Indian Annexation of Hyderabad: A Visual History

The Indian annexation of Hyderabad, code-named Operation Polo, was the 'police action' of 13-17 September 1948 by which India took over the princely state of Hyderabad, whose Muslim Nizam Osman Ali Khan had refused to accede to India or Pakistan at partition and ruled 16 million mostly Hindu subjects with a Muslim elite. A standstill agreement collapsed as the Razakars, the militia of Qasim Razvi's Ittehad party, terrorised the countryside, a communist peasant revolt spread in Telangana, and the Nizam sought UN help and Pakistani arms. Indian troops under General Chaudhuri invaded on 13 September and the Nizam surrendered on the 17th; a few thousand died in the fighting, but the Sunderlal committee found that Hindu mobs and Indian troops killed 27,000 to 40,000 Muslims in reprisals afterwards. Hyderabad became an Indian state; the Nizam stayed on as governor.

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Deaths in Hyderabad, 1948

Timeline of the Indian annexation of Hyderabad (Operation Polo)

1. 1947
   Nizam refuses to accede; standstill agreement
2. 1948
   Razakar violence; arms flights; UN appeal
3. 1948
   Operation Polo13 to 17 September.
4. 1948
   Post-annexation massacres; Sunderlal committee
5. 1956
   Hyderabad state dissolved

The Nizam holds out

Hyderabad, the size of Britain and landlocked in the middle of India, was ruled by the seventh Nizam, reputedly the world's richest man; at independence in August 1947 he declined to join either dominion and hoped for sovereignty under the British crown. Mountbatten negotiated a standstill agreement in November 1947. Meanwhile the Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen's Razakars, up to 200,000 strong, attacked Hindu villages and Congress activists; communists led an armed peasant uprising against landlords in Telangana; and Hyderabad lent Pakistan 200 million rupees and bought arms flown in by the Australian gunrunner Sidney Cotton.

Operation Polo

After the Razakars attacked a train and border villages, and with the Nizam appealing to the UN Security Council, Patel and Nehru ordered the invasion, styled a police action. Two divisions advanced from Sholapur and Vijayawada on 13 September; the Hyderabad army of 24,000 and the Razakars broke at Naldurg and Bidar, and Chaudhuri reached Hyderabad city on 17 September as the Nizam broadcast his surrender. Laik Ali resigned; Razvi was arrested and later left for Pakistan. India lost 32 killed.

The massacres and after

In the following weeks Hindu mobs, sometimes with the connivance of Indian troops, killed Muslims across the districts, particularly in Osmanabad, Gulbarga, Bidar and Nanded; the Sunderlal committee sent by Nehru estimated 27,000 to 40,000 deaths, and its report was suppressed until 2013. The Nizam was retained as Rajpramukh (governor) until 1956, when Hyderabad was divided among Andhra Pradesh, Bombay and Mysore states on linguistic lines. The Telangana communist revolt was crushed by 1951. Pakistan denounced the annexation and it remains a grievance; India cites the Razakars' terror and the state's geography.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Mughal Empire (1526 to 1857)
• Maratha Empire (1674 to 1818)
• Danish colonial empire (1536 to 1953)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)
• Third Portuguese Empire (1822 to 1999)

Wars of the same era and region

• Indian Rebellion of 1857 (1857 to 1858)
• Bangladesh Liberation War (1971)
• Deccan wars (1680 to 1707)
• Sri Lankan Civil War (1983 to 2009)

8 surprising things about the Indian annexation of Hyderabad (Operation Polo)

1. The Nizam had been on the cover of Time in 1937 as the richest man in the world, and used the Jacob diamond as a paperweight.
2. The operation was called a 'police action' to avoid the word war; it lasted 109 hours.
3. The Sunderlal report on the massacres was buried for 65 years and published only in 2013 after a scholar found it in the Nehru library.
4. The Australian pilot Sidney Cotton flew arms to Hyderabad from Karachi in Lancastrian bombers, dodging Indian fighters.
5. The Nizam remained titular governor of the state he had lost until 1956 and died in 1967.
6. Hyderabad's Ittehad party survives as the AIMIM, a mainstream Indian political party.
7. The Telangana peasant revolt of 1946-1951 was India's largest communist uprising.
8. Junagadh and Kashmir were the other two princely states whose accession was contested; Hyderabad was the largest.

Sources

• Annexation of Hyderabad Wikipedia
• Hyderabad (historical state) Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Hyderabad 1948: India's hidden massacre BBC News
• A. G. Noorani, The Destruction of Hyderabad (2013) Hurst

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