THE INVENTION OF INDIA

A new book examines the men, motives and labyrinthine plots that shaped the Indian Union

- NAVIN J. ANTONY

Otto von Bismarck had to trigger three wars to forge peace across Germany. A Prussian master of strategy, Bismarck manoeuvred Denmark, Austria and France into fighting a loose alliance of 39 quarrelling German states. In the end, he got what he wanted: three war victories that fused the states into a unified Germany, making it a major European power.

Much has been written about India’s own Bismarck, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who accomplished a far bigger national unification project with nary a battle. In the weeks before and after India’s independence, Patel coaxed, cajoled, threatened and arm-twisted 562 princely states into joining the Indian Union. But the birth of India was not entirely without bloodshed—the “police action” in Hyderabad, for instance, resulted in at least 25,000 deaths.

All things considered, though, the unification was orderly enough to make Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev wonder: “How did you Indians manage to liquidate the princely states without liquidating the princes?”

As it happens, John Zubrzycki has the answer. A scholar, journalist and former diplomat, Zubrzycki has written Dethroned: Patel, Menon and the Integration of Princely India, which tells the remarkable tale of how India’s dhoti-clad, no-nonsense first home minister—together with his political aide V.P. Menon—negotiated the accession of the princely states.

Zubrzycki takes the tale into the 1970s, when prime minister Indira Gandhi dealt the final blow to the princely order. She abolished the privy purse—a sort of political pension for the royals—thereby erasing the last Bismarckian touch in India’s political integration. It was Bismarck who had invented pensions.