Maharaja Yadavindra Singh of Patiala

Maharaja Yadavindra Singh was the last hereditary ruler of the princely state of Patiala, the premier ruling prince in the Punjab. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says he was born on 7 January 1913, the son of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh, and became ruler in 1938 of a state of nearly two million people. He played cricket for India in 1934 and led the Indian Olympic Association from 1938 to 1960. In the history of the Panth he is the Sikh prince who took the case for a Sikh homeland to the Viceroy and to Sardar Patel in 1947, headed PEPSU as its Rajpramukh, and later mediated between the Akalis and Nehru.

Key moments

• 8 May 1947: Mountbatten's report of that date, printed in Gurmit Singh's history, says the Maharaja of Patiala came to see him because the Sikh leaders felt he was "ruining the idea of 'Sikhistan'", and appealed to him, as Baldev Singh did the next day, to draw the line by Sikh landed property, sacred buildings and interests. Mountbatten told him world opinion would be against it. When the Maharaja said he feared the Sikhs would fight, Mountbatten replied that they would be bombed and machine-gunned from the air.
• After the partition decision: the Encyclopaedia says he took his case to Sardar Patel, urging that Sikh refugees be compensated and the community given a place in the new constitution. The Radcliffe line, it says, left many Sikhs and Sikh shrines in Pakistan.
• 1 August 1947: he led twenty-two rulers who decided to accede to the Indian Union. Towards the end of the year he took the presidency of the Panthic Darbar, a quasi-political body.
• May to July 1948: he gave his assent to the merger of Patiala with seven other states into PEPSU, the Patiala and East Punjab States Union. Gurmit Singh writes that Patel inaugurated it on 15 July 1948 and called it a "Homeland of the Sikhs". The Maharaja was its Rajpramukh until it merged with Punjab in November 1956.
• From 1960: he chaired the Punjabi University Commission, which preceded the founding of Punjabi University at Patiala in 1962.
• 25 September to 1 October 1961: Gurmit Singh records that on 25 September he met Nehru with Gurnam Singh, and the Akali Dal's Working Committee asked him to end the mediatory talks that day. On 1 October he and Sant Fateh Singh offered Master Tara Singh a glass of fruit juice, ending his fast.
• 24 December 1962: Sikh leaders met at Patiala and elected him Chief Organizer to harness the Sikhs' resources for the defence of the country.
• 1965 to 1974: he was ambassador in Rome and in 1969 tried, unsuccessfully, to act as go-between with the Centre to head off Darshan Singh Pheruman's fast to death over Chandigarh. He died of a heart attack on 17 June 1974, while ambassador at The Hague.

He is remembered as the prince who spoke for the Sikhs when they had no state of their own.