White Paper on Indian States (1950)/Part 1/Theory of 'Personal' Relationship between the Princes and the Crown

by Ministry of States, Government of India

Theory of 'Personal' Relationship between the Princes and the Crown

20. Ever since the East India Company entered into treaty relations with the States, the whole of India had been treated as one unit and the Court of Directors and the British Parliament had functioned in India through the Government of India which exercised suzerainty over the States. Both before and after the transfer of the Company's dominion to the British Crown relations of the States were both in constitutional theory and in actual practice with the Governor-General in Council. The Minto-Morley Reforms made provision for the appointment of a non-official Indian as a Member of the Governor-General's Executive Council; after the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms there were at least three Indians continuously serving on this Council. The Executive Council in this way lost its entirely British character and to some extent its bureaucratic character also became attenuated. The change did not affect the position of the Central Executive vis-a-vis the Indian States.

21. The relationship of the States with the Government of India had now to be reviewed in relation to possible constitutional developments in British India. It was thought that growing administrative unity between the States and the rest of India would detract from their role as breakwaters. An attempt was now made "to convert the Indian States into an Indian Ulster by pressing constitutional theories into service". It was in this context that the theory of the Crown as the sole link between the Central Government and the States was systematically developed. The Butler Committee while summarily turning down the request of the Princes for a definition of the scope of paramountcy and codification of the political practice readily agreed with the Counsel of the States that "the relationship of the States to the paramount power is a relationship to the Crown and that the treaties made with them are treaties made with the Crown and that those treaties are of a continuing and binding force as between the States which made them and the Crown". Of all the demands made by the Princes, the Butler Committee clearly and forcefully recognised only one, that for making any transfer of the Crown's rights and obligations in relation to States to persons not under the Crown's authority, conditional on the agreement of the States. In paragraph 58 of the report, the Committee said:

"The States demand that without their own agreement, the rights and obligations of the Paramount Power should not be assigned to persons who are not under its control, for instance, an Indian Government in British India responsible to an Indian Legislature. If any Government in the nature of a dominion government should be constituted in British India, such a government would clearly be a new government resting on a new and written constitution. The contingency has not arisen;......We feel bound however to draw attention to the really grave apprehension of the Princes on this score and to record our strong opinion that in view of the fact of the historical nature of the relationship between the Paramount Power and the Princes, the latter should not be transferred without their own agreement to a relationship with a new government in British India responsible to an Indian Legislature".

22. The new concept of personal relationship between the States and the Crown found expression in the Act of 1935 and drove further the wedge between the States and the rest of India. Paramountcy which had become "the method by which the executive of British India aggrandized itself at the expense of the Indian States" now set in motion the reverse process of depriving the British Indian Executive of all constitutional status vis-a-vis the States. Ia complete disregard of patent historical facts and the established constitutional procedure, a new functionary, the Crown Representative, was now brought into existence to conduct the relations of the Crown with the States. The relations between the States and the Government of India were hereafter to be through the circuitous route of the Crown Representative. At one stroke of the pen, the States were "delinked" from the Governor General in Council and "pegged" to the British Crown. The policy of balance and counterpoise thus forged for the imperial political armoury another formidable weapon, the problem of the States.