Page:White Paper on Indian States (1950).pdf/145

 the British Government with a Prince's absolute authority, has made it impossible to construe such pledges literally. Is it conceivable that the British Government should lend its aid to prevent the development of constitutional government in the States when it has not only promoted that development in the neighbouring Provinces for many years past but actually brought it in recent years to its almost complete culmination by Act of Parliament?"

 

250. Yet it was precisely to prevent the constitutional advancement of States and the political progress of India that the treaty obligations came in handy as a convenient veto. In all other fields, the treaty rights of the States, overborne by the heavy pressure of political practice, vanished into thin air. British statesmen themselves made no secret of their stand that the treaty obligations did not stand in vacuo and that the relations between the Paramount Power and the States were determined not so much by the letter of treaties as by usage and sufferance.

251. Under the Company's regime treaties were honoured more in their breach than in their observance. Internal independence of the States and their territorial integrity were of the essence of these treaties. The exercise of paramountcy powers in the States and the policy of annexation were, therefore, the very negation of the Company's treaty obligations. Even during that period of the Company's rule, when officially the policy of non-intervention held the field, in actual practice there was a great deal of interference by the Company in the internal affairs of the States such as Oudh, Mysore, Nagpur, Udaipur, etc. The nature and degree of interference varied at different phases according to the shifting requirements of Imperial interests and the temperament and the personality of the agents of the Company interpreting those requirements. Indeed, these treaties were a flexible instrument in the hands of the Empire-builders, who used them to suit the exigencies of the times. The whole scope of the relationship between the States and British power wag purposely kept nebulous and vague. "It is impossible", wrote Sir George Campbell in 1852, "to give any definite explanation of what things we do meddle with and what we do not". The entire system was so capricious that even Dalhousie, so well-known for his confirmed convictions and his vigorous policy of annexation, refused to interfere in Hyderabad despite the wretched misrule of the Nizam. 