The India Project with Josy Joseph | Radio Azim Premji University

What is the mood in the streets of India on August 14, 1947? If you expected cheering crowds and processions of jubilation on the eve of Independence, here’s the sobering truth: not everyone is celebrating. For some princely states, accession to the Indian Union is not a natural choice. Punjab, Sind and Bengal, cloven by Partition, witness scenes of horrific violence and the displacement of millio...

Co-host Seetal joins expert Josy Joseph in conversation in this penultimate episode of The India Project. As they unravel the story so far, they bring on stage the key characters for a curtain call. What became of Travancore Diwan Sir C P ’s machinations in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on him? What were the moves being planned by the Nizam of Hyderabad? In the wake of the Japanese Ar...

In August 1947, as India took the final steps towards becoming an independent nation, numerous actors thronged the chessboard in the northeast of the country, contemplating their moves. Among them was the Governor of Assam, Sir Muhammad Saleh Akbar Hydari, who initiated talks with the respective princely states and ethnic dominions of the northeast, including the Naga Hills, Khasi Hills and Mizo H...

Did you know that Bhopal has a rich history, and a role to play in the cloak-and-dagger drama that preceded Independence? Before it came to be the capital of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal was the second-largest Islamic princely state in British India. In fact, Bhopal State had a long lineage of rulers, including a succession of female Nawabs or Nawab Begums, unique in Indian history. The last ruling Nawa...

A car chase in Bombay climaxes in a cold-blooded street murder and a foiled abduction. A cornered potentate, chastened by a scandal, agrees reluctantly to abdicate. Amid the power play of dangerous liaisons, this episode of The India Project packs it all in. After our exploration of the fraught politics of The Princely States in Episode 1 and the mutinous designs of Travancore to renege on the Uni...

A man of great contradictions… that is how the learned and venerable reformer and technocrat Sir Chetput Pattabhiraman Ramaswami Iyer is introduced in the second episode of The India Project with Josy Joseph. In the summer of 1947, Sir CP had drawn up an aggressive plan for independence… not of India, but of the princely state of Travancore, of which he was the Diwan from 1936 to 1947. As the cloc...

“We must celebrate our democracy. More importantly, it must be nurtured, preserved and deepened.” Episode 1 of The India Project, The Princely States , opens with these lines, going on to explore how one of the fundamental challenges to the idea of a unified India came from its princely states. From Hyderabad under the Nizam to the kingdom of Travancore, from Junagadh to Bhopal, each state was pre...