How was this new situation to be dealt with? Some of the ruling Princes and Chiefs whose views appear to have prevailed with the Secretary of State and the Government of India, came to the conclusion that they should combine together and try to secure as a body a recognised position from which their collective influence might be brought more effectively to bear upon the Government of India, whatever its new orientation may ultimately be under the influence of popular assemblies in British India. Some, doubtless, believed that once in such a position they would be able to oppose a more effective because more united front to interference from whatever quarter in the internal affairs of their States. Circumstances favoured their scheme for the loyalty displayed by all the Native States, and the distinguished services rendered in person by not a few Chiefs inclined Government to meet their wishes without probing them too closely, and in the first place to relax the control hitherto exercised by its political officers on the spot—often, it must be confessed, on rather petty and irritating lines. The leading Princes were encouraged to come to Delhi during the winter season, and those who favoured a policy of closer combination amongst themselves were those who responded most freely to these official promptings. Conversations soon assumed the shape of informal conferences, and, later on, of formal conferences convened and presided over by the Viceroy. The hidden value of these conferences must have been far greater than would appear from the somewhat trivial record of the subjects under discussion, for it is out of these conferences that the new Chamber of Princes has been evolved as a permanent consultative body for the consideration of questions affecting the Native States generally, or of common concern to them and to British India and to the Empire generally.
The conception is in itself by no means novel and appeals to many upon whom the picturesqueness and conservative stability of the Native States exercise a strong attraction. It can be traced back at least as far as Lord Lytton's Viceroyalty over forty years ago, and the steadily growing recognition of the important part which the Native States play in the Indian Empire culminated during the war in the appointment of an Indian Prince to represent them specially at the Imperial War Conferences held in London during the war, and again, after the war was over, at the Paris Peace Conference.
But the creation of a Chamber of Princes at this particular juncture raises very difficult issues. In the first place, though it has been engineered with great skill and energy by a small group of very distinguished Princes, mostly Rajput, it is viewed with deep suspicion by other chiefs who, not being Rajputs, scent in it a scheme for promoting Rajput ascendancy, and it has received no support at all from other and more powerful Princes such as the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Gaikwar of Baroda, the Maharajah of Mysore. Some have always held aloof from the Delhi Conferences and have intimated plainly that they have no desire to see any alteration introduced into their treaty relationships with the Paramount Power. Without their participation no Chamber of Princes can pull its full weight, and even if most of them considered themselves bound out of loyalty to the Sovereign to attend an inaugural ceremony performed by the Duke of Connaught in the name of the King-Emperor himself, it would be premature to infer that their opposition has been permanently overcome. The Supreme Government has of course reiterated the pledges already embodied in the treaties that there shall be no interference with the ancient rights and privileges of the Native States and their rulers, but its eminent right to interfere in cases of extreme urgency has not and cannot be surrendered. It has been exercised very rarely, and only when administration and government have fallen flagrantly short of certain standards, established by usage and generally understood and accepted, which it is perhaps easier to describe negatively than positively. Misrule cannot be tolerated when it amounts to a public scandal or takes the form of criminal acts. The whole question has always bristled with difficulties, and still does. The tendency, since Lord Curzon's time, has been to relax the control of the Supreme Government even in matters of slighter moment on which it had been accustomed to tender advice not always distinguishable from commands. That some of the Native States, and not the least powerful, are badly governed is of common notoriety. But if the Supreme Government has been sometimes inclined to turn a blind eye in such cases, and even to forget that it has moral obligations towards the subjects as well as towards the rulers of the Native States, it has been free hitherto to obey considerations of political expediency which may conceivably not weigh so much in the future. For the same forces that have obtained the surrender of the autocratic principle in British India, may demand with equal insistency its surrender throughout the Native States. Should the more irresponsible chiefs rely on the solidarity of a Chamber of Princes to secure for them greater immunity than ever from the just consequences of misgovernment, they would merely hasten a conflict which undoubtedly most of their caste have begun to dread between their own archaic methods and the democratic spirit which the Government of India Act of 1919 has quickened in British India.
There are many other thorny points. Obviously there could be no room for all the seven or eight hundred ruling chiefs, great and small, in any assembly reasonably constituted to represent the Native States. Nor have they ever enjoyed any uniform status or received any uniform treatment. Some of them, the most important, have maintained direct relations with the Government of India; the majority only indirect relations through the Provincial Governments within whose sphere their territories are situated. The creation of the Chamber of Princes has necessitated a new classification of major and minor States, the former entitled to direct, the latter only to indirect representation, which has naturally caused a vast amount of jealousy and heartburning. Another consequence still under discussion is the substitution in most cases of direct relations with the Government of India for those in which the smaller Native States now stand to provincial governments. Such transfer must involve innumerable difficulties and complications, especially in a Presidency like Bombay, within whose boundaries there are over 300 Native States inextricably bound up with it by common interests and even by common administrative needs. Many of them are at first sight inclined to welcome such a transfer as enhancing their prestige; some of them, remembering the old saying that "Delhi is a long way off," hope that it will lessen the prospect of outside interference in their own administration, however bad it may be or become. But these are hardly arguments to justify a transfer which can only import a new element of confusion into an already sufficiently confused situation.
The Chamber of Princes was opened with all the glitter of oriental pomp and magnificence, but it only held a few meetings and the proceedings were veiled in secrecy. Only enough transpired to show that personal jealousies and clan rivalries were rife even at that early stage. Its very constitution denies it the assistance for which the Indian Councils and the Indian Ministers have been wise enough to look from the co-operation with them of British elements, whose authority in government and administration is still maintained by statute and so far undisputed. To the Chamber of Princes the Viceroy alone is in a position to give guidance, and to shape that illustrious assembly to useful purposes is one of the many difficult tasks in front of Lord Reading.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] At the "stabilised" rate of exchange a crore, or ten million rupees = one million gold pounds sterling. One hundred lacs make a crore.