Appendix—IX : What about the States ? - Page 558

APPENDIX—IX

WHAT ABOUT THE STATES ?

“Dr. B. R. Ambedkar has given a timely warning to both the Indian States and the Interim Government. The States cannot have an existence apart from the Indian Union.

As a Constitutionalist, Dr. Ambedkar speaks with authority, when he asks the Interim Government to notify the British Government that the people of India will never recognise any Indian State as a Sovereign Independent State.

But something more than the letter of the law is necessary to restrain the States rulers from their folly and their peoples from its consequences.

What are the sanctions of the Interim Government in regard to a definite States policy ? The sanctions are fourfold : The will of the Indian people, the will of the States people, the prevailing influence of Democracy and the blind autocracy of the rulers.

It is a fact that not all rulers are against Democracy but then these rulers are for the Union.

Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyer grandiloquently said, “They that are not with us, are against us.”

This should be the guiding rule of the Indian Union.

Sir C. P. Ramaswami’s attitude, however, is transitory. He is himself a traveller through Travancore. He may stay a year, two years or five. But he must go. His claim to speak on behalf of Travancore is very slender. The matured wisdom of the Maharaja of Cochin is bound to carry weight with the sister State of Travancore, sooner rather than later.

More serious is the menace of Hyderabad, sprawling in the very centre of India, where no passing Premier but the ruling Prince himself bars the entrance into the Union.