Partition of British India

With the partition of British India and withdrawal of the British from the Indian subcontinent, the Indian Independence Act provided that the princely states were released from their subsidiary alliances and other obligations to the British, while the British withdrew from their obligations to the states, leaving the rulers to decide whether to accede to India or Pakistan or to remain independent outside both. Sardar Patel said in a speech in January 1948, "On the lapse of Paramountcy, every Indian State became a separate independent entity." The political integration of the princely states into the two new dominions was begun by many accessions in August 1947, but mostly it followed on later. Critically, the rulers of the states of Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, and others, chose independence.