Indira of Baroda - Cooch Behar

Cooch Behar

It happened that at the time of the wedding, Jitendra's elder brother, the maharaja of Cooch Behar, was grievously ill. Within days of the wedding, he died of ailments arising from alcohol abuse, and Jitendra became maharaja of Cooch Behar. The couple lived a relatively happy life and rapidly became the parents of five children. However, alcoholism was endemic in Jitendra's family, and he died at a young age, within a decade of the wedding.

Indira was now not only a young widow and the mother of five, but also regent of Cooch Behar during the minority of her elder son. She faced her situation not merely with courage but indeed with verve. Her administrative skills were deemed by observers very middling indeed, but Indira quickly gained a reputation for her highly-active social life, and spent prolonged periods of time in Europe and away from Cooch Behar. There have also been suggestions of her having been free with her favours.

Jitendra Narayan's mother Maharani Sunity Devi (1864–1933) was the rajmata of Cooch Behar. She was the wife of Maharaja Nripendra Narayan Bhup Bahadur and the daughter of Keshab Chunder Sen, an illustrious Brahmo leader and social reformer of Bengal. She was a highly educated and an erudite women of her time. She established schools, institutions and did a lot of pioneering work for women of her princely state and all around Bengal. She wrote her autobiography in English, which was published in London in 1920. This was the first autobiography written in English by any Indian woman.