Hyderabad: The middle kingdom

It was 1948 and India looked like a Polo mint. The hole in the middle was the stubborn dominion of Hyderabad, and it belonged to one man. His Exalted Highness Osman Ali Khan, Nizam VII was the scion of a 300-year-old dynasty. He was used to hearing 21 gun salutes and national anthem that went ‘God save our gracious Ni-ii-ii-zam and on him blessings pour’ (there were Urdu and Persian versions too) and he was understandably reluctant to surrender all of this to a newfangled republic.

Instead, as this map reveals he had territorial claims of his own. He is proclaimed here as Jalalat ul Mulk, Khusru-e-Daccan-o-Berar. The last part of that title being the province of Berar, the pink exclave on the left of the map, ceded to the British in 1853 to settle a bad debt. But the Brits had left and he wanted it back. He had an army too and 200,000 shock troops, the Razakars whose leader promised to raise the Asaf Jahi standard on the ramparts of the Red Fort.

Alas it was not to be. On September 14 the Indian Army engaged the Nizam’s forces at Naldurg by the 18th they were in Hyderabad. The casulties? India: 22, Nizam’s Dominions 882. A small war. The Indian Army called it ‘Operation Polo.’