'India protests new laws disenfranchising minorities in Bhopal and Kathiawar' or 'Indian government exhorts Hyderabad and Bikaner to update age of consent for women to 18'. Imagine the headlines in an India where states such as Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, Bhopal and hundreds of others co-exist under alongside 'India'. India being the newly independent erstwhile British India. This was not only a plausible scenario but also a highly probable one. As a matter of fact the 'Instrument of Accession' that the princely states signed with the independent India gave control of only 3 spheres to 'India' - foreign affairs, defence and communications.
The Indian subcontinent that the British ruled had two main systems of government. The British crown directly ruled the so called 'British India', which was approximately three fifths of the land mass. A substantial two fifths was divided among almost 550 princely states. These states managed their own internal affairs under the crown's protection. Their fiefs ranged from a few square kilometers to hundreds of thousands of kilometers in the case of Hyderabad and 'Jammu and Kashmir'. The rulers of these states fully expected to be independent once the British packed their bags and left. Congress leadership realised that having hundreds of these 'independent states' would be a nightmare to manage. This would also have deprived the citizens of these princely states the full benefits of Independence. The task of assimilating these states fell to the unlikely pairing of Vallabhbhai Patel and VP Menon. As the name suggests , this book covers the few months in 1947-48 within which this project was completed with an epilogue of subsequent events.
Sardar Patel was a london trained barrister from Gujrat who traded his suits for dhoti kurta when he answered Gandhi's call. He was one of the towering leaders of Congress with a huge mass following of his own. The lessor know VP Menon from Kerala was a man of many experiences. While starting his professional life as a teenage labourer at Kolar mine fields he then rose to be at the top ranks of the British administration in India. These two used every one of the old 'sam - dam - dand - bhed' to assimilate the princely states. They lulled them into a false sense of security, painted lurid pictures of people's revolt and if all failed threatened with direct use of force to ensure that the princely states fell in line. In my view the two them did the dirty work required to ensure that India came out of the British rule as one cohesive geographical unit. Specially knotty issues emerged in the case of some princely states. Hyderabad and Junagarh had muslim rulers but largely Hindu populations while the scenario was reversed in the case of Kashmir.
Zubrzycki does a good job of throwing light on this very significant part of the Indian history. He covers biographical aspects of Patel, Menon and the major princes interspersed with a taut narrative of the events. A major source for the book is Menon's own book on the subject 'Story of the Integration of Indian states'
This is not only a good read but one of the more important books that I have read in some time.
