On Ceasing to Be

An incongruous visitor sat uncomfortably in a straight-backed chair among the followers gathered at Mohandas Gandhi's evening prayers last week. What Gandhi said made His Highness of Faridkot, ruler of 200,000 in the Punjab, more uncomfortable.

Like the other rulers of India's 562 Princely States, Faridkot will face sudden political loneliness when the British withdraw late this summer. The princes have to decide quickly whether to throw their lot with one of the new Indian nations or try to go it alone. Faridkot, together with the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Maharaja of Travancore, had declared he wished to retain his princely independence. But Gandhi threw his enormous prestige behind the Congress solution: end princely privilege. "Rulers," he told his visitor, "have only the right to exist if they become the trustees and servants of the people. If the princes do not change, they must cease to be."*

Next day the All-India Committee of the Congress Party got together and unanimously resolved that it "cannot admit the right of any state of India to declare its independence and to live in isolation from the rest of India."

* Gandhi, who many a time has said he would live to the age of 125, said last week that he, too, might soon cease to be. Now 77, he explained: "There is no place [in a violent India] for me. I have given up hope of living for 125 years. I might last a year or two, but that is a different matter."

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