Importance and services of Princes. 14. The Indian Princes have played an important part in imperial history. Their loyalty at the time of the mutiny; their response to all patriotic calls upon them; their noble services in the Great War; their splendid devotion to the Crown and the person of the King-Emperor and to the Royal Family are one of the proud things of our annals, a glory of the Empire. To their KingEmperor they look with the devotion of a younger world. All service to their King-Emperor ranks the same with them. Progress of states. 15. For long they stood upon the ancient ways but they too have been swept by the breath of the modern spirit. Their efforts to improve their administration on the lines generally followed in British India have already in many cases been attended with conspicuous success. Of the 108 Princes in class I, 30 have established legislative councils, most of which are at present of a consultative nature only; 40 have constituted High Courts more or less on British Indian models; 34 have separated executive from judicial functions; 56 have a fixed privy purse; 46 have started a regular graded civil list of officials; and 54 have pension or provident fund schemes. Some of these reforms are still no doubt inchoate, or on paper, and some states are still backward, but a sense of responsibility to their people is spreading among all the states and growing year by year. A new spirit is abroad. Conditions have very largely changed in the last twenty years. Political diversity of states. 16. Diverse as the states are geographically and historically, they are even more diverse politically. Of the total number of states forty only have treaties with the Paramount Power; a larger number have some form of engagement or sanad*; the remainder have been recognised in different ways. The classification of the states has given rise to some discussion and there is naturally a strong desire on the part of the lower graded states to rise higher. On the other hand informal suggestions have been made to us that representation in the Chamber of Princes should be limited to those rulers who have treaty rights and large powers of internal sovereignty. It is not within our province to reclassify the Indian Sir Henry Maine defined the term sanod as "an ordinary instrument of contract, grant or cession used by the Emperors of Hindustan.' He points out that sanads may have the same effect as treaties or engagements in imposing obligations for "they are not necessarily unilateral." In political parlance (to quote the opinion of counsel-Appendix III) the term sanad (spelt in old documents. and pronounced sunnud) is used generally as indicating a grant or recognition from the Crown to the ruler of a state. States, and so far as we could gather, the consensus of opinion amongst the Princes is that any attempt to do so would cause so much heart-burning and open up so many difficulties that it had better not be made. The great variety of the Indian States and the differences among them render uniform treatment of them difficult in practice if not impossible. Our proposals concerned mainly with classes I and II. 17. We may say at once that, in the main, our remarks and proposals have in view the first two classes only of Indian States, the rulers of which have, in greater or less degree, political power, legislative, executive and judicial, over their subjects. While we do not wish to make recommendations in regard to the third class, it is obvious that they are placed differently from the larger states and call for treatment in groups rather than individually. The petty states of Kathiawar and Gujerat, numbering 286 of the total of 327 in the third class, are organised in groups called thanas under officers appointed by the local representatives of the Paramount Power, who exercise various kinds and degrees of criminal, revenue, and civil jurisdiction. As the cost of administration rises the states may find it necessary to distribute it over larger areas by appointing officials to work for several states. Already there is talk in some of the larger states in Kathiawar of appointing a High Court with powers over a group of such states. Paramount Power. 18. The Paramount Power' means the Crown acting through the Secretary of State for India and the Governor-General in Council who are responsible to the Parliament of Great Britain. Until 1835 the East India Company acted as trustees of and agents for the Crown; but the Crown was, through the Company, the Paramount Power. The Act of 1858, which put an end to the administration of the Company, did not give the Crown any new powers which it had not previously possessed. It merely changed the machinery through which the Crown exercised its powers. Fact and development of paramountcy. 19. The fact of the paramountcy of the Crown has been acted on and acquiesced in over a long period of time. It is based upon treaties, engagements and sanads supplemented by usage and sufferance and by decisions of the Government of India and the Secretary of State embodied in political practice. The general course of its evolution has been well described by a great modern jurist. "The same people," wrote Professor Westlake, "has determined by its action the constitutions of the United Kingdom and of India, and as a consequence these are similar so far as that neither is an engine-turned structure, but the architecture of each includes history, theory, and modern fact, and the books which describe them are similarly varied in their composition. On the side of substance the principal difference between them is that, while in both the field covered by express definition leaves room for questions to arise, in the Indian constitution an acknowledged supreme will decides every question which arises, but in that of the United Kingdom & balance of power causes questions to be less easy of solution."* Changes in policy. 20. The paramountcy of the Crown acting through its agents dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century when the British became the de facto sole and unquestionable Paramount Power in India. The policy of the British Government towards the states passed, as stated in the report of Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford, from the original plan of non-intervention in ali matters beyond its own ring-fence to the policy of subordinate isolation initiated by Lord Hastings; that in its turn gave way before the existing conception of the relation between the states and the Government of India, which may be described as one of union and co-operation on their part with the Paramount Power. Position of treaties and intervention. Hyderabad case cited. 21. The validity of the treaties and engagements made with the Princes and the maintenance of their rights, privileges and dignities have been both asserted and observed by the Paramount Power. But the Paramount Power has had of necessity to make decisions and exercise the functions of paramountcy beyond the terms of the treaties in accordance with changing political, social and economic conditions. The process commenced almost as soon as the treaties were made. The case of Hyderabad may be cited by way of illustration. Hyderabad is the most important state in India. In 1800 the British made a treaty with His Highness the Nizam, article 15 of which contains the following clause : "The Honourable Company's Government on their part hereby declare that they have no manner of concern with any of His Highness' children, relations, subjects, or servants with respect to whom His Highness is absolute.' Yet so soon as 1804 the Indian Government successfully pressed the appointment of an individual as Chief Minister. In 1815 the same Government had to interfere because the Nizam's sons offered violent resistance to his orders. The administration of the state gradually sank into chaos. Cultivation fell off, famine prices. prevailed, justice was not obtainable, the population began to "The Native States of India" Law Quarterly Review, Vol. XXVI, 318. migrate. The Indian Government was compelled again to intervene and in 1820 British officers were appointed to supervise the district administration with a view to protecting the cultivating classes. Later on again the Court of Directors instructed the Indian Government to intimate to the Nizam through the residency that they could not remain. "indifferent spectators of the disorder and misrule" and that unless there were improvement it would be the duty of the Indian Government to urge on His Highness the necessity of changing his minister and taking other measures necessary to secure good government. These are only some of the occasions of intervention. They are sufficient to show that from the earliest times there was intervention by the Paramount Power, in its own interests as responsible for the whole of India, in the interests of the states, and in the interests of the people of the states. Reaction to doctrine of laissez faire. Statement of Lord Canning. 22. From this policy of intervention there was in time a reaction. For some years before India passed under the direct government of the Crown, the doctrine of laissez faire prevailed. The states were left alone and in the event of revolt, misrule, failure of heirs, etc., the Paramount Power stepped in with annexation. This policy was abandoned again after the Crown assumed the direct government of India. That great historical event, with its numerous implications, was thus described by Lord Canning, the first Viceroy of India : 66 "The Crown of England he said, stands forth the unquestioned ruler and Paramount Power in all India, and is for the first time brought face to face with its feudatories. There is a reality in the suzerainty of the Sovereign of England which has never existed before and which is not only felt but eagerly acknowledged by the Chiefs." Later in his despatch, dated the 30th April, 1860, Lord Canning laid down the two great principles which the British Government has followed ever since in dealing with the states: (1) that the integrity of the states should be preserved by perpetuating the rule of the Princes whose power to adopt heirs was recognised by sanads granted in 1862; (2) that flagrant misgovernment must be prevented or arrested by timely exercise of intervention. Political practice and intervention. 23. With this acceptance of the necessity of intervention modern political practice may be said to have begun. It received an extension from the development of a strong Political Department. Intervention reached its zenith during the viceroyalty of Lord Curzon. The administration of many states broke down temporarily under the strain of the great famine of 1899, and drastic intervention became necessary in order to save life within the states and prevent the people of the states from wandering over British India. In many states the Paramount Power was, on grounds of humanity, compelled to take over the direction of famine relief operations. Pronouncements of Paramount Power on paramountcy. 24. The Paramount Power has defined its authority and right to intervene with no uncertain voice on several occasions, in the Baroda case (1873-75), the Manipur case (1891-92), and so lately as March 1926 in the letter of His Excellency Lord Reading to His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad which carried the authority of His Majesty's Government. This letter is so important that we quote it in extenso as Appendix II to this report. Baroda case, 1873-75. 25. In the Baroda case a commission was appointed to investigate complaints brought against the Gaekwar's administration, and to suggest reforms. In reply to his protest against the appointment of the commission, as not being warranted by the relations subsisting between the British Government and the Baroda State, the Gaekwar was informed as follows by the Viceroy and GovernorGeneral: 66 This intervention, although amply justified by the language of treaties, rests also on other foundations. Your Highness has justly observed that the British Government is undoubtedly the Paramount Power in India, and the existence and prosperity of the Native States depend upon its fostering favour and benign protection. This is especially true of the Baroda State, both because of its geographical position intermixed with British territory, and also because a subsidiary force of British troops is maintained for the defence of the state, the protection of the person of its ruler, and the enforcement of his legitimate authority. "My friend, I cannot consent to employ British troops to protect any one in a course of wrong-doing. Misrule on the part of a government which is upheld by the British power is misrule in the responsibility for which the British Government becomes in a measure involved. It becomes therefore not only the right but the positive duty of the British Government to see that the administration of a state in such a condition is reformed, and that gross abuses are removed. 'It has never been the wish of the British Government to interfere in the details of the Baroda administration, nor is it my desire. to do so now. The immediate responsibility for the Government of |