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The accession of Junagadh, 1947–48: Colonial sovereignty, state violence and post-independence India
By revisiting the events from July 1947 to February 1948 that comprised the accession of the
princely state of Junagadh to India, this article gives an insight into the newly independent
Dominion’s ‘mobilisation of violence’ in re-fashioning its sovereignty and authority. In doing
so, it adds to the growing historical literature on state formation in India that argues that
multiple crises of the period 1947–49—post-partition violence in Punjab and Delhi, rebellion,
accession and war in Kashmir and the so-called ‘police-action’ in Hyderabad—far from being
aberrations to the emerging Indian nation-state were, instead, affairs through which its new
sovereignty evolved. The mobilisation of Indian defence forces in the lead up to the accession of
Junagadh in November 1947 and the management of violence directed at Junagadh’s Muslims
afterwards are yet another instance of the forcible incorporation of Indian princely states and
Indian Muslims into the reconstructed post-colonial state. Present in this matrix were also the
‘sub-states’ within Junagadh and the attendant questions of their autonomy, an instrumentalist
alarmism about popular will and unrest and a hastily conducted referendum. These aspects
of this contested accession have remained overshadowed in the historical record and are here
revised to provide an alternative narrative.
History
School
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