Pomp & Princes

Just as though wizened little St. Gandhi had never existed, India's Viceroy, his long legs encased in white kerseymere knee breeches, drove smiling through the streets of New Delhi to open the eleventh annual session of the Chamber of Princes. Bearded lancers with gay fluttering pennons trotted in front of his State carriage. A bodyguard perched behind holding a huge umbrella over the viceregal head.

In the Chamber, princes, nawabs, rajas and maharajas sat under their painted armorial shields, fingering their silky beards, their brocaded turbans, their jeweled necklaces, delighted that the Viceroy had revived this ceremony. There was work for them to do. They were assembled to consider a resolution by which the native states would agree to join a federated union with British India. Said the Viceroy:

"Your Highnesses realize as well as I do that the forces of repression cannot be an end in themselves, and that I have only adopted them so as to produce conditions in which we shall be able to proceed with the details of the great constitutional changes which are pending."

The princes thought it over for two days, finally adopted the following resolution:

"This Chamber declares the Indian States will join an all-India federation on the assumption that the Crown will accept the responsibility of guaranteeing to them the necessary safeguards."

In other words the princes, realizing that a united India must come, accepted the inevitable, but put it directly up to King George to keep them on what is left of their thrones.

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