The credo of one of the oldest public schools in India is impressive: "A raja is honoured in his own country, a learned man throughout the world." But the former royals, who retain control over the 120-year-old Rajkumar College (RKC) in Raipur, now stand accused of ruining its finances and selling property leased from the state. The man rallying against them is none other than commoner Ajit Jogi, who at the behest of hundreds of former students, is heading a battle to rid the college of its feudal lords. Politics, of course, is central to the contention. The royals control at least 15 of the 90 assembly and four of the 11 Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh. And the sprawling, fully equipped 127-acre campus forms the axis of their power.

PRINCE AND PLEBEIAN: Jogi (left) has joined the campaign to oust Surendra Bahadur

Surendra Bahadur Singh of Sakti, an erstwhile princely state, heads the managing committee which runs the college founded by Sir Andrew Fraser, then chief commissioner of the Central Provinces, in 1882. Among its illustrious principals were T.L.H. Smith Pearse and Reverend G.D. Oswell in the years when the British took upon themselves the task to educate the chiefs and zamindars of the Eastern Provinces. Forty feudal families from Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Bengal and Orissa donated money to establish the college which opened its doors to commoners only in 1939. But even though the President of India is the patron-in-chief of the Rajkumar College Society (RCS), the commissioner of Raipur is the government's nominee and members of the Old Boys' Association can be elected to the 70-member General Council, the 40 donor families continue to dominate the administration of the college as life members of the council. "The common denominator for the royals is the institution funded by their forefathers," says S.C. Jain, an RKC alumnus. "They have zealously protected it, even cutting across party lines.'' Union minister Dilip Singh Judeo of the Jashpur royal family, for instance, has donated more than Rs 25 lakh to the college.

Interestingly, the property on which the imposing red brick college building was constructed was leased for a 100 years in 1894 by the British government to the RCS, which was later registered under the Firms and Societies Act of Madhya Pradesh. The lease was extended for another 30 years by the Digvijay Singh government (before Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh) in which Surendra Bahadur was a minister. He is not a legislator anymore but he heads a formidable lobby of blue-blooded Congress MLAs and college alumni. They were a powerful force even in undivided Madhya Pradesh. Former royals like Arjun Singh, Digvijay, Govindnarayan Singh and Madhavrao Scindia have dictated politics through the decades.

But in sheer numbers Chhattisgarh royals had no match. They wield considerable clout in all but two of the 16 districts in the state. All are RKC alumni and one of them, Naresh Chandra Singh Deo of Sarangarh, even went on to become the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. After the birth of Chhattisgarh in 2000, they became even more dominant. Currently, the Korea, Khairagarh, Raigarh, Rajnandgaon and Kawardha families have representatives in the Assembly.

BONE OF CONTENTION: Raipur's premier institution

Aware of the hegemony of the royals in the state, both the Congress and the BJP have always looked at them for leadership. When former chief minister Arjun Singh contested the assembly polls from Kharsiya, near Jashpur, against Judeo, it was supposed to be a cakewalk. But the closely fought election-89 per cent of the votes were cast-established the then struggling BJP in the Chhattisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh, then a Congress stronghold. The BJP has now anointed former Union minister Raman Singh, who belongs to a former zamindari family, to spearhead the first election to the Chhattisgarh Assembly expected later this year. Having grown up in the state, Jogi is neither ignorant of history nor disdainful of feudal influence.

After Raipur was chosen the state capital, the magnificent Stow Hall in the college became the obvious place to hold the first session of the Assembly. Another former royal Mahendra Bahadur Singh, an MLA, presided over the session as the Protem Speaker. With half-a-dozen alumni alongside him on the treasury benches, Jogi must have felt uncomfortable but he kept his cool. His opportunity to intervene, however, came soon enough. Surendra Bahadur allegedly sold two acres of land-valued at Rs 2 crore-of the campus which faces the Grand Trunk Road, the lifeline of Raipur. "The land was sub-leased with the intention of protecting it from encroachers who were breaking into the boundary wall," says Principal J.B. Singh. "It is also meant to augment the school's resources through rent.''

The Jogi Government also stopped the construction of a shopping complex on the campus. But Surendra Bahadur complicated matters by allegedly selling another seven acres of land to start an engineering college. He was apparently under the impression that since he had backed Jogi's candidature for chief ministership, the chief minister would not put hurdles in his path.

There is nothing wrong if Jogi wants to break the stranglehold of feudal families in the state," says Shekhar Sharma, a former member of the General Council of the RCS who is now heading the campaign against Surendra Bahadur. "The college's constitution says we should preserve the privileges of the former royals. Can such a thing be tolerated in a democratic society?'' He also claims that Jogi is backing him because he wants to save the only public school in the state from being plundered by those responsible for its upkeep. That could be the reason why state Finance Minister Ramchandra Singh Deo is also backing the Sharma faction. "The school finances are being wasted on trivialities and both as finance minister and RKC alumnus I am pained,'' he says. So he has put his signature along with 400-odd old boys who want the school to be handed over to a receiver.

"I am only doing what ex-RKCians want. If Surendra Bahadur is not performing and if the allegations of corruption and burning of school accounts are true then we will have to verify it through a receiver,'' says Jogi. Some old boys have, however, expressed fear that the political struggle to decimate the feudals might be deleterious to the exclusive educational institution that has given the country several big names in various professional fields. Others, like Deo, feel that once the institution is handed over to a body of alumni and some efficient former royals, things might start to function smoothly. Sir Andrew would certainly have wanted the magnificent college to survive another century.