Federal Plans in Pre-Independence India

Abstract

Did federalism have historical antecedents in South Asia? Was it the only possible institutional configuration to rule such a diverse and large territory? Certainly under the Mughal period, but even further back, modes of governance premised upon territorial autonomy were devices to consolidate territory. While this autonomy did not involve a de jure division of sovereignty, and the central ruler maintained supreme power, de facto territorial power sharing operated. This was because of the constraints imposed by geographic distance, cultural diversity, limited technology, and means of transport and communication. As developments in technology and communications overcame the constraints of ruling large territories, the functions of government expanded. Even the historian Reginald Coupland, a fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford, who wrongly argued that “there was… no division of authority, no trace of the federal idea in the constitution of British India before 1919” conceded that in practice “superintendence and control” by the center were limited by distance and the sheer volume of work involved (1942, 10). These restrictions on “superintendence and control” have been a constant in organizing the governance of the subcontinent, ensuring that territorial autonomy remained a necessary feature of successful government in the subcontinent. But the extent to which they were a form of ethnic conflict regulation is more contestable, as many provincial boundaries did not coincide with particular ethnic groups.

The British rule… disrupted the natural evolution of India into an authentic federal polity.

(Khan 1992, 37)

The British could not have organised India as they did if the people had not already been… apprenticed to the idea of unity. Nor, in consequence, could independent India have grown so quickly in unity and strength. Mr Nehru was sometimes called a great Mughal; he was their heir in a truer sense than perhaps he himself realised.

(Spear 1965, 51)

We divide and you rule.

(Mulana Muhammad Ali to the British Government in 1930)¹

The basis of Pakistan is the fear of interference by the Centre in Muslim majority areas as the Hindus will be a majority in the centre.

(Azad 1988, 152)