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Swami Anandashram did not teach Ranjitsinhji to play cricket. In Rahul Sagar’s account, the Bengali ascetic’s influence was political and indirect: his reform work and advice during a Nawanagar succession dispute formed part of the chain that brought the young prince to Rajkot, where he encountered the game.
Who was Swami Anandashram?
Rahul Sagar’s 3 October 2026 article in the Hindustan Times portrays Anandashram as an English-speaking Bengali ascetic who pressed for administrative reform in the princely state of Nawanagar. Sagar places him in a Kashi math in the late 1850s, followed by an extended pilgrimage and travel through the Himalayas. The account says he reached Jaipur in the early 1860s and Nawanagar in 1864.
In Nawanagar, Anandashram used the Bombay press to criticize the ruler’s administration and worked with Vinayak Bhagwat on reform initiatives. Sagar names a dispensary, an English-language primary school and an independent judicial department among their efforts. The article quotes Anandashram telling Jam Sahib Vibhaji: “I journey through the country examining into and exposing all that is false, cruel, and unjust, and giving my support to whatever is good wherever I find it; and this I shall continue to do”. Sagar also reports that British representative Lionel Barton called him a “political sannyasin.”
Sagar says Vibhaji expelled Anandashram and Bhagwat amid a dispute over succession, after which Anandashram advised in neighbouring Kutch. The quotations and narrative details here are those reported by Sagar; the underlying archival records have not been independently established by the other sources cited here.
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How did Anandashram’s advice relate to Ranjitsinhji’s succession?
The connection is a political sequence, not a direct cricketing one. Sagar describes an earlier heir being removed and a subsequent selection failing. In that context, a reform party advised Vibhaji to choose “collateral members of the reigning family” as heirs. Sagar links that advice to Vibhaji’s eventual selection of Ranjitsinhji and says the boy was sent to Rajkot for his safety.
This causal account should be read as Sagar’s historical interpretation, not as a conclusion independently confirmed by the period biographical entry or South Asian Britain. Those sources support key facts about Ranjitsinhji’s adoption and education, but do not verify Anandashram’s role in the succession decisions. Sagar also recounts allegations and political intrigue around the dispute; without separate corroboration, those details should remain attributed to his account rather than treated as settled fact.
Who introduced Ranjitsinhji to cricket?
Sagar credits Chester Macnaghten, principal of Rajkumar College in Rajkot, with noticing Ranjitsinhji’s sporting ability, introducing him to cricket and helping him continue his education at Cambridge. That account makes Macnaghten—not Anandashram—the figure associated with the prince’s first opportunity to play.
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The broad education path has period-source support: the 1915 Indian Biographical Dictionary records that Vibhaji adopted Ranjitsinhji and that he studied at Rajkumar College and Trinity College, Cambridge. South Asian Britain identifies him as both an England cricketer and a prince of Nawanagar. These sources corroborate the outline of his life and education, but not Sagar’s specific account of Macnaghten’s intervention.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why is Ranjitsinhji’s legacy more than a cricket story?
Ranjitsinhji became famous as a cricketer, but Sagar also places his public life within the politics of princely India and the British Empire. The article describes criticism of his support for imperial and princely rule, as well as criticism of his cultural assimilation. It also notes the barriers he faced in English society. Those are contested judgments presented in Sagar’s account, not a single uncontested verdict on his legacy.
The distinction matters to the title’s claim: Anandashram’s role, as Sagar tells it, belongs to the political circumstances that shaped Ranjitsinhji’s route to education. The documented cricketing biography begins later, with the prince at school and the sporting connections Sagar attributes to Macnaghten.
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