In 1926, at the age of thirty-six, HH Maharadhiraja Raja Rajeshwar Sawai Shri Tukojirao III Holkar XIII Bahadur of Indore, GCIE, formally signed his abdication papers. The period preceding it had been a traumatic year for the ruler. In January 1925, a Muslim businessman by the name of Bawla was murdered on a dimly lit street in Bombay's affluent Malabar Hill, and his lover, Mumtaz Begum, who had accompanied him that night, was severely injured with knife wounds to her head. The begum had been at one time a palace dancer at Indore, and a favourite of the Maharaja's. It was soon discovered by eyewitness accounts and police inquiries that their assailants were members of the Indore household, who had been sent under the directions of Tukoji Rao. The murder case dominated national and international headlines when it came to trial in the Bombay High Court and ultimately compelled the ruler to relinquish his sovereign powers.

Thus, from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, the kingdom of Indore in Central India was best known for the romantic trials of its two Holkar princes, the aforementioned Maharaja Tukoji Rao (1890–1978, r. 1903–26) and his son Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar (1908–61, r. 1926–61). Born as sovereigns at the end of empire, these two Hindu Maratha rulers became embroiled in personal crises, which had far reaching political consequences. Their life histories reveal how the private peccadilloes, sexual desires and love unions of the Indian kings were elaborately interwoven with the running of state government and the kingdom's relationship with the colonial regime. In this particular dynastic line, regal consorts and royal wives caused considerable political instability and damage. The Malabar Hill Murder trial cost Tukoji Rao Holkar his gaddi when he was compelled to abdicate. Yeshwant Rao's morganatic marriages to two American women forced him to rewrite succession precedence in Indore, making his daughter his heir and precluding the rights of future male issue. Despite the fact that these rulers were aware of the political consequences of their seemingly imprudent romantic liaisons, they still went ahead with them.