India After Independence: 1947-2000 (13 page)

Patel’s first step was to appeal to the princes whose territories fell inside India to accede to the Indian union in three subjects which affected the common interests of the country, namely, foreign relations, defence and communications. He also gave an implied threat that he would not be able to restrain the impatient people of the states and the government’s terms after 15 August would be stiffer.

Fearful of the rising tide of the peoples’ movements in their states, and of the more extreme agenda of the radical wing of the Congress, as also Patel’s reputation for firmness and even ruthlessness, the princes responded to Patel’s appeal and all but three of them—Junagadh, Jammu and Kashmir and Hyderabad—acceded to India by 15 August 1947. By the end of 1948, however, the three recalcitrant states too were forced to fall in line.

Junagadh was a small state on the coast of Saurashtra surrounded by Indian territority and therefore without any geographical contiguity with Pakistan. Yet, its Nawab announced accession of his state to Pakistan on 15 August 1947 even though the people of the state, overwhelmingly Hindu, desired to join India.

The Indian nationalist leaders had for decades stood for the sovereignty of the people against the claims of the princes. It was, therefore, not surprising that in Junagadh’s case Nehru and Patel agreed that the final voice, like in any other such case, for example Kashmir or Hyderabad, should be that of the people as ascertained through a plebiscite. Going against this approach, Pakistan accepted Junagadh’s accession. On the other hand, the people of the state would not accept the ruler’s decision. They organized a popular movement, forced the Nawab to flee and established a provisional government. The Dewan of Junagadh, Shah Nawaz Bhutto, the father of the more famous Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, now decided to invite the Government of India to intervene. Indian troops thereafter marched into the state. A plebiscite was held in the state in February 1948 which went overwhelmingly in favour of joining India.

The state of Kashmir bordered on both India and Pakistan. Its ruler Hari Singh was a Hindu, while nearly 75 per cent of the population was Muslim. Hari Singh too did not accede either to India or Pakistan. Fearing democracy in India and communalism in Pakistan, he hoped, to stay out of both and to continue to wield power as an independent ruler. The popular political forces led by the National Conference and its leader Sheikh Abdullah, however, wanted to join India. The Indian political leaders took no steps to obtain Kashmir’s accession and, in line with their general approach, wanted the people of Kashmir to decide whether to link their fate with India or Pakistan. (Nehru and Patel had made a similar offer in the case of Junagadh and Hyderabad). In this they were supported by Gandhiji, who declared in August 1947 that Kashmir was free to join either India or Pakistan in accordance with the will of the people.

But Pakistan not only refused to accept the principle of plebiscite for deciding the issue of accession in the case of Junagadh and Hyderabad, in the case of Kashmir it tried to short-circuit the popular decision through
a short-sighted action, forcing India to partially change its attitude in regard to Kashmir. On 22 October, with the onset of winter, several Pathan tribesmen, led unofficially by Pakistani army officers, invaded Kashmir and rapidly pushed towards Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. The ill-trained army of the Maharaja proved no match for the invading forces. In panic, on 24 October, the Maharaja appealed to India for military assistance. Nehru, even at this stage, did not favour accession without ascertaining the will of the people. But Mountbatten, the Governor-General, pointed out that under international law India could send its troops to Kashmir only after the state’s formal accession to India. Sheikh Abdullah and Sardar Patel too insisted on accession. And so on 26 October, the Maharaja acceded to India and also agreed to instal Abdullah as head of the state’s administration. Even though both the National Conference and the Maharaja wanted firm and permanent accession, India, in conformity with its democractic commitment and Mountbatten’s advice, announced that it would hold a referendum on the accession decision once peace and law and order had been restored in the Valley.

After accession the Cabinet took the decision to immediately fly troops to Srinagar. This decision was bolstered by its approval by Gandhiji who told Nehru that there should be no submission to evil in Kashmir and that the raiders had to be driven out. On 27 October nearly 100 planes airlifted men and weapons to Srinagar to join the battle against the raiders. Srinagar was first held and then the raiders were gradually driven out of the Valley, though they retained control over parts of the state and the armed conflict continued for months.

Fearful of the dangers of a full-scale war between India and Pakistan, the Government of India agreed, on 30 December 1947, on Mountbatten’s suggestion, to refer the Kashmir problem to the Security Council of the United Nations, asking for vacation of aggression by Pakistan.

Nehru was to regret this decision later as, instead of taking note of the aggression by Pakistan, the Security Council, guided by Britain and the United States, tended to side with Pakistan. Ignoring India’s complaint, it replaced the ‘Kashmir question’ before it by the ‘India-Pakistan dispute’. It passed many resolutions, but the upshot was that in accordance with one of its resolutions both India and Pakistan accepted a ceasefire on 31 December 1948 which still prevails and the state was effectively divided along the ceasefire line. Nehru, who had expected to get justice from the United Nations, was to express his disillusionment in a letter to Vijaylakshmi Pandit in February 1948: ‘I could not imagine that the Security Council could possibly behave in the trivial and partisan manner in which it functioned. These people are supposed to keep the world in order. It is not surprising that the world is going to pieces. The United States and Britain have played a dirty role, Britain probably being the chief actor behind the scenes.’
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In 1951, the UN passed a resolution providing for a referendum under UN supervision after Pakistan had withdrawn its troops from the part of Kashmir under its control. The resolution has remained infructuous since
Pakistan has refused to withdraw its forces from what is known as Azad Kashmir.

Since then Kashmir has been the main obstacle in the path of friendly relations between India and Pakistan. India has regarded Kashmir’s accession as final and irrevocable and Kashmir as its integral part. Pakistan continues to deny this claim. Kashmir has also over time become a symbol as well as a test of India’s secularism; it was, as Nehru put it, basic to the triumph of secularism over communalism in India.

Hyderabad was the largest state in India and was completely surrounded by Indian territory. The Nizam of Hyderabad was the third Indian ruler who did not accede to India before 15 August. Instead, he claimed an independent status and, encouraged by Pakistan, began to expand his armed forces. But Sardar Patel was in no hurry to force a decision on him, especially as Mountbatten was interested in acting as an intemediary in arriving at a negotiated settlement with him. Time, Patel felt, was on India’s side, especially as the Nizam made a secret commitment not to join Pakistan and the British government refused to give Hyderabad the status of a Dominion. But Patel made it clear that India would not tolerate ‘an isolated spot which would destroy the very Union which we have built up with our blood and toil.’
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In November 1947, the Government of India signed a stand-still agreement with the Nizam, hoping that while the negotiations proceeded, the latter would introduce representative government in the state, making the task of merger easier. But the Nizam had other plans. He engaged the services of the leading British lawyer Sir Walter Monckton, a friend of Mountbatten, to negotiate with the Government of India on his behalf. The Nizam hoped to prolong negotiations and in the meanwhile build up his military strength and force India to accept his sovereignty; or alternatively he might succeed in acceding to Pakistan, especially in view of the tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

In the meanwhile, three other political developments took place within the state. There was rapid growth, with official help, of the militant Muslim communal organization, Ittihad ul Muslimin and its para-military wing, the Razakars. Then, on 7 August 1947 the Hyderabad State Congress launched a powerful satyagraha movement to force democratization on the Nizam. Nearly 20,000 satyagrahis were jailed. As a result of attacks by the Razakars and repression by the state authorities, thousands of people fled the state and took shelter in temporary camps in Indian territory. The State Congress-led movement now took to arms. By then a powerful Communist-led peasant struggle had developed in the Telengana region of the state from the latter half of 1946. The movement, which had waned due to the severity of state repression by the end of 1946, recovered its vigour when peasant
dalams
(squads) organized defence of the people against attacks by the Razakars, attacked big landlords and distributed their lands among the peasants and the landless.

By June 1948, Sardar Patel was getting impatient as the negotiations with the Nizam dragged on. From his sick-bed in Dehra Dun, he wrote
to Nehru: ‘I feel very strongly that a stage has come when we should tell them quite frankly that nothing short of unqualified acceptance of accession and of introduction of undiluted responsible government would be acceptable to us.’
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Still, despite the provocations by the Nizam and the Razakars, the Government of India held its hand for several months. But the Nizam continued to drag his feet and import more and more arms; also the depradations of the Razakars were assuming dangerous proportions. Finally, on 13 September 1948, the Indian army moved into Hyderabad. The Nizam surrendered after three days and acceded to the Indian Union in November. The Government of India decided to be generous and not to punish the Nizam. He was retained as formal ruler of the state or its Rajpramukh, was given a privy purse of five million rupees, and permitted to keep most of his immense wealth.

With the accession of Hyderabad, the merger of princely states with the Indian Union was completed, and the Government of India’s writ ran all over the land. The Hyderabad episode marked another triumph of Indian secularism. Not only had a large number of Muslims in Hyderabad joined the anti-Nizam struggle, Muslims in the rest of the country had also supported the Government’s policy and action to the dismay of the leaders of Pakistan and the Nizam. As Patel joyfully wrote to Suhrawardy on 28 September, ‘On the question of Hyderabad, the Indian Union Muslims have come out in the open on our side and that has certainly created a good impression in the country.’
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The second and the more difficult stage of the full integration of the princely states into the new Indian nation began in December 1947. Once again Sardar Patel moved with speed, completing the process within one year. Smaller states were either merged with the neighbouring states or merged together to ‘form centrally administered areas.’ A large number were consolidated into five new unions, forming Madhya Bharat, Rajasthan, Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU), Saurashtra and Travancore-Cochin; Mysore, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir retained their original form as separate states of the Union.

In return for their surrender of all power and authority, the rulers of major states were given privy purses in perpetuity, free of all taxes. The privy purses amounted to Rs 4.66 crores in 1949 and were later guaranteed by the Constitution. The rulers were allowed succession to the gaddi and retained certain privileges such as keeping their titles, flying their personal flags and gun-salutes on ceremonial occasions.

There was some criticism of these concessions to the princes at the time as well as later. But keeping in view the difficult times just after independence and the Partition, they were perhaps a small price to pay for the extinction of the princes’ power and the early and easy territorial and political integration of the states with the rest of the country. Undoubtedly, the integration of the states compensated for the loss of the territories constituting Pakistan in terms of area as well as population. It certainly partially healed ‘the wounds of partition’.

Two other trouble spots remained on the Indian body politic. These
were the French and Portuguese-owned settlements dotting India’s East and West coasts, with Pondicherry and Goa forming their hub. The people of these settlements were eager to join their newly liberated mother-country. The French authorities were more reasonable and after prolonged negotiations handed over Pondicherry and other French possessions to India in 1954. But the Portuguese were determined to stay on, especially as Portugal’s NATO allies, Britain and the USA, were willing to support this defiant attitude. The Government of India, being committed to a policy of settling disputes between nations by peaceful means, was not willing to take military steps to liberate Goa and other Portuguese colonies. The people of Goa took matters in their hands and started a movement seeking freedom from the Portuguese, but it was brutally suppressed as were the efforts of non-violent satyagrahis from India to march into Goa. In the end, after waiting patiently for international opinion to put pressure on Portugal, Nehru ordered Indian troops to march into Goa on the night of 17 December 1961. The Governor-General of Goa immediately surrendered without a fight and the territorial and political integration of India was completed, even though it had taken over fourteen years to do so.

The Partition and the violence which accompanied it, led to nearly six million refugees pouring into India having lost their all.

India was in the midst of a communal holocaust. There was senseless communal slaughter and a fratricidal war of unprecedented proportions. Unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated on the minorities in both India and Pakistan. In the span of a few months, nearly 500,000 people were killed and property worth thousands of millions of rupees was looted and destroyed. Communal violence threatened the very fabric of society. Even in Delhi, under the very nose of the central government, the looting and killing of Muslims lasted several days.