When the British decided to partition their Indian colony and exit the sub-continent, the fate of five hundred odd Princely States hung in the balance. Many of the Kingdoms were powerful, with standing armies and did not like the idea of joining either India or Pakistan. From the point of view of Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru, allowing a bunch of independent principalities to fester inside the Indian Union was not an option at all. So, Home Minister Sardar Patel and a small, but very competent team rolled up their sleeves and got down to the mammoth task at hand. When Patel asked Lord Mountbatten to help him win over the various Indian prices and convince them to join the Indian Union, Mountbatten agreed to help, provided Patel agreed to his conditions. Patel agreed, provided he got a basket of apples. A basket of 565 apples to be precise.
The story of how Sardar Patel and his team convinced a motley bunch of egoistic and truculent princes to give up their independence and join the Indian Union has been described in a few history books in summary fashion, but, now, for the first time, a well-known Indian fiction writer has brought to life the story of how “more than 500 princely kingdoms were threaded together into a union – in record time and against all odds – to create the India we now have”. Mallika Ravikumar calls her book a “work of creative non-fiction, inspired by real events in history and rooted in research.” I don’t think there can be a better description of 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India. Ravikumar acknowledges that she has taken creative liberties in the writing and presentation of her book, all in good faith. At the end of every chapter, a “Did It Really Happen This Way?” section details Ravikumar’s sources and delineates a boundary between what definitely happened and what probably happened.
565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India has thirteen chapters, each dealing with a significant or interesting integration, ranging from Travancore to Hyderabad and Kashmir. Each of these chapters can be read independently as a separate story. Every chapter is full of twists and turns that keeps the reader engrossed. More importantly, 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India is set in an era when, in every princely state, the ruler was considered divine and the will of the people was unimportant, something unthinkable today. Many Princes did not want to give up their rights and privileges, though some did do so willingly.
Ravikumar writes in elegant, but simple prose that is an excellent conductor for the electric thread that runs through 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India. Each of the thirteen chapters is a treasure trove of historical anecdotes, thrillers that can put the best of Hollywood or Bollywood in the shade and sagas of courage and sacrifice, all of which combine to make the book unputdownable. One just gallops from one chapter to another and before one realizes, this book comes to an end, making one want for more. At the end of the twelfth chapter (The integration of Jammu and Kashmir) when an Indian air force Dakota piloted by Wing Commander Bhatia hovered over Srinagar, verified that the crowds surging towards the dusty and unkempt airstrip at Budgam airport were locals waiting to welcome Indian troops and not Pakistani raiders looking to ambush, and disgorged Lieutenant Colonel Rai and his men amidst delighted shrieks of ‘Khushamdeed!’, I thought Ravikumar’s story telling couldn’t get any better, but it actually did.
I used to think I knew everything significant about the happenings in 1946/47, but I didn’t know that the Nizam of Hyderabad tried to purchase Goa from the Portuguese so that Hyderabad could have a seaport or that three young members of the Arya Samaj (Narayan Rao Pawar, Gandaiah Arya and Jagdish Arya) made an abortive attempt to assassinate Sir Mir Osman Ali Khan Siddiqui Asaf Jah. I knew nothing at all about Tripura and it was a revelation to find out how selfish Prince Durjoy Kishore and Diwan Mukherjee took the support of the Muslim League to try and wrest Tripura for Pakistan. However, Maharani Kanchan Prava stood firm and ensured that her late husband Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Debbarma Bahadur’s wish for Tripura to join India was implemented.
In addition to big stories, one also gets to know a lot of trivia about that era. Did you know that the head of a province of British India too was referred to as “Prime Minister”? Thus, Balasaheb Gangadhar Kher, Prime Minister of Bombay until 1950, when the Constitution of India was adopted. I don’t want to divulge too much info here and ruin the book for you. Go on, do read 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India and find out how Sardar Patel bagged a basket of 565 apples for India.
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