Separatist movements of India the ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir in 1925, and he was the reigning monarch at the conclusion of British rule in the subcontinent in 1947. With the impending independence of India, the British announced that the British Paramountcy over the princely states would end, and the states were free to choose between the new Dominions of India and Pakistan or to remain independent. It was emphasized that independence was only a `theoretical possibility' because, during the long rule of the British in India, the states had come to depend on British Indian government for a variety
Political warfare in British colonial India required replacing of pre-existing political institutions and replacing them with centralised, territory-wide, and bureaucratic legal-administrative institutions that were controlled by colonial officials. Indirect rule was a form of colonial domination via collaboration with indigenous intermediaries who controlled regional political institutions. Colonial India was a mix of the two types of rule. While the Civil Service ran a large portion of the country, "in peripheral regions, chiefs, princes, sultans, and other indigenous leaders controlled "customary" legal-administrative institutions that were organised along patrimonial lines." Leading colonial officials believed indirect rule was more adaptive and culturally sensitive, far superior to direct rule, in