Mani Shankar Aiyar, while reviewing Sandeep Bamzai s Princestan: How Nehru, Patel and Mountbatten Made India in the Open Magazine, wrote, quoting extensively from the book:
Nehru never hid his contempt for India's monarchs. He loathed the "gilded and empty-headed maharajas and nawabs who strut about the Indian scene and make a nuisance of themselves". To belittle his contributions to the freedom movement .