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‘The Indian Maharaja under check…’: the abolition of privy purses and
princely privileges, 1967-71 and the end of an era
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Ankit, Rakesh. 2022. “‘the Indian Maharaja Under Check…’: The Abolition of Privy Purses and Princely
Privileges, 1967-71 and the End of an Era”. Loughborough University.
https://hdl.handle.net/2134/16918153.v1.
 1

‘The Indian Maharaja under check…’: 1 The abolition of Privy Purses & Princely
0F

Privileges, 1967-71 and the end of an era

Abstract

This article attends to the abolition of the privy purses and princely privileges of ex-rulers achieved between

May 1967 to December 1971 in a controversial constitutional episode, in a period of transition for Indian

democracy. Moving beyond the usual figures under focus namely Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her

Principal Secretary P.N. Haksar, it brings to fore a wider cast of characters and their concerns during this

campaign. Second, it seeks to take the established binary between the old of the Indian National Congress

and the new of Indira’s Congress (Ruling) from the split in 1969, to stand for a wider generational passage

of time at both international and internal levels. Third, probing this overlapping interaction, it presents it as

one among final episodes of independent India emerging from its British world of 1947, whose relevance

can be sketched beyond pressure politics inside a party and mass politics outside it. Finally, it presents this

episode as a prism through which one can see the end of the ‘first phase’ of India’s democracy and one of

its inherited institutions.

Introduction

In the summer of 1947, upon the lapse of British paramountcy, the accession of Princely India

into the independent dominion(s) was achieved largely via a constitutionally guaranteed

exchange mechanism, which offered (284 out of) the 550+ rulers an annual privy purse,

allowed them to retain their personal properties and extended privileges like exemption from

central taxes, provincial arrests and import duties. 2 This arrangement secured the territorial
1F

(near)union of India, apart from being considered, in economic terms, ‘a veritable steal’, as

1
Hindustan Times (HT) 20 July 1967.
2
See Ian Copland, The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917-1947 (Cambridge, 2002), V.P. Menon,
Integration of the Indian States (Hyderabad, 2014) and Y.K. Bangash, A Princely Affair: The Accession and
Integration of the Princely States of Pakistan, 1947-1955 (Karachi, 2015).
 2

revenues from princely states were expected to amount ‘ten times’ the ‘pay out to the princes’

in 10-years’ time. 3 Subsequently, ‘several princes were installed as Rajpramukh

2F

(governor)…of states [and]…some princes accepted diplomatic postings’. 4 Others entered3F

parliamentary politics, ‘where their money, contacts and enduring appeal enabled them to win’

handsomely. So successful were some that it was quipped in 1967 that ‘the princes

have...emerged as the natural leaders of the masses…’ 5 4F

In that summer of 1967, the abolition of these privy purses emerged within a 10-point socialist

programme that has been understood as a practical instrument for the Prime Minister Indira

Gandhi and her principled secretary P.N. Haksar, to energise the Indian National Congress

Party after its reverses in the February 1967 general election. Steadily ‘increased’ princely

electoral behaviour across their ‘traditional’ regions of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan,

and Gujarat, was considered a contributing factor to this upset. The total number of princely

parliamentarians and legislators had gone from 45 in 1951-56 to 75 in 1967-70. 6 Among these,
5F

‘fewer than half…were either Congress or ex-Congress members’, and princely support of

Congress was declining ‘prior’ to the 1967 elections. 7 6F

However, as Ian Copland has recently argued, ‘the late 1960s, a period rife with crises in

India…merits closer attention’, 8 dotted as it was also by a dramatic ‘disappearance of British

7F

symbols’ of influence; 9 one of which is the focus of this article. In fact, Copland has offered
8F

3
Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (London, 2008), pp.
43–44; three exceptions were Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Junagadh, pp. 35–83.
4
Barbara N. Ramusack, The Indian Princes and their States (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 275–279.
5
Ian Copland, ‘Crucibles of Hindutva? V.D. Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha, and the Indian princely states’,
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 25: 3 (2002), pp. 230–231.
6
W.L. Richter, ‘Princes in Indian Politics’, Economic and Political Weekly, 6: 9 (1971), p. 537.
7
Ibid. p. 538.
8
Ian Copland, ‘History in Flux: Indira Gandhi and the “Great All-Party Campaign” for the Protection of the
Cow, 1966-8’, Journal of Contemporary History, 49: 2 (2014), p. 412, p. 435.
9
Paul M. McGarr, ‘The Viceroys and Disappearing from the Roundabouts in Delhi: British symbols of power in
post-colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies, 49: 3 (2015), pp. 787–831.
 3

that time as a candidate for a ‘turning point’ in contemporary Indian history, to add to Paul

McGarr’s description of the preceding 1960-64 period as that of ‘the Other Transfer of

Power’. 10 Typifying it were Indira Gandhi’s ‘leftward turns’, which involved nationalising 14
9F

banks (including those British owned) in July 1969 and abolishing privy purses and princely

privileges in September 1970, with Haksar terming the latter as ‘out of place and out of time’, 11 10F

spanning the November 1969 split within the Congress party.

This article is interested in exploring precisely this understanding of the post-imperial afterlife

in India wherein the then-political leadership, in its search for ‘a radical turn’ in a plateauing

postcolonial politics, looked upon bank nationalisation and privy purses abolition as having a

‘symptomatic significance’. 12 These colonial inheritances were jettisoned expediently and

11F

enthusiastically as a shot in arm for an emerging ‘paramount state’, 13 eventuating in the12F

Emergency of 1975; India’s British-style democracy’s turning point. 14 Naturally, a substantial

13F

body of scholarship has studied the legal-constitutional aspects of these events, which clustered

around British definitions of ‘property’, Indian understanding of ‘compensation’ and their

determinations by the executive-in-parliament or the bench-in-court. 15 These narratives around

14F

an individual (Indira Gandhi) and her inclinations, 16 another (P.N. Haksar) and his
15F

10
Paul M. McGarr, ‘After Nehru, What? Britain, the United States, and the Other Transfer of Power in India,
1960–64’, The International History Review, 33: 1 (2011), pp. 115–142.
11
Guha, India After Gandhi, pp. 416–447.
12
J. P. Lewis, ‘Wanted in India: A Relevant Radicalism’, Economic and Political Weekly, 5: 29/31 (1970), pp.
1211–1212.
13
G. Dhabhai, ‘Paramount State and the “Princely Subject”: Privy Purses Abolition and its Aftermath’, in
Anupama Roy and Michael Becker (eds.) Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy: India and Germany
(Singapore, 2020), pp. 169–182.
14
See G. Prakash, Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy's Turning Point (New Jersey, 2019).
15
See V.K. Ananth, The Indian Constitution and Social Revolution: Right to Property since Independence (New
Delhi, 2015).
16
Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi (London, 2001), pp. 287–347.
 4

influences, 17 and an institution (Congress Party) and its inconveniences, 18 have framed this
16F 17F

topic.

This article, in tracing the trajectory of the campaign against the privy purses and princely

privileges from May 1967 to December 1971, when it climaxed in their de-recognition, is

interested instead in populating this political history from an inter-national register to a

provincial level. Secondly, it seeks to broaden the binary of the old/new party to an old/new

time and situates the end of this British-bequeathed grant within this overlap. The article does

so by drawing upon the documents of the well-informed British High Commission in New

Delhi and supplementing it with relevant material. It was well-informed because it was well-

involved and employing its vantage is interesting for it being the conduit, albeit reluctant, for

the last Viceroy Lord Mountbatten’s intervention, 19 in this princely affair; a relic of the Raj
18F

that the latter – with his royal lineage – had transferred in 1947. 20 Thus, the High Commission
19F

was not simply an ex-colonial observer in postcolonial politics but a participant, with some

‘informal influence’ in this narrative, which brought to an end the ‘first phase’ of India’s

Eastminster’s democracy, 21 taking down one of its British residues. 22

20F 21F

Indeed, the larger British response (or lack of it) to the privy purse issue in India has been

contextualised within royalties re-moulding themselves to post-1945 decolonisation,

‘republicanism and radicalism’. 23 This adjustment resulted in an ambivalent de-

22F

17
See Jairam Ramesh, Intertwined Lives: P. N. Haksar and Indira Gandhi (New Delhi, 2018).
18
See W.F. Kuracina, The State and Governance in India: The Congress Ideal (London, 2010).
19
See S.R. Ashton, ‘Mountbatten, the royal family, and British influence in post-independence India and
Burma’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 33: 1 (2005), pp. 73–92.
20
See Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten: The Official Biography (London, 1985).
21
James Manor, ‘Parties and the Party System’, in Atul Kohli (ed.) The Success of India’s Democracy
(Cambridge, 2001), p. 63.
22
See Harshan Kumarasingham (ed.) Constitution-making in Asia: Decolonisation and State-Building in the
Aftermath of the British Empire (London, 2016).
23
See R. Aldrich and C. McCreery (eds.) Monarchies and Decolonisation in Asia (Manchester, 2020).
 5

institutionalised politics, with surviving spectres of kingship. Asian monarchies especially

experienced an assortment of destinies, as the British (and other European powers) both

abolished them viz. Ceylon (1813)/Burma (1885) and retained them e.g., the Malay

sultanates. 24 Their subsequent histories therefore were about their pacifications and pretensions
23F

vis-à-vis the 19th c. colonial state and the rising nationalist tide(s) of 20th c.

There were princes in India prior to 1800, but it was the ‘British construction’ of their ‘indirect

rule’ across the 1857 rebellion, which cemented their subsequent ‘aristocratic conservatism’. 25 24F

British framework of ‘paramountcy’, which combined ‘practice and tradition…status and

position’, ceremoniously ‘re-established’ the Indian princes, keeping them ‘separated from

British India [as] …almost passive agents’. 26 In a way, the abolition of their privy purses over
25F

1967-71 ended the last vestiges of this separateness that they had maintained in the 1950s by

either siding with the Congress or remaining ‘silent on political matters…’ or adopting

‘independent candidacies’ until the Swatantra Party (est. 1959) ‘tried to bring [them] …in

common cause [against] Congress “statism”. 27 In the general elections of 1962 and 1967,
26F

Swatantra was the ‘second strongest party among the princely families [in] the states of Orissa

and Gujarat’, while the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) emerged strongly in ‘Madhya Pradesh and

Rajasthan’. 28 Their ‘drift…away from the Congress was [also due] to the Jana Sangh’s
27F

Hindutva ideology’; 29 another pre-1947 legacy.

28F

Emerging from ‘the post-mortem’ of 1967 Election

24
Ibid. Chapter 1, ‘Monarchies, Decolonisation and Post-Colonial Asia’.
25
See Ramusack, The Indian Princes and their States.
26
Edward Thompson, The Making of the Indian Princes (London, 1978), p. vi.
27
Howard L. Erdman, ‘Conservative Politics in India’, Asian Survey, 6: 6 (1966), p. 343, p. 346.
28
Richter, ‘Princes in Indian Politics’, p. 538.
29
Copland, ‘Crucibles of Hindutva?’, p. 231.
 6

In February 1967, an electorate of 250 million reduced the Congress party to 281+ seats out of

521 in the lower house; a working majority of 45. Alongside, it made it taste defeat across ten

states. 30 This was the Congress’s worst showing since the 1937 elections and it was a veritable
29F

‘watershed’ moment. 31 Afterall, in the last five years, India had witnessed a border defeat and
30F

two military stand-offs, seen language riots and renewed regional politics, suppressed Naga-

Mizo nationalism(s) having smothered Kashmiri self-determination, and was facing a large-

scale famine. 32 Ergo the Congress leadership gathered for three post-mortem sessions over
31F

April-June 1967. In the second of these, at a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, a

note was circulated demanding bank nationalisation and the abolition of privy purses and

princely privileges. While the conservative Deputy Prime Minister Morarji Desai opined this

as ‘too drastic’, the British High Commissioner John Freeman noted that the CWC did decide

that the government should do away with privileges like exemption from customs and

immunity from arrest. 33 32F

It was in the third of these post-mortem sessions, at an All-India Congress Committee (AICC)

meeting, that a formal resolution calling for abolition got passed, somewhat surprisingly.

Whereas the original draft had called only for the privileges to end, a last-minute amendment

added the purses too. 34 This vote was spearheaded by members from the western state of
33F

Maharashtra. Its provincial Congress committee had met in Bombay earlier and passed several

such ‘socialist’ resolutions, ignored by the English-language national press but not by the

30
M.P. Singh and S.R. Raj, eds, The Indian Political System (Delhi, 2011), p. 257.
31
Rajni Kothari, ‘India’s Political Transition’, Economic and Political Weekly, 2: 33/35 (1967), p. 1490. Stanley
Kochanek, The Congress Party of India: The Dynamics of One-Party Democracy (New Jersey, 1968), p. 40.
32
See Guha, India After Gandhi, pp. 242–416.
33
The National Archives (TNA). FCO 37/40. Freeman to CRO, 16 May 1967.
34
TNA. FCO 37/41. AICC meeting, June 1967.
 7

British Deputy High Commissioner there. 35 Now, in New Delhi, the watching John Freeman
34F

anticipated that:

This meeting of the AICC is of considerable significance…The delegates…could feel the breath of the

electorate on their necks…and the High Command have emerged [with] their hands tied…Mrs

Gandhi…said not one word for or against… [this] shifting to the left… 36
35F

This despatch anticipated many of the acts of this longer-than-expected drama. First, with the

princes playing an increasingly oppositional role, it was the Congress party that was keen on

cutting them to size, while the government was ‘quite cautious’ to renounce treaty obligations

from 1947. 37 Secondly, with the sums of their subsidies being small, compared to the amounts
36F

involved in bank nationalisation, it was the political capital that the party sought, with its

professed socialism being at odds with the princes’ opulence. Third, it was neither Indira

Gandhi nor P.N. Haksar but Home Minister Y.B. Chavan, who made the running on this issue,

positioning himself vis-à-vis the Prime Minister and her Deputy Desai. His chosen vehicle of

the ‘Young Turks’ represented old-wine-in-a-new-bottle as they were members of the Congress

Forum for Socialist Action (CFSA) founded in 1962 by V.K. Krishna Menon; no less than

‘India’s Rasputin’ to the Anglo-Americans. 38 Fourth, the tremors along this trajectory to
37F

abolition – while felt in New Delhi and London – had their epicentre among the provinces, in

the five ‘princely’ states among which one Congress government fell, another saw the party

forced in a coalition, a third suffered desertions and two survived. Finally, this four-year period

(1967-71) – an in-between time, 39 for Indian politics between the wars of 1962 and 1971 –
38F

35
TNA. FCO 37/44. Pease to Renwick, 25 July 1967.
36
TNA. FCO 37/40. Freeman to CRO, 29 June 1967.
37
Ramesh, Intertwined Lives, p. 112.
38
See Paul M. McGarr, ‘“India's Rasputin”? V.K. Krishna Menon and Anglo–American misperceptions of
Indian foreign policymaking, 1947–1964’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 22: 2 (2011), pp. 239–260.
39
TNA. FCO 37/50. Renwick-Gujral talk, 30 June 1967.
 8

would end with a treaty of peace, friendship, and cooperation with the Soviet Union, which

was a decisive step out of the British Commonwealth that it had dwelt in hitherto.

For the princely rulers, that had been a world of constitutionally protected privy purses,

guaranteed by the departing British, whose abolition was a ‘breach of trust’ amidst a politics

of ‘slogans’. 40 They promptly approached the remaining personal guarantor from the 1947-48
39F

trinity of Governor-General Mountbatten, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and States

Minister Vallabhbhai Patel that had prevailed upon them to accept the privy purse as a quid

pro quo for their accession into India. Mountbatten too considered the proposed abolition as ‘a

breach of [his] undertaking’ and felt duty-bound ‘to make a personal appeal to Mrs Gandhi’,

worrying the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) that was keen to ‘in no way associate

themselves with [it]’, concerned of ‘the sensitive… relations with India’. 41 These comprised
40F

British-Indian businesses, aid-loan-investment and the princely state of Sikkim, which was

agitating ‘for a separate entry into the UN’, 42 apart from the usual list of diplomatic disputes,
41F

and the CRO decided to warn Mountbatten against becoming ‘involved over princely

privileges…which were the sole concern of Indians’, 43 arranged as they had been by the Indian
42F

government after independence, notwithstanding his delicate straddling of the

viceregal/Governor-General divide over August 1947. 44 43F

Nevertheless, in the last week of July 1967, Mountbatten called in the CRO, having been

‘approached’ by the Maharaja of Jaipur. When he expressed a desire to ‘write privately to Mrs

Gandhi emphasising his own personal responsibility and her father’s reputation’, he was told

40
TNA. FCO 37/44. Morarji Desai’s interview, 9 July 1967.
41
TNA. FCO 37/44. Hunt’s note, 3 August 1967.
42
TNA. FCO 37/44. Renwick to CRO, 25 July 1967.
43
TNA. FCO 37/44. Renwick to CRO and Allinson to Garner, 25 July 1967.
44
See Ian Copland, ‘Lord Mountbatten and the integration of the Indian states: A reappraisal’, The Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21: 2 (1993), pp. 385–408.
 9

that they ought to consult John Freeman. An ‘anxious’ Mountbatten reached out to Freeman

thus: ‘Maharaja of Jaipur came to see me…Maharaja of Bikaner wrote to me…but for my

relationship to the King and the trust they placed in me, they would never have accepted [privy

purses]’. 45 Simultaneously, Mountbatten also left two letters from the Maharaja of Jaipur, then-
44F

India’s Ambassador in Spain, for his wife and son, to be delivered by the High Commission!

The Maharaja claimed that his mail was being opened and the CRO added to Freeman that

‘there was perhaps occasion for turning blind eyes’. 46 Faced with these missives, the High
45F

Commissioner, acknowledging Mountbatten’s ‘sense of personal honour’, was ‘ready to

communicate his letter’ as an ‘act of courtesy’ but with the following passage deleted: ‘If the

GoI, particularly a Congress party government, which gave their word to the original

settlement, were now to break it, the damage to India’s good faith would be immeasurable…’ 47 46F

John Freeman, a former left-wing Labour parliamentarian and editor of the New Statesman,

was an ‘imaginative’ appointment in India, who would handle ‘the forging of a new

relationship…conceived more as a partnership of equals…’ albeit ‘frustrated by [London’s]

more ham-fisted approach to diplomacy’. 48 In 1965, while Britain had ‘mediated successfully’
47F

in the first Indo-Pakistani clash over the Rann of Kutch, on the ensuing second Indo-Pakistani

conflict over Kashmir, it had ‘managed to alienate New Delhi’, leaving the Soviet Union to

make peace with the Tashkent declaration. 49 It ‘might have been expected that Labour would
48F

not take kindly to these virtually irresponsible despots’ but the Labour governments, across

1947, had been rather keen ‘to uphold the sanctity of British treaties’ with New Delhi. 50 49F

45
TNA. FCO 37/44. Mountbatten to Freeman, 28 July 1967.
46
TNA. FCO 37/44. CRO to Freeman, 26 July 1967.
47
TNA. FCO 37/44. Freeman to Garner, 31 July 1967.
48
Gavin Hyman, Freeman, John Horace (1915–2014), ODNB,
https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.108185 (Accessed 18 July 2021).
49
See Jonathan Colman, ‘Britain and the Indo-Pakistani Conflict: The Rann of Kutch and Kashmir, 1965’, The
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 37: 3 (2009), pp. 465–482.
50
V.G. Kiernan, ‘India, and the Labour Party’, New Left Review, I/42 (1967), p. 55.
 10

The question uppermost on everybody’s mind was why the Home Minister was spearheading

this attempt. The Deputy High Commissioner in Bombay reminded his colleagues that Chavan

came of age politically in the princely states of Western India in the late-1940s. Before

embarking upon his cabinet career in New Delhi in 1962, Chavan had been the last chief

minister of the bilingual Bombay province and the first chief minister of its Marathi successor.

In the 1967 general election, he was instrumental in getting a parliament ticket from Kolhapur

for Lt. General (retd.) S.P.P. Thorat, the Sandhurst-trained veteran of the WWII Burma

campaign, where the Rajmata of Kolhapur opposed Thorat and, despite Chavan’s canvassing,

defeated him. During the campaign, Chavan had made disparaging remarks about the gaddi

[throne] of the princes, ‘comparing it with an old mattress, which should be discarded’. 5150F

Afterwards, Chavan ‘became convinced that [for] social justice, the power of the princes which

stemmed from their privy purses and the high esteem they command[ed] in their localities

should be curbed’, if needed, by an executive action. 52 It was apparent this could only be
51F

pursued at the risk of an institutional split, if not an international smear and, within a month of

its passing, the abolition of privy purses had become ‘a resolution…equally difficult to

implement or ignore’, 53 with the Prime Minister’s instincts inscrutable. It was being recalled
52F

that she had once called for it, at an AICC meeting in 1965. During the 1967 election campaign,

she too had delivered ‘a tirade against the princes’ in Jaipur: ‘If you look at their record…before

Independence, you will find a big zero’. 54 As for their British patrons, she felt ‘a lack of
53F

contact’ with them. She saw the ‘Britishers of [her] generation and earlier [as]

prejudiced…because of their colonial memories but…the younger generation [as] perhaps

51
TNA. FCO 37/44. Pease to Renwick, 25 July 1967.
52
TV Kunhi Krishnan, Chavan and the Troubled Decade (Delhi, 1971), p. 164, p. 166.
53
TNA. FCO 37/44. Pease to Renwick, 25 July 1967.
54
TNA. FCO 37/44. Renwick to CRO, 25 July 1967.
 11

merely bored with India’. 55 Within a month of her taking over the premiership in January 1966,
54F

Haksar, then India’s Deputy High Commissioner in London, had set out his disbelief in ‘the

elaborate mythology…about our post-independence relationship with Britain’ thus: ‘Our

becoming part of the Commonwealth saved us from the Cold War…Britain too derived

benefits… [Now] …we [must] develop direct relationship with the USA as we have developed

with USSR’. 56 55F

More recently though, her Ministry of External Affairs, headed by Dinesh Singh, Raja of

Kalakankar, had advised her that to cancel the covenants concluded in 1947-48 would make

the rulers of Sikkim and Bhutan less confident in the value of their similar treaties with New

Delhi. This was in addition to the legal implications, which were time-consuming. More

impetus seemed to be forthcoming from the left-opposition in the party and the parliament and

riding the confidence of their backing, Chavan claimed that the Indian democracy could not

straddle forever its contradictions of co-existence with a caste-ridden and status-bound society.

In fact, the princes were to believe ‘as late as 1970’, that Indira Gandhi was either ‘weak’ or

‘being used by the Young Turks in the Congress’, but not that she was personally ‘out to get’

them. 57
56F

In July 1967, mandarins in the Law Ministry told officials in the British High Commission ‘that

the constitutional problems were so complex that…it might not be possible to assess all the

implications…’ Their counterparts at the Home Ministry felt that the best solution was ‘to

phase out the privy purses’, while declaring them ‘offices of profit’ to be ‘forfeited for

election’. 58 With 9 prince MPs being members of the Congress party, this could be a solution.
57F

55
Quoted in Ramesh, Intertwined Lives, p. 76.
56
Ibid. p. 77.
57
Richter, ‘Princes in Indian Politics’, p. 538.
58
TNA. FCO 37/44. Freeman to CRO, 27 July 1967.
 12

On 2 August 1967, Haksar dictated a note in which he pointed out that the AICC resolution

called upon the government to ‘examine’ the question. That was being done at three ministries

– Home, Finance and Law – and ‘until a definitive stage’ was reached, he would not ‘say

anything’. 59 Two days later, Chavan hosted John Freeman for dinner and spoke with
58F

‘disinterested contempt’ about the princes, bar Karan Singh of Kashmir, and affected an easy

assumption on the passage of the abolition of their purses. Framing the issue widely as one of

‘popular egalitarianism’, he claimed that otherwise people ‘would turn to the Communists’. 60 59F

At a time of the birth of the ‘Maoist movement in India’, 61 Chavan was well-aware of the then-
60F

ongoing shifts across Asia towards such populism, with the West’s attendant anxieties.

By now, Freeman had received Mountbatten’s watered-down letter to Indira Gandhi. His

simultaneous letter to the Maharaja of Jaipur also confirmed Mountbatten’s meetings with Sir

Michael Adeane, private secretary to the Queen. He also wrote reassuringly to the Maharaja of

Bikaner and the Maharao of Kutch. 62 Forewarning Freeman of Mountbatten’s letter, the CRO
61F

had added that: ‘if the letters from Maharaja of Jaipur…caused any embarrassment…hope the

occasion will not recur. But Mountbatten…is not [an] easy person to say “no” to’. 63 This 62F

business of ‘sending by hand of a Chancery Secretary the two letters from the Maharaja of

Jaipur to his wife and son’ had the potential of metamorphosing into a major diplomatic row

and Freeman decreed that henceforth his ‘High Commission should not be involved in any of

the princely families’. 64 For the moment, he was delivering Mountbatten’s letter to Haksar on
63F

10 August 1967. The shrewd secretary said that while he ‘fully understood’ London’s position,

59
Ramesh, Intertwined Lives, p. 112.
60
TNA/ FCO 37/32. Freeman-Chavan conversation, 4 August 1967.
61
See D.K. Gupta, ‘The Naxalites and the Maoist Movement in India: Birth, Demise, and Reincarnation’,
Democracy and Security, 3: 2 (2007), pp. 157–188.
62
TNA. FCO 37/44. Mountbatten to Maharajas of Jaipur and Bikaner, 1 August 1967.
63
TNA. FCO 37/44. Garner to Freeman, 7 August 1967.
64
TNA. FCO 37/45. Waterfield to MacInnes, 8 August 1967.
 13

he also ‘wondered’ if they had not ‘already compromised it by delivering such a letter’,

especially if its ‘existence [became] known’. 65 The Prime Minister though accepted the letter
64F

‘without rancour’, recognising Freeman as no more than ‘a postman’. 66 65F

Simultaneously, almost twenty years to the day of Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘tryst with destiny’

speech, the aristocratic class that he had considered bogus but useful, 67 was preparing to take
66F

its last stand. On 12-13 August 1967, 59 princes convened in the national capital, under the

chairmanship of the Maharaja of Baroda. The Nizam of Hyderabad did not attend but sent a

message of support, nor did Karan Singh although his association was claimed. The conference

constituted a committee to coordinate princely action and urged the Union Government to

respect the sacred pledges of 1947. Disclaiming any inheritance from the colonial Chamber of

Princes, this committee called itself a ‘trade union’, 68 but there was no distancing from colonial
67F

connections for this collaborator class with its ‘international friendship[s]’. 69 68F

This all-India organisation called the ‘Rulers of Indian States in Concord for India’

subsequently established regional units, called ‘accords’, and set up an elaborate organisation

comprising a 10-member ‘Ministrant Committee’, a larger ‘Conciliar Committee’, and the

annual convention of 279 privy purse recipients. 70 Its unexpected intransigence made stark the
69F

choice in front of the government between abolition by their agreement or alienation of their

support. Their willingness to marshal arguments reflecting upon ‘India’s bona fides [in]the

world’, given their ‘persecution’ and ‘negotiation under pressure’, also intensified the

65
TNA. FCO 37/45. Freeman to Garner, 10 August 1967.
66
TNA. FCO 37/45. Freeman to Garner, 16 August 1967.
67
See Manu Bhagavan, ‘Princely states and the making of modern India: Internationalism, constitutionalism and
the postcolonial moment’, The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 46: 3 (2009), pp. 427–456.
68
TNA. FCO 37/45. Renwick to CRO, 17 August 1967.
69
W.L. Richter and Barbara N. Ramusack, ‘The Chamber and the Consultation: Changing Forms of Princely
Association in India’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 34: 3 (1975), p. 760.
70
Richter, ‘Princes in Indian Politics’, pp. 538–539.
 14

symbolism involved. 71 Any substantive international support however could only be pursued
70F

through diplomatic channels and Jai Singh, second son of the Maharaja of Jaipur, came to the

British High Commission carrying three documents from 1947-48 that Mountbatten had

‘asked’ for. 72 The CRO’s fears had to be now impressed upon Mountbatten:
71F

Due to the delicate correspondence, great pains were taken by the HC not to disclose that our bag was being

used… [This] was agreed to [as] these letters would undoubtedly have been intercepted by the

Indian[s]…However, were [they] to learn of [this] …the consequences would be grave. 73 72F

By now, John Freeman was also having second thoughts about having personally delivered

Mountbatten’s letter. He reflected that perhaps he ‘took too big a risk’ but the bigger risks were

‘the Jaipur letters and [those] to the various princes’ and their ‘intention…to use the High

Commission as a continuing channel to Mountbatten’. 74 However, with Finance Minister Desai

73F

coming out in opposition to the Home Minister and less than half (114/281) of the MPs signing

a memorandum demanding the implementation of the party’s ‘socialist’ resolutions, the Prime

Minister was ‘advocating a go-slow policy’, 75 also in view of the complicated constitutional
74F

position. 76 The courses open to the Union Government were either legislating a bill into law
75F

or issuing an executive order, and neither were easy. In financial terms, the government paid a

total of GBP 2.3 million a year tax-free, which amounted to 0.2 per cent of the annual budget. 77 76F

A circumspect Prime Minister therefore presided on a cabinet meeting on 5 September 1967,

which authorised Chavan to start negotiations with the ex-rulers for ‘abrogating’ their

privileges and working out a ‘phased abolition’ of privy purses ‘without causing undue harm

71
Ibid. p. 539.
72
TNA. FCO 37/45. Strong to CRO, 13 August 1967.
73
TNA. FCO 37/45. Atkinson’s note, 18 August 1967.
74
TNA. FCO 37/45. Freeman to Garner, 18 August 1967.
75
Financial Times (FT), 13 August 1967.
76
TNA. FCO 37/45. Renwick to CRO, 17 August 1967.
77
FT, 24 August 1967.
 15

to rulers…drawing small amounts’. 78 Her cautious secretary articulated the wisdom of this way
77F

thus:

In a country like ours where people are poor…privileges invite pointed attention…One can legislate. One

can talk…privy purses of some run into lakhs, but there are [those] whose amount to…a few thousand

rupees. My preference would be to solve it in a way which leaves the least amount of bitterness. 79
78F

That this was a balancing act for buying time was made clear to the British High Commission

officials by both sides of the Congress divide. 80 Meanwhile, on 2 September 1967, March of
79F

the Nation, a Bombay weekly, ran a front-page story titled ‘Mountbatten suggests caution’. 81 80F

More embarrassing, however, for Freeman were the continuing pleas for support like those

from Rao Govardhan Singh (legal adviser to the Rajmata of Partabgarh), who asked him

‘whether Lord Mountbatten will be pleased to come over to India if recalled by the Rulers’ or

if ‘a deputation of the Princes should meet HM Queen’! 82 These indeed were the two domains
81F

that Mountbatten, being connected to both, bridged. Prompted by him, the Queen would ask

about royals like the Maharaja and, later, the Maharani of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi. Her government

would be at pains to emphasise that officially London had ‘no standing to intervene in an

internal affair of the Indian government concerning an Indian citizen’. Any ‘informal initiative

by a member of the Royal Family’ was considered ‘unlikely to do any good’. 83 Gayatri Devi 82F

had been an Swatantra MP since 1962. Her husband would pass away in 1970 while playing

polo in Britain and Buckingham Palace was conscious of the royals’ symbolic presence at the

78
HT, 6 September 1967.
79
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). Subject File Serial No. 118. P.N. Haksar Papers (III
Instalment). Haksar to Gandhi, 16 September 1967.
80
TNA. FCO 37/33. Conversations with Patil and Gujral, 8 and 25 October 1967.
81
TNA. FCO 37/45. 1 September 1967.
82
TNA. FCO 37/45. Singh to Freeman, 26 August 1967.
83
TNA. FCO 37/1594. O’ Neill’s note, 16 September 1975.
 16

heart of the commonwealth, which though was increasingly problematic for British foreign

policy with its former colonies by the 1960s. 84 83F

By late-October 1967, the Home Ministry had worked out the ‘transitional allowances’ to be

paid over two decades in lieu of privy purses. As regards privileges, it recommended abolishing

the ‘ostentatious’ and curtailing the ‘ceremonial’. With respect to economic benefits, it

recommended ‘exemption in central taxes but abolition of others…’ Here was a classic half-

way house and now, the question for the Prime Minister was ‘in what precise way’ to build it,

for the Home Ministry’s note argued ‘against executive decision’ and suggested ‘constitutional

amendment’. However, Haksar considered it ‘essential [to] go through the process of

negotiations…unless the princes prove to be intransigent’. 85 84F

In early-November, Chavan spelled out these terms to his interlocutors who were rather

relieved by his ‘assurance that the government would not act unilaterally’. 86 In these meetings,
85F

when one of the rulers said that ‘he could have understood…the step if a communist

government had taken it’, Chavan replied that ‘what was involved was the principle that

unearned incomes and hereditary privileges were inconsistent with democracy’ and, to that

extent, ‘the decision was the result…of historical changes’. 87 On 3 July 1968, the Internal
86F

Affairs Committee of the union cabinet, presided over by the Prime Minister, approved the

Home Ministry’s proposals for abolishing the privy purses and privileges ‘without causing

undue hardship’. It decided to amend the relevant constitutional articles to avoid a tussle with

the judiciary, being confident of the support of the communist, socialist, and Southern parties,

84
See Philip Murphy, Monarchy, and the End of Empire: The House of Windsor, the British Government, and
the Postwar Commonwealth (Oxford, 2013).
85
Ramesh, Intertwined Lives, p. 113.
86
HT, 3 November 1967.
87
Krishnan, Chavan and the Troubled Decade, p. 170.
 17

to command the necessary 2/3rd majority in both houses of parliament. Simultaneously, Chavan

was to consult with the princes for three more months on a ‘phased solution’ as below:

Princes drawing up to Rs. 30, 000 would get 12-times the amount, those receiving between Rs. 30, 000 and

Rs. 100, 000, ten times and those receiving more than Rs. 100, 000, eight times… [It] would be free of tax.

All their privileges would be abolished, but… [they would] be given protection against prosecution relating

to their acts as rulers and accorded certain procedure[s] according to status and notions of society. 88
87F

On their part, the princes were showing a disinclination to ‘to contemplate any alterations to

the [status quo]’. There was ‘talk of their going to the courts’, 89 but they had certainly not
88F

gained any goodwill by refusing to face political reality. As Chavan rose in the parliament on

24 July 1968 to announce the cabinet’s decision, The Times headlined this news as ‘India to

end privileges of princes…’ 90 Some of the princes were headed to London as the Maharaja of
89F

Bikaner visited Mountbatten ‘to see whether [he] could [make] a last-minute appeal’. 91 90F

Mountbatten had been in correspondence with personalities as diverse as Robert McNamara,

then-president of the World Bank, and C. Rajagopalachari, his successor as Governor-General

in June 1948 and, an active opponent of the Congress since forming his party, Swatantra. In

the general elections of 1967, it had won 44 seats and thus had a crucial position in the

parliamentary vote on the constitutional amendment. Mountbatten urged McNamara to

influence Desai, 92 and reminded Rajagopalachari that ‘the balance of power’ rested with him. 93
91F 92F

88
TNA. FCO 37/45. 12 July 1968.
89
Ibid.
90
The Times, 25 July 1968.
91
TNA. FCO 37/364. Mountbatten to Gore-Booth, 27 November 1968.
92
Ashton, ‘Mountbatten, the royal family, and British influence’, p. 78.
93
TNA. FCO 37/364. Mountbatten-Rajagopalachari correspondence, November 1968.
 18

Sir Morrice James, Freeman’s successor in New Delhi, was quick to caution the Foreign &

Commonwealth Office (FCO), CRO’s successor in London, that as the scheme on privy purses

was acceptable to ‘Indian opinion (apart from Swatantra Party)’, there was nothing to be done.

James took strong exception to Mountbatten’s letter to Rajagopalachari and termed it ‘a direct

interference in Indian internal affairs…’ 94 In January 1969, as controversy finally broke in the
93F

country on Mountbatten’s August 1967 letter to Gandhi, James hastened to remind the FCO

that ‘it would cause irritation…to make any public demarche’, 95 pointing out her terse reply to
94F

the persistent queries of what business has Lord Mountbatten to write: ‘a lot of people write to

me’! In the FCO though, an odd official was starting to wonder whether Mountbatten’s views

– a voice of the past – and the princes’ fate – a void of the present – were really ‘likely to harm

Indo-British relations …’ in the future? 96

95F

Engulfed by the 1969 crisis and split

One year later, however, that future was still pending. In August 1969, responding to a

parliamentary resolution demanding a timetable for abolition that had been unresolved, Y.B.

Chavan issued the following statement, ‘negotiations could not be conclusive [and] these things

cannot be put into a straitjacket’. 97 The reason for Chavan’s plea was the crisis in the Congress
96F

party in July 1969, following the dismissal of Morarji Desai as Finance Minister over the issue

of nationalisation of 14 major banks. Next month, the party’s candidate for India’s Presidency

was defeated, in a campaign orchestrated by Indira Gandhi, who supported the Vice-President’s

independent candidature. 98 These were the major milestones on the road to the Congress split
97F

94
TNA. FCO 37/364. James to Gore-Booth, 10 December 1968.
95
TNA. FCO 37/364. James to Gore-Booth, 7 January 1969.
96
TNA. FCO 37/364. O’Leary’s note, 30 May 1969.
97
TNA. FCO 37/364. Chavan’s statement, 1 August 1969.
98
TNA. FCO 37/362. 8 September 1969.
 19

of November 1969. 99 They also meant though, as Karan Singh put it, that the Prime Minister
98F

needed ‘to cut privy purses…to keep up momentum’. 100 99F

Haksar, however, continued to be cautious over ‘the manner of implementation and its

timing’, 101 and Foreign Secretary T.N. Kaul sought to assure the Western diplomatic corps in
100F

the capital that following bank nationalisation, ‘it was not likely that Mrs Gandhi would take

any dramatic initiative in economic policy’. 102 This reaffirmed their understanding of the privy
101F

purses issue as less an economic, and more a socio-political measure. The Congress split also

affected the princes’ Concord, as ‘three quarters of the Congress princes sided with Indira

Gandhi’s faction’, for they feared that her downfall might ‘unleash anarchy or communist

power’. To that extent, they acquiesced in her necessity to assert – symbolically – her ‘socialist

credentials [by] adherence to the ten-point programme’, 103 including abolition of privy purses
102F

and privileges.

On 8 April 1970, the union cabinet of the now-minority government of Congress (Ruling),

supported from the outside by the left parties, finally decided, on the advice of its Law Ministry

that there was no need to go to the Supreme Court to abolish privy purses. Next day, more than

40 Congress (R) MPs, former rulers and their supporters, addressed a letter to the Prime

Minister seeking reconsideration of this ‘unjust’ decision. This was responded to by over 50

Congress (R) MPs urging her ‘not to be deflected from her commitment to abolish…’. 104 This 103F

divide led The Times to declare that ‘Mrs Gandhi faces desertion by her left-wing allies’. 105 104F

99
See R.L. Hardgrave Jr., ‘The Congress in India -- Crisis and Split’, Asian Survey, 10: 2 (1970), pp. 256–262.
100
TNA. FCO 37/362. Talk with Karan Singh, 7 August 1969.
101
NMML. Subject File Serial No. 141. Haksar Papers (III Instalment). Haksar to Gandhi, 4 August 1969.
102
TNA. FCO 37/404. Conversation with Kaul, 26 August 1969.
103
Richter, ‘Princes in Indian Politics’, pp. 538–539.
104
TNA. FCO 37/594. 27 April 1970.
105
The Times, 4 May 1970.
 20

The field where this desertion was to be feared most was the parliament’s budget session in

spring 1970, in which the minority government re-introduced successfully the second bank

nationalisation bill with ‘compensation…to the affected shareholders’, 106 but baulked at the
105F

promised bill on privy purses. The government’s fears centred as much around abstentions

within the ruling party as challenge from the opposition. The scene was thus set for a summer

lobbying as it was clear that the present pattern of ruling by the Congress (R) – ‘a mixture of

radical titbits for the left, counterbalancing titbits for the right’ – could not continue. 107
106F

By August 1970, the economic radicalism that had seen bank nationalisation seemed tempered.

In her Independence Day speech, Indira Gandhi spoke about ‘a balance with the private sector’

and as this shift in emphasis became visible in the fourth 5-year plan, the Communist Party of

India (Marxist) withdrew its parliamentary support to her government. By now, the Prime

Minister, also holding the portfolio of Home Ministry, was ‘busy discussing the issue with the

princes in the hope of an amicable agreement’. 108 Against this background, when the
107F

legislative denouement came, it was surprisingly swift. On 1 September 1970, without much

public notice or press fanfare, Indira Gandhi introduced the constitution amendment bill to

abolish privy purses and princely privileges in the lower house.

The Prime Minister’s motives seemed related first, to the then-ongoing ‘land grab’ movement

indulged in by her party’s left-wing as well as her left allies. Apart from Naxalbari (West

Bengal), 109 the areas affected included the erstwhile princely states of Travancore and Cochin,
108F

106
Ramesh, Intertwined Lives, p. 185.
107
TNA. FCO 37/594. 27 May 1970.
108
TNA. FCO 37/594. 21 August 1970.
109
See Bernard D’ Mello, India after Naxalbari: Unfinished History (New York, 2018).
 21

along with Malabar (Madras/TN), and eastern UP and Bihar with their feudatories, 110 and ‘the 109F

government gave every appearance of being pushed into action by the Congress Left and the

Leftist parties’. 111 Second, there were murmurs that ‘she would go to the country if the bill is
110F

defeated’, reflecting both the usefulness of ‘such a defeat as an election issue’ and the fact that

as Home Minister, this was now her bill and its successful passage could only strengthen her. 112 111F

In the event, the bill got passed in the lower house by 336 to 155 votes. It was in the upper

house that on 5 September, the bill was defeated by 149 votes for and 75 against. As the number

of members present and voting was 224, the 2/3rd majority required was 149.33. The bill was

thus defeated by 1/3rd of a vote! Two days later, now-Finance Minister Chavan told a

disbelieving parliament that ‘the President [had] decided to de-recognise all the rulers…’

Sweetening the bitter pill, he added that the government would still make ‘transitional’

arrangements for them. 113 What had happened to turn abolition into de-recognition? A note by
112F

Haksar to the Prime Minister dated 5 September 1970 ‘justified’ the ‘decisive’ turn thus: ‘The

President has the unquestioned power to de-recognise…There is widespread support in the

country for putting an end to an antiquated system…’ 114 113F

These insider views of the Indian official chimed in with the outsider thoughts of the British

High Commissioner, Morrice James, on what Indira Gandhi had described as ‘a step in the
115
particular direction in which the country wants to go’. 114F Abolition was of interest in political,

constitutional, and historical terms and she had argued that the 1947 British dominion

covenants were ‘not contracts with individuals but political settlements’, which preceded the

110
See Joseph Tharamangalam, ‘The communist movement and the theory and practice of peasant mobilization
in South India’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 11: 4 (1981), pp. 487–498 and Rajendra Singh, ‘Agrarian Social
Structure and Peasant Unrest: A Study of Land-Grab Movement in District Basti, East U. P.’, Sociological
Bulletin, 23: 1 (1974), pp. 44–70.
111
Richter, ‘Princes in Indian Politics’, p. 539.
112
TNA. FCO 37/599. James to FCO, 2 September 1970.
113
TNA. FCO 37/599. 7 September 1970.
114
Ramesh, Intertwined Lives, pp. 185–186.
115
TNA. FCO 37/599. James to FCO, 11 September 1970. This and the next paragraph draw upon this letter.
 22

1950 Indian constitution, and therefore it was possible to abolish them. Insisting that in the

government’s opinion, privy purse was ‘not property [for] compensation’, but it was prepared

to provide for ‘some means…’ to help the rulers, she had concluded with her starting theme of

making the constitution ‘serve…the Indian people’.

The bargaining chip of 1947-50 had thus been cashiered in 1967-70 and, with the alienation of

the princes holding no political or territorial terrors for New Delhi, it was a question of mopping

up the legislative and legal aspects. Given the strengths of the parties in the upper house,

following its last biennial election in March 1970, the Prime Minister knew that she would

have ‘difficulty’ obtaining a 2/3rd majority there but, afterwards, there was little doubt among

observers that had ‘all members…been present, the bill would have been passed’. The

consequent presidential order de-recognising the princes gave rise to three kinds of

controversy, all of which were ominous broadly, as they concerned Eastminster cabinet

procedure, contempt of parliament and presidential power to de-recognise royalty. There was

the matter of the speed with which the presidential order had followed. The more important

questions however, which the Prime Minister herself asked Haksar, were, could there still be

any ‘agreement’ and would that be ‘politically wise’? 116 115F

Even more significant was her willingness to override the parliamentary process, which called

for a re-introduction of the bill in a special session. This was what Jawaharlal Nehru had done

in 1964, in similar circumstances. For Chavan to describe the parliamentary defeat as

‘technical’ was an illustration of the ‘cavalier attitude’ of this government, to Morrice James.

Last but not the least was the question uppermost on the minds of the princes that as there was

no ‘specific provision for de-recognition’, could the executive’s right to de-recognise, hitherto

116
NMML. Subject File Serial No. 191. Haksar Papers (III Instalment). Gandhi’s note, Undated/handwritten.
 23

accepted as implicit only in individual cases, be exercised in this ‘blanket manner’? With the

princes preparing to take their case to the judiciary, for the High Commissioner, ‘Mrs Gandhi

[had] ridden roughshod not only over a past governmental commitment but over the democratic

process, parliamentary decision, and the spirit and perhaps even the letter of the

constitution’; 117 in other words, over a very Westminster world.

116F

If this was the diplomatic reasoning, what was the reception of these events in the contemporary

British press? Writing for The Guardian, Inder Malhotra reckoned that the Prime Minister ‘did

not want…unnecessary delay’ given the bill’s ‘massive majority’ in both houses. 118 In 117F

response, The Times quoted the Maharaja of Bikaner declaring that ‘the next round would be

fought in the Supreme Court’. In turn, Chavan brought up the left parties’ objection to the

proposed ‘transitional relief’ to the princes, as they had already ‘received GBP 50 million since

1947’. 119 The Economist held privy purses as the reason for India having avoided ‘either a
118F

bloodshed or balkanisation’ then and reasoned that now that princes ‘no longer do the ruling,

their privileges…look like luxuries in a poor country’. It held their abolition as the price of the

support from ‘her communist allies’ that Indira Gandhi needed, to have this parliamentary left

help her take on ‘the communist guerrillas, the Naxalites’. It understood the technique used,

for ‘the defeat was so narrow that the executive order cannot be described as a flat contradiction

of the will of parliament’. 120 It was in The Scotsman that Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, asking the
119F

question ‘How purse-less Princes will make out?’, pointed out that ‘princes without purses will

not become paupers but their pensioners/dependents…might’. 121 120F

117
TNA. FCO 37/599. James to FCO, 11 September 1970.
118
The Guardian, 7 September 1970.
119
The Times, 8 September 1970.
120
The Economist, 12 September 1970.
121
The Scotsman, 17 September 1970. On this, see Priya Naik, ‘All the king’s men: regal ministers of eclipsed
empires’, in Aldrich and McCreery (eds.) Monarchies and Decolonisation in Asia.
 24

In political terms, the first casualties were those 7 ex-rulers, then-Congress MPs, who had voted

against the bill. Of the 2 who did not, the notable name was that of Karan Singh of Kashmir.

Given these numbers, the Congress (R) had estimated that it would gain more from socialist

radicals than it would lose from princely sycophants, some of whom were heading to Britain.

In September 1970, the Maharao of Kutch approached Mountbatten claiming that he could ‘no

longer live in Kutch, where [his reduced] status of a private citizen will [lead] to harassment’.

Recalling that his ‘house [had] always been loyal to the Crown’, he plaintively asked if it

‘would be possible for [him] to acquire British citizenship or permission to reside permanently

[there]?’ 122 The FCO officials weighed the implications of this request, the answer to which
121F

was that ‘provided the Maharao has funds, he [could] stay and, after five years, apply for British

nationality’. But there were two clouds on the horizon: one, the then-imminent immigration act

of 1971 that was expected to ‘make the situation more difficult’ for cases like these, and two,

that this might be ‘the first of many requests’ and necessitated a ‘general policy’. 123 It was
122F

considered ‘not unlikely that other dispossessed rulers may appeal’ to Mountbatten or that ‘he

has already [not] been active on their behalf’. 124 After all, he still considered himself ‘the
123F

Ombudsman for the Indian Princes’. 125 124F

Endgames in the 1970 Supreme Court and the 1971 General Election

On 14 October 1970, a special bench of 11 judges of the Supreme Court, headed by the Chief

Justice Mohammad Hidayatullah, started hearing the petition filed by the Maharaja of Gwalior

and others, challenging the constitutional validity of the presidential order. This too was a very

British world, with the Trinity, Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn educated Hidayatullah, one of

122
TNA. FCO 37/599. Singh to Mountbatten, 8 September 1970.
123
TNA. FCO 37/599. Birch’s note, 14 September 1970.
124
TNA. FCO 37/599. Sutherland’s note, 18 September 1970.
125
Ashton, ‘Mountbatten, the royal family, and British influence’, p. 78.
 25

whose civil servant brothers had been a two-time Foreign Secretary of Pakistan! The High

Commission’s officials found the corridors of power in New Delhi abuzz with

…ideas of the PM’s extravagant colleagues to use a decision for the princes…to mount an electoral

campaign, victory in which might be interpreted as a mandate to rewrite the constitution…not [considered]

democratic since the Constituent Assembly which drew it up was elected upon a restricted franchise [in

1945-6] covering less than 20%... 126

125F

That there was little popular support for the princes was clear; equally though, it seemed that

it was their privileges that animated people. When in November 1970, Robert Cormack – future

British Ambassador to Congo and Sweden – visited Jaipur, he was told by the Rajasthan

Finance Minister that ‘he did not mind if the princes were compensated…but it was intolerable

that they should be a super class of citizen’, adding that he hoped the court would ‘interpret the

law in the spirit of the will of the people’. In the event, on 15 December 1970, the judges ‘by

a majority of 9:2 found for the princes...’ 127 The government’s case was that the covenants
126F

with the rulers in 1947 were political documents, which recreated imperial paramountcy post-

independence and, therefore, depended ‘on the willingness of the government’. Neither was

the payment of privy purses a ‘legal obligation’ nor was the court competent to hear disputes

relating to them. These claims were dismissed by the judges, who held that British

‘paramountcy lapsed on 15 August 1947 and did not devolve on the [Indian] President’.

Therefore, the presidential order had no validity and the court found it ‘a clear infringement of

[princes’] Fundamental Rights’. Secondly, ‘to withdraw [princely] recognition en masse was

wholly outside’ the scope of the rights of the President and, third, the bar to the jurisdiction of

the court did not apply to the privy purses.

126
TNA. FCO 37/599. James to FCO, 19 November 1970.
127
TNA. FCO 37/599. James to FCO, 15 December 1970.
 26

With the legal circle thus squared, the ball was back in the political court of the Prime Minister.

She was keeping her own counsel in the face of characteristic cries from the left ‘for the

recreation of a Constituent Assembly to amend sections of the constitution dealing with

Fundamental Rights…’ 128 Politically speaking, it did appear ‘a little odd’ that parliament
127F

should have no power ‘even by due process to amend the constitution’. A third way pointed

back to negotiations with the princes most of whom, the High Commission was told, believed

that they had ‘come to the end of the line’. The court’s judgement had been a shot in their arm

and one possibility was for them to ‘voluntarily give up privileges in return for compensation’

for their purses. Even the union cabinet had been ‘discussing the quantum of compensation’.

Whatever happened, one thing was clear: ‘Twice [in 1970], first over bank nationalisation and

now over privy purses, Mrs Gandhi [had] shown disregard…for the parliamentary

process…Twice she [was] brought up sharply by the Court’. Murmurings were growing about

‘Mrs Gandhi’s hankering, shared by many of her advisers, for a greater measure of

authoritarianism’.

Y.B. Chavan, ‘who had championed the cause of abolishing…more consistently than [most],

felt that the game was lost’. However, he maintained that ‘the measure had the approval of the

nation, and that the verdict of the Court was not the last word’. 129 Pointing out that in 9 by-
128F

elections held across 4 different states, after the split in the Congress, Gandhi’s party had won

5/7 seats contested, Chavan called it an ‘indication of the direction in which the wind was

blowing’ and called for ‘early elections so that party could take advantage of [this]

psychological shift’. 130 On 27 December 1970, the Prime Minister duly announced that
129F

128
TNA. FCO 37/599. James to FCO, 21 December 1970. The rest of this paragraph draws upon this note.
129
Krishnan, Chavan and the Troubled Decade, p. 176.
130
Ibid., p. 250.
 27

‘elections to the Lok Sabha due in 1972…would be held in early-1971’; 131 the first-ever mid-
130F

term polls in India with ‘more of a plebiscitary character than any previous election’. 132 The 131F

scene was set for her ‘Garibi hatao’ [remove poverty] campaign, at the end of which, as the

Financial Times headline said on 6 March 1971, ‘Mrs Gandhi holds the Centre’. For the first

time since 1951 ‘more Princes lost than won’, 133 and overall, they were now at the
132F

‘government’s mercy’. 134 As they had done in the past, ‘the princes turned to Britain’, 135
133F 134F

specifically to Mountbatten, who again appealed to her ‘to be generous’, adding that her father

‘would have approved of [it]’. 136 He was cautiously hopeful in his communication with the
135F

Maharaja of Bikaner that he had ‘continued to help…but [had] to be careful not to come out

into the open as this proved counterproductive’. 137 136F

Mountbatten had been passing on princely approaches about ‘their prospects of settling in

Britain to Buckingham Palace, which in turn sought clarification from the [FCO]. The

answer…was that the princes’ titles might be acknowledged in private [as] some…had British

titles [but] dual nationality was out of the question [as] India did not recognise it’. 138 If any 137F

Conservative plans for ‘Princely Ulster’s in India did not come off in 1947 because of, among

other reasons, ‘something to the impossibility of basing a campaign at Westminster on the

obscure rights of the feudal, alien princes’, 139 then their privy purses could hardly be salvaged
138F

now from that vantage.

131
Ramesh, Intertwined Lives, pp. 186–87.
132
Richter, ‘Princes in Indian Politics’, p. 540.
133
Harish Khare, ‘Restructuring of Values: Princes in 1971 Elections’, Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 15: 4 (1973), p. 413.
134
TNA. FCO 37/812. March 1971.
135
Ashton, ‘Mountbatten, the royal family, and British influence in post-independence India and Burma’, p. 77.
136
Hartley Library (HL), University of Southampton. MB1/K146. Mountbatten Papers. Mountbatten to Gandhi,
22 March 1971.
137
HL. MB1/K26. Mountbatten Papers. Mountbatten to Singh, 22 April 1971.
138
Ashton, ‘Mountbatten, the royal family, and British influence in post-independence India and Burma’, p. 79.
139
Nicholas Owen, ‘The Conservative Party and Indian Independence, 1945-1947’, The Historical Journal, 46:
2 (2003), p. 429, p. 432.
 28

Instead, on 9 August 1971, the day her Ambassador in Moscow signed the Indo-Soviet

Friendship Treaty, Indira Gandhi tabled the Constitution (26th) Amendment Bill to abolish

privy purses and privileges in the parliament. 140 She was ready to discard this ‘fifth wheel of
139F

colonialism’. 141 By December 1971, when the Indian army was marching on to Dhaka in the
140F

Bangladesh war, this abolition was ‘no longer a political issue’. 142 Its appeal had eroded so
141F

much that no compensation was provided for in the new bill and yet the debate in the parliament

was ‘flat’ on precisely the point on which the court had struck down the original order. The bill

became law on 28 December 1971 capping ‘Indira Gandhi’s year’. 143 In December 1972,
142F

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto would follow her lead and issue his own presidential order abolishing the

privy purses and privileges of the rulers of states acceding to Pakistan in 1947. 144 In May 1975,
143F

her government would also abolish the rule of the Chogyal (monarch) of Sikkim, making it

India’s 22nd state, from being a ‘British protectorate since 1861’ and enjoying a special

relationship ‘under the Indo-Sikkim Treaty of 1950’, in another case of ‘internal affairs’ for

the FCO. 145

144F

Even when she would be ousted from office in 1977, by a combination of Gandhian

Jayaprakash Narayan’s call for ‘total revolution’ and her response of imposing an emergency,

the successor Janata Party government would not repeal the abolition, instead amending the

fundamental right to private property. 146 As for the princes, they would endure in the public
145F

imagination/media as ‘symbols of regional identity and rajadharma’, and in electoral

140
TNA. FCO 37/814. 9 August 1971.
141
Khare, ‘Restructuring of Values’, p. 408.
142
TNA. FCO 37/814. 10 December 1971.
143
TNA. FCO 37/1093. 10 January 1972.
144
TNA. FCO 37/1335. 31 December 1972.
145
TNA. FCO 37/1534. Mountbatten-Brimelow correspondence, 1 and 13 November 1974. TNA. FCO
37/1672. Deas to Stitt, 16 January 1975.
146
See Prakash, Emergency Chronicles and Ananth, The Indian Constitution and Social Revolution.
 29

politics/governance, apart from continuing to offer a ‘fantasy for post-modern

consumption’. 147 The arc of their afterlife, from losing ‘regal privileges and privy purses’ to
146F

the consequent conversion of ‘their palaces into hotels’, was accompanied by their

‘popular…depiction on a logo [of] Air India [whose] maharaja was presented as a likeable and

humorous persona’! 148 147F

Conclusion

Across Asia today, there remain some monarchs with their spectacles, while the memories of

others live on, sometimes in the diaspora – like those of Maharaja Ranjit and Dalip Singh

among Sikhs in Britain. Royal legacies linger in diverse trails, especially for the British-

maintained rulers beyond South Asia, like in Malaysia (1963) and Brunei (1984), but all show

a refashioning of public roles. Their narratives from the ‘endgame’ of empire saw first, ‘willing

or coerced acquiescence’, then a ‘cessation’ of their sovereignty with caveats/guarantees and

lastly, with ‘heightened national sentiment’, the end of their ‘privileges’, leaving them as

nostalgic ‘founts of ceremonies…’ or exotic ‘sites of heritage’. 149 148F

In this corpus, the abolition of privy purses in India was an exercise in ending a remnant of the

Raj, within a wider inter-generational transition. This article has traced the response of the

ruling Congress Party and government, between 1967 and 1971 with a split in the middle, in

the hope to highlight an internal politics from decolonisation that impinged upon inter-

governmental relations, while being emblematic of an era of decline of British informal

147
Ramusack, The Indian Princes and their States, p. 278. Richter, ‘Princes in Indian Politics’, p. 541.
148
See Jim Masselos, ‘Decolonised rulers Rajas, maharajas and others in post-colonial India’, in Aldrich and
McCreery (eds.) Monarchies and Decolonisation in Asia.
149
See Aldrich and McCreery, ‘Monarchies, Decolonisation and Post-Colonial Asia’, in their (eds.) Monarchies
and Decolonisation in Asia.
 30

influence in Indian political circles. There was little leverage or desire left, by 1971, in

London’s relationship with New Delhi, to stop its ‘breakwaters’ of 1857 from being emptied.

These cultural symbols of British rule in India were sustained by a colonial financial set-up and

its curtailment was thus a moment of passage into contemporary politics. In the late-1960s,

this removal of purses and privileges associated with the old regime served as a barometer for

re-fashioning loyalty to a new Congress, as nationalist leaders targeted them for personal desire

and political dividend. The efforts to end these psychological inheritances were, however, less

a crucible of a substantial skirmish and more a measure of symbolic socialism, in which

Indira’s India was to be ushered in, papering over this Nehruvian fault-line.

Instead of being swept away in the late-1940s, princely India was offered a sweet deal over

opposition from socialist and communist parties. From the mid-1960s however, Congress

party/government felt pressure to cut down these imperial leftovers, given their increasing

patronage of the right-wing opposition. Internationally, there was a sense that the princes would

call upon the British government and personalities like Mountbatten and open another front in

the strained Indo-British relations of the post-Nehru era. After all, they had been an integral

part of the empire’s force and facade. Afterwards though, Britain’s New Commonwealth

relationship with the Indian Union had seen paramountcy being assailed by accession, whose

swallowing was made easier with purses, perks, and privileges.

This had maintained a patina, shaping perceptions like those by successive British Prime

Ministers in the 1950s-60s that ‘in so far as any country from the West can exercise influence

[in India] …the task…lies upon us’, as things in India appeared to be still done ‘according to
 31

the old style’. 150 That continuum was pierced through after Nehru, as everything from British
149F

symbols to these buffer princes were taken down across the country in a ‘leftward turn’. 151 150F

They had been co-opted in 1947-48 but now the Congress state struck at their lifestyle, less for

an economic rationale and more for political, socio-cultural reasons. British ‘official’ discretion

and Indian disdain confirmed an overlapping understanding that this dimension of their shared

past might imperil future relations. From London’s perspective, the princes were not such

actors anymore, for whom it would stake prestige or could wield support. The mixed and

mingled nature of their post-1947 relations had run the course of that transfer of power as a

post-colonial generation shed yet another of the colonial skins of British India.

150
TNA. CAB 129/78. 15 November 1955. TNA. CAB 129/93. 4 June 1958.
151
See McGarr, ‘The Viceroys and Disappearing from the Roundabouts in Delhi’.