June 7, 1947. The historic meeting at which Viceroy Lord Mountbatten revealed the British plan to “partition” India. With him are Jawaharlal Nehru, Lord Ismay, advisor to the Viceroy, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. | Photo credit: HINDU ARCHIVES
The year 1947 was a turning point in the modern history of the Indian subcontinent. Although the river of historical time flowed in a completely different direction eight decades ago, most historians of modern India continue to cultivate the floodplains of colonialism. The study of independent India remains a historiographical frontier, with limited interest in imperial academic centers.
Birth of a Nation aims to fill a gaping hole in the historiography of decolonization and the emergence of the modern Indian republic. Unlike Partition, historians have yet to fully explain how the hundreds of princely states scattered across the subcontinent were integrated into independent India. The standard comprehensive report is left to Vice President Menon. Integration of Indian states, published in 1956. Josie Joseph’s book does not tell the whole story, but rather focuses on “the three troubling weeks leading up to August 15, 1947.” The book begins with Joseph’s discovery of recently declassified records in the National Archives of India, a huge collection that he has carefully studied. The result is a thoroughly researched and readable account of this important period.
The political edifice of the Raj rested on two pillars: the ‘provinces’, which were directly controlled by the British, and the indirectly controlled ‘states’, nominally under the rule of the Indian princes. The political relationship between Great Britain and the states was referred to as “supremacy”.
Birth of a Nation aims to fill a gaping hole in the historiography of decolonization and the emergence of the modern Indian republic. | Photo credit: By special arrangement
Birth of a Nation: Twenty Days That Made India
Josie Joseph
Context
Pages: 264
Price: 799 rupees.
A conveniently vague and imprecisely defined term, “supremacy” included a system of British “residents” in the states, control over their foreign policy, and regulation of succession within the states. In practice, the princes’ claims to sovereignty were steadily eroded. Their powers over key communications and infrastructure, monetary policy and even valuable tracts of territory were transferred to the Government of India. The continuous bleeding of real sovereignty was compensated by the decorative splendor of royal titles, salutations and imperial durbars. During World War I, major principalities vied with each other to demonstrate their loyalty to the king-emperor by sending troops and parting with significant sums to support the imperial war effort.
The Raj, for his part, responded to the rise of anti-colonial nationalism in the interwar years by creating a “House of Princes” and eventually proposing a “federation” with the states under the Government of India Act 1935. Under this scheme, provinces automatically joined the federation, while states had the opportunity to join by signing an instrument of accession, which defined the federal legislative powers that would subsequently apply to the states. As the details of this rosy vision became clearer, the House of Princes began to move away step by step from the idea of federation. Eventually, the outbreak of World War II gave them a reprieve.
Section plan
After the war, a British Cabinet mission sent to consider the political future of India declared that with the independence of British India, the supremacy would cease to apply: all rights renounced by the states would revert to them. States would have to fill this gap by entering into a “federal relationship” or “special political arrangement” with the government or successor governments. However, over the next year, the issue of the states faded into the background as the unity and partition of India became the most important and pressing issues. When the partition plan was announced on 3 June 1947, it briefly stated that British policy would be determined by a Cabinet Mission Memorandum.
At this point Joseph’s narrative comes to the fore. The Congress and the Muslim League were at loggerheads over the issue of states. The former insisted that these states should join either India or Pakistan, while the latter argued that they could remain independent. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s argument was simple. Given a Pakistan with a divided Punjab and Bengal, it was important to restore the overall balance with India by encouraging some states to join Pakistan and others to remain independent.
In fact, some of the major states did not need Jinnah’s support. The Dewan of Travancore, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nawab of Bhopal announced their decision to remain independent and sovereign entities. Fearing the “Balkanization” of India, the Congress leadership issued a stern statement emphasizing that the states could not remain independent.
A new State Department was created in the Government of India with Vallabhbhai Patel as Minister and Vice President Menon as Secretary. Menon was well versed in constitutional matters and had a good reputation with both the senior leadership of the Congress and Lord Mountbatten. Menon came up with a simple but ingenious idea of forcing states to join through the instrument of accession in the Government of India Act (1935), but limiting the scope of accession and the powers of the Union government to only three subjects: foreign affairs, defense and communication. Patel assured the princes that “otherwise we will scrupulously respect their autonomous existence.”
Equally important was the decision of Patel and Menon to involve Mountbatten in their cause. In an important speech to the House of Princes on 25 July 1947, Mountbatten urged the princes to abandon dreams of independence and join either India or Pakistan, based on two considerations: geographical proximity and the religious composition of their populations. Accession on three subjects will give them maximum internal sovereignty. Without Mountbatten’s powerful combination of royal charisma, persuasion and subtle intimidation, it is difficult to imagine the princes agreeing to join him on short notice. Joseph gives a vivid account of the ensuing weeks of frantic negotiations, punctuated by some dramatic events such as the Maharaja of Jodhpur’s threat to shoot Menon (apparently in jest, although Menon thought otherwise); serious attempt to assassinate the Dewan of Travancore, CP Ramaswamy Iyer; and the rings of intrigue that rule Bhopal and Hyderabad.
In fact, all but three states – Junagadh, Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir – acceded to India by August 15, 1947. Joseph rightly believes that the princely states were “more than mere relics” and that their annexation into India requires historical explanation. However, he seems to exaggerate the situation by suggesting that things might have gone very differently if, for example, the Dewan of Travancore had not been attacked and therefore thrown out of existence. In fact, with the departure of British power, the princes lost their main support. Indian leaders, especially Jawaharlal Nehru and Patel, were determined not to allow the independent existence of the states. The final arbiter of the future of the states, as the examples of Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir show, was the control of the new Indian government over the coercive apparatus of the departed Raj.
Birth of a Nation ends August 15, 1947. However, the resolution of the situation in these three states will continue into the next year. Moreover, the acceding states’ relationship with the Indian Union would continue to evolve as Patel and Menon would steadily work to tighten control over the states and force them to cede much more power, not to mention their polite assurances to the contrary. Let’s hope Joseph has a sequel that can take the story back to the Indian Republic in 1950.
Srinath Raghavan – author Indira Gandhi and the years that changed India (Random Penguin House, 2025).
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