Page:White Paper on Indian States (1950).pdf/11



The White Paper on Indian States issued on July 5, 1948, contained a survey of the developments in respect of States during the first year of the existence of the Ministry of States. During the period of a year and a half which has followed the issue of that White Paper, the policy of integration pursued by the Government of India has made further progress. The States integrated during this period include Mayurbhanj, Kolhapur, Baroda, Rampur, Tehri-Garhwal, Benaras and Cooch-Behar, which have been merged in Provinces; Bhopal, Tripura and Manipur which have been taken over as centrally administered units; Travancore and Cochin, whose Union emerges as a new unit on the Indian map; and the remaining Rajputana States of Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer which have been integrated in the reconstituted United State of Rajasthan. An outstanding development during this period has been the establishment of constitutional relationship between the Centre and the State of Hyderabad.

2. The process of welding over 500 diverse States into viable and sizeable units and converting them into democracies has now been carried to its final objective. This process started with the elimination of the chain of small States that severed the Provinces of Orissa and Bihar from the Central Provinces; next it solved the cross-jurisdictional puzzle of the vast assemblage of the States of Kathiawar; and, as it gathered momentum, its wide sweep covered even a number of major States. As against five hundred and odd units known as States, the new Constitution of India specifies in Part B of the First Schedule only 8 such units.

3. The operations for revivifying the palsied limbs of India's body-politic were rendered swift and smooth by the welcome realisation on the part of the Princes that in a free India it would be unpatriotic for them to cling to a legalistic stand on time-worn treaties or their anachronistic prerogatives and powers. Moving voluntarily with the times, the Princes, big and small, co-operated in exploding the myth that India's independence would founder on the rock of Princely intransigence. The edifice of democratic India rises on the true foundation of the co-ordinated effort of the Princes and the people.

4. The task of reconstruction of States is not over with the signing