The Viceroy at Patiala

Abstract

Lord Ripon, the Viceroy from 1880 to 1884, paid a state visit to the Maharajah of Patiala on the occasion of the opening of the Mohindar College in Patiala. The Maharajah, still a minor, was the titular head of the most important of the Sikh states of the Punjab, under British protection since 1809 and lying on the plains of the Eastern Punjab some two hundred miles from Lahore. The Mohindar College had been officially founded on the occasion of another viceregal visit, by Lord Northbrook in 1875, to encourage education in a state notably backward in that respect among the Punjab states. The Maharajah after whom the college was named had died in 1876, however, and progress had not been rapid thereafter. The things that Kipling found furnishing the palace in such profusion had been standing undisturbed in the eight years since the late Maharajah’s death.