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Internal Violence: The “Police Action” in Hyderabad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2015

Sunil Purushotham
Sunil Purushotham*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Through an examination of the September 1948 event known as the “Police Action,” this article argues that “internal violence” was an important engine of state formation in India in the period following independence in 1947. The mid-century ruptures in the subcontinent were neither incidental to nor undermining of the nascent Indian nation-state project—they were constitutive events through which a new state and regime of sovereignty emerged. A dispersal and mobilization of violence in and around the princely state of Hyderabad culminated in an event of violence directed primarily at Hyderabad's Muslims during and just after the Police Action. This violent mediation of the incorporation of India's Muslims into the postcolonial order left significant legacies in subsequent decades. These events in the heart of peninsular India, and the processes behind them, have remained largely invisible or obscured in the historical record. Here I substantially revise the historiography of what happened in Hyderabad, and draw on my findings to offer an alternative perspective on decolonization in India.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 435 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2015 

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103 SL Reports.

104 Ibid.

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106 Ibid., 112.

107 Ibid., 124.

108 Ibid., 124.

109 Ibid., 128.

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133 Vellodi, 16 June 1949, MoS, 1(50)-H/49.

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136 Bakhle to Patel, 6 Nov. 1948, Sardar Patel's Correspondence, vol. 7, 275; Nagendra Bahadur to Ministry of States, 4 Jan. 1952, MoS, 17(1)-H/52.

137 Ministry of States' telegram to Military Governor, MoS, 103-H/48.

138 SL Reports.

139 Ibid.

140 Chaudhuri, “Report on Certain Aspects.”

141 Tirtha to V. P. Menon, cited by Chaudhuri to Vellodi, 31 May 1949, MoS, 1(50)-H/49.

142 Tirtha to Patel, 10 May 1949, ibid.

143 M. Narsing Rao et al. to President, Indian National Congress, 11 Nov. 1948, AISPC Papers, Nehru Museum and Memorial Library, file 72.

144 Chaudhuri to Ministry of States, 17 June 1949, MoS, 1(50)-H/49.

145 “Note on the Situation.”

146 Times of India, 30 Sept. 1948.

147 Chaudhuri to Ministry of States, 17 June 1949, MoS, 1(50)-H/49.

148 Mohammed Hyder, October Coup: A Memoir of the Struggle for Hyderabad (New Delhi, 2012), 79.

149 SL Reports.

150 Chaudhuri to Vellodi, 29 May 1949, and “Supplementary Note on Visit to Osmanabad,” 29 May 1949, MoS, 1(61)-H/49. See also MoS, 1(11)-H/48.

151 Bindu to Nehru, 21 Dec. 1950, and Bindu to Patel, 21 May 1950, both in MoS, 1(5)-H/51. See also, Hyderabad State Congress to President, Indian National Congress, 11 Nov. 1948, AISPC Papers, Nehru Museum and Memorial Library, file 72.

152 SL Reports.

153 “Note on the Situation.”

154 “Inner C.C. No. 6,” Jawaharlal Nehru University, Archive of Contemporary History, 1949/56.

155 Zamindar, Safeena, Ehsan, and Mahgrabi Pakistan all made such claims. Press Intelligence Reports, 28 Oct. and 6 Nov. 1948, Punjab State Archives, East Punjab Liaison Agency records, LVI/16/23-G, pt. II.

156 Chaudhuri to Vellodi, 31 May 1948, MoS, 1(50)-H/49.

157 Chaudhuri, “Report on Certain Aspects.”

158 SL Reports; Rahman to Nehru, 1 Jan. 1950, MoS, 1(71)-H/49; “Report of the Rehabilitation Committee Appointed by the Government of Hyderabad,” MoS, 17(1)-H/52.

159 Omvedt, Dalits, 298.

160 Ibid., 313.

161 SL Reports. Choties are the tuft of hair left unshaven by Hindu men to signify their twice-born status.

162 Extract from Civil Intelligence Report, 11 Nov. 1948, MoS, 112-H/48, vol. I.

163 Abstract of Intelligence, Hyderabad Police, 24 Mar. 1949, MoS, 11(9)-H/49.

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166 Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers.

167 Patel insisted “mere declarations of loyalty to the Indian Union” would not suffice; what was needed was “practical proof of their declarations.” Speech at a public meeting, Lucknow, 6 Jan. 1948, cited in For a United India, 64–70. See also Pandey, Gyanendra, “Can a Muslim Be an Indian?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, 4 (1999): 608–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

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