Princestan

In the run-up to independence, a vile plan was devised by a handful of powerful princes to not join either Modern India or Pakistan. The plan was led by the Chancellor of the chamber of princes, Nawab of Bhopal, who was operating under the patronage of M. Ali Jinnah, Lord Wavell and British prime Minister Winston Churchill. The idea was to create a third dominion called Princestan where the 565 princely states would stay outside the ambit of the two free states and retain paramountcy under the aegis of the departing British. The success of such a malevolent plan would have made the newly independent nation unstable and vulnerable. However, three persons stood in the way of the nefarious British plan to balkanize India. This is the hitherto untold story of how Jawaharlal Nehru, Lord Mountbatten and Sardar Patel battled the rulers of the princely states at every twist and turn to foil that cunning plan, even as the process of decolonization had begun. One third of India’s land mass comprising 100 million people and ruled by the Princely Order through linkages by treaties with the British Empire contemplated a Third Dominion in the lead up to Independence. With the British dividing India through the creation of a new dominion called Pakistan, British PM Winston Churchill in conjunction with the Viceroy of India Lord Wavell planned to ‘keep a bit of India’. Using the wily Mohd Ali Jinnah as his instrumentality, he architected the vivisection of India by creating three dominions — Hindustan, Pakistan and Princestan. It was a diabolical plan which roped in defiant princes like the Nawab of Bhopal Hamidullah Khan who in turn was a stalking horse for the much bigger Princely State of Hyderabad whose ruler — His Exalted Highness Nizam — believed that he could remain independent of the two dominions.

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