Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

by B Krishna

  This did not impress Patel. World opinion, though important, did not weigh much with him. He was concerned with saving Junagadh from falling into the hands of Jinnah. If he withheld action, it was in deference to the wishes of Mountbatten and Nehru.

  Two developments hastened the crisis. One was Liaquat Ali’s reassertion on 25 September that the Nawab had every right to accede to Pakistan regardless of the state’s territorial location. The other related to the Nawab’s declaration of accession of Babariawad and Mangrol to India as invalid, claiming both as integral parts of Junagadh territory. Junagadh refused to withdraw its troops sent to Babariawad. For Patel, it was “an act of aggression, which must be met by a show of strength, with readiness in the last resort to use it”.17

  Mountbatten suggested reference to the UNO. Patel rejected it on the ground that Junagadh was not a disputed matter, but was a case of blatant interference on the part of Pakistan. Reference to the UNO would have internationalised the issue, as happened in the case of Kashmir later. Patel also rejected Mountbatten’s other suggestion that the Central Reserve Police, and not the Indian Army, should be entrusted with the task of occupation of Babariawad and Mangrol. To Patel, this meant “taking unnecessary risks; he was firm that the operation should be handled by the Indian Army”.18 In the Maharaja of Gondal’s view, the worsening situation posed a threat to “the peace and tranquillity of the whole of Kathiawar”. Without violation of Junagadh territory, Indian troops, under a newly created command, the Kathiawar Defence Force, were deployed in the adjoining states with a view to “creating [a] steadying effect all over Kathiawar”. Babariawad and Mangrol were occupied on 1 November. At the same time, under the leadership of Samaldas Gandhi, a provisional government was formed with headquarters at Rajkot. Over two and a half months’ political stalemate and economic stagnation had reduced Junagadh to near bankruptcy, resulting in a steep fall in the state’s revenues and leading to a fast deteriorating food situation. Since no help arrived from Pakistan, the Nawab was forced to flee to Karachi “together with his family, many of his dogs, and all the cash and negotiable assets of the State Treasury”.19

  From Karachi, the Nawab authorised Bhutto to use his “judicious discrimination as the situation demanded, and to negotiate with the proper authorities”.20 Bhutto wrote to Jinnah on 27 October, telling him of “the fading of Muslim ardour for accession”. He also said, “Today our brethren are indifferent and cold. Muslims of Kathiawar seem to have lost all enthusiasm for Pakistan.”21 Bhutto called a meeting of the Junagadh State Council on 5 November, which decided: “The position arising out of the economic blockade, interstatal complications, external agitation and internal administrative difficulties make its necessary to have a complete reorientation of the State policy and a readjustment of the relations with the two Dominions, even if it involves a reversal of the earlier decision to accede to Pakistan.”

  In pursuance of the state council resolution, Bhutto started negotiations with Samaldas Gandhi on 7 November for handing over power. It was supported by the Muslim Jamiat of Junagadh. Bhutto, therefore, told the Indian regional commissioner in Kathiawar, N. M. Buch, that the government of India could take over the administration. At that point, Liaquat Ali, the Pakistan prime minister, threw a spanner in the works with the statement that since Junagadh had acceded to Pakistan, neither the diwan nor the ruler could negotiate a temporary or permanent settlement with India, and that it was a violation of Pakistan territory and a breach of international law.

  Mountbatten and his advisers had hoped that “Patel would be satisfied for a decision on the occupation of Junagadh itself to lie in the pending tray until greater problems were safely resolved”. Patel played his game. Mountbatten was “tactfully left in the dark”. By the time he discovered what was happening, troops were already on the move. According to Campbell-Johnson: “All these developments were only brought to Mountbatten’s notice late in the evening. It is the first time since the transfer of power that the Government has carried out a major act of policy without fully consulting or notifying him in advance of the event. He feels this may be due to Patel’s and VP’s [Menon’s] desire to spare him embarrassment.”22

  Due to Patel’s firm handling of the Junagadh crisis, the storm blew over in no time. India took over the Junagadh administration on 9 November. On the thirteenth, Patel visited Junagadh. Addressing a mammoth public meeting, he assured the people that India would abide by their wishes. And then, dramatically, “by way of oratorical flourish, he asked the audience to indicate whether they wished the State to accede to India or Pakistan. Over ten thousand hands were immediately raised in favour of accession to India.”23 Patel also did some plain-speaking: “The action of the Nawab of Junagadh would be a lesson to those who are persisting in their chimera of attachment to an authority with which they have no natural ties . . . The State is no property of a single individual. Paramountcy has lapsed—certainly not by the efforts of the Princes, but by those of the people.”24

  A plebiscite, as Patel had promised, was held on 20 February 1948. Out of a total of 201,457 registered voters, 190,870 exercised their franchise. Only 91 cast their vote in favour of accession to Pakistan. A referendum was held at the same time in Mangrol, Manavadar, Babariawad, Bantwa, and Sardargarh, which showed that out of 31,434 votes cast in these areas, only 39 went in favour of Pakistan. Jossleyn Hennessy, of the Sunday Times, London, and Douglas Brown, of the Daily Telegraph, who were in Junagadh at that time, confirmed that “they could find little fault with the manner in which the referendum was conducted”.25

  Patel was the recipient of congratulations from many quarters for his “crowning success”, especially the princes who eulogised his “noble efforts” in achieving “a unique victory over Junagadh without causing loss of life and property”. All the Kathiawar princes and people felt grateful to Patel for “preserving the integrity and unity of Kathiawar by his timely action”.26

  Hyderabad Mountbatten’s pro-Nizam role

  In Hyderabad, India faced a situation far more serious than in any other Indian state. Situated as it was in India’s belly, Patel asked, “How can the belly breathe if it is cut off from the main body?”1 It was a question of survival for India. A frightening situation was rapidly developing in Pakistan-dominated Hyderabad. Mountbatten’s press attaché, Alan Campbell-Johnson, saw Hyderabad’s various “sponsored” acts as “acts to display her status as an independent nation”.

  Such acts related to “moral and physical violations of the Standstill Agreement”: a loan of Rs. 20 crore to Pakistan, and the state Congress leaders’ imprisonment without trial. The “most provocative was the activity of Kasim Razvi”.2 Further, Hyderabad’s prime minister, Mir Laik Ali, was, till September 1947, Pakistan’s representative at the United Nations. Far more disquieting was Jinnah’s statement: “I require Hyderabad as an active ally, not as a neutral in such a war”3—a war against none other than India.

  Patel’s most formidable obstacle lay in Mountbatten’s outlook and his conversion of Nehru to his point of view: to prevent the Indian Army from moving into Hyderabad. Further, Walter Monckton, the Nizam’s constitutional adviser, was a friend of Mountbatten whose services Mountbatten had secured for the Nizam for conducting negotiations with India. Monckton had stated that “he felt there was no fundamental difference of approach between Mountbatten and himself. He would continue to look for the formula which would allow statutory independence for Hyderabad, and which, while containing no direct reference to the word ‘accession’, would incorporate it on a de facto basis”.4 Both Mountbatten and Monckton wanted the Nizam to have an “association” with India, not accession. Accession, as Monckton explained to the Nizam, could not be abrogated, whereas association could.

  Patel failed to understand why Mountbatten asked India alone “to adopt ethical and correct behaviour towards Hyderabad and to act in such a way as could be defended before the bar of world opinion”.5 Such moralisation had little value for Patel when others wer
e not reciprocating. The Nizam showed no qualms in trampling all codes of moral conduct. Campbell-Johnson admitted that “both the Nizam and his Government are very volatile statesmen, pursuing a very inconsistent and wavering line of policy.”6 In such a situation, Mountbatten naturally found in Patel “a much sterner and less conciliatory leader than Pandit Nehru”.7

  Patel had turned sterner and less conciliatory by the anti-Indian activities of the British secretary of the Political Department, Conrad Corfield, and his British diehard residents and agents in the states. Added to this was Monckton’s highly intriguing role. “Even before Attlee’s February statement, Monckton [who was in touch with Jinnah through Bhopal] was testing the possibility of Conservative Party support for appeals by Jinnah and the Muslim princes for separate membership of the Commonwealth. In mid-January he was in touch with the chief creator of the 1935 Act, Samuel Hoare [Lord Templewood], and was ‘much encouraged’ by their measure of agreement.” In April 1947, Monckton was “in touch with Templewood about the acquisition of port facilities at Marmagoa, in Portuguese Goa, with a rail linkage to be built from the State to the sea”. One Alexander Roger, a businessman, who had “important contacts among the Portuguese authorities, was employed as intermediary”. Monckton himself is reported to have visited Portugal in April before reaching India. He is quoted to have stated that “for the Nizam to join India would be political suicide”; and “if we go warily, we shall very likely outlast them [the Indian government]”. Monckton was “sanguine of Hyderabad’s survival”, and believed that “if HMG would maintain relations with Hyderabad, then Pakistan would recognise it, as would Egypt and Saudi Arabia”.8

  Monckton’s presence in Hyderabad from April onwards was sufficient encouragement to the Nizam to step up his activities aimed at achieving independence. Even before Britain’s transference of power, plans were hatched for the transfer of Bastar to Hyderabad. Panikkar wrote to Patel on 19 May: “A very serious and extremely dangerous intrigue is taking place” in Bastar, where the Nizam’s government had been given a mining lease, the right to extend the Nizam’s railway to Bastar and to acquire 15,000 square miles of rich mineral deposits. Panikkar stated: “It is a part of the dangerous intrigue to strengthen the Nizam in every possible way, e.g. by the sale of the Bren gun factory . . . This intrigue with the Nizam has to be scotched, otherwise the whole of Hindustan will be undermined.” Even Nehru wrote to Patel: “The Hyderabad Government has come to an arrangement with the Birmingham Small Arms Company for supply of arms . . . an order for four crores of rupees worth ammunition with Mr. Kral, calling himself representative of the Czechoslovakian Government.”9

  On 12 June, after the announcement of the 3 June plan, the Nizam issued a firman which declared that “the departure of the Paramount power . . . will mean that I shall become entitled to resume the status of an independent sovereign”. The Nizam had “set his heart on becoming a ‘Third Dominion’ of the British Commonwealth”.10 Early in June, the Nizam had been advised not only to declare his “independence” but also to “recruit Britishers to the state forces, to ask for Goa as part of his state, to demand a corridor between Hyderabad and Goa and apply for membership of the United Nations.”11

  The Nizam, on whom the king had conferred the titles “Most Exalted Highness” and “Faithful Ally to the British Government”, was disappointed to find that the Indian Independence Bill did not provide for dominion status to Indian states. He protested against “the way in which my State is being abandoned by its old ally, the British Government, and the ties which have bound me in loyal devotion to the King Emperor are being severed”.12 Mountbatten dispelled all doubts when he told the Nizam’s delegation on 11 July that HMG would not agree to Hyderabad becoming a member of the British Commonwealth except through either of the two dominions of India or Pakistan. This humbled the Nizam’s pride, but did not dishearten him as he had other plans up his sleeve: to gain time by engaging India in prolonged constitutional negotiations through Monckton; to make preparations for a military confrontation with India by purchase of arms through foreign sources; and to build up the Ittehadul-Mussalmeen so as “to arm himself with a view to crushing the Hindu subjects”13—even to encourage migration of Muslims from some of the Indian provinces and states to Hyderabad.

  On Monckton’s advice, the Nizam wrote to Mountbatten on 8 August that “he could not contemplate bringing Hyderabad into organic union with either Pakistan or India”, but was prepared to enter into a treaty which guaranteed the integrity and independent identity of his state under three conditions: in the event of a war between India and Pakistan, Hyderabad would remain neutral; Hyderabad should have the right to appoint agents-general wherever it thought fit; and if India seceded from the Commonwealth, Hyderabad would be free to review the situation de novo.

  Patel told Mountbatten rather sternly on 24 August:

  I wish to let Your Excellency know my mind before you meet the [Nizam’s] delegation. I see no alternative but to insist on the Nizam’s accession to the Dominion of India. The least variations in the Instrument of Accession, or arrangement regarding the State’s association with the Dominion in regard to the three subjects, would not only expose me to the charge of breach of faith with the States that have already joined the Dominion, but would create the impression that advantage lay in holding out rather than coming in, and that, while no special merit attached to accession, a beneficial position could be secured by keeping out. This is bound to have most unfortunate consequences in our future negotiations for accession to the Union.

  Patel also informed Mountbatten: “I have authentic information that the recent activities of the Ittehad-ul-Mussalmeen are designed almost to create a feeling of terror amongst the non-Muslim population, so that its agitation in favour of the independence of Hyderabad, with possible alliance with Pakistan, should flourish.”14

  What role was Monckton playing? He himself disclosed that in his note of 15 September to the Nizam’s Executive Council:

  My object has been to advise a course calculated to obtain for Hyderabad the maximum degree of real, practical independence, compatible with its prosperity and security . . . that Hyderabad is landlocked in the belly of Hindustan; that Pakistan is not yet in a sufficiently established State to be able to give effective help; that, if Hyderabad is to remain independent, she must stand on her own feet . . . The guiding principle has been to avoid executing an Instrument of Accession.

  According to Monckton, an agreement of “association”, as opposed to “accession”, meant that “a treaty or agreement, short of accession, preserves independence in law, whereas accession destroys it and involves merger or organic union; that, when circumstances change, e.g. if Pakistan and Hyderabad grew strong enough to warrant it, the treaty can be denounced . . . once a State has acceded to the Dominion, it will find it hard to extricate itself ”. Monckton further explained:

  I wanted the negotiations to continue for Hyderabad as long as possible after 15 August . . . the longer they continued the better for us . . . we have a breathing space to get ready for the economic and political conflict if it comes . . . I know that Patel was, and is, against any extension of time to Hyderabad and that the Governor-General prevailed over the Cabinet of the Dominion to allow him personally two months’ time to see whether he and I, who had known each other intimately for many years publicly and privately, could find a compromise satisfactory to both sides.15

  Encouraged by Monckton’s note, the Nizam wrote to Mountbatten on 18 September, that short of accession, Hyderabad was “ready and willing” to make a treaty of association with India. “Simultaneously with this approach to us,” writes V. P. Menon, “the Nizam got into contact with Jinnah with a view to securing the services of Zafrullah Khan as the President of his Executive Council.” Zafrullah could not be spared as he was to lead the Pakistan delegation to the UNO.

  Following this, an uncertainty hung over Hyderabad, with the result that delegation after delegation, with leaders and me
mbers changing now and again, began visiting New Delhi for negotiations with Mountbatten. These were almost endless, with no agreement in sight. About mid-October Patel got completely fed up and wanted to break off the negotiations. This upset Mountbatten, who pleaded: “It would be a great pity if the negotiations were to break down.” He ignored what the Nizam wrote towards the end of October: that “if the negotiations with the Government of India were to break down, he would immediately negotiate and conclude an agreement with Pakistan”. Patel was much annoyed. He told Menon, “The only decent course for us is to send back the new delegation by the very same plane by which it has arrived.”16

  Meanwhile, the situation within Hyderabad worsened. There was serious communal rioting in Secunderabad on 25 August. The police were entirely manned by Muslims. A member of the Nizam’s Executive Council, Arvamudh Aiyangar, wrote that the Muslim police were “unwilling to protect the life or property of a Hindu”, and “armed Pathans, Rohillas and Arabs are allowed to roam about without let or hindrance, terrorising the people”. This caused an exodus of the Hindus. According to Aiyangar, “The local Muslim League, which has been well organised and supplied with arms, is only waiting for an opportunity to attack the Hindus en masse . . . if Hyderabad joins the Union, there will be mass slaughter on a large scale.” Again he reported on 23 October: “One Lancaster landed at Begumpet aerodrome direct from Pakistan. It is suspected that it contained arms and ammunition.”17

  Earlier on 19 September, Patel had told Mountbatten, “The Nizam has mortgaged his future to his own Frankenstein, Ittehad-ul-Mussalmeen.”18 The Razakar leader, Kasim Razvi, had mounted a vitriolic tirade against Patel. He said on 14 October: “Patel belongs to the class of Hitler . . . Our Government is temperamentally like Chamberlain . . . what is there to prevent carrying on negotiations with Pakistan and other Muslim and non-Muslim countries?”19