first Indian princely state to accede to British protection under the policy of Subsidiary Alliance instituted by Arthur Wellesley, and was thus named as the State of Hyderabad. The State of Hyderabad under the leadership of its 7th Nizam, Mir Sir Osman Ali Khan, was the largest and most prosperous of all the princely states in India. With annual revenues of over Rs. 9 crore, it covered of fairly homogenous territory and comprised a population of roughly 16.34 million people (as per the 1941 census) of which a majority (85%) was Hindu. The state had its own army, airline, telecommunication system, railway network, postal system, currency and radio broadcasting service. Hyderabad was a multi-lingual state consisting of peoples speaking Telugu (48.2%), Marathi (26.4%), Kannada (12.3%) and Urdu (10.3%). In spite of the overwhelming Hindu majority, Hindus were severely under-represented in government, police and the military. Of 1765 officers in the State Army, 1268 were Muslims, 421 were Hindus, and 121 others were Christians, Parsis and Sikhs. Of the officials drawing a salary between Rs. 600 and 1200 per month, 59 were Muslims, 5 were Hindus and 38 were of other religions. The Nizam and his nobles, who were mostly Muslims, owned 40% of the total land in the state. When the British departed from the Indian subcontinent in 1947, they offered the various princely states in the sub-continent the option of acceding to either India or Pakistan, or staying on as an independent state. As stated by Sardar Patel at a press conference in January 1948, "As you are all aware, on the lapse of Paramountcy every Indian State became a separate independent entity." In India, a small number of states, including Hyderabad, declined to join the new dominion. In the case of Pakistan, accession happened far more slowly. Hyderabad had been part of the calculations of all-India political parties since the 1930s. The leaders of the new Dominion of India were wary of a Balkanization of India if Hyderabad was left independent. Hyderabad state had been steadily becoming more theocratic since the beginning of the 20th century. In 1926, Mahmud Nawazkhan, a retired Hyderabad official, founded the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (also known as Ittehad or MIM). Its objectives were to unite the Muslims in the State in support of Nizam and to reduce the Hindu majority by large-scale conversion to Islam. The MIM became a powerful communal organisation, with the