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

1965: A Western Sunrise

Title: 1965: A Western Sunrise – India’s War with Pakistan

Author: Shiv Kunal Verma

Publisher: Aleph Book Company, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9789390652464

Pages: 509

 

Right after partition, India and Pakistan joined battle over Kashmir in October 1947. Under the guise of tribal invaders, Pakistan occupied a portion of Kashmir now known as PoK (Pak-occupied Kashmir). Indian troops soon flushed them out, but Pakistan was always on the lookout for an opportunity to present itself to renew its effort to get hold of Kashmir. Such a chance came about in 1962 when India had miserably failed to take on Chinese aggression in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. The reasons behind this debacle were mostly political as Prime Minister Nehru had lost all connection with the military capability of the country and his hallucinations on world peace had crippled the battle-worthiness of the nation’s military. This encouraged Pakistan to try their own tricks on the Kashmir front. But the US weighed on them in preventing the opening of a simultaneous attack theatre on the western sector. Three years later in 1965, they tried their luck in Kashmir with another invasion. India strongly retaliated under the new Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri. This book deals with the war and states that it ended in a stalemate, but it disabused Pakistan of its wishful thinking that Hindu India was incapable of putting up a fight. Six years further on, in 1971, both the countries met in another warfront. This time, there was no confusion on the outcome. Pakistan lost the war, 93000 Pakistani soldiers meekly surrendered and the country itself was split into two pieces! Shiv Kunal Verma is an Indian military historian and a documentary filmmaker who has produced many documentaries on Indian defence services. His book on the 1962 war has been reviewed earlier in this blog.

 

As a backdrop to 1965, Verma comments on the legacy of Nehru and the disaster he had wrought about when China invaded in 1962. Nehru tampered with established norms and pushed his own favourites into positions of power. He appointed V K Krishna Menon, a diehard communist, as the defence minister which set alarm bells ringing in the West. Krishna Menon carried his political agenda to the job as well and polarized the army. He conveniently ignored inputs and advice that did not suit him. Pathetic conditions generally prevailing in India during Nehru’s tenure spilled over to strategic communication also. At the height of 1962 War, China unilaterally declared a ceasefire when their forces could easily have crossed over into Assam. Nehru was totally in the dark as the Indian embassy in Beijing failed to transmit the news of the ceasefire. It was the press which finally broke the news in New Delhi. At that precise moment, Nehru and his advisers were planning a program to blow up the various oil refineries in Assam to keep them from falling into Chinese hands!

 

The book then examines how the Chinese fiasco encouraged hawks in Pakistan to try their hand banking on India’s dismal performance in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. Most of Pakistan started believing that Hindu India did not stand a chance against a Pakistani onslaught. Moreover, Nehru’s foolish alliance with the Soviets had driven the US to invest heavily in Pakistan’s military infrastructure. As a part of the western alliance, Pakistan was bristling with US weapon systems that gave it an edge over India both on land and in the air. President Ayub Khan and his foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto then cozied up to China also, after their fallout with Soviet Union in the 1960s. As part of a boundary agreement, Pakistan coyly handed over the Shaksgam Valley in Kashmir over which China had lodged its territorial claim. This 75,000 sq.km region was a critical link between the Chinese occupation zones of Tibet and Xinjiang. As the Pakistani preparations were going on, Nehru died and the little known Lal Bahadur Shastri became prime minister. The outwardly frail and small physical appearance of Shastri fed Pakistani machismo as its President Ayub Khan towered over the dhoti-clad minuscule Indian prime minister. But they forgot that looks could be deceiving, as this same Ayub Khan was suspended from the charge of Punjab regiment battalion in 1945 for cowardice.

 

Verma puts the blame on the failure to make much headway in the 1965 war on the army general J N Chaudhuri. He was seen by most people as being brilliant in the operations room but shaky on the battleground. Besides, he was lucky to go scot-free after his bungling during the China war. As a traditional army man, Chaudhuri discounted the use of air power. He considered himself to be the sole authority who would plan and guide operations. He was senior to air force chief Arjan Singh by ten years, which in the armed forces set them apart by a generation. The army failed to make an offensive plan to target Lahore and Sialkot which would have crippled Pakistan’s morale. This muddled thinking was the direct result of India’s defensive mindset in which an offensive stance was always relatively muted instead of planning and waging an all-out war. This timidity of brigade commanders and ranks above was visible in 1962 as well. Almost all officers at the higher echelons of command were guilty of passing the buck and sacking those under their command for lapses they were guilty of (p.468). The invading troops were not given air support. No aerial photographs or tactical reconnaissance of enemy territory was available.

 

This book also narrates some peculiarities of Pakistani military practice and propaganda. It was driven home in the minds of young cadets that Hindus are cowards and they would run for their lives when they confront an Islamic army. These people had a very nasty surprise when they actually encountered the determined and multi-religious Indian army. If the Indians did not break and run for cover at the sight of the advancing Pakistani formations, they did not seem to have an alternate plan. In effect, they fell victims to their own propaganda. Verma also states that Pakistani soldiers most often did not return the respect due to an enemy soldier who is also, after all, fighting for his own country. Whether they were irregulars or regular troops, the standard practice of the Pakistanis was to mutilate the dead bodies of enemy soldiers (p.121). The Pakistan army discriminated against their own citizens who belonged to religious minorities and heterodox Islamic sects other than Sunnis. Major General Akhtar Hussain Malik was the commanding officer of Operation Grand Slam which sought to wrest control of key areas in Kashmir. However, he was transferred in the middle of the operation, when troops were literally midstream on Manawar Tawi River. The reason for this sudden shift was that Malik was an Ahmadiyya and Ayub Khan did not want him to grow too big for his boots.

 

Even though Shastri as prime minister handled the war and ensuing crisis exceptionally well, the instinct to crush the enemy was sadly lacking in him. Instead of finishing the job, he believed in forgiving the enemy and giving him one more chance to mend his ways. Needless to say, this floundered against the Pakistani mindset which originated in religious intolerance and was shaped by the inferno of partition-related violence. Shastri’s objectives to the army were modest in the extreme. It asked them to occupy only minimum Pakistani territory to achieve India’s purposes which would be vacated after the satisfactory conclusion of the war. India directed its air force not to attack PAF airfields unless they attacked IAF bases first. Compare this strategy to Israel’s blindingly devastating strikes at enemy airfields in the Six-Days War of 1967! This outlook percolated down to military officers too. Verma describes an anecdote here. An air force officer requested his superior that a military man needed to get on a civilian flight to Dhaka and come back with information pertaining to deployment of Pakistani fighter aircrafts there. His superior rejected it outright saying what he was suggesting was most ‘ungentlemanly’ and would amount to spying (p.254)! We also read about the air chiefs of both countries talking to each other over phone and promising not to engage each other in battle with their aircrafts. However, this promise was very short-lived.

 

Much of this huge book is devoted to describe the minutiae of war and its tactics. Readers who don’t know the differences between a company, platoon, brigade or battalion – people such as myself – would find it extremely difficult to appreciate what was happening and would find it very hard to proceed. Perhaps this book is better suited to military personnel. The author exhibits a thorough knowledge of Pakistani capabilities, tactics and battle formations in 1965 and provides a respectful assessment of their potential. He unhesitatingly admits their superiority in equipment but stresses that Indian army more than made up for the difference with sheer determination and courage. The book includes many photographs and illustrations of the various battle engagements. It also includes some pictures of Pakistani service personnel who performed outstanding feats of bravery. At the same time, he comes down with sharp criticism of those Indian army officers who wilted in the face of crisis and showed indecisiveness. He remarks that if those commanders had fought in the time of Stalin or Hitler, most of these gentlemen would have been shot for incompetence (p.287).

 

The book is recommended only for serious readers of military history.

 

Rating: 3 Star

 

Our Moon Has Blood Clots

Title: Our Moon Has Blood Clots – The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits

Author: Rahul Pandita

Publisher: Random House India, 2013 (First)

ISBN: 9788184000870

Pages: 258

 

When India was partitioned in 1947, the British provinces were annexed to each successor state on the criterion of which community commanded a majority in population. When that majority was thin, the province also was partitioned otherwise it went as a whole. For native states ruled by local princes, there were no solid criteria but the general communal principle was still upheld. If a state had a majority of a particular community and if it was geographically contiguous with the new nation in which that community held a majority, the native king acceded likewise. The rulers of Junagadh and Hyderabad wanted to join Pakistan, but that was out of the question. Not only were those two states having a very large Hindu majority, but were totally landlocked by India. States on the border regions had much more flexibility. Two states were notable in this respect for the choices they made. The state of Amarkot had a Hindu ruler and a Hindu majority in population, but the ruler decided to join Pakistan. Jinnah readily agreed even though the merger went against his foundational two-nation theory. The ruler of Kashmir prevaricated for a while, but Pakistan forced his hand with an invasion of his country by a mixed lot of tribal Pathans and disguised Pakistan army soldiers. Kashmir immediately acceded to India, but Pakistan continued its subterfuge ever since; and from the 1980s onwards, it is carrying out an armed jihad. The Islamists don’t want to just free Kashmir politically, but also to drive out the Hindus from their own soil and establish an exclusive Islamic state. Consequently, the Kashmiri Brahmins called Pandits have been at the receiving end of a brutal planned violence from the year 1990, forcing them to flee Kashmir and settle as refugees in other parts of India. This book tells this story from the author’s own painful personal experience. Rahul Pandita is a journalist-cum-author who has reported extensively from warzones. He was born in Kashmir valley and was only 14 years old when his family was forced into exile.

 

Pandita establishes his community’s roots in Kashmir with an eagle’s eye view of the attacks and persecutions they suffered at the hands of religious bigots. Towards the end of 14^th century, Islam entered Kashmir. Initially it fused with local practices and evolved into a way of life rather than a strict monotheistic religion. By the turn of that century, the picture changed. Sultan Sikander unleashed a reign of terror and brutality against his Hindu subjects. It is said that the number of Pandits he killed was so large that the sacred threads worn by these unfortunate men weighed nearly 200 kg when they were weighed before burning. A century later, Chaks of Shia sect took power and they were intolerant to both Sunnis and Pandits. Iftikhar Khan, who was the provincial governor in the time of Aurangzeb, was the next in the line of oppressors. Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh guru, was martyred when he intervened with the Mughals on behalf of the Pandits. Kashmir fell to the Afghans in 1752. Conditions were then so hostile that during the reign of Atta Mohammed Khan, any Muslim who met a Pandit would jump on his back and take a ride (p.17). Finally, the Hindu Dogra family bought Kashmir from the British for 75 lakh rupees, one horse, twelve goats and three Cashmere shawls! Even under their rule, Pandits were targeted by Muslim hardliners many times, especially in 1931.

 

The author claims that irreversible bitterness between Kashmiri Muslims and Indians caused the minority Pandits to be at the receiving end of the wrath which it evoked. A lot of illustrative examples are given in the book in which Kashmiris victimized the Pandits. Crowds half-mad with religious frenzy chanting hum kya chahte? – Azadi (what do we want? – freedom) would attack Pandit homes and their business establishments on the wayside. They would kick Pandit children at school for singing India’s national anthem. The author’s personal experiences include Kashmiri children tearing off images of goddess Saraswati from school magazines and grown up men flashing openly when Indira Gandhi addressed them in a public meeting in Srinagar. When India played against other teams in cricket, spectators would raise Pakistan flags and cry for Pakistan’s victory. Pandit homes’ window panes would be smashed whenever India defeated Pakistan in cricket. The entire Kashmir erupted in celebration when Javed Miandad scored a sixer from the last ball at Sharjah in 1986. This was in the 1980s, even before the violence escalated.

 

Matters came to a head in 1990. A notable feature of the book is that it horrifies readers with the plain truth in the narrative. One would be unable to contemplate the emotions which would stir a person to inflict such cruelty on his fellow humans. The events of Jan 19, 1990 were nightmarish for the Pandits. Slogans and war cries were raised from mosque loudspeakers throughout the night. Meanwhile, hoodlums assembled outside Pandit homes and threatened them by pelting stones. This pattern repeated in the following days. The mayhem would begin in the night and would continue till the wee hours of the morning, thus continuously depriving sleep for the victims. The incident of Naveen Sapru’s murder exposes the complicity of ordinary Kashmiris in the ethnic cleansing. Sapru was targeted and shot near a mosque in Habba Kadal. The attackers and spectators then danced around the bleeding body which was writhing in pain and agony of death. Minutes later, the spectacle ended and Sapru’s body lay motionless. A police truck then took the body to a hospital. The crowd followed the vehicle cheering from behind and shouting slogans. Nobody was convicted as the police also sided with the militants. Throughout the year 1990, Pandits were picked up selectively and put to death. If the chosen one was not to be found, a proxy of the same community sufficed. It was all about numbers and how many were killed. Kashmiris freely molested Pandit women in public and they habitually removed their bindis while going outside their homes. These innocent people suffered because the Islamists wanted Kashmir to be cleansed of Pandits. The jihadis were sure that if one was killed, a thousand would flee. Ads were placed in newspapers asking the Pandits to leave the valley or face consequences. Once they vacated their houses, the neighbours swooped in to claim the articles left behind. After a few months in the hellish refugee camps in Jammu, agents would approach them with offers of sale of non-movable property like houses, land, farms and orchards at rock bottom prices. Desperate for money, the Pandits would sell their assets to their attackers. The Kashmiris had done their groundwork well and made a perfect example of ethnic cleansing.

 

The author provides a grim description of the refugee life. His house in Srinagar had 22 rooms in total, but the family had had to accommodate themselves in a single room in Jammu without any kind of privacy. Government employees continued to receive their salaries but most others had to manage with the pittance offered by the administration. Denied their cool homes, several refugees were killed by heat stroke in Jammu. Eventually, they spread to various parts of India, notably in Delhi, with memories of uprootedness still fresh in their minds. For some of the older generation Pandits, this was a rerun of the 1947 exodus from the areas that lay in the path of attacking Pakistan tribals. They also killed, raped, looted and burnt. We read about people who had thus to undergo two such migrations in a single lifetime.

 

What makes this book unique is its personal touch. Most of the described incidents were directly experienced by the author or occurred to a close friend or relative. In spite of this, he maintained a right balance of mind and sense of justice. Years later, as a journalist, he questioned and opposed the authorities in cases of alleged human rights violations of Kashmiri Muslims during counter-insurgency operations. He also declined to join right-wing organisations as an act of avenging for his losses. Pandita’s lack of bitterness against his tormentors is remarkable. He still maintains touch with several people in Kashmir and visit there often as a solace to the feeling of loneliness in the collective psyche of the Pandits. The book has some disadvantages as well. There is no mention of the actions of the mainstream parties in the uprising and also in the buildup to the final outbreak. Readers don’t get an idea of how the restlessness originated and developed to disastrous proportions. Readers can not close the book without a pang of sadness and a thought for the miserable plight of an innocent diaspora that is still struggling to find their place and plant roots wherever they are living at present.

 

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star