PARAMOUNTCY OF THE STATES 203
the Crown does not remain. Can Independent India claim to inherit the prerogative rights of the Crown ? The answer is yes. She can. Independent India will be a succession State. For an answer to this question one must look to the provisions of International Law relating to succession among States. Oppenheim admits that a succeeding State can inherit certain rights of the preceding State. From Hall’s International Law, it would appear that among other things, property and advantages secured to it by treaty can be inherited by a succession State. India as a succession State she can inherit certain rights. On this point the following extracts from Hall’s International Law are relevant :
“And as the old State continues its life uninterruptedly, it possesses everything belonging to it as a person, which it has not expressly lost; so that property and advantages secured to it by treaty, which are enjoyed by it as a personal whole, or by its subjects in virtue of their being members of that whole, continue to belong to it. On the other hand, rights possessed in respect of the lost territory, including rights under treaties relating to cessions of territory and demarcations of boundary, obligations contracted with reference to it alone, and property which is within it, and has, therefore, a local character, or which, though not within it, belongs to state institutions localised there, transfer themselves to the new state person.”
The conclusion is that the Indian States will continue to be in the same position when India becomes Independent as they are now. They will be sovereign States to the extent they are, but they cannot be independent States so long as they remain under the suzerainty, as they must be, either of the Crown, if India remains a Dominion and under the suzerainty of the succession State, if India becomes independent. While the suzerainty remains they can never be independent. The States may declare themselves independent. But they must realise that while the suzerainty lasts and it must continue even when India becomes independent, India will not recognize their independence nor can a foreign State accord them the status of an independent State. The only way by which the Indian States can be free themselves from Paramountcy would be to bring about a merger of sovereignty and suzerainty. That can happen only when the States join the Indian Union as constituent units thereof. The States’ spokesmen ought to know this. But as they seem to have