Often forgotten in the narratives of how India achieved independence is the question of the princely states. Ruling over two-fifths of pre-Partition India, the princes were given the choice of acceding to India or Pakistan or becoming independent, once the treaties and instruments that bound them to the British Crown lapsed on the transfer of power. (Fourth from right) Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel with President Rajendra Prasad (centre), Prime Minister Jawaharalal Nehru (fourth from left), state governors and Rajpramukhs ahead of a conference at Government House in New Delhi in March 1950. HT archives The man rightly credited with saving India from Balkanisation, had enough states exercised their legal rights, is Vallabhbhai Patel who took up the critical post of states minister in June 1947. Today, Patel is often called the Bismarck of India for repeating the German chancellor’s feat of cajoling a group of scattered and disparate princedoms into giving up their sovereignty and creating a cohesive nation state. Britain’s most loyal allies, the 562 princely states, were virtually untouchable — only those rulers who committed …