The Prince & Plato

With the help of Plato, 21-year-old Yuvraj (Crown Prince) Karan Singh, Prince Regent of embattled Kashmir, last week was trying to choose between duty and a maharaja's fortune (once estimated at $75 million). Karan, a Hindu, has been nominal ruler, since 1949, of predominantly Moslem Kashmir in place of his exiled father. Kashmir's real ruler, the man who banished Karan's father, is Prime Minister Sheik Mohammed Abdullah, a Moslem. As he had long threatened to do, Abdullah persuaded the Kashmir constituent assembly to abolish the 106-year-old dynasty of the ruling Singhs. As a sop to the sentiments of the Hindu minority, however, he offered to let young Karan become the state's constitutional governor for a five-year term. But Karan's father, the old maharaja, who is living in luxury in Bombay, threatened to disinherit his son and cut off his $63,000 yearly allowance if he took the job. The governor's job would pay only $12,000.

In a commencement speech at Jammu and Kashmir University--Karan Singh is himself a graduating student and at the same time the university's chancellor-- the Prince mused: "Increased possession . . . does not bring .with it contentment or peace of mind. Our distracted world needs some sort of philosophical background if it is ever to pull itself out of the mire of ignorance, hate and misery. Over 25 hundred years ago, Plato said that it was not until kings became philosophers or philosophers became kings that the ideal society would be built . . . Kings," he added wistfully, "are having a rather bad time of it these days."

This week, friends of the young maharaja-not-to-be reported that he had made up his mind to accept the governorship, philosophically.

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