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 strengthen their grip on power. This was either to create a hierarchy of racial types arose, "each arranged into appropriate social classes, whose spiritual and material improvement were entrusted to the paternal direction of gentlemanly rulers" or 'a single hierarchy all its subjects, Indian and British'. The Army and the Civil Service were the main instruments of British power, staffed by only a small number of white officials. This imperial service became, "a large vested interest of the educated upper middle class. By 1913–14, for example, the Government of India devoted no less than 53 million pounds (65 percent of