Per tab Singh (1845-1922) was one of the prominent Indian princes during the English Raj.
was quite a character. A younger son of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, he was in his own right Maharaja of Idar (1902-1911), in what is now Gujarat, in western India, which he abdicated to his nephew, having no son of his own of princely rank, and three times served as regent of Jodhpur after the death of his brother and the latter’s successor. Eventually the holder of three knighthoods, Sir Pertab was an enthusiastic supporter of British rule. Commissioned an officer in the Jodhpur Army, one of the princely forces that supported the British Indian Army, Sir Pertab served in the field during the Second Afghan War (1878-1880), earning a mention in dispatches, fought gallantly in the Tirah Campaign on the Northwest Frontier (1897-1898), during which he was severely wounded, and earned a promotion to colonel. In 1900 he commanded the Jodhpur contingent during the Boxer Rebellion, and was promoted to major-general in 1902.
In 1907, a British officer serving in Jodhpur died, and when no fourth Christian of appropriate rank was found to assist at his burial, Sir Pertab voluntarily served as a pall bearer. , Brahmin priests claimed that he had thus broken caste, and demanded that he undergo a purification, to which he replied “I will do nothing of the sort, the deceased and I belong to the highest caste of all, that of a soldier.”
Sir Pertab believed that “a soldier’s death, wherever won, is the best and greatest gift of life,” and so, when World War I broke out, though pushing 70, volunteered for service. He led the Jodhpur Imperial Service Troops, essentially a brigade of two lancer regiments and a medical detachment, on the Western Front in the Indian Corps (1914-1915), and later in the Sinai and Palestine (1917-1918). The Jodhpur Lancers took a prominent role in the capture of Haifa (September 23, 1918), where Sir Pertab told them, "You can go forward and be killed by the enemy’s bullets, or you can fall back and be executed by me." Two of his sons and a nephew served with the lancers, and one son was killed at Haifa, an operation still commemorated annually in the Indian Army. Sir Pertab emerged from the war as a lieutenant-general and Knight Commander of the Bath.
During the course of his long and faithful service to the British Empire, Sir Pertab became a personal friend to Queen Victoria, her son Edward VII, and the latter’s son George V. So when, in 1921, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), toured India, he quite naturally looked up the old family friend.
Sir Pertab took the young prince pig sticking, a favorite sport among the Indian horsey set, and one at which he was quite adept. The prince, although an accomplished polo player, was much less experienced in the pig sticking business, and made a careless mistake; He dismounted during the hunt, before the pig had been killed, which could have cost him dearly.
At that, Sir Pertab told him, “I know you are the Prince of Wales, and you know that you are the Prince of Wales, but the pig doesn’t know you are the Prince of Wales.”