Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV

Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV (Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar; 4 June 1884 – 3 August 1940) was the twenty-fourth maharaja of the Kingdom of Mysore, from 1894 until his death in 1940. At the time of his death, he was one of the world’s wealthiest men, with a personal fortune estimated in 1940 to be worth US$400 million, equivalent to $7 billion at 2018 prices. He was the second-wealthiest Indian, after Mir Osman Ali Khan, Nizam of Hyderabad.
He was a philosopher-king, who was seen by Paul Brunton as living the ideal expressed in Plato’s Republic. He has been compared to Emperor Ashoka by the English statesman Lord Samuel. Acknowledging Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV’s noble and efficient kingship, Lord John Sankey declared in 1930 at the Round Table Conference in London, “Mysore is the best administered state in the world”.The vernacular name Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar comes from the word “nalwadi” meaning “the fourth” in Kannada.