Abstract
Hyderabad was India’s largest princely state. Its position, in some ways, was analogous to that of Junagadh. Nizam Osman Ali Khan presided over a population of nearly 16 million, over 80 per cent of them Hindus. But Hyderabad was of much greater interest to the Indian government, for the nizam’s sprawling domains squatted at the very centre of India. This accounted both for India’s willingness to go the distance to secure Hyderabad’s accession and for its eventual decision to annex the state by force.
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Notes
For background, see Lucien Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration: Political Developments in Hyderabad State 1938–1948 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2000)
Margrit Pernau, The Passing of Patrimonialism: Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad 1911–1948 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001); John Roosa, “Quandary of the Qaum: Indian Nationalism in a Muslim State, Hyderabad 1850–1948,” PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998.
John Zubrzycki, The Last Nizam: The Rise and Fall of India’s Greatest Princely State (London: Pan Macmillan, 2006), 167; Copland, The Princes of India, 11.
S.N. Prasad, Operation Polo: Police Action Against Hyderabad 1948 (New Delhi: Historical Section Ministry of Defence, 1972), 38–40.
Cf. Taylor C. Sherman, “The Integration of the Princely State of Hyderabad and the Making of the Postcolonial State in India, 1948–1956,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 44, no. 4 (2007): 495.
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© 2010 Srinath Raghavan
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Raghavan, S. (2010). Hyderabad 1947–1948. In: War and Peace in Modern India. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277519_4
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