who proved more interested in English guns than Christianscripture, was placed in harness and askedto tackle the era's great sins - brigandage, slavery, sati, and infanticide. He outdid the Company: The slave trade was discountenanced in 1836; the practice of sati was outlawed in 1852; and by 1859, the Rao had inaugurated amarriage fund for girls, which reduced the incentive for his clansmen to commit infanticide, increasing the female-to-male ratio from 1:8 to 1:3. Deshalji himself became, the British noted with equal measures of horror and pride, the first Rao to "preserve a daughter". Small wonder, then, that he came to be described in the British press as "perhaps the most interesting person in the East". Deshalji's heir, Pragmalji, who ascended the gaddi (throne) in 1860, faced a different challenge. Educated and aided by graduates of Elphinstone College, Pragmalji was seized with the idea of progress. Unfortunately, his bhayad (clansmen) were less impressed by "improvement". When pressed to contribute, they threatened to rebel. Still reeling from 1857, the British warned Pragmalji to rein in his ambitions - or be deposed. Undeterred, the Rao circumvented the Viceroy: He dispatched his dewan to London and, with Naoroji's help, struck a bargain with the secretary of state for India in 1869. He helped the Liberals curb the slave trade in Zanzibar by ordering Kachchhis, who dominated commerce there, to obey the British consul. In return, Bombay informed the bhayad, who considered themselves "independent States", that they had to "cooperate with the darbar". Pragmalji did more than bring Kutch under a "central and able" authority; when he expressed his gratitude to Naoroji by endowing the East India Association in 1871, he also gave Indians a formidable voice in London. Little could the British have imagined when they raised an infant in remote Kutch in 1819 that they would end up pricking themselves in London in 1871. Why was the remarkable path beaten byfigures like Deshalji and Pragmalji forgotten by the time Gauba penned His Highness? There were three waves of disillusionment. Thefirst came when, shaken by the rise of theIndian National Congress and the emergence of radicalism, the British decided to treat the Native States as a bulwark. Previously, the British had served in placeof public opinion, berating Maharajas for"irresponsible" conduct. Going forward, however, they increasingly excused "decadence"as "customary magnificence". With this fateful step, painstaking "administrators" such asPragmalji gave way in the public imagination to swaggering "sportsmen" and "travellers" likethe Maharaja of Patiala. The disillusionment deepened during the Great War. In an era that saw monarchies fall in China, Russia, and Turkey, the Native States were conspicuous for proving their "loyalty" by combating "sedition" at home and offering "service" abroad. Not surprisingly, this led them to be described as "the last stand of despotism in Asia". Few cut deeper than Lala Lajpat Rai, whose The Political Future of India (1919) declared that most Maharajas were "parasitical" creatures who, "protected by British bayonets", had no incentive to reform, and would have to be made to "fall in line". What a comedown from the time when Rai's hero, Dayanand Saraswati, had travelled from darbar to darbar in the hope that Maharajas would lead India's revival! The final blow came with the arrival of representative government, which raised questions about the relationship between elected legislatures in the Presidencies and the Native States, where "personal rule" was still the norm. The Maharajas responded by insisting that they were "sovereign" and proposing various forms of "federation" that would safeguard their "independence". This approach put them at odds with the Congress - and with the broader ideal of "progressive nationalism". It became inevitable that someone - it turned out to be Sardar Patel - would do to the Native States what Pragmalji had done to the bhayad. Gauba was not entirely wrong, then. As a class, the Native States made unwise choices: They ought to have tolerated criticism, adopted constitutions, and conceded gracefully to nationalism. But he was mistaken when he dismissed capable principalities such as Mysore and Baroda as anomalies. Preceding generations knew better; familiar with the deeds of men like Deshalji and Pragmalji, they knew that modern India was the work of many hands. Few put it more evocatively than MG Ranade, who wrote of the Native States during his days at Elphinstone: "Their fathers fell in glory on the battlefield. Their noble descendants are fighting the battle for their country on a more peaceful stage. It is such princely houses as these who link in their person the past and the present, who are the themes of our infant songs, and the heroes of our youthful dreams of the future. It is these houses whose memory we have to adore." Gauba later had second thoughts. Having fled Pakistan for India - evidently popular sovereignty did not always translate into good government - he conceded in his autobiography that His Highness contained "some exaggeration". It was too little, too late for him, but the upcoming museum gives us a chance to make amends by recounting what Naoroji knew - that there were Maharajas and Raos who loved and served his land....