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 implications are obvious enough. The practicability of Pakistan must be admitted, but the more the separation of the States from British India is considered, the more impracticable it seems; India would live if its Moslem limbs in the North-West and North-East were amputated, but could it live without its heart?"

75. The first task to which the newly created States Department had to address itself, therefore, was the conserving of the heart out India. This required a common Centre for the whole country including the Indian States, able to function effectively in the Provinces and States alike in matters requiring all-India action.

 

76. On the day the States Department came into being, i.e., 5th July, 1947, the Hon'ble Sardar Patel, Member for States Department, issued an important statement (Appendix V), defining the policy of the Government of India, and inviting the States to accede to the Dominion on the three subjects of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Communications, in which the common interests of the country were involved. He assured the States that it would not be the policy of the States Department to conduct the relations with the States in any manner which savoured of the domination of one over the other; and that if there would be any domination, it would be the domination of mutual interests and welfare. Sardar Patel expressed the hope that the Indian States would bear in mind that the alternative to cooperation in the general interest was anarchy and chaos which would over-whelm great and small in a common ruin if the States and Provinces were unable to act together in the minimum of common tasks.

77. The position, as it stood when the States Department cane into existence, was that the Political Department had already sent to the Rulers a draft Standstill Agreement and it was proposed to call conference of Rulers to finalise the Agreement. But having regard to the paramount necessity of the establishment of a constitutional relationship, however tenuous, between the States and the Dominion, the Government of India felt that a Standstill Agreement would not provide any kind of answer to the problem that confronted them at the time. It was, therefore, decided that the States Department, and not the Political Department, should take charge of the negotiations with the Rulers and that the accession of the States on the three essential subjects of Defence,