ABSTRACT
The opening chapter profiles the Nizam himself: His Exalted Highness, Mir Osman Ali Khan, the Seventh Nizam of Hyderabad. It also sketches the circumstances prevailing in Hyderabad State on the eve of, and immediately following, the police action by India and Hyderabad’s integration with India.
The chapter begins with a brief description of King Kothi, the residence or ‘palace’ of the Nizam, and of his peculiar way of life. Setting the narrative in the month of September 1948, the highlights of the events of the crucial days of the police action, namely, 15–18 September, are then recounted from the Nizam’s point of view. Interspersed with brief biographical and historical information about the Nizam and his succession to the Hyderabad throne, the narrative describes the last-ditch attempts made by the Nizam to preserve the existence of Hyderabad as an ‘independent’ state, including his ‘complaint’ against India to the United Nations Security Council.
Finally, it recounts how all the efforts of the Nizam to remain ‘independent’ ultimately failed, how he had to accept and reconcile himself to the inevitable, and how, in the end, he personally declared the surrender of Hyderabad.
