Princely State

A princely state (also called native state (legally) or Indian state) was a nominally sovereign entity of India during the British Raj that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by a local ruler under a form of indirect rule, subject to a subsidiary alliance and the suzerainty or paramountcy of the British Crown.

There were officially 565 princely states in India at the time of independence in 1947, but the great majority had contracted with the Viceroy of India to provide public services and tax collection. Only 21 major ones had actual state governments, and among them only four were large (Hyderabad, Mysore, Baroda and Jammu and Kashmir). They acceded to one or other of the two new independent nations of India and Pakistan between 1947 and 1949. The accession process was largely peaceful except in the case of Jammu & Kashmir (whose king decided to accede to India, but only after an invasion by Pakistan based tribal militia) and Hyderabad. All the princes were eventually pensioned off. Some two hundred of the states had an area of less than 25 square kilometres

Princely State

Kingdom of Travancore
Kingdom of Mysore
Kingdom of Hyderabad
Princely State of Awadh
Princely State of Bahawalpur 
Princely State of Tripura