INDIAN PRINCES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 56, 15 September 1928, Page 20

INDIAN PRINCES

ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE CROWN. The Maharajah Dhiraj of Patiala, Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes, speaking to the East India Association in London recently on the relation of the Indian States to the Crown, said that every Prince in India was agreed that the present system should be altered. "I thinli it is fair to say," he declared, "that we are all agreed that there must be something like a federation for India; and by. federation I mean nothing more than a machinery which will enable British India and Indian India to meet together at the top, and to discuss jointly iv a manner consonant with the interests and importance of each, all policies and proposals which affect India as a whole. I want to emphasise most strongly that there is not, and cannot be, any ill-will on tho part of the Indian Princes to^ wards the Nationalist movement in India. We Princes, like all the greatest of the Nationalist leaders in British India, are tan believers in. the. value of the British connection. We do believe, however, that it is perfectly, com-, patible with that connection that .Indians should have greater, power ; over tho managemeut of their own affairs than they possess to-day. ■ , ... "We always had in our minds -the three main requirements which wo put forward to Mr. Montagu—an effective. Chamber of Princes, a real • .AdvisoryCouncil, and a system of .impartial ai>'| bitration," the Maharajah continued. "I do plead in all earnestness for a real effort by people in England .and people in India alike to understand theIndian States. ;.,•.- -.. ;. ; . ; "I only wish that those .persons who take advantage of nn occasional ;fol]y:or extravagance in one individual among what is, after all, a very considerable number of rulers to pillory. the whole order of Princes could spare time to oomc. and visit, I do not say the model States, but the States whose rulers constitute the rank and filo of the princely order. I think these critics would be surprised. "It has sometimes been said that rulers of Indian States aro autocrats. I do not quite know tho full implications of that term to Western ears, but this I do know, that no Indian ruler can resist, or would dream of resisting, the public opinion of his people. That is not our conception of kingship at all; nor is it the idea which our people hold. To us kingship is an office which has rights and which has obligations. The two aro indissoluble linked."