The British Raj and the Indian Princely States

The Indian princely states are the part of British India that the British themselves found hardest to understand. The Raj, in the official mind, was a rational system of imperial governance, modelled on the British Indian Civil Service, and the princely states — autocratic, varied, often bizarre, with rulers who claimed to rule by divine right — were an embarrassment. Yet the princely states covered about 40 percent of the area of British India and contained about a quarter of the population. They were not, in any meaningful sense, peripheral to the British Raj; they were half of it. The integration of these states into the Indian Union between 1947 and 1950 was, as the historian Ian Copland has shown in The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917–1947 (1997), the most consequential political event of the post-independence period, and it was carried out, in the main, by one man, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and his secretary V. P. Menon, in less than three years.

The Nature of the Princely States

The princely states were governed by local rulers who acknowledged British paramountcy in matters of foreign affairs and external relations. The states ranged in size from the great states of Hyderabad, Kashmir, Mysore, and Baroda, which had populations in the millions, to tiny states with just a few hundred subjects. The states were governed by a range of rulers, including Hindu maharajas, Muslim nawabs, and tribal chieftains, and they had very different historical origins.

The British relationship with the states was governed by treaties, sanads, and other formal documents, and the states were guaranteed internal autonomy in exchange for the surrender of foreign policy. The political and administrative arrangements of the states varied enormously. As Copland and others have shown, the British treated the states as a system of personal relations with individual rulers, and the system worked, in so far as it worked, because the British could rely on the Resident to manage the relationship. When the Residents were competent — as in Hyderabad in the 1850s, when they were not — the system functioned; when they were not, the system produced long-running frictions.

The Doctrine of Paramountcy

The British concept of paramountcy was the legal and political framework for the relationship between the British government and the princely states. Paramountcy had its origins in the late Mughal period, when the British East India Company claimed to have inherited the suzerainty of the Mughal emperors. The doctrine was consolidated in the nineteenth century, particularly under Lord Dalhousie (1848–1856), who used the doctrine of “lapse” to annex states whose rulers died without male heirs. The doctrine of paramountcy was not formally defined, and the British interpretation of it shifted over time. The doctrine was the source of constant friction between the British and the princely states, and it was one of the major grievances of the Indian independence movement.

The Subsidiary Alliance System

The subsidiary alliance system was the principal mechanism by which the British extended their control over the princely states. The system was developed by Lord Wellesley at the end of the eighteenth century and was applied across India during the nineteenth century. Under a subsidiary alliance, an Indian ruler accepted a British garrison in his territory, paid for its maintenance, surrendered his foreign policy to the British, and accepted a British Resident at his court. The system was designed to prevent the Indian states from forming coalitions against the British, and it was generally successful in achieving this aim. The system, however, also weakened the Indian states by extracting their resources and by limiting their ability to develop modern armed forces.

The Great States of India

The princely states included several large and powerful states that retained substantial internal autonomy. Hyderabad, with a population of more than 16 million in 1947, was the largest princely state and was ruled by a Muslim nizam over a Hindu majority population. Kashmir, with a population of about 4 million, was the most contested state, and its accession to India in 1947 led to the first India-Pakistan war and the long-running Kashmir conflict. Mysore, Baroda, and Travancore were other major princely states, and they developed their own distinctive political and cultural traditions.

The great states were governed by rulers who were often wealthy and sometimes modernising, and they were important in the politics of the British Raj. Travancore, for example, had a literacy rate of perhaps 60 percent in 1947, far higher than British India, and a relatively well-administered state. The princes, in the judgment of the historian Ramachandra Guha, were “the autocrats who could not adapt” — and the inability to adapt was, in the long run, what did for them.

The Residents and Political Agents

The British system of control over the princely states was exercised through a network of Residents and Political Agents, who served as the British representatives in each state. The Residents were senior British officials, often drawn from the Indian Political Service, and they were stationed in the capitals of the major states. The Political Agents were junior British officials, and they were stationed in the smaller states. The Residents and Political Agents had the formal task of representing the British government, but they also played a notable role in the internal politics of the states. The Resident system was one of the most distinctive features of British rule in India, and it was the subject of constant negotiation between the British and the Indian rulers.

The Chamber of Princes

The Chamber of Princes, established in 1921, was a consultative body of the princely rulers. The Chamber was created in response to the growing political pressure on the princely states, and it was intended to provide a forum for the rulers to discuss common concerns. The Chamber met twice a year under the chairmanship of the Viceroy, and it had no formal powers, but it provided a useful channel of communication between the British and the states.

The Chamber was active in the 1920s and 1930s, but it became increasingly irrelevant as the Indian independence movement gathered strength. The Chamber was dissolved in 1947, and the princely states were integrated into the Indian Union and Pakistan over the next three years.

The Integration of the Princely States (1947–1950)

The integration of the princely states into the Indian Union was one of the most significant political events of the post-independence period. The work was carried out by V. P. Menon and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Indian minister in charge of the States Department, and it was completed in less than three years. The legal framework was the Instrument of Accession, by which the rulers ceded control of defence, foreign affairs, and communications to the Indian Union. By 1949, all but a few of the princely states had acceded to the Indian Union, and the most difficult cases, including Hyderabad, Junagadh, and Kashmir, were resolved by the early 1950s.

Patel’s method, in the words of his biographer Rajmohan Gandhi, was “iron in velvet.” He combined patient diplomacy with the threat of force; the Indian Army stood ready to intervene in Hyderabad, and Operation Polo, in September 1948, was the largest of the integration operations. The integration of the princely states was a remarkable achievement, and it was one of the central political events of the post-independence period.

The Legacy of the Princely States

The legacy of the princely states is still felt in modern India. The former princely families retain a cultural role in many Indian states, although they lost their formal powers in 1947 and 1950. The cultural and architectural heritage of the princely states, including the palaces of Mysore, Udaipur, and Jaipur, is one of the most visible legacies of the British period, and the states are an important part of the Indian tourist economy. The political legacy of the princely states is more contested, and the integration of the states produced long-running political tensions, including the Kashmir conflict and the linguistic reorganisation of Indian states. The princely states remain an important part of the history of British India.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the princely states was, for a long time, dominated by the work of the Indian Political Service — Upendra Nath Ghoshal, A. C. Banerjee, and the more apologetic British works of Vincent Smith and R. P. Patwardhan. The recent revival of interest, led by Ian Copland, Ramachandra Guha, and Manu Bhagavan, has produced a more critical literature, in which the princely states are read as a system of imperial extraction and princely collaboration. The current debate, exemplified in the writing of S. R. Ashton and Barbara Ramusack, is over how far the princely states can be seen as a distinctive form of imperial governance and how far they should be treated as a peripheral aspect of the British Raj.

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