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THE INDIAN PRINCES AND THE REFORMS 339 Under him was a Council or Cabinet consisting of picked men from a service which demanded from all its members a high standard of education, of distinguished soldiers the and of Indians of marked ability. They were, of course, subject to a Secretary of State who held office on a party tenure and was the servant of a parliament elected upon a democratic vote. But that vote was never influenced by affairs in India, and the elected members taken as a whole have never taken more than a languid interest in them. The Government of India Act has, ld therefore, introduced more than a bold extension of the Idemocratic system; from the standpoint of the Princes it is revolutionary, for its avowed purpose is to form the starting-point for an Indian democracy and so to change the whole administrative outlook of the country. So far as British India is concerned it may be described as the latest stage in the evolution of a scheme whereby Indians were gradually taken into partnership, were entrusted with local self-government, and were accustomed to the elective idea. In the earlier stages the Princes were lost sight of, for the opponents of the Reform Act, who have denounced it on the broad grounds that democracy is not suited to India and that the pace is being forced, cannot but admit that the whole trend of policy in the past has been towards the eventual realisation of democracy. The Princes are therefore faced with the prospect of a change, not indeed of allegiance, for that is to the King-Emperor, or of 'subordinate alliance,' for that is with the Crown, but of the agency by which the existing policy is controlled. All that now is British India was once under native rulers; parts of it were acquired almost within living memory, and the result of policy there will be to transfer the paramount power from the English Government of India to a body of men whom the Princes may well regard as standing on an equality with their own subjects. They have no doubt received categorical assurances that all treaty engagements will be scrupulously respected; that is well enough as far as it goes, but relations with the Paramount Power are not begun and ended by words written on parchment. A dilemma is created; either the Princes must accept the transference of their imperial relations from an English oligarchy to a democratically elected

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Indian Parliament, which involves, in theory at a wi rate, the transference of control to a bourgeois, all m even to some extent to a peasant electorate, or the syste bolit itself will undergo change, not necessarily violent, be ba ultimately inevitable. This change cannot but be adversemo in the circumstances contemplated, to the ideal of Th unified India. The Government of India, secure in the per knowledge that English rule was firmly established, ane po that after the Mutiny the Crown of England stand mou forth the unquestioned ruler of India,' or at most viewing me si the attainment of self-government in British India asem far-off and perhaps a visionary ideal, have in theirat relations with the Princes gradually advanced from the y principle of complete non-intervention, through that orch subordinate relations with complete autonomy, to which tion annexation was the only alternative, to the presentemo policy of co-operation under which the interests of British w India and of the States are recognised to be identical, ay and the permanence of the State no longer depends on upon the personality of the ruler. British India under titu democratic rule will as a logical outcome of a change of for t system sink from the position of the unquestioned org ruler' to that of the primus inter pares which it held ey when the Company's territories were no more than one among many States, and the Company itself claimed no more exalted position.

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There are, however, many in India who do not accept Kin this view. Thus in the Madras Hindu,' a Nationalist forg newspaper, it is argued typically in the new spirit of the democracy, that any change in relations can only be com made with the consent of the people of British India wit and of the subjects of Indian States. And quoting an at Indian writer, evidently with approval, it adds that for 'when the British Parliament transfers the responsibility is for the government of India to the duly accredited representatives of the Indian people, it will also automatically transfer to them the right of intervention and control over Indian States; for as long as the system of administration in the Indian States continues to be personal and autocratic the necessity for outside control will remain as a safeguard against misrule.' Democratic British India is in this view to become the Paramount Power, the successor of Britain in every respect; only

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theor will democracy be vindicated and every Charles I 1 meet his Cromwell. It is the first step towards the olition of the Princes. The Princes, in fact, are to bartered about in the old fashion which the new utmocracy has vehemently denounced.

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The situation, therefore, created by the Reform Act, perhaps it would be more correct to say evolved by able policy of which the Reform Act is the present climax, aounts to a clash of incompatible systems. On the e side is the democratic government of the bourgeoisie, emselves largely the outcome of the British admintration, on the other government of the Princes, which day be called autocratic, benevolently despotic, oliarchical, or aristocratic, according to the various conitions prevailing, but always very far from being emocratic. The whole-hearted believers in democracy, ɔ whom it is as sacred as is the Koran to a Mussulman, hay rejoice to see the whole 'antiquated' system of aonarchy thrown upon the rubbish heap and the subtitution of the government of the people by the people or the people, if that is the correct formula. But they orget that personal loyalty to their sovereign is still the keynote of Indian sentiment, and that even in British India reverence for the far-off King-Emperor is so marked that a bourgeois representative in a personal interview begged permission to take the dust' of the King's feet in the time-honoured fashion of India. They forget, too, that in many of the more important States the government is conducted upon lines which bear comparison not only with that of British India but also with that of England itself, and are calculated to satisfy critics nursed in the European schools. They forget the imperceptible pressure which has been exercised by the Government of India towards the improvement of government in the States. To a large extent the measures taken in British India for the betterment of the people have been reproduced and imitated in the States; the ryots are contented and prosperous; communal dissension is almost unknown; agitation is suppressed or at least kept within limits, and if palace intrigues have not wholly ceased, those which have come to light are the exceptions that prove the rule. It is difficult to imagine to-day such deeds as those of the

Domitian of Coorg whose foible of murdering his relatives with his own hand led to the extinction of his State.

The problem is further complicated by the geographical position of the States. If they formed one compact block which could be divided off from the rest of India as Belgium and Holland were divided after the breakdown of the amalgamation in 1830, the problem might be simplified, though even so only at the cost of sacrificing the ideal of union. But they are very far from being in a compact block. The large group of Rajputana lies between the Punjab and Bombay, Central India is broken up by the intrusion of Hyderabad and Mysore, and the rest are scattered throughout the country from Kashmir to Travancore. Nearly all of them are situated in the interior; those on the coast contain no ports which can be compared with the great British ports of Bombay, Karachi, Calcutta, and even Madras. The consequence is that, so long as the idea of co-operative union holds the day-and the advantages of it are too obvious easily to be relinquished—the Indian States cannot but be influenced by the fiscal policy of British India. For the problem of the States is not entirely political. If British India resolves upon a policy of Free Trade, of Protection, or of Imperial Preference, such a policy cannot but react upon the States and the unifying influence of a Zollverein is historically established. You cannot split up the whole country into hundreds of parcels each with its separate fiscal policy without the risk of disunion or at least of undesirable friction. Yet, as was recently pointed out in the 'Times' (Aug. 9), the desire for closer economic union with, and complete political dissociation from, British India are if not 'incompatible,' at least difficult to reconcile. The Princes, it was suggested, cannot have it both ways. That is true, if you admit that there is no alternative to subordination to an Indian British India and complete severance from it. But if a closer economic union can be attained under the present régime, there is no reason why it should not continue; and it should not pass the wit of man to devise an alternative for the political difficulty. For reasons of efficient management it would seem essential that the railways, posts, and telegraphs should be continuous, though the

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ing arrangements bring with them certain other problems of hi of police and jurisdiction which are not altogether easy to T solve. These are, however, lesser evils compared with for continuity of management, especially when it is rememonbered that the services mentioned are vital to the defence of the country.

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he pr The mention of defence brings us to one of the the crucial questions of the Indian Reforms vis-à-vis the Indian States. Apart from the question of dignity involved in the grant of power to bourgeois politicians, if the Government of India were to hand over the whole administrative machine intact, how is such a Government to maintain the obligations towards the Princes? Put very broadly, the surrender of full the sovereignty to the Crown, and the acceptance of conthe ditions which allowed the Government a limited control And in State affairs, was in consideration of the complete protection guaranteed to the Rulers both by land and sea against foreign invasion and internal aggression. The immense coast-line of India is defended by the British Navy, not necessarily operating in Indian waters, but always in the background, as a deterrent to hostile nations. The sea-borne trade of India is In enormous. Upon it depends the prosperity of millions, although the actual carriers may not be Indian, and these millions do not all live in British India. The export of jute in the war, and the restriction of the import of cotton which caused great hardship to the common folk, are contrasted instances of the appalling consequences to the country if the command of the sea were lost during a war. The project of an Indian Navy is in its infancy; the child in fact is still in the womb, but in any case when born there are long years of adolescence yet to come before it can attain even the modest stature predicted for it. And if the Navy is ultimately of such importance, how much more vital is an efficient army to protect and close the ever vulnerable gaps on the North-West frontier and to preserve order in the interior! Relying upon the British Indian army for their protection, the Princes have agreed to maintain only small bodies of their own troops and to accept conditions relating to cantonments of British troops within their territories. The army has indeed problems

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