The London Declaration was a declaration issued by the 1949 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference on the issue of India's continued membership of the Commonwealth of Nations, an association of independent states formerly part of the British Empire, after India's transition to a republican constitution. Drafted by the Indian statesman V. K. Krishna Menon, the declaration stated the agreement of the prime ministers to the continued membership of India in the organization after it becomes a republic. By that declaration, the Government of India had expressed its acceptance of the king as a symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and head of the Commonwealth. The declaration dealt only with India, seen as an exceptional case, and it reaffirmed that the other members of the Commonwealth owed common allegiance to the Crown with an initial acceptance of the king as a head of the Commonwealth. However it did establish a precedent that republicanism is compatible with membership in the organization. History The declaration stated vis-à-vis India: This formula has since been deemed to be a sufficient precedent for all other countries. The issue had been discussed at the 1948 Prime Ministers Conference, the agenda of which was dominated by the imminent decisions of two states—India and Ireland—to declare themselves republics. At the meeting, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru proposed a Ten Point Memorandum on the settlement between India and the Commonwealth. The Cabinet Committee on Commonwealth Relations recognised that Nehru's proposals could not constitute a basis for continued Commonwealth membership, and that a further conference would be required. On 16 May 1949, during the Constituent Assembly Debates for the framing of a republican constitution, Nehru declared in the house that: At the next conference, in April 1949, Nehru, seeking above all to avoid two-tiered membership, conceded a more agreeable three-point programme, based upon common Commonwealth citizenship, a declaration of India's continued membership, and recognition of the monarch in a separate capacity than that as monarch. This met general agreement, particularly with the new South African Prime Minister Daniel François Malan, and, over the next two days, the draft was crafted into a final agreement. To avoid criticisms about dropping the word British from the name of the Commonwealth, Nehru conceded a reference to the "British Commonwealth of Nations" in the opening paragraph of the document as an historically-appropriate reference. King George VI was reticently in favour of the