He gave Asia its first hydroelectric power, Karnataka its first university, and India its first formal reservations for backward communities — and on Monday, 3 August 2026, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah paused to bow before that legacy, paying tribute to Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, the visionary Maharaja of Mysore whose reign is remembered as a golden chapter in the state's history.

In his post, written in Kannada, Siddaramaiah recalled the Maharaja as 'dooradrushTiya daksha aaDaLitaagaara' — 'a far-sighted, efficient administrator' — who gave the touch of modernity to the Mysore princely state and built a nation that made all of India take notice. He offered his 'infinite salutations' (ananta namanagaLu) to a ruler he described as a people's king, a democratic thinker, and a champion of an equal society.

A Reign That Rewrote What a Princely State Could Be

Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar ruled Mysore State from 1902 to 1940, transforming a feudal princely state into one of the most administratively progressive regions in early 20th-century India. The list Siddaramaiah recited is staggering in its breadth: a representative assembly (Praja Pratinidhi Sabha), free primary education, social reform legislation, the founding of the University of Mysore in 1916, the construction of the Krishnaraja Sagar Dam across the Cauvery, an iron and steel factory at Bhadravathi, the iconic Mysore Sandal Soap factory, and — crucially — hydroelectric power generation that was a first for Asia.

The University of Mysore, established by royal decree in 1916, was the sixth university in all of India at the time, a remarkable achievement for a princely state operating under British suzerainty. The Krishnaraja Sagar reservoir, completed in the early 1930s, remains a cornerstone of irrigation and power infrastructure in the region nearly a century later.

India's First Reservation Policy — Born in Mysore

Perhaps the most politically resonant part of Siddaramaiah's tribute was his emphasis on social justice. He credited Wodeyar with being the first ruler in the country to introduce reservations in education and government employment for backward communities — a measure that predates independent India's constitutional provisions by decades.

This policy trace runs through the Miller Committee, constituted in 1918 to examine the representation of backward communities in Mysore's administration and educational institutions. The committee's recommendations seeded what we now understand as affirmative action — and Siddaramaiah, himself a champion of OBC rights and the architect of Karnataka's current social justice agenda, was deliberate in drawing that line from Wodeyar's court to the present day.

Why a Karnataka CM Keeps Returning to This Legacy

Tributes to the Wodeyar era are not incidental in Karnataka political discourse — they are load-bearing. Successive governments have invoked the Mysore State's early reforms when framing reservation policy, irrigation investment, and public education spending. For Siddaramaiah, who has staked much of his political identity on backward-class welfare and the Guarantee schemes of his current term, the Maharaja's legacy offers historical legitimacy: proof that Karnataka's soil has always nurtured social equity, long before the Constitution mandated it.

The kicker is in what Siddaramaiah chose to emphasise — not the palace, not the pageantry, but the dam, the factory, the university, and the reservation order. That is a political reading of history as much as a tribute, and it lands with precision.