In the opening paragraph of its report the Butler Committee observed:
2. That is how 19 years ago the problem of the Indian States presented itself to the authors of this important report on the Indian States. But were there really two Indias? And was the problem merely to hold them together?
3. A glance at the map showed that geographically India was one and indivisible. The territories of the Indian States were dovetailed into, and closely interwoven with, those of what was then British India. Even where the map showed solid blocks of the Indian States the territories were so irregular that the States had enclaves in the Provinces and vice versa.
4. The main part of the communications essential to the welfare of the whole of the country passed in and out of the territories of the Indian States. A community of interests in the wider economic field linked the States with the Provinces. If the States and the Provinces failed to co-operate in implementing policies on matters of common concern, there was a vacuum which rendered it impossible to enforce effective measures in respect of such matters in any part of the country.
5. The geographical set-up of the Indian States did not coincide with any ethnic, racial or linguistic divisions. The peoples of the Provinces and the States had suffered alike from the waves of foreign invasions and foreign domination. Close ties of cultural affinity, no less than those of blood and sentiment, bound the people of the States and the Provinces together.
6. What was it then that separated the Indian States from the rest of India? Firstly, the historical factor that unlike the Provinces the States had not been annexed by the British Government. Secondly, the political factor that the States maintained the traditional monarchical form of Government.
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