Dethroned

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