Princely state

A princely state (also called native state) was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British Indian government, but rather by an indigenous ruler under a form of indirect rule, subject to a subsidiary alliance and the suzerainty or paramountcy of the British Crown. The rulers of the princely states were very largely allowed to govern their own territories, but were not allowed relations with states outside the Indian Empire, and were not allowed to fight wars against other princely states. British pressure on the rulers to modernize their domains increased over the period. At the time of the British withdrawal, 565 princely states were officially recognized in the Indian Subcontinent, apart from thousands of zamindari estates and jagirs. In 1947, princely states covered 40% of the area of pre-independence India and constituted 23% of its population. The most important princely states had their own Indian political residencies, quasi-diplomatic missions of the British Raj: Hyderabad State, Mysore, Pudukkottai and Travancore in the South, Jammu and Kashmir and Gwalior in North and Indore in Central India. The most prominent of them – roughly a quarter of the total – had the status of a salute state, one whose ruler was entitled to a set number of gun salutes on ceremonial occasions. The princely states varied greatly in status, size, and wealth; the premier 21-gun salute states of Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir were each over 200,000 km2 (77,000 sq mi) in size. In 1941, Hyderabad had a population of over 16 million, while Jammu and Kashmir had a population of slightly over 4 million. At the other end of the scale, the non-salute principality of Lawa covered an area of 49 km2 (19 sq mi), with a population of just below 3,000....