Page:White Paper on Indian States (1950).pdf/17

 

The problem of Indian States in the form in which it was inherited by free India, was an accident of the ascendency of British power in India. The institution of rulership had, no doubt, been a recognised feature of ancient Indian polity and the States had studded the map of India even before the advent of the British in this country. However, the Princes, their status and their possessions constituting the Indian States system, as it was stabilised under British rule, were all evolved during the first two decades of the 19th century as a concomitant of the rise of British power in India. It was during this period that a "strange and unknown volcanic force made its way through the soft and yielding strata of Indian society" and "crystallised" Indian States into the form in which they were found at the time of the withdrawal of the British from India. The process of re-moulding the States structure was practically completed as early as 1819 and the framework of this structure was sustained in all its essentials all through the remaining 180 years of British rule in India. The problem of Indian States was an inevitable consequence of a system which virtually brought history to a standstill in a multitude of isolated principalities forming about two fifths of the territory of India and scattered over the whole of this sub-continent.

 

2. The first phase of the East India Company's treaty-making activities, which may be said to have extended from 1757 after the victory of Plassey to the close of the first Lord Minto's Governor-Generalship in 1813, was, generally speaking, marked by a desire to confine British interests to trading in and around the territories in which the British possessed settlements. During this period, the Company was struggling for a foothold in India and it recoiled from the expense and danger of extending its commitments beyond the ringfence of its own territorial acquisitions.

3. To the policy of non-involvement, the treaty-making career of Wellesley formed an exception. Wellesley came to India "inspired with imperial projects". "From the first he laid down, as his guiding principle, that the British must be the one paramount power in India, and that native Princes could only retain the personal insignia of sovereignty by surrendering their political independence." The Subsidiary System introduced by Wellesley contained in it the essentials of the framework of States as it was developed and maintained under British Rule. From the British point of view, the system had distinct advantages. It ensured the