The destruction of Hyderabad

LAHORE:

“Let us demolish the myth that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel brought about the accession of Indian states. It was Lord Mounbatten,” said Abdul Gafoor Noorani, at a panel discussion on his book The Destruction of Hyderabad at the Lahore Literary Festival on Saturday.

“Patel was afraid of a revolt in the princely states and believed that the army would have to be called in. He feared bloodshed. So he offered support to Mountbatten,” Noornai said. Noorani contested the Indian textbook version of the event. “This marked the destruction of Hyderabad rather than cessation of the princely state.”  To a question on how Indian government could ask 160 princely states to join the union, Noorani said the states had been demarcated during the British Raj and could not be considered autonomous.

“Three states stood out during the accession process: Kashmir, Junagarh and Hyderabad. Junagarh and Hyderabad had a Muslim ruler with a Hindu majority population,” he said.

“Princely states in Europe are all democratically governed. States in the subcontinent were created by the British. There was no way these states could have survived,” he explained.  Noorani said, for Patel, who was a Hindu nationalist, the Muslim Nizam of Hyderabad represented an alien culture. “The word nizam was used for a caretaker of the Mughal empire,” he explained. Speaking on the role of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, he said it had been vital in shaping major events.

“But there were some misjudgements on his part which could have been avoided, since he believed that states like Hyderabad and Kashmir will accede to Pakistan,” he said.

Noorani said the destruction of Hyderabad was much more than the destruction of a princely state.  “It was also the annihilation of a Muslim minority and destruction of a composite Hindu-Muslim culture”, Noorani said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2016.