War in Our Times | Operation Polo: The military campaign to free Hyderabad in September 1948

Editor’s note: This series by one of India’s leading military historian of contemporary times showcases chronological vignettes of war and conflict in independent India. Watch out for this column close to all the dates in the year when independent India has had to deal with various national security challenges.

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The Nizam Acts Difficult The state of Hyderabad was one of the oldest princely states in the Deccan and had been ruled by the Asaf Jahi dynasty since 1724 after it broke away from the declining Mughal Empire. Centred at Hyderabad, the Nizam ruled over a large state with a majority Hindu population in the west and north-western areas bordering the Maratha Empire and in the south and south-east areas bordering the Madras Presidency. The Muslim population grew around the capital of Hyderabad and provided the much-needed physical security for the Nizam from the oppressed and restive majority population. As the ‘idea and shape of India’ emerged slowly out of the cocoon of the various British-ruled provinces and princely states in 1948, apart from Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad remained a thorn in India’s hinterland. Where did the Nizam accumulate such wealth? The answer lay in his ability to retain control over the rural population, extract huge taxes, exploit the fertile cotton and sugarcane belts of the region and send the produce to Great Britain and Europe in return for exotic riches and unimaginable wealth. Such control would not have been possible had it not been for the existence of Arab and Pathan militia in the Nawab’s army – recruited in the early 19th century – not only to beef-up the Nizam’s security forces, but also to support the ulema (holy men) in spreading the Islamic faith. As this militia integrated with the local population, they were organised into a 20th century militia called Razakars under a hardline Islamist cleric named Qasim Razvi, the leader of a political party called Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen devoted to the cause of Islamic supremacy in the region. It was this militia that perpetrated communal violence in the state and created a combustible security situation warranting immediate intervention by India. GOI procrastinates, police action? The Government of Indis was initially at a loss how to peacefully resolve the issue and offered a Standstill Agreement to the Nizam in September 1947. The agreement offered significant autonomy to the Nizam, emboldening the radical elements within the Nizam’s government to reject the agreement and push for complete independence. Thus, the political indecisiveness in Delhi reinforced the hands of the Nizam and his band of Razakars, ripening an already fragile and adversarial situation between the Muslims and the Hindus in the state. The situation worsened much through the first half of 1948 with stray but authentic reports of killings on either side coming from British army personnel posted at Hyderabad. One of the most interesting facets of the use of military force to coerce the Nizam of Hyderabad to accede to the Indian Union is the term Hyderabad Police Action. How and why this term was coined by the Government of India is interesting to reflect on as it has been a matter of much debate since. While some believe that the name police action reveals much about the nature of Indian strategic thought on force application at the time of independence, others believe that it provided early signs of the restraint and maturity that India’s political leadership would display whenever its hands were forced to use force on its own people. Even though Jawaharlal Nehru clearly called it a military action and not war in one of his pronouncements at Madras prior to the actual commencement of operations, he assumed that by downplaying a full-fledged military operation and calling it a mere police action, India would be viewed by the rest of the world as a mature and restrained power. Little did he realise that it would also reveal strategic contradictions about India’s reluctance to accept that force application and demonstration of coercive power and intent were critical ingredients of statecraft. Military action at last At 13.45 on 12 September, 1948, the Indian Army commenced a multi-pronged pronged thrust into Hyderabad from four bordering provinces of the Union of India -– Central Province, Bombay, Mysore and Madras. Symbolically, on the same day in 1727, the Marathas under Peshwa Balaji Rao defeated the Nizam of Hyderabad in the first battle he fought after declaring his independence from them. Largely planned under the supervision of Brigadier JN Chaudhuri when he was Chief of General Staff at Army HQ, New Delhi, Operation Polo, as the action was code-named, was finally executed by an all-Indian team of Southern Army Command under Lieutenant General Maharaj Shri Rajendra Sinhji, a freshly promoted Major General JN Chaudhuri (later to be COAS), the GOC of 1 Armoured Division and Major General Ajit Anil ‘Jock’ Rudra who was GOC of the Madras Area. The air element comprised a ‘Polo Air Task Force’ under the command of Air Commodore Subroto Mukherjee as AOC Caterpillar Air Task Force. He was later to be the first Indian Chief of the Air Staff in 1954. His mandate for the use of air power in the operation was to provide photo reconnaissance and close air support to advancing Indian army columns particularly the armoured division with two fighter squadrons of Tempest fighter-bombers (3 and 4 Sqns) at Poona. A cakewalk into Hyderabad The major Indian Army thrust was from the west where the Sholapur-Hyderabad highway presented the best opportunity for Maj Gen Chaudhuri’s 1 Armoured Division to steamroll past stubborn state forces and Razakars at Bidar and capture Hyderabad. A subsidiary thrust by additional troops assigned to 1 Armoured Division was to commence from the North-West with the aim of capturing Aurangabad and Jalna, two important towns in the NW areas. A North-Eastern thrust was planned from Adilabad, a southern thrust from Kurnool and a major South-Eastern thrust from Bezwada. Both the southern thrusts were entrusted to infantry and armoured formations from Rudra’s Madras Area. The state forces of the Nizam were poorly trained and had no battle experience. Their equipment was old and rusty and did not support the numbers of a 30,000 strong standing army, an Armed Police Force of approximately 35,000 and 8,000 irregulars and a large force of Razakars. The strength of Razakars widely varied since it was a militia and ranged from a modest 30,000 as reported by western commentators to a figure of 70,000 active and armed men and women as indicated in the white paper. Contrary to initial reports, the Nizam had no air force and most of his armoured cars were off-road. Indicating a sense of urgency in response to the wildly exaggerated strength of the Nizam’s forces and anticipating concurrent and prolonged operations in Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir, the Union of India adopted proactive measures by summoning reserve officers from Travancore, Madras, Cochin and Coorg. [caption id=“attachment_13147242” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Maj Gen El Edroos (R) surrendering to Maj Gen JN Chaudhuri in Hyderabad on 16 September 1948[/caption] After three days of sporadic fighting mainly in the form of skirmishes and tough encounters with the Razakars, Chaudhri’s 1 Armoured Division supported by RIAF Tempests operating from Pune smashed past defence at Rajasur, Zahirabad, Bidar and Homnabad from the west and Aurangabad in the north-west, while Gen Rudra’s formations forged ahead in the Suriapet salient of the Bezwada sector. By the early morning of 17 September, 1 Armoured Divison was poised to take Hyderabad and by 5pm on the same day, the Nizam surrendered. Personal vignettes Lt Gen MM Zaki, the former Corps Commander of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps and then an advisor to the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir during the troubled 1990s, comes from an illustrious military family from Hyderabad. He was all of 11 years and had just finished his first year at the Rashtriya Indian Military College in Dehradun. His father, Brigadier Zaki was serving in the Nizam’s Hyderabad Army as the Sector commander North in Gulbarga which is now in the state of Karnataka. Gen Zaki recollects events after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948 because of which he could not return to school and then when he was visiting his father in Gulbarga when the military action against Hyderabad commenced. Imagine yourself as a 11-year-old in a staff car with your father and a Tempest fighter aircraft dive on you with its machine guns firing. This is exactly what happened as the father and son duo dived for cover. Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam (Retd) is a fighter pilot from the IAF and an accomplished military historian. He is the author of two defining books on contemporary Indian military history, ‘India’s Wars: A Military History 1947-1971 & Full Spectrum: India’s Wars 1972-2020. Coming Next: Standing Up to the Dragon: The Skirmishes at Nathu La & Chola The author is a retired fighter pilot who has flown both the MiG-21 and the Mirage 2000. He is also an air power analyst and military historian. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.