On June 3, 1947, Lord Mountbatten announced that India would get freedom in August 1947. Congress had six weeks to convince 565 kingdoms to agree to accede to India. Princely states had 45 per cent of today’s India’s landmass. Without the princely states, the Indian map would look like a tattered cloth with huge holes in it.
This mammoth task was taken up by Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Vappala Pangunni Menon, aided by Mountbatten and Nehru. How they did it forms the basis of the book 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India.
Trivedi’s illustrations aid the understanding of what Patel and Menon were up against and why Jinnah thought he would get the larger nation while tearing India into bits as Ravikumar meticulously traces personal ambitions, princely agendas, and political intrigues of that time.
Jinnah played chess with Patel, where he sacrificed the pawn (Junagadh) to capture the Queen (Kashmir), in which he failed while Patel wanted the King (Hyderabad).
Mountbatten threatened Maharaja of Indore and Nizam of Bhopal into submission; Travancore applied for United Nations membership as an independent nation with support from Savarkar and Jinnah.
Hyderabad bought arms secretly delivered by Sidney Cotton, the Australian pilot. From a maharaja who had a pen that changed into a gun and threatened to shoot Menon to the Rampur nawab who refused to join Pakistan, Ravikumar tells the story of how India was unified and made into a democracy. The writing is engaging, fast-paced, and well researched.
Author Mallika Ravikumar speaks to Deepa Kandaswamy on her book.
Q: Tell us about yourself and the trigger for writing this book?
MR: I’m a lawyer turned writer. In 2018, I was working as the content writer and curator for the Government of India’s National Virtual Libraries of India portal on Sardar Patel. During this time, I got an opportunity to research on this story. In Ahmedabad, I was asking for directions to Sardar’s office when somebody turned around and asked, ‘Who is Sardar Patel?’ That disturbed me. I felt sad that so little was known about the man who had united India. I began writing a blog about Sardar’s contribution and started telling stories to neighbourhood kids on his birthday. But I felt I could do more to reach a wider audience. That is how the idea of the book came up.
Q: How did Sardar Patel convince Gandhiji to accept partition?
MR: Sardar Patel was one of the first leaders in Congress to come around the idea of partition. He believed that this was the chance to finally see India free, and if Jinnah’s demand was acting as a spoke in the wheel, it was better to cede Pakistan and get the British out. He was chosen to convince Gandhi to accept partition. It wasn’t easy, but Gandhi gave in to Sardar’s practical argument.
Q: The demand for Sikhistan actually began after the Rawalpindi massacre, and isn’t it a development during the 1980s?
MR: Yes. There were a lot of discussions during Partition as well. Especially since the Sikhs were bearing the brunt of the division of Punjab. While the Muslims were a majority in west Punjab, the Hindus formed the majority in east Punjab, and the Sikhs were spread all over. This idea was mooted around that time as an alternative.
Q: Why was Sir Cyril Radcliffe chosen to partition the Indian subcontinent?
MR: Cyril Radcliffe, a member of the London Bar, had never been to India and knew nothing about it. Strangely, that is why he was chosen to head the boundary commission. A lack of any knowledge would make him seemingly unbiased. He destroyed his diary and left no records of his thoughts for us to know why he accepted the assignment.