Turmoil and Chaos – Hyderabad on the Cusp of Independence
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As a nation completes seventy-eight years of independence, it is imperative that we look back at its history with some scrutiny. After all, a nation’s past does indeed foretell its journey in the coming decades. India’s tumultuous road towards independence has been well-documented. The arrival of the notorious English East India Company in the early 1600s, the infamous Battle of Plassey (1757), the transfer of power to the British Crown in 1857, colonial rule in the subcontinent for the next ninety years and ultimately the brutal partition and the birth of two new nations in 1947.
But amidst this chaos, in the first half of the 20th century, leading up to the partition, there were four crucial areas at play in the subcontinent. These were – Lahore and Kashmir at the north, Bengal in the east and Hyderabad in the south. How the two parties, the Congress for India and the Muslim League for Pakistan, navigated the tricky terrain of diplomacy and strategic relations during this time, would determine the future of the two nations. The stakes were high, and all cards were at play. Well aware of this, the Indian contingent was vary of Jinnah and Pakistan’s influence on the princely state of Hyderabad, which had held out accession till the very end. This article narrates the crucial tale of the Hyderabad episode of 1947 and ’48. A story no less than a theatrical drama, the role of the ingenious Kasim Razvi was key in shaping India as it is, in its 79th year of independence.
Source – The Wire.
Hyderabad – A Brief History
The history of Hyderabad goes back to the late 17th century when Mir Qamar-ud-Din Siddiqi (Asaf Jah I) founded the Asaf Jahi dynasty. He was originally appointed viceroy of the Deccan regions under Mughal control, under which fell the state of Hyderabad. As Mughal rule in Delhi weakened, the Asaf Jahi dynasty began to take shape as a prominent kingdom in the Indian subcontinent. Six generations later, the seventh king, twenty-five year-old Mir Osman Ali Khan (or Asaf Jah VII) assumed the throne in 1911. Considered one of the wealthiest people of all time, Khan was bestowed with the title ‘His Exalted Highness’ (H.E.H) by the British Empire, a rare feat for an Indian prince.
Despite the special place he held in British India, the Nizam made several attempts to act as an independent ruler. The British resident appointed to the state firmly quashed these multiple attempts, with the Viceroy ultimately interfering in 1926. In a letter to the Nizam, he wrote, rather curtly – “I will merely add that the title ‘faithful ally’ which your Exalted Highness enjoys has not the effect of putting your government in a category separate from that of other states under the paramountcy of the British Crown” (Gray, 400).
This state of Hyderabad, despite significant British influence and paramountcy, was indeed an autonomous entity. The Nizam had his own coinage system. The state had its own government, including a Prime Minister and a Legislative Assembly introduced in 1946, all of whom operated under the Nizam. The composition of this Hyderabad state set up the early foundation for the struggle that was to follow. The state had a majority Hindu population (about 81 %), with the wealthy, creamier layer of society constituted mostly by the Muslims, much like the Nizam himself. The exact opposite of the northern Indian city of Lahore (which had a majority Muslim population and a wealthier Hindu one), Hyderabad’s struggles were rooted in communal tensions, much like most of British India at the time. The political climate of the state was therefore also a result chiefly of its religious composition. According to a 1966 report, “the population of Hyderabad was 16 million and of these only about 10 per cent were Muslims, but from this small Muslim minority were drawn 75% of state officials and 95% of the police and military services” (Gray, 402).
To understand the chaotic situation in which Hyderabad found itself following Indian independence, it is important to examine a key player in this saga – Kasim Razvi. The next section narrates a brief history of the Majlis Ittihad-ul-Muslimin (Council of the Union of Muslims), its fanatic leader Kasim Razvi, and of the intense pandemonium that Hyderabad faced in the year after Indian independence.
Kasim Razvi and the Majlis
Founded in 1926, the Majlis Ittihad-ul-Muslimin was initially a ‘cultural-religious organisation, created “with the object of uniting Muslims in the state of Hyderabad in support of the Nizam, and reducing the Hindu majority in the state by large-scale conversions” (Gray, 402). Already rooted in a contentious belief, the existence of this party became even more tenuous when its leadership passed into the hands of Kasim Razvi, a rural lawyer who originally hailed from Lucknow, during the war years. The relationship of this organisation with the Nizam himself has always been rather ambiguous. While some scholars argue that such an organisation could not have functioned without the blessing of the state’s central authority, the Nizam, some members of the party have maintained that authority was vested in the hands of the members of the Muslim community and not the figure of the Nizam.
Source: Deccan Herald
The Majlis posed no difficulty to Hyderabad and the Indian Union till June 1947, when the departure of the British and the creation of a Muslim-majority Pakistan were announced. The real problem started surfacing when Razvi organised a group of volunteers called the ‘Razakars’. These were basically a group of amateur fighters that provided protection to landowners and government administrators during the Communist-led uprising in Hyderabad during ‘40s. For the Indian administration, the razakars were essentially a private militia, headed by a goon who passed himself off as the protector of the Hyderabad state and its minority Muslims. Razvi frequently visited the Nizam and was possibly one of the many figures of the time who managed to convince him to stall Hyderabad’s accession to the Indian Union. He was also closely linked with the Hyderabadi government of the time, aiding in the organisation of arms and ammunitions in the state.
“Death with the sword in hand is always preferable to extinction by a mere stroke of the pen.”
These words utterred by Kasim Razvi to his followers would spell doom for Hyderabad and the Indian Union. So strong were his anti-India sentiments that it would go on to earn him the moniker “the Nizam’s Frankenstein monster”, by the Indian government. In another such strong comment, Razvi had sent a warning signal to the Indian Union. He said,
“I will, I must defend the rights of the Muslims even against H.E.H. [His Exalted Highness] himself. If India attacks, us I can and will create a turmoil throughout India. We will perish but India will perish also.”
Hyderabad – In 1947
When on 3rd June, 1947 the Partition was announced to the public, the Nizam promptly declared that Hyderabad state would not declare to either of the dominions. In November 1947, Hyderabad signed a ‘Standstill Agreement’ with the Government of India. This basically maintained the erstwhile relationship that the state shared with the British Government wherein Hyderabad would retained ‘paramountcy’. The relationship was therefore ambiguous and undecided. As negotiations continued on both sides for the next six months, in June 1948 this agreement collapsed, and that is when all hell broke loose.
From the beginning of 1948 itself, the Indian government had enacted a blockade on the import of almost all goods into Hyderabad. The period of 13 months that followed from India’s independence in August 1947 until the violent outburst in September of 1948, saw a gradual rise in communal violence and an unprecedented amount of arms entering the state of Hyderabad. Following the partition of British India the northern and eastern corners of the country witnessed widespread massacres, loot and rape, all along communal lines. This had a ripple effect on the rest of India, with communal tensions rising in refugee camps far away from the epicentres of violence. Hyderabad, already boiling in its own waves of tension, was no exception to this. The state witnessed the stumbling arrival of almost 7,00,000 Muslim refugees seeking the Nizam’s protection. In a rather poetically tragic fashion, the ‘non-Muslims’ of the state, numbering an estimate of 5,00,000, fled in the other direction, seeking asylum in the Indian Union. In Delhi, the pressure was mounting for the interim government and its ministers made no efforts to cover this up. The law minister, B.R. Ambedkar remarked that Hyderabad was “a new problem which may turn out to be worse than the Hindu-Muslim problem as it is sure to result in a further Balkanisation of India” (Purushotham, 439). Nehru himself observed that “Hyderabad [was] full of dangerous possibilities” (439).
Source: The Hindu
So how was Hyderabad able to hold its own for so long after Indian independence? After all, the princely state was situated in the heart of the Indian Union with no physical way out. All the Nizam needed was a crutch to boost his threats into actualisation. And when Jinnah demanded a sovereign nation for the Muslims of British India, the Nizam’s government had found its ally, one which would go on to provide it with arms and ammunitions as it ramped up its fight against India. Reports state that the Muslim League leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah had purportedly written to the viceroy, Lord Mountbatten in July 1947, warning him of Indian military action against the state of Hyderabad. He wrote, “If the Congress attempted to exert any pressure on Hyderabad, Muslim throughout the whole of India, yes, all the hundred million Muslims, would rise as one man to defend the oldest Muslim dynasty in India” (439).
The story of this military turmoil in Hyderabad forms the second part of this saga. In the two months preceding the state’s accession, Hyderabad was to witness a massacre orchestrated by the Razakars, ‘Operation Polo’ – India’s military arrival in the state, and the armament of the state courtesy a curious man named Sidney Cotton. The next part promises theatrics on the runway, secret sorties in the black of the night, and poses a tough question on the very idea of nationalism in 1948 India.
Sources:
Wiener, Myron. “State Politics in India.” Princeton University Press eBooks, 1968, pp. 399–431.
Purushotham, Sunil. “Internal Violence: The ‘Police Action’ in Hyderabad.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 57, no. 2, Mar. 2015, pp. 435–66.
Time. “HYDERABAD: The Holdout.” TIME, 30 Aug. 1948, time.com/archive/6601434/hyderabad-the-holdout.