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52 the title of Maharaja in 1864. This title was followed by another - the KCSI (Knight Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India) in 1866, and then he was awarded the right to be addressed as %u2018His Highness%u2019 in 1874. It was Vijayarama Gajapathi III who won the coveted 13-gun salute. Since then, the Maharaja of Vizianagaram was reasonably high in the pecking order. What was the world into which the young Prince Vijayarama entered? The Great War, known to us as the First World War, had come to an end. While India had been spared direct conflict of the war, it had not escaped the ravages of the Spanish Flu. The pandemic was estimated to have killed 100 million around the globe, out of which 10 million were in India. Politically, the return of a young barrister, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, from South Africa in 1914, and his transformation into the Mahatma was well underway. The Jallianwala Bagh firing of 1919 had exposed the brutal face of the British and had signalled that this order could not go on. Similarly, the revolution in Russia and the spread of Communist and Socialist thought meant that there were powerful new combatants in the battle of ideas.Meanwhile, far from these weighty issues, the education of young Vijayarama continued. At first, like those of his status, he was home tutored. The personal tutor was Mr. Bardswell, from England. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, then a Professor at the University of Calcutta, and later to become President of India, was an old family friend. Whenever he would drop in, he would expound on ancient Hindu philosophy, of which he was a well of knowledge. Recollects PVG Raju, it was %u201cin the year 1932 that I first came to know Dr. Radhakrishnan. I was then just a child, and I remember to have met him along with