of the RSS had been involved. Here, indeed, was a good example of a
deferral of a problem rather than its solution. But at the time the deferral
was more than welcome.JUNAGADH, HYDERABAD, KASHMIR
There was of course a way in which anti-Muslim sentiment could be
equated with reasons of state, where ‘Pakistan’ could take the place of
‘Muslims’. Pakistan, by attempting to define itself as a Muslim state that
was not Islamic in a religious sense – a state in which the Muslims of the
Indian sub-continent did not feel persecuted – in effect made its self-
definition a negative one, dependent on the fact that it was not India.
There was a danger of India following suit, and of mutually reinforcing
definitions of national boundaries and identities bound to each other
in intimate antagonism. This was almost facilitated by the question of
Kashmir, where by the end of 1947, hostilities had broken out between
India and Pakistan over that state’s accession to one or the other state.
Pakistan’s sponsorship of the so-called ‘tribal incursion’ into the kingdom
of Kashmir, and the maharaja’s decision to accede in haste to India,
abandoning his earlier position that he wished to secure independence for
Kashmir was the beginning of a long and agonised conflict.
Compared to the problems of Kashmir, the other recalcitrant states
that by August 15, 1947, had not yet acceded to one or other of the new
dominions of India and Pakistan posed far less of a problem. Junagadh, a
small state in the Kathiawad region with a Hindu-majority population
but a Muslim ruler, decided it wished to join Pakistan. After a brief stand-
off with Indian troops outside the state, the maharaja lost his nerve and
ran away to Karachi; his dewan (‘First Minister’), the Muslim League
appointee Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, was unable to continue, as his maharaja
had emptied the state treasury on his departure. In February 1948, a
referendum was held in Junagadh that showed an overwhelming desire
to join India. The non-accession of Hyderabad to India was considered
an anomaly given that the state was surrounded entirely by Indian
territory (although by that reasoning East and West Pakistan were them-
selves anomalies, and the potential accession of the North-West Frontier
Province to India given the 1946 election results could have been
achieved). The Nizam of Hyderabad could claim a lineage and a tradition
of independence from late Mughal times, but geopolitics were against176 CONSOLIDATING THE STATE, c. 1947–55