Much has been written about India’s own Bismarck, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who accomplished a far bigger national unification before and after independence with his aggressive strategy. In the weeks before India’s independence, Patel coaxed, cajoled, threatened and arm-twisted 562 princely states into joining the Indian Union. But the birth of India was not entirely without bloodshed—the “Police action” in Hyderabad, for instance, resulted in at least 25,000 deaths.

All things considered, though, the unification was orderly enough to make Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev wonder: “How did you Indians manage to liquidate the princely states without liquidating the princes?”

As it happens, John Zubrzycki has the answer. A scholar, journalist and former diplomat has written Dethroned: Patel, Menon on the Integration of Princely India, which tells the remarkable tale of how India’s dhoti-clad, no nonsense first home minister-together with his political aide V P Menon- negotiated the accession of the princely states.

Zubzycki takes the tale into the 1970s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dealt the final blow to the princely order. She abolished the privy purse—a sort of political pension for the royals---thereby erasing the Bismarckian touch in India’s political integration. It was Bismarck who had invented pensions for the former rulers.

At 337 pages, Dethroned reads like a breeze. Zubrycki has unique quality of condensing history and making it entertaining. His last effort was The Shortest History of India, a running down on 5,000 years of Indian history in less than 300 pages.

So which was the more difficult book to write? “Oh it is very hard to condense 5,000 years of Indian history into, say 250 pages”, Zubrzycki says, adding “but telling the story of what happened to 562 princely states at the time of Independence and afterwards was equally hard. The story of princely states, even though it takes place over just few decades, is quite a complex one. And, there are many competing narratives at play.”(IPA Service)