This book uses personal accounts to show how Hyderabad’s annexation affected ordinary people

Operation Polo September 13, 1948, an Indian Army of 36,000 invaded Hyderabad after declaring an Emergency in India. (There were 17 polo grounds in Hyderabad, that’s why that code name.)

In September of 1948, Hyderabad’s Muslims had gone through unimaginable and unforgettable trauma in their lives they called “Action”, short for the Police Action, a euphemism India had come up with for its forcible annexation of Hyderabad, the largest princely state it was surrounding, 82,698 square miles, almost equal to England and Ireland combined. For years they asked their new friends and acquaintances the question “Action kay time pay aap kaan thay?” When they asked me that question, I replied I was on the train which India had bombed at the Yadgir Railway Station.

On the afternoon of September 16, we were on board the last NSR train (Nizam State Railways) for Hyderabad. When it started pulling out of the station, an Indian Air Force’s propeller plane (perhaps a Hawker Tempest), with its engine switched off, stealthily swooped on it and dropped a bomb that missed our train and fell on a fully loaded bus, killing and wounding dozens. One should ask, wasn’t that attack on a passenger train a war crime,…

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