"The Rajput race is the noblest and proudest in India, they are of highest antiquity and purest descent, they have a military autocracy of a feudal type, and “brave and chivalrous, keenly sensitive to an affront, and especially jealous of the honour of their women".
If devotion to the fair sex be admitted as a criterion of civilization, the Rajpoot must rank high. His susceptibility is extreme, and fires at the slightest offense to female delicacy, which he never forgives.
If other princes were born with silver spoons in their mouth, Indian princes (Rajputs) were born with gold ones. It is difficult in these proletarian times to imagine the sheer grandeur and scale of opulence in which the princes were reared.
Indeed it is amongst the Rajputs of our Army that we find the best specimen of Hindu character, and is no part of the world has the devotion of the soldiers to their immediate Chiefs been more remarkable than among the Rajputs.
In the ancient days the Rajput principalities were India's stoutest bulwarks against foreign invasion. Khshatriya armies fought not only Alexander and his Greeks, but also the hordes of Scythians and Bactrians which poured into India up to the end of the 1st century.
Akbar sent Raja Man Sing and Asaf Khan against Rana Pratap of Mewar in 1576. There were Rajput soldiers on both sides; those under Rana Pratap were fighting the ones under Raja Man Singh. At one stage in the fierce struggle, Badaoni asked Asaf Khan how he could distinguish between the friendly and the enemy Rajputs. Asaf Khan replied: “Shoot at whomsoever you like, on whichever side they may be killed, it will be a gain to Islam.”