Yunus Yacoob Lasania on Forgotten Histories: Hyderabad's Annexation to India

17 September 2020 marked 72 years since the princely state of Hyderabad was annexed to India through military force, known as Operation Polo or Police Action.

The story of how the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad was annexed to India in 1948 is often forgotten. Much like Punjab and Bengal this region was also marked with violence, especially against Muslims, largely owing to communal elements.

The last state to be annexed to India, Hyderabad at that time was spread over 82,000 square miles and had a population of over 16 million people. Osman Ali Khan—the last Nizam—had wished to stay independent—the option given to princely states by the British. What transpired then? How and why did the annexation happen?

Around the same period—1946-51—Telangana, which was part of the Hyderabad state then, also witnessed the Telangana Armed Struggle—a Communist Party of India-backed peasant rebellion against state-appointed landlords. One of the first instances of freedom from bonded slavery.

Yunus Yacoob Lasania shares his research on the forgotten histories of Hyderabad—an important aspect of the history of the 1947 Partition—on Saturday, 26 September 2020 at 5 p.m.

Yunus Y. Lasania is currently a special correspondent based in Hyderabad with Siasat.com, which is the English website of Siasat, one of the city's oldest vernaculars. Prior to that, he worked as the state correspondent for the business newspaper Mint (HT Media), covering AP and Telangana, and also with The Hindu and The New Indian Express. He conducts weekly heritage walks around the city to engage people with Hyderabad’s history. Yunus also documents the city's lesser known history through The Hyderabad History Project through a blog and an Instagram account and is currently working on a book to document the oral history of ordinary people who lived in the erstwhile state of Hyderabad, when it was annexed to India by the Indian army in 1948.

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