The hardcover book itself is of medium height and thickness. It is divided into fourteen chapters with a Prologue and Epilogue, notes, select bibliography, Acknowledgements and Index. A few pages of black and white photos are also included. What would be of use is a list of terms used for the various rulers, what they meant and their rank. For example, some were entitled to a 21 gun salute, others not.
A terrific book, written in a relatively easy to read style yet at the same time meticulously researched, John Zubrzycki’s DETHRONED charts the events leading up to, and after, the dissolution of the British Empire in 1947 and the politics, bitter feuds and lasting effects of the creation of India and Pakistan and how the repercussions from these events are still being felt today.
DETHRONED details how the tyrannical rulers of the various princely states were hoodwinked into acquiescing to India by the leaders – Nehru, Menon, Patel as supported by Mountbatten.
Zubrzycki’s book explains all the behind the scenes political turmoil, delays and bungles, scandals etc after 25 July 1947 when Lord Mountbatten, India’s last Viceroy, had three weeks to entice over 550 Princely states that ranged enormously in size from some the size of Britain, some extremely tiny they were almost invisible, to all, to join together and become a part of a free India, rather than splitting and becoming part of Pakistan. The princely states were not really part of the grand Raj: they were effectively governed by complicated treaty.
Zubrzycki details events in various States and the various foibles of the rulers and how there could be a great administration mix up. Hyderabad’s income and expenditure for example was similar to Belgium and in 1947 it was bigger than twenty members of the UN, while Travancore in the far south always insisted it was going to declare for independence. An administrative structure for an independent “Rajastan” was also submitted but postponed indefinitely.
The closure of the British rule was at times fraught with tension and mishaps and some of the larger, richer Princely states dripped with autocratic opulence, the rulers not really caring about their subjects. At times truth seems like fiction. Zubrzycki demonstrates that the myth of Patel ‘courteously decapitating hundreds of little King Charleses’, like a ‘Hindu Cromwell’ was not true. However, Kashmiris were denied the plebiscite promised to them, their leader was imprisoned for a quarter of a century and a torture-loving gauleiter was installed in his stead while Patel seemingly covered up the murder of thirty thousand Muslims in Alwar and Bharatpur and only after twenty-five thousand Muslims were killed by an Islamophobic occupying army did Hyderabad surrender.
Parts of the book are quite shocking and disturbing. Zubrzycki shows how some of the rulers eccentricities included inbred insanity, torture, prostitution, incest, enslavement, conspiracy to murder, and more. Galior’s ruler named his son George after the British King. While his equivalent in Bahawalpur, claiming to be a descendant of the uncle of Prophet Muhammad, boasted a collection of six hundred dildos, which Pakistan’s generals discreetly buried when he was dethroned.
The tyrant of Junagadh wasted a fortune on the ‘marriage of his favourite bitch Roshana with a handsome golden retriever named Bobby’. Some fifty thousand guests attended the ‘marriage ceremony’, the bride apparelled in pearls and the groom’s paws ‘bedecked with gold’. Among other things , when fleeing in 1947, he didn’t wait for one of his four wives to collect her daughter but boarded the private plane and left the airport without her.
Scandals also lurked with for instance the seventh nizam of Hyderabad who was not only rapacious and degenerate, with two hundred wives and concubines but was a secret peeping tom – his guests had no idea hidden cameras were taking nude photos of them. Hari Singh, Kashmir’s dastardly ruler was caught in flagrante delicto in Paris with a Mrs Robinson.The encounter cost him (or rather the public exchequer and his subjects), £125,000 (£8 million today) to cover it up.
Khairpur’s voracious ruler became so fat that that he couldn’t ‘get his face closer than 60 centimetres to the table’.
Five hundred farmers were murdered and then their village torched in 1925 by the ruler of Alwar, after they had what he considered the audacity to protest against his voracious land tax – an episode possibly far more horrifying than the Amritsar Massacre in 1919.
Patiala’s ruler’s appetite for quail – he devoured twenty-five in a single sitting – was eclipsed by his appetite for sex and money. Some 60 per cent of the state’s income was spent on providing for his livelihood. Zubrzycki writes that bureaucrats were jailed for failing to supply him with a ‘constant stream of young peasant girls for his sexual gratification’.
In 1971 Indira Ghandi ended all the Princely prerogatives. Some disputes /actions still resonate today.
For history buffs, a captivating read about the creation of twentieth century India packed with fascinating ,extensive detail.
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/dethroned/
