(EDITORIAL) The breakdown of the Indo-Hyderabad negotiations … has … crystallised India’s stand in relation to the state and lifted the curtain to display the dictator showing his mailed fist. … The democrat Pandit Nehru most unashamedly declared that his draft agreement was immutable… . All that remained for the Nizam [of Hyderabad] to do was to “sign on the dotted line”. If the Nizam does not do so and if “a situation develops in such a way that a conflict takes place” then the result “will not be to the liking of the present Government of Hyderabad and it will not … [be one] which will be bound by any draft agreement”.

… He declared that India could never agree to Hyderabad remaining independent… . This, he assured the world, was not because of any sentimental reasons, but for “highly practical reasons of geography”. … If India rejects the democratic method and chooses the Hitlerian way, a nation that knows the fate of Hitler will not despair. Hyderabad is part of the Muslim confraternity, whatever geographers might say. And violation of Hyderabad’s independence is bound to have repercussions far and near.

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2023