Harsimran Kaur ON  Aug 17, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW, Dethroned: Patel, Menon And The Integration Of Princely India By John Zubrzycki–Non-Fiction

Rating: 5/5

In the book, ‘Discovery of India’, Jawaharlal Nehru quotes Shelvarkar, “Indian states were Britain’s fifth column in India.” The ubiquitous Princely States spread all over the country like moths with different patterns and colors webbing an infallible feudal functioning—a desideratum for the British Crown to hedge a heavy-hand around the states. Then, came along the gnarled slanging match of ‘partition’ serrating a sqwakish cut in the manifested charm of royal exuberance. 

The story of partition is a simulacrum of dystopic vulnerabilities that still plays in the mind a battle ground of treachery and turpitudes.

• A non-sine qua non or atleast was made to be showcasing a dereliction of one’s accustomed truth of tolerance.
• More so, an act of whataboutery that finally presented itself as a self-indulgent masquerade of knitting a cause of dichotomy.

Partition did happen and so did the disempowerment of the princely states hanging as a dewlap falling from the corrugated chard of their privileged occupancies. The questions that leap as innuendoes creating faults in the pejorative limps of Indian hubris still make a clangoring sound.

• Was the cumulonimbus of disconcerted and disenchanted states to be a part of the dominion a chimera?—the idea of which fell heavily as diddle on the rulers.
• Or did the ingenious minds of Patel and Menon web a theory that actually turned out to be a deus ex machina?
• What about the subsidiary system? The Princely States under the British Crown were awarded for their solipsism intoxicated by an autocratic rule levying inappropriate taxes and considering their subjects as defunct parasites. 

Doughtily expounded with assiduous research, the book ‘Dethroned: Patel, Menon and the Integration of Princely India’ by John Zubrzycki is a piquant taste of disorder and stentorious affirmations of the Princely States brought to a cul-de-sac by the sharp intellect of ‘Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’ and the savoir faire of ‘V.P.Menon’.  

The decision to integrate the states was an important one so as to retain the integrity and sovereignty of the country. But, all had to be dealt with a stratagem to absolve the sclerotic state system. It was though met with schismatic scrimmage; the Princely Rulers with their po-faced discretions and carrying the pop-eyed reluctant demeanor to the persiflage of consequences. The shining armour was the triumvirate of Patel-Menon-Mountbatten that herded to slip the Earth under the ruler’s feet to make them accept the ‘Instrument of Accession’.

The book debates and presses hard to ponder if the entire cavalcade of convincing the rulers to join either of the dominion after partition was somewhat selfish, and then undeterred in their mission, both Patel and Menon wafted a scurrilous mission to make the rulers integrate into the existing provinces.

Author John Zubrzycki lays down parallel dimensions of various rulers enjoying their self-exculpating privileges. The bête-noir propinquity to be subjugated by the discretions of the Congress party felt like a comeuppance they deserved. The carnivalesque of ‘Hari Singh’ ruling ‘Kashmir’ was torn into smithereens by the perfidy of invaders who felt‘ loot’ could give ‘Kashmir’ in the palm of their hands. ‘Travancore’ was a tough nut to crack; intimidation did not work, acted as a rope with lose ends till its ruler C.P. Ramaswami was attacked by miscreants.

Patel had his inhibitions for ‘Hyderabad’. But what made victory possible for Patel-Menon duo was an ideology to see India as a democratic and peaceful dominion buckled with a tight snap of equality. They knew! The ‘Princely States’ would be left unattended due to their economic and social disparagement, and imperceptibly they altered its direction to merge with the formidable side. “Hyderabad’ in its obstinacy chaperoned chaos and upheaval to finally find itself in the new-fangled power crisis. An ad infinitum, the Princely States were not ready for; an abnegation of their pageantry and ornamental show that made them felt disassociated and disenfranchised.   

The book, ‘Dethroned: Patel, Menon and the Integration of Princely India’ is a cornucopia of prolific research on the mental framework of Menon and Patel to pursue the country out of an apocalypse. ‘Standstill agreement’ and ‘Privy Purse’ was a rip cord to balance the tumultuous whiff of unpleasantness thereby revivifying a new functionality in the working of a democratic set-up. Jinnah had its own hang-ups and lacked the political acumen to convince the states to join him. He was no demagogue; in fact a disputatious fanning desultory conversations and polemics. 

TAKE AWAY

Some states were easy to grasp, some a rumpus in the forest. What it all required was a dendrite of ratiocination and rabbit punch to put an end to the diadem and the amorphous. The caravan started by Patel-Menon was finally given a screech of breaks during the Indira Gandhi regime; the privy purse and the sanctioned privileges of the ‘Princely States’ were taken off as per the bill that became a law on December 28, 1971.

There was no looking back then. It was as if a ray of sunshine beckoned on the disport rulers taking away from them their compulsions and riley, and to finally become a part of the dominion as pure nationalist.