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 19. After the introduction of Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, the Swaraj movement fired the imagination of the people and deepened the anxiety of the alien rulers of India to neutralise, or at least to isolate, the growing upsurge of Indian nationalism. This marked the beginning of the policy of utilising the services of States for organising a counter-revolution.

 

20. Ever since the East India Company entered into treaty relations with the States, the whole of India had been treated as one unit and the Court of Directors and the British Parliament had functioned in India through the Government of India which exercised suzerainty over the States. Both before and after the transfer of the Company's dominion to the British Crown relations of the States were both in constitutional theory and in actual practice with the Governor-General in Council. The Minto-Morley Reforms made provision for the appointment of a non-official Indian as a Member of the Governor-General's Executive Council; after the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms there were at least three Indians continuously serving on this Council. The Executive Council in this way lost its entirely British character and to some extent its bureaucratic character also became attenuated. The change did not affect the position of the Central Executive vis-a-vis the Indian States.

21. The relationship of the States with the Government of India had now to be reviewed in relation to possible constitutional developments in British India. It was thought that growing administrative unity between the States and the rest of India would detract from their role as breakwaters. An attempt was now made "to convert the Indian States into an Indian Ulster by pressing constitutional theories into service". It was in this context that the theory of the Crown as the sole link between the Central Government and the States was systematically developed. The Butler Committee while summarily turning down the request of the Princes for a definition of the scope of paramountcy and codification of the political practice readily agreed with the Counsel of the States that "the relationship of the States to the paramount power is a relationship to the Crown and that the treaties made with them are treaties made with the Crown and that those treaties are of a continuing and binding force as between the States which made them and the Crown". Of all the demands made by the Princes, the Butler Committee clearly and forcefully recognised only one, that for making any transfer of the Crown's rights and