Instrument of Accession and the Integration of the Princely States (1947‑1948)

Princely States Under British Paramountcy

Paramountcy, the Subsidiary Alliance and the British Residents

The British Indian Empire was made up of two kinds of territory. The British Indian Provinces, which formed British India, were ruled directly by the British government, while the princely states were ruled by their own princes, who kept some control over internal affairs as long as they accepted British supremacy. This supremacy was called paramountcy, or the suzerainty of the British Crown. The princely states covered between one-third and about 40 per cent of the land area of the British Indian Empire, by different counts, and one out of four Indians lived under princely rule.

Paramountcy grew out of the subsidiary alliance system, which reached its most systematic form under Lord Wellesley, Governor-General from 1798 to 1805. Wellesley's highest priority was to make Britain prevail over French power in India, and the alliances served that aim. The Nizam of Hyderabad was among the first rulers to enter such an alliance, in 1798. A ruler who signed one accepted the following terms:

• Troops: He maintained British troops in his state at his own expense.
• Foreign relations: He conducted relations with other states only through the British.
• Other Europeans: He expelled all other Europeans from his service.
• The Resident: He accepted a British official, the Resident, at his capital.

The system looked as if it preserved the sovereignty of the states, but it transferred real power to the British while making the rulers pay for their own subjugation.

Annexation, the 1858 Proclamation and the Salute States

In the nineteenth century the East India Company also annexed states outright, including any state whose ruler died without a natural male heir. The Revolt of 1857 showed the British how hard annexed territory was to hold and how useful loyal princes could be, so in 1858 annexation was formally renounced. Queen Victoria's proclamation of that year promised to respect "the rights, dignity and honour of native Princes". The states stayed closely watched all the same. A Resident or Political Agent posted in almost every state often interfered in its government, reducing its autonomy to a symbolic one.

The states differed enormously. Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir were vast kingdoms, while Lawa covered only 49 square kilometres, some 200 lesser states were smaller than 25 square kilometres, and some rulers were little more than the owners of landed estates. About 120 rulers were entitled to gun salutes, and at independence only five of them, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the rulers of Mysore, Jammu and Kashmir, Gwalior and Baroda, received the highest salute of 21 guns.

Chamber of Princes, Butler Committee, 1935 Federation and Praja Mandals

In the twentieth century the British tried to bind the states more closely to British India. A royal proclamation of King-Emperor George V, issued on 23 December 1919, created the Chamber of Princes (Narendra Mandal), which first met on 8 February 1921 as a forum where rulers could voice their concerns. It initially had 120 members, and several important rulers, among them those of Baroda, Gwalior and Indore, declined to join it.

Sir Harcourt Butler chaired the Indian States Committee (1927‑1929), usually called the Butler Committee, which advised on the relations between the British Government and the princely states. A larger plan followed in the Government of India Act, 1935, which proposed an All-India Federation of the British provinces and the princely states. The federation never came into being, and the scheme was abandoned in 1939 on the outbreak of the Second World War.

The national movement also reached into the states. In 1920, under Gandhi, the Congress asked the princes to establish full responsible government in their states. The All India States Peoples Conference held its first session in Bombay in December 1927 and brought together the Praja Mandals and other popular bodies in the states; Jawaharlal Nehru was its president from 1939 to 1946. After the Congress won the provincial elections of 1937, protests and satyagrahas against the rulers were organised in many states, with the support of the Congress ministries. These people's movements later gave the Indian government an ally inside the states during integration.

Lapse of Paramountcy and the Problem of 1947

The Indian Independence Act and the Choices Before the Rulers

Just before independence, the British announced that paramountcy would lapse when their rule ended. The plan of 3 June 1947 said the future of the states would be settled later, and the Indian Independence Act, 1947, which received Royal Assent on 18 July 1947, ended the suzerainty of the Crown over the states from 15 August 1947. As many as 565 states would then become legally independent. In the British view they were free to join India or Pakistan or to remain independent, and the decision rested with the rulers, not with their people.

NCERT gives the number of states as 565; other accounts give 562, and counts of the time ran from over 500 to 600. Whatever the exact count, it covered units of every size, from Hyderabad to estates of a few villages.

Several rulers moved quickly to claim independence or to keep out of the Indian Union:

• Travancore: In June 1947 its ruler announced that the state had decided on independence.
• Hyderabad: On 11 June 1947 the Nizam declared that his state would join neither Constituent Assembly.
• Bhopal: The Nawab, Hamidullah Khan, was averse to joining the Constituent Assembly and tried to build an alliance of princes with the Muslim League.

Hyderabad even appointed trade representatives in Europe and opened talks with Portugal to lease or buy Goa for access to the sea, and some states proposed a confederation of princely states as a third entity beside India and Pakistan.

This created a real possibility that India would break into a number of small countries. The prospects of democracy for the people of the states also looked bleak, because most of them were governed in a non-democratic manner by rulers unwilling to grant democratic rights. The Congress regarded the independence of the states as a "Balkanisation" of India and held that the states must join one of the two dominions. Its position had support among the people of most states, who clearly wanted to become part of the Indian Union.

Patel, V. P. Menon and the States Department

Patel's Policy, Mountbatten's Pressure and the Accession of Most States

The States Department, which handled relations with the princely states, had Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as its political head and V. P. Menon as its administrative head. Patel, India's Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister in the crucial period after independence, negotiated with the rulers firmly but diplomatically. His policy statement of 5 July 1947 made no threats. It stressed the unity of India and the common interests of the princes and the new country, and invited them to join India "to make laws sitting together as friends than to make treaties as aliens".

V. P. Menon later wrote his own account of this work, The Story of the Integration of the Indian States, published in 1956. He had been Political Reforms Commissioner to the Viceroy in 1946 before becoming Patel's Secretary in the States Department. Two other men of those years are often confused with him: Sir B. N. Rau was the constitutional adviser to the Constituent Assembly, and V. K. Krishna Menon became India's first High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and later Defence Minister.

The government's approach rested on three considerations:

• The people's wish: The popular movements inside the states wanted union with India, and the government could rely on them.
• Flexibility: The government was prepared to give autonomy to some regions and to accommodate plurality.
• Territorial unity: After Partition, the integration and consolidation of the country's territorial boundaries had assumed supreme importance.

Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy and India's first Governor-General, added his weight. On 25 July 1947 he addressed a special meeting of the Chamber of Princes. Throughout these weeks he made clear that Britain would grant no state dominion status or a place in the Commonwealth, that the subcontinent was one economic unit, and that "geographic compulsions" meant most states must choose India. With the Nawab of Bhopal, he arranged that the signed Instrument of Accession would sit in his safe until 15 August, so that the Nawab could still change his mind; he did not. Mountbatten stayed on as Governor-General until June 1948, when C. Rajagopalachari succeeded him as the last Governor-General of India.

Pressure from below did the rest in some states. The Maharaja of Travancore abandoned his plans for independence after an attempt on the life of his dewan, Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer. Muhammad Ali Jinnah offered the rulers of Jodhpur and Jaisalmer any terms they wished to join Pakistan; Jaisalmer refused, and Maharaja Hanwant Singh of Jodhpur signed the Instrument of Accession with India on 11 August 1947. In the northeast, Manipur and Tripura acceded on 11 and 13 August. By 15 August only Junagadh, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir, among the states inside India's borders, had still not acceded.

Instrument of Accession: The Three Subjects Ceded to India

The Instrument took its form from the Government of India Act, 1935, which had allowed a ruler to accede to the planned federation. For states that had enjoyed internal autonomy under the British, the Instrument ceded only three subjects, defence, external affairs and communications, each defined as in List I of the Seventh Schedule of the 1935 Act. V. P. Menon drafted the Instrument.

The document came in three forms, matched to the standing of each state:

• States with internal autonomy: These ceded the three subjects and kept everything else.
• Estates and talukas: Where the Crown had exercised substantial powers, the ruler's Instrument vested all residuary powers in the Government of India.
• States of intermediate status: A third form preserved the degree of power each ruler had held under the British.

The Instrument carried safeguards that made it easy to sign. Clause 7 said the ruler would not be bound to accept any future Constitution of India, and Clause 8 guaranteed his autonomy in every area not ceded. Rulers were also promised that their personal privileges would be protected, that democratisation would be gradual and that none of the 18 major states would be forced to merge.

Standstill Agreement and the Documents of Integration Compared

The Standstill Agreement was the second document. It kept existing agreements and administrative arrangements, such as those on customs, communications and posts, running unchanged while the new relationship was settled. Before independence the Indian government signed Standstill Agreements only with states that also acceded. Hyderabad, which never signed the Instrument, was the exception: It was given two more months to negotiate and then, on 29 November 1947, a one-year Standstill Agreement.

Junagadh, Hyderabad, Kashmir and Manipur: The Hard Cases

Junagadh's Accession to Pakistan and the Plebiscite of 1948

Junagadh was one of the Kathiawar states, at the south-western end of present-day Gujarat, with no land border with Pakistan. About 80 per cent of its people were Hindu, but its ruler, Nawab Muhammad Mahabat Khanji III, was Muslim, and Shah Nawaz Bhutto, left in charge of the state while its dewan was away, had been advised by Jinnah in July to hold out. On 15 August 1947 the Nawab announced that Junagadh would accede to Pakistan, arguing that Pakistan could reach it by sea.

India refused to accept the accession, fearing that it would worsen communal tension in Kathiawar, and called for the people to decide. Events then moved quickly:

1. Mangrol and Babariawad: Babariawad and the Sheikh of Mangrol, both under Junagadh's suzerainty, claimed independence and accession to India, though the Sheikh withdrew his accession the next day; the Nawab occupied them with his troops.
2. Aarzi Hukumat: On 25 September 1947 a provisional government of Junagadh, the Aarzi Hukumat headed by Samaldas Gandhi, was declared at a public meeting in Bombay.
3. Pressure on Junagadh: India sent troops to the frontier and reoccupied Mangrol and Babariawad, while Junagadh's supplies and its air and postal links were cut off.
4. The Nawab's flight: On 26 October 1947 the Nawab and his family fled to Pakistan.
5. Indian administration: On 9 November 1947, fearing communal violence, India took over the administration of the state.
6. Plebiscite: On 20 February 1948 all but 91 of the 1,90,870 people who voted chose India.

The plebiscite confirmed the people's desire to join India, though Pakistan refused to recognise Junagadh's incorporation. In Junagadh, where a ruler's choice ran against both geography and his people's will, India let the people decide.

Hyderabad, the Razakars and Operation Polo

Hyderabad, the largest of the princely states, was surrounded entirely by Indian territory and lay astride the main lines of communication between northern and southern India. Its ruler, the Nizam, Osman Ali Khan, was one of the world's richest men, and 87 per cent of his subjects were Hindu while the state's politics was dominated by a Muslim elite. In June 1947 the Nizam issued a firman declaring that Hyderabad would resume independence when the British left. India rejected the claim, and the Nizam's demand for a treaty guaranteeing Hyderabad's neutrality in any war between India and Pakistan was also refused, because other states would have demanded the same terms.

The Nizam signed a Standstill Agreement with India on 29 November 1947, to last one year while negotiations continued. Inside the state, a popular movement against his rule gathered force. The peasants of the Telangana region, victims of oppressive rule, rose against him, women joined in large numbers, and the Communists and the Hyderabad State Congress led it. The Nizam answered with the Razakars, a paramilitary force tied to the Ittehad-ul‑Muslimeen and set up under the influence of Qasim Razvi. The atrocities of the Razakars fell chiefly on non-Muslims. In August 1948 the Nizam tried to take his case to the United Nations Security Council, and on 7 September Nehru demanded that he ban the Razakars.

On 13 September 1948, two days after Jinnah's death, the Indian Army entered Hyderabad in a "police action" code-named Operation Polo. After a few days of intermittent fighting, the Nizam's army surrendered on 17 September, and Major General J. N. Chaudhuri, who had led the operation, headed the military government that followed. Widespread communal violence followed the operation. Official estimates put the dead at 27,000 to 40,000, and scholarly estimates run to 2 lakh or more.

The Nizam stayed on as head of state, accepted the Constitution of India by a firman of 24 November 1949, and became the state's Rajpramukh when India became a republic on 26 January 1950. In 1956 the state was divided along linguistic lines among Andhra Pradesh, Bombay State (later Maharashtra) and the state now called Karnataka, and its Telugu-speaking districts became the State of Telangana on 2 June 2014.

Instrument of Accession of Jammu and Kashmir, 1947

Jammu and Kashmir was a princely state ruled by Maharaja Hari Singh, a Hindu, while most of its people were Muslim. The Maharaja wanted neither India nor Pakistan; he signed a Standstill Agreement with Pakistan and announced that his state would remain independent. The popular movement in the state, the National Conference led by Sheikh Abdullah, wanted to end the Maharaja's rule but was against joining Pakistan, because the party was secular and close to the Congress.

In October 1947 Pakistan sent tribal infiltrators to capture Kashmir, and they advanced quickly towards Srinagar. The Maharaja asked India for military help, and India agreed to send troops only after the state acceded. The accession was completed in three days:

1. 25 October 1947: V. P. Menon flew to Srinagar to see the situation for himself.
2. 26 October 1947: Maharaja Hari Singh executed the Instrument of Accession.
3. 27 October 1947: Lord Mountbatten accepted it, and Indian troops were airlifted to Srinagar; they drove the infiltrators back from the Kashmir valley.

In accepting the accession, Mountbatten wrote that the Government of India wished the question to be settled "by a reference to the people" once the invader was driven out and order restored. The accession is commemorated every year on 26 October as Accession Day.

Because Pakistan continued to hold a sizeable part of the state, India took the matter to the United Nations. A United Nations resolution of 21 April 1948 set out a three-step process whose first step, the withdrawal of Pakistan's forces and nationals from the state, was never carried out, so the plebiscite was never held.

A ceasefire came into effect on 1 January 1949, and the part of the state that came under Pakistani control in 1947 is Indian territory under the illegal occupation of Pakistan, known as Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK). Sheikh Abdullah became Prime Minister of the state in March 1948, and India granted the state provisional autonomy under Article 370. Jammu and Kashmir alone signed no revised Instrument of Accession and, like Mysore and Hyderabad, no merger agreement, so its link with the Union rested on the original Instrument and Article 370.

The special arrangement ended in 2019, and the Supreme Court upheld the change in 2023:

1. Presidential order, 5 August 2019: The whole Constitution was made applicable to the State.
2. Reorganisation, 31 October 2019: Under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, the State became the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
3. Judicial review, 11 December 2023: A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court upheld the abrogation of Article 370.

Manipur: Accession, the 1948 Election and the 1949 Merger Agreement

Manipur, on India's northeastern frontier, shows a different path. A few days before independence its Maharaja, Bodhachandra Singh, signed the Instrument of Accession on the assurance that the internal autonomy of Manipur would be maintained. Under the pressure of public opinion he held elections in June 1948, and the state became a constitutional monarchy. Manipur was thus the first part of India to hold an election based on universal adult franchise.

The new Legislative Assembly was sharply divided over merger with India. The state Congress wanted the merger, while other parties opposed it. The Government of India persuaded the Maharaja to sign a Merger Agreement in September 1949.

From Accession to Merger: Completing Integration, 1947‑1950

Merger Agreements, Princely Unions and the Rajpramukhs

Accession alone would have produced a loose federation, with each state still governed in its own way. Many states were too small to survive as administrative units. There were 26 small states in today's Odisha, and the Saurashtra region of Gujarat had 14 big states, 119 small states and numerous other administrations. Many also taxed trade with the provinces. Between 1947 and 1950 the States Department therefore merged the states, even though this dissolved states whose existence India had only recently guaranteed.

The merger took two main forms:

• Merger into provinces: In December 1947 the rulers of the Eastern States and Chhattisgarh were persuaded at an all-night meeting with Menon to merge their states into Orissa, the Central Provinces and Bihar from 1 January 1948. Later, 66 states of Gujarat and the Deccan, including Kolhapur and Baroda, were merged into Bombay.
• Princely unions: Groups of neighbouring states signed Covenants of Merger to form a union, whose head, the Rajpramukh, was chosen from among the rulers. Saurashtra was formed in January 1948 from 222 units of Kathiawar, big and small states and other administrations alike, Madhya Bharat from Gwalior, Indore and 18 smaller states on 28 May 1948, and the Patiala and East Punjab States Union on 15 July 1948. The United State of Rajasthan took its final form on 15 May 1949, and Travancore and Cochin united in 1949.

Some states along sensitive borders, such as Kutch, Tripura and Manipur, became Chief Commissioners' Provinces under the Centre, and so did Bhopal, whose Nawab signed his merger agreement on 30 April 1949. Thirty hill states near the border were joined into Himachal Pradesh. Only Jammu and Kashmir, Mysore and Hyderabad signed neither a Covenant of Merger nor a Merger Agreement.

Every ruler who gave up his state received a privy purse, an annual payment fixed by the extent, revenue and potential of the state, together with protection of his private property, titles and succession.

Following a suggestion Menon made in December 1947, a special covenant bound the Rajpramukhs to act as constitutional monarchs, so the people of the unions gained the same responsible government as the rest of India. At a meeting in Delhi in May 1948, the Rajpramukhs of the unions formed by then signed new Instruments of Accession that let the Centre legislate on every matter in the Seventh Schedule of the 1935 Act, and the unions, Mysore and Hyderabad then adopted the Constitution of India as their own.

Part B States, the 1956 Reorganisation and the End of Privy Purses

The Constitution, which came into force on 26 January 1950, declared that India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States, and it sorted the units into three classes:

• Part A states: The former British provinces, with the princely states merged into them.
• Part B states: These included the princely unions, Mysore and Hyderabad, headed by Rajpramukhs instead of Governors and placed under the general control of the President.
• Part C states: The former Chief Commissioners' Provinces and other centrally administered areas.

The distinction was meant to be brief. In 1956 the States Reorganisation Act redrew the states on the basis of language, and the Seventh Amendment ended the difference between Part A and Part B states. The Rajpramukhs lost their office to Governors appointed by the Centre, and the territories of the old states could no longer be told apart from the old provinces.

The privy purses outlived the states. At the time of accession few criticised them, because integration and consolidation came first, but hereditary privileges sat badly with the equality and social and economic justice the Constitution promised. Following the 1967 elections, Indira Gandhi supported the demand that the privy purses be abolished. A constitutional amendment in 1970 failed in the Rajya Sabha, and an ordinance that followed was struck down by the Supreme Court. After her victory in the 1971 election, the Constitution (Twenty-sixth Amendment) Act, 1971, omitted Articles 291 and 362 and inserted Article 363A, which ended the recognition of the rulers and abolished the privy purses from 28 December 1971.

Administrative and Socio-Cultural Problems of Integration

Administrative Issues: Scale, Uneven Systems and Unequal Powers

The integration posed three main administrative problems. The first was sheer number and variety, for there were hundreds of units, from Hyderabad to small estates, each governed in its own way. Some states, such as Mysore, had legislatures elected on a broad franchise, while in others decisions were made in small aristocratic circles. Merging them meant taking over state property, absorbing their staff with guarantees of equal pay and treatment, and dismantling the taxes and restrictions that blocked trade with the provinces.

The second problem was the unequal relationship the Instruments of Accession left behind. Because the states had ceded only three subjects, the Draft Constitution at first bound them only on defence, external affairs and communications; they did not have to accept the Concurrent or State Lists, could frame their own constitutions and could even keep their own armies. Dr B. R. Ambedkar told the Constituent Assembly on 4 November 1948 that this disparity was "quite indefensible" and could weaken the Centre's authority, and he called the freedom to keep armies "a most retrograde and harmful provision". When the princely unions, Mysore and Hyderabad adopted the Constitution, the disparity ended everywhere except Jammu and Kashmir.

The third problem was law and order. The Telangana peasant movement, the Razakar violence in Hyderabad, the fighting in Kashmir and an Adivasi uprising in Orissa in late 1947 all had to be met while the government was also coping with the refugees of Partition. The Orissa rising forced the government to begin the mergers earlier than Patel and Nehru had intended.

Socio-Cultural Problems: Rulers, Peoples and Communal Fear

The socio-cultural problems were of three kinds. The deepest was the gap between rulers and ruled. The choice of accession was given to the rulers, not the people, and in Junagadh, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir the ruler's religion differed from that of most of his subjects. Each of these cases therefore carried a communal charge, and in Hyderabad the Razakar campaign and the violence that followed Operation Polo cost at least tens of thousands of lives.

A second problem was the change from personal rule to democracy. Most states had been governed in a non-democratic manner, and their people's movements, the Praja Mandals and the States Peoples Conference, had to be given a place in the new order; the States Peoples Conference dissolved itself on 25 April 1948 and its units merged into the Congress, except the National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir. For the princes, the change meant losing the states their families had long ruled. Several complained that Britain, which they had regarded as an ally, had betrayed them, though most adapted to life as private citizens, and a number, like the Maharaja of Bhavnagar, who became Governor of Madras, took public office.

A third problem was regional identity. States joined to provinces were not always at ease with them. The Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad, merged with the Andhra region in 1956, became the centre of a long movement that ended in the separate State of Telangana in 2014. In Jammu and Kashmir, a strong sense of regional identity, called Kashmiriyat, kept the debate over the State's autonomy within the Union alive for decades, while Pakistan's illegal occupation of part of the State remained a separate, external problem.

Significance and Legacy of the Integration of Princely States

Patel's Legacy, the Statue of Unity and the Debate Over Integration

The integration of the princely states gave independent India its territorial shape, and it was achieved mostly by negotiation. It also gave millions of people who had lived under autocratic rule the same responsible government as the rest of India.

Sardar Patel's mix of persuasion and firmness with the rulers earned him the title of the Iron Man of India. He died on 15 December 1950. The Statue of Unity in Gujarat, about 182 metres high, was dedicated to him on 31 October 2018, his birth anniversary.

The integration has also been judged more critically. One view holds that the Congress leaders never meant the limited Instruments of Accession to be permanent, and that the mergers of 1948 to 1950 broke the assurances of autonomy that Mountbatten had given the princes. Menon maintained in his own account that every change was freely consented to by the rulers. The opposite view holds that the states could not have survived as independent units after 1947, so their end was inevitable, and that integration achieved in a few months what the British had attempted without success for over a century, the unification of the whole country under one rule.

The work did not end with the mergers. The princely order came to an end with the reorganisation of 1956, the rulers' remaining privileges ended with the abolition of the privy purses in 1971, and the takeover of the French and Portuguese enclaves, ending with the liberation of Goa in 1961, completed the map of the Union.

Sources

• NCERT: Politics in India since Independence, Class XII, Chapter 1, Challenges of Nation Building
• NCERT: Politics in India since Independence, Class XII, Chapter 5, Challenges to and Restoration of the Congress System
• NCERT: Politics in India since Independence, Class XII, Chapter 7, Regional Aspirations
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History III, Class XII, Theme 15, Framing the Constitution
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History III, Class XII, Theme 13, Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement
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