Page:White Paper on Indian States (1950).pdf/167



It was announced some days back that the Government of India had decided to get up a Department to conduct their relations with the States in matters of common concern. This Department has come into being today and the States have been informed to this effect. On this important occasion I have a few words to say to the Rulers of Indian States among whom I am happy to count many as my personal friends.

It is the lesson of history that it was owing to her political fragmented condition and our inability to make a united stand that India succumbed to successive waves of invaders. Our mutual conflicts, and internecine quarrels and jealousies have in the past been the cause of our downfall and our falling victims to foreign domination a number of times. We cannot afford to fall into those errors or traps again. We are on the threshold of independence. It is true that we have not been able to preserve the unity of the country entirely unimpaired in the final stage. To the bitter disappointment and sorrow of many of us some parts have chosen to go out of India and to set up their own Government. But there can be no question that despite this separation a fundamental homogeneity of culture and sentiment reinforced by the compulsive logic of mutual interests would continue to govern us. Much more would this be the case with that vast majority of States which owing to their geographical contiguity and indissoluble ties, economic, cultural and political, must continue to maintain relations of mutual friendship and co-operation with the rest of India. The safety and preservation of these States as well as of India demand unity and mutual co-operation between its different parts.

When the British established their rule in India they evolved the doctrine of paramountcy which established the supremacy of British interests. That doctrine has remained undefined to this day, but in its exercise there has undoubtedly been more subordination than co-operation. Outside the field of paramountcy there has been a very wide scope in which relations between British India and the States have been regulated by enlightened mutual interests. Now that British rule is ending, the demand has been made that the States should regain their independence. In so far as paramountcy embodied the submission of States to foreign will, I have every sympathy with this demand, but I do not think it can be their desire to utilise this freedom from domination in a manner which is injurious to the common interests of India or which militates against the ultimate paramountcy of popular interests and welfare or which might result in the abandonment of that mutually useful relationship that has