Integration of Princely States: The problem and the method

Under the Merger Agreements and the Covenants of Merger, rulers ceded full and exclusive jurisdiction over their states. In return they received an annual payment from the Indian government, the privy purse, as compensation for the surrender of their powers and the dissolution of their states. The amount depended on factors such as the state's revenue, its salute status and the antiquity of the dynasty. Their private property, personal privileges, dignities and titles were protected, and succession was guaranteed by custom; separately, the provinces had to absorb state employees on equal pay. The privy purse and the princes' privileges survived full integration and were abolished only in 1971.

Jinnah hoped to win over some large border states to compensate for the loss of half of Punjab and Bengal. He offered Jodhpur and Jaisalmer accession on any terms, reportedly handing their rulers blank sheets on which to write their conditions. The ruler of Jaisalmer refused, saying he could not side with Muslims against Hindus if communal trouble broke out. Hanwant Singh of Jodhpur, who disliked the Congress, came close to signing, but opinion in his state was hostile to Pakistan. Mountbatten pointed out that a Hindu-majority state joining Pakistan would contradict the two-nation theory and could provoke communal violence, and Hanwant Singh reluctantly acceded to India. By contrast, the ruler of Bikaner joined India early out of patriotic conviction and was among those who took seats in the Constituent Assembly in April 1947.

Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon backed their diplomacy with two documents. The Standstill Agreement kept existing arrangements (railways, customs, posts) running, while the Instrument of Accession transferred specified subjects to India. States with internal autonomy under the British ceded only three subjects: defence, external affairs and communications, as defined in List 1 of Schedule VII of the Government of India Act, 1935; smaller estates and talukas signed a different form vesting residuary powers in India. The States Department used the Standstill Agreement as a lever and categorically refused it to states that would not accede. The Instrument also carried safeguards: Clause 7 said the ruler would not be bound to accept any future constitution, and Clause 8 guaranteed autonomy in all matters not ceded. That is why fresh instruments and covenants were needed later to bring the states fully under the Constitution.

Under paramountcy the Crown dealt with the princes through the Political Department and its residents and political agents. Its last head, Sir Conrad Corfield, was sympathetic to the princes' claim that they would regain full freedom when paramountcy lapsed. When Mountbatten told the princes that Britain would neither give dominion status to any state nor admit it to the Commonwealth, and used his personal standing to push them towards accession, Corfield resigned in protest. Several princes complained that Britain had betrayed them, and the Conservative opposition attacked the policy. On the Indian side, the new States Department, headed politically by Vallabhbhai Patel with V. P. Menon as its secretary, replaced the Political Department; Patel stressed that it would not be an instrument of paramountcy.

When paramountcy was due to lapse, some rulers claimed full freedom. Bhopal, Travancore and Hyderabad announced that they would join neither dominion. Nawab Hamidullah Khan of Bhopal, Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes, even tried to build an alliance of princes with the Muslim League, though Mountbatten, a personal friend, asked him by confidential letter to sign an Instrument that would be kept in his safe until 15 August, and Bhopal was finally taken over by the Centre on 1 June 1949. Travancore's dewan Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer stressed the state's thorium reserves and its value to the West, but after he survived a stabbing on 25 July 1947 the Maharaja gave up the plan and acceded. Hyderabad kept up its claim and was integrated only after Operation Polo in September 1948. Mysore, by contrast, acceded early: Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar signed on 9 August 1947.

Patel and Nehru had at first meant to wait until Mountbatten left before breaking his guarantees to the smaller states, but an adivasi uprising in Orissa in late 1947 forced the pace. In December 1947 Menon held an all-night meeting with the princes of the Eastern States and Chhattisgarh agencies, who signed Merger Agreements joining their states to 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. For security reasons, thirty Punjab hill states became Himachal Pradesh, run by the Centre as a Chief Commissioner's Province. A second type of merger agreement was taken from sensitive border states: Kutch, Tripura and Manipur were not merged into any province but kept as Chief Commissioners' Provinces under direct central control, as were Bhopal and Bilaspur.

Integration after accession passed through merger, democratisation and centralisation. Once the unions had been formed and their Rajpramukhs bound by a special covenant to act as constitutional heads, one gap remained: the 1947 Instruments ceded only defence, external affairs and communications, so Union laws in other fields did not reach the former states. The Congress leadership saw this as an obstacle to national development and social justice. In May 1948, at Menon's initiative, the Rajpramukhs met the States Department in Delhi and signed new Instruments giving the Centre power to legislate on all matters in the Seventh Schedule of the 1935 Act. The unions, Mysore and Hyderabad then adopted the Constitution of India itself, placing them on the same legal footing as the old provinces; Kashmir alone remained outside this route.

Integration ran in two tracks. Small states signed Merger Agreements and were absorbed into neighbouring provinces or made Chief Commissioner's Provinces (Bhopal became one in 1949). Larger states and groups of states signed Covenants of Merger to form unions such as Saurashtra, Madhya Bharat, PEPSU, Rajasthan and Travancore-Cochin, each headed by a Rajpramukh. The only states that signed neither were Kashmir, Mysore and Hyderabad. Mysore and Hyderabad remained single states and, like the unions, became Part B states that adopted the Constitution of India; their rulers (the Maharaja of Mysore and the Nizam) served as Rajpramukhs. Kashmir stood apart, its relationship governed by its original Instrument of Accession and later Article 370.