Word: chambers
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Residents watched for one car with a battleship searchlight on top, one with bulletproof steel shutters, another with a small pipe organ perched on the running board. The richest and most eccentric group of men in the world were coming to town for the annual meeting of the Indian Chamber of Princes...
...spite of their scandalous feudal economics, the princes are useful to Britain as buffers against Indian nationalism and the popular Indian National Congress. Britain's technique, therefore, has been to flatter them with a pretense of needing their advice. The Chamber ot Princes, "a permanent consultative body," which was set up in 1921 to implement the pretense, has had pretty regular annual meetings but has never proved much...
Startling news, however, was made at last week's Chamber. Most of Britain's real political work is done quietly, across dinner tables and on elephants' backs, by so-called political agents. Until 1929, even the Chamber of Princes met in secret. But last week for the first time, Britain spoke to the princes publicly and sharply at an open meeting of the Chamber...
...assembled potentates, sitting on leather benches under coats of arms emblazoned on the Chamber's paneled walls, the Viceroy, the Marquess of Linlithgow, who is very pally with the princes on social occasions, told them to: 1) reform their governments; 2) stay at home to rule instead of spending eight months of the year, as many do, in Cannes, Biarritz, Paris; 3) stop spending revenues on their own pleasures. Britain had been scared into this unprecedented dressing down by the success of Mohandas Gandhi's recent fast to force reforms in the state of Rajkot (TIME, March...
Next day the Chamber's native chancellor, the Maharaja of Nawanagar, made a sympathetic speech acknowledging the grievances. Then the princes drove home in their lavender limousines and gold-plated sports jobs...