[British India - Baroda (Vadodara)]. Papers Connected with the Deaths of Bhow Scindia and Govind Naik (Baroda No. 3).

€ 450.00

Records of the Baroda Crisis, a political crisis that took place in British India between 1872 and 1876 in Baroda, a Gujarati princely state. The crisis began when Colonel Robert Phayre was appointed as the British Resident of Baroda. An increasingly negative relationship with Malhar Rao Gaekwad, the Gaekwar of Baroda, culminated in the Baroda Enquiry which found "serious misgovernment" in the state. The present work comprises papers referring to the alleged murders of two men, Bhow Scindia and Govind Naik, in Baroda State Prison in 1872 as crimes committed by the Gaekwar's orders, with evidence collected by Sir Lewis Pelly, Agent, Governor-General and Special Commissioner of Baroda. Despite compelling evidence the case was dropped in March 1875 when a commission was installed to investigate whether the Gaekwar had orchestrated the attempted poisoning of Colonel Robert Phayre, former Resident at Baroda, and whether he was to be held responsible for the mismanagement of the state. The attempted murder of Phayre led to the Gaekwar being convicted of high treason, a possible miscarriage of justice. By order of the Secretary of State for India, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Malhar Rao was deposed on 10 April 1875 and exiled to Madras, where he died in obscurity in 1882.