Legacy in Thread

Maharani Radhikaraje Gaekwad brings her royal heritage to life, championing the revival of traditional Baroda textiles, and curating one of India's most storied jewellery collections.

-  Chelna Khatau

The chandeliers still glitter at Lukshmi Vilas Palace, and the treasures of the Gaekwads—Raja Ravi Varma’s seven-strand pearls, a diamond once known as the Star of the South—remain enviably intact.

But what defines Baroda’s present-day royalty is not just what they possess, but what they preserve.

At the centre of this cultural stewardship is Maharani Radhikaraje Gaekwad, a woman of quiet command and cultivated taste, who has taken on the role of a custodian with sensibility shaped as much by international museums as by royal archives. Married into the illustrious Gaekwad dynasty—her husband Samarjitsinh Ranjitsinh Gaekwad is the current titular Maharaja—she belongs equally to the past and the future.

Born as the princess of Wankaner, Gujarat, her arrival at Baroda’s 170-room Lukshmi Vilas Palace in 2002 marked more than a shift in address. It was the beginning of an intimate, intellectual journey—one that would eventually lead her to revive heritage textiles like the chanderi and the exquisite barodashalu, a handwoven paithani-meets-banarasi fabric once woven and reserved specifically for generations of Gaekwad women.

"Coming from a background in the arts, and having travelled the world and visited museums, one begins to realise the value of what we have back home," she says.