Practise the Principle of Subsidiarity

The centre has left states to buy vaccines in the open market. This is not co-operative federalism at all. Instead, India should practise the principle of subsidiarity so that fast action is taken at the local level

- Kamaljit Singh Garewal

POWERS, jurisdiction and authority were always primary questions that victors addressed when territory was conquered, the defeated people vanquished, their rulers exiled and their elite decimated. Usually the new rulers would restore a semblance of peace, appoint one of their own trusted generals to control the land, collect taxes and extract war retribution. Sometimes a member of the defeated clan would defect and join the victors for reward of office. It is intrinsic to every conquest that the spirit of the conquered people must be destroyed completely to prevent them from rising again.

A good example of peace after conquest was Europe, conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte. France became very powerful, introduced its Code Napoleon, which is still extant today. Napoleon appointed one of his marshals on vacant thrones of Sweden and Norway and had matrimonial alliances with ruling families. After Napoleon’s defeat, the European powers met at Vienna in 1815 to settle the future of Europe through the gentle art of diplomacy, alliances, detentes and balance of power. Peace lasted until 1914, but after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles (1919) imposed such excessive war reparations on the vanquished that the defeated German nation rose again. The consequences were devastating. Coincidentally, the years 1815 and 1919 are also important landmarks in our constitutional history.

At about the same time as the Napoleonic years, the decline of the Mara thas also began, leading the East India Company to expand its territory under Lord Wellesley and Lord Lake. Treaties with ruling princes of Rajput tana are a good example to show how unfair and one-sided clauses were imposed through treaties. These treaties defined the relationships between the Company and the ruling princes and were to remain in force past the Government of India Acts 1919 and 1935, right up to the lapse of paramountcy in 1947.