The States Department, later States Ministry, was a department of the Government of India headed by the Minister of States. Its responsibility was to deal with the princely states and manage their relationship with independent India.
The department was formed in June 1947 to replace the Political Department of the British Government, which had administered relations between the British Crown and British India on the one side and the princely states on the other. The Political Department had exercised its power on the basis of paramountcy. Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy of India, proposed that a department that would replace the Political Department avoid that name, and instead call itself the States Department.[1]Vallabhbhai Patel, who was to be the first home minister of India, was also made Minister of States. V.P. Menon was appointed the administrative head of the department.
The States Department had principal responsibility for bringing about the political integration of India by securing the accession of the princely states to India. Subsequently, it supervised the conduct of their affairs, their democratisation, and their administrative integration into India.
Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, statesman, secular humanist, social democrat, and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a principal leader of the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Upon India's independence in 1947, he served as the country's first prime minister for 16 years. Nehru promoted parliamentary democracy, secularism, and science and technology during the 1950s, powerfully influencing India's arc as a modern nation. In international affairs, he steered India clear of the two blocs of the Cold War. A well-regarded author, the books he wrote in prison, such as Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), An Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946), have been read and deliberated upon around the world.
Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel, commonly known as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, was an Indian independence activist and barrister who served as the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of India from 1947 to 1950. He was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress, who played a significant role in the Indian independence movement and India's political integration. In India and elsewhere, he was often called Sardar, meaning "Chief" in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Persian. He acted as the Home Minister during the political integration of India and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947.
Hyderabad State or Hyderabad Deccan was a kingdom, country, and princely state in the Deccan with its capital at the city of Hyderabad. It is now divided into the state of Telangana, the Kalyana-Karnataka region of Karnataka, and the Marathwada region of Maharashtra in present-day India, which annexed it in 1948.
Sree Padmanabhadasa Sree Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, popularly known as Sree Chithira Thirunal, was the last ruling Maharaja of the Indian princely state of Travancore, in southern India until 1949 and later the Titular Maharajah of Travancore until 1991. His reign is known for several notable reforms that have indelible impact on the society and culture of Kerala.
Bombay State was a large Indian state created in 1950 from the erstwhile Bombay Presidency, with other regions being added to it in the succeeding years. Bombay Presidency was merged with the princely states of Baroda, Western India and Gujarat and the Deccan States.
A princely state was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, subject to a subsidiary alliance and the suzerainty or paramountcy of the British crown.
Rajpramukh was an administrative title in India which existed from India's independence in 1947 until 1956. Rajpramukhs were the appointed governors of certain Indian provinces and states.
Mysore State, colloquially Old Mysore, was a political territory within the Dominion of India and the subsequent Republic of India from 1947 until 1956. The state was formed by renaming the Kingdom of Mysore, and Bangalore replaced Mysore as the state's capital. When Parliament passed the States Reorganisation Act in 1956, Mysore State was considerably enlarged when it became a linguistically homogeneous Kannada-speaking state within the Republic of India by incorporating territories from Andhra, Bombay, Coorg, Hyderabad, and Madras States, as well as other petty fiefdoms. It was subsequently renamed Karnataka in 1973.
Uchharangrai Navalshankar Dhebar was an Indian Independence activist who served as the Chief Minister of Saurashtra State from 1948 to 1954 and the President of the Indian National Congress from 1955 to 1959.
In India, a privy purse was a payment made to the ruling families of erstwhile princely states as part of their agreements to first integrate with India in 1947 after the independence of India, and later to merge their states in 1949, thereby ending their ruling rights.
Vappala Pangunni Menon was an Indian civil servant who served as Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of the States, under Sardar Patel. By appointment from Viceroy and Governor-General of India Wavell, he also served as Secretary to the Governor-General (Public) and later as Secretary to the Cabinet. He also was the Constitutional Adviser and Political Reforms Commissioner to the last three successive Viceroys during British rule in India. In May 1948, at the initiative of V. P. Menon, a meeting was held in Delhi between the Rajpramukhs of the princely unions and the States Department, at the end of which the Rajpramukhs signed new Instruments of Accession which gave the Government of India the power to pass laws in respect of all matters that fell within the seventh schedule of the Government of India Act 1935.
The Dominion of India, officially the Union of India, was an independent dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations existing between 15 August 1947 and 26 January 1950. Until its independence, India had been ruled as an informal empire by the United Kingdom. The empire, also called the British Raj and sometimes the British Indian Empire, consisted of regions, collectively called British India, that were directly administered by the British government, and regions, called the princely states, that were ruled by Indian rulers under a system of paramountcy. The Dominion of India was formalised by the passage of the Indian Independence Act 1947, which also formalised an independent Dominion of Pakistan—comprising the regions of British India that are today Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Dominion of India remained "India" in common parlance but was geographically reduced. Under the Act, the British government relinquished all responsibility for administering its former territories. The government also revoked its treaty rights with the rulers of the princely states and advised them to join in a political union with India or Pakistan. Accordingly, the British monarch's regnal title, "Emperor of India," was abandoned.
Samaldas Gandhi (1897-1953) was a journalist and Indian independence activist who headed the Aarzi Hakumat or Provisional Government of the erstwhile princely state of Junagadh. He was a nephew of Mahatma Gandhi.
Before India gained independence in 1947, India was divided into two sets of territories, one under direct British rule, and the other consisting of princely states under the suzerainty of the British Crown, with control over their internal affairs remaining in the hands of their hereditary rulers. The latter included 562 princely states which had different types of revenue-sharing arrangements with the British, often depending on their size, population and local conditions. In addition, there were several colonial enclaves controlled by France and Portugal. After independence, the political integration of these territories into an Indian Union was a declared objective of the Indian National Congress, and the Government of India pursued this over the next decade.
In February 1948, the princely state of Junagadh, located in what is now the Indian state of Gujarat, was annexed to the Union of India after a dispute with the Dominion of Pakistan, regarding its accession, and a plebiscite. Junagadh had been a princely state under the suzerainty of the British Crown, until independence and partition of British India in 1947.
Junagarh or Junagadh was a princely state in Gujarat ruled by the Muslim Babi dynasty in India, which acceded to the Dominion of Pakistan after the Partition of British India. Subsequently, the Union of India annexed Junagadh in 1948, legitimized through a plebiscite held the same year.
Saurashtra State, formally known as United State of Kathiawar and later United State of Saurashtra, was a State of India that existed between 1948 and 1956, on Saurashtra alias Kathiawar peninsula, with Rajkot as its capital,
Hyderabad State was a state in Dominion and later Republic of India, formed after the accession of the State of Hyderabad into the Union on 17 September 1948. It existed from 1948 to 1956.
The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 was a major reform of the boundaries of India's states and territories, organising them along linguistic lines.
A standstill agreement was an agreement signed between the newly independent dominions of India and Pakistan and the princely states of the British Indian Empire prior to their integration in the new dominions. The form of the agreement was bilateral between a dominion and a princely state. It provided that all the administrative arrangements, existing between the British Crown and the state would continue unaltered between the signatory dominion and the princely state, until new arrangements were made.
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