The Story of Integration of the Indian States by V.P. Menon was, actually, the concluding chapters of a story that began much earlier. It began as early as 1921 when the Indian National Congress entered the states arena with clear intentions of using the spontaneous, native, democratic movements in the princely states towards their own objective of integration, without, in turn, committing themselves to the states people’s own programmes for ‘responsible government’. In this, the policy of the Indian nationalists towards the states’ people’s movement was dictated, not so much by the needs and aspirations of the states people, but, by their own necessities to counter the machinations of the British Government which sought to counterpoise the princes against them. This study marks a new approach by treating the subject not as a mere projection of the national movement, nor as a study of the democratic movement in the princely states in isolation, but as an interaction of different elements – the states people, the states administration, the Indian nationalists and the British administrators – moving towards their different aims.
