Operation Polo: the five days in 1948 that ended Hyderabad State
How India's only home-grown military annexation unfolded — and its long shadow.
The Indian Army moved on Hyderabad on September 13, 1948. By September 17, the seventh Nizam had surrendered. The aftermath remains contested.
After the 1947 partition, the Nizam's government — under Razakar paramilitary pressure — refused to accede to either India or Pakistan. India's Sardar Patel ordered military action.
The operation, codenamed Polo for the city's polo grounds where the army first landed, lasted 108 hours. Casualties were modest in the engagements themselves; the violence in the months that followed — recorded in the Sundarlal Committee Report (declassified only in 2013) — was an order of magnitude worse and disproportionately affected Muslim civilians.
The Nizam was retained as Rajpramukh until 1956, when Andhra Pradesh was formed by merging Telugu-speaking regions. Telangana's separate-state movement traces partly to that 1956 merger; statehood for Telangana finally came in 2014.
