Title: Dethroned – Patel, Menon and the Integration of Princely India
Author: John
Zubrzycki
Publisher:
Juggernaut, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789353451691
Pages: 337
“My
own personal wish is to abdicate and to serve Islam. I have not amassed a
fortune but that does not matter as long as I can serve Islam and Pakistan. I
am prepared to serve Pakistan in any capacity”. This excerpt is from a letter
written by Hamidullah Khan, the Nawab (king) of Bhopal to Jinnah on Aug 2,
1947, hardly two weeks before freedom dawned on India. A cursory glance at the
map would convince any political novice that the Bhopal ruler’s wish to join
Pakistan was physically impossible, yet it contained a political dynamite that
was sure to wreck the unity of India. There were around 565 native states in
undivided India, of which only ten states came inside the geographical boundary
of Pakistan which easily acceded to it with the exception of Kalat in
Baluchistan. The situation in India was different. All the Muslim rulers and
even some of the Hindu rulers did not want to join India for various reasons,
most of them religious or selfish. The native states were too dispersed
geographically and too interconnected economically with British India for
having any chance ever to become truly autonomous. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and
V P Menon achieved their integration with India in an astonishingly short time.
This book tells the story of India’s native princes from the arrival of Lord
Mountbatten as the viceroy in March 1947 until the abolition of the former
rulers’ titles, privileges and privy purses in Dec 1971. John Zubrzycki is the
author of several books on Indian royalty of the twentieth century. He majored
in South Asian history and Hindi at the Australian National University and has
a PhD in Indian history. He had worked in India as a diplomat and as foreign
correspondent of The Australian
newspaper. My review of his earlier book ‘The Last Nizam’ can be read here.
The
author makes an analysis of how the native states were managed by the rulers.
There were large states such as Hyderabad which equalled France in geographical
area but most were very small and the titular rulers were practically nothing
more than zamindars. Some states – such as Mysore, Travancore and Baroda – were
administered better than British India, but most of the others were backward
fiefs. Whatever laws existed in many princely states were a jumble of personal
decrees, British Indian laws and local customs. Britain, being the paramount
power, did not interfere in their administrative affairs in return for
cooperation and support of the princes when they needed it. The India Office in
London was the final authority on recognizing successions and determining when
to hand over powers in the case of minors. The system of gun salutes tied the
princes to a feudal hierarchy. Out of the 565-odd states, only 149 were
privileged to have gun salutes ranging from 9 to 21. By comparison, the Viceroy
was entitled to 31 gun salutes and the King Emperor 101. Personal misrule
freely occurred in many states. The proclivity of the princes towards sexual
perversions reached gross proportions in some cases. In the summer of 1947,
four tons of paper containing correspondence between the local British resident
and the political department in Delhi regarding the secret affairs of the
princes were clandestinely confined to flames so as not to reach the hands of
the leaders of independent India. Congress withdrew its earlier stand-offish
stance in the 1938 Haripura AICC session. It declared that the Congress stood
for the same political, social and economic freedom in the states as in the
rest of India and considered the states as integral parts of India which cannot
be separated.
The
book includes the fabulous intrigues and machinations undertaken by the
Congress, Muslim League and the British in the run up to and immediately after
independence. Most white officials had no qualms to see India disintegrating
into a multitude of small, independent nations. Some of them even cherished the
idea, while some others came around to embrace a nationalist outlook later on.
Conrad Corfield, the political secretary to the Viceroy, was of the former type
and he gave the rulers the assurance that their states would become independent
once the British left, as was promised earlier by the Cabinet Mission plan.
Mountbatten also toyed with the concept of disintegration at first. He was
having a Balkanizing plan for independent India. Eleven provinces of British
India would become free along with most of the native states which would
negotiate with the provinces regarding accession. Nehru was furious at this
callous proposal which would forever put India’s political unification to doom.
It was on May 10, 1947 that V P Menon articulated a plan to Mountbatten which
eventually materialized. On May 18, Menon and Mountbatten flew to London with
the plan and convinced the British cabinet. This established Menon as an
irreplaceable factor in the States ministry. An interesting anecdote is told in
the book that exemplifies Jinnah’s subterfuges to destabilise India after he
got assurance of Pakistan. The Patiala kingdom was reluctant to join India
while entertaining hopes for an independent existence. Jinnah quickly seized
the opportunity and in May 1947 urged Yadavindra Singh, the ruler of Patiala,
to join Pakistan and offered an array of carrots. Singh refused. Undeterred,
Jinnah invited him to his residence in Delhi two days later for an informal
chat where his sister Fatima ‘made excellent tea’ while Jinnah repeated his
offers. Once more, the Maharaja remained unmoved, but Pakistan’s reputation for
preparing excellent tea for ‘Indian guests’ (remember Abhinandan Varthaman)
appears to be long established.
The
author covers most of the contentious cases where the rulers had to be forced
to see reason and fall in line. It is to be remembered that not a drop of royal
blood was spilt in the process. That was why Khrushchev once remarked that
‘India liquidated the princely states without liquidating the princes’. Patel’s
powerful personality, which mixed fury with charm and persuasion with coercion
complemented Menon’s skills as a tactician. Most rulers held Patel in awe and
esteem. Menon cleverly handled this to his advantage. Even a mere hint from him
that a point of contention might have to be referred to Sardar was sufficient
to bring the rulers around. Menon and Patel thus achieved their wonderful goal
of creating a politically cohesive India and of extending responsible, democratically
elected government to the people of the states. No longer could the ruling
princes run their states like fiefdoms. Rulers surrendered all their governing
powers in return for a guaranteed privy purse amounting to ten per cent of the
revenue of their states in 1947. This money was tax-free and this was an
important concession considering the exorbitant levels of taxation at that
time. Princes were allowed to retain their palaces, personal privileges and
titles. Integration yielded, in addition to territory and population, cash and
investments worth almost Rs. 100 crores, half of which had come from the bonds
of just one state – Gwalior. In return, the government of India committed
itself to paying privy purses costing around Rs. 4.5 crores in the first year,
which would shrink with each succeeding year.
This
book is unique because of two reasons. One is that it describes how the native
states acceded to Pakistan while the same process was going on in India.
Fortunately for them, they had to handle only ten states out of the 565. Even
then, the accession of Kalat in Baluchistan was a coercive one that totally
alienated the sentiments of Baloch nationalists. Pakistan is still paying a
bloody price for disregarding the wishes of Baloch people in the form of a
thriving freedom movement and militancy. It is interesting to note that Pakistan
too revoked the privy purses shortly after India did so. The second noteworthy
feature of the book is the clear exposition of Indira Gandhi’s rationale in
rescinding the privy purses. After their states were merged to the union and
their powers conceded, many rulers had taken to electoral politics cashing in
on their immense clout with the local populace. The former rulers had begun to
unite on the political front and tried to influence electoral outcomes in many
constituencies. Indira Gandhi was not someone who would acquiesce in to such
encroachment on territory which she deemed sacrosanct for popular politicians.
One thing led to another and with a showdown with judiciary, Indira achieved
what she wanted in taking away the incomes of the former princes. Whatever may
be the democratic justifications, readers feel that the abrupt cancellation of
princely privileges was a breach of promise Nehru and Patel had vowed to them
while merging their territories voluntarily with India.
While
the book is an enjoyable read, it presents the most blatant one-sided and
pro-Pakistan outlook coming from a Western author. The accounts of even
Pakistani authors such as Ayesha Jalal are much more balanced than this one
which has completely gone over the fence as far as neutral readers are
concerned. Zubrzycki’s narration is a totally partisan account of atrocities as
if the Muslims alone were at the receiving end. He justifies the Pakistani
attack on Kashmir in 1947 that propelled its king Hari Singh into the arms of
India as a justifiable outrage of Pashtun tribals at the ill-treatment of
Muslims in Kashmir. He alleges that Patel sanctioned ethnic cleansing of
Muslims in Alwar by the state forces. He again stoops so low as to mimic the
Pakistani propaganda piece that the atrocities committed by Razakars in
Hyderabad were fake and fabricated by K M Munshi, India’s agent in that state.
It is as If this author was asked to prepare an account on the losses of World
War II, he would come up with only German losses suffered subsequent to Allied
bombings while claiming the Holocaust as ‘fake and fabricated’. This book’s
handling of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is terribly off-balance by
propping up a biased overview of the alleged violence on Muslims of Kashmir by
the Dogra ruler. Plain communal disturbances are portrayed as ‘anti-monarchical
protests’. He accuses the minority Kashmiri Pandit community of having 78 per
cent representation in state services as a valid justification of the jihadi
violence on them. By the same token, we would expect that this author would
mention that Muslims cornered 85 per cent of the state services in the
Nizam-ruled Hyderabad, but he maintains a stoic silence on this issue.
Moreover, atrocities on Hindus are just ‘sectarian violence’ for him (p.222).
This book also attempts to whitewash the Bhopal Nawab’s bigoted overtures to
join Pakistan with a dubious allegation that the preference of a handful of
fellow princes to the Hindu Mahasabha had driven Nawab Hamidullah Khan into the
folds of the Muslim League and Pakistan (p.55). This kind of an argument would
come only from a hard-line Muslim League supporter and Zubrzycki’s parroting of
this line only proves his incompetence and ignorance of Indian politics and
society.
Since
this book is just a Pakistani propaganda piece, it is not recommended for
general readers.
Rating: 1 Star
