, the leader of Razakars. . With the
Indian Independence Act 1947, the British left the princely states with the option of join either
India or
Pakistan or opting for full independence. However, by 1948 almost all had
acceded to either India or Pakistan. One major exception was Hyderabad, where
Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII, a Muslim ruler who presided over a largely Hindu population, chose
independence and hoped to maintain this with the help of Razakars and entered into a
standstill agreement with India on 29 November 1947 to maintain the
status quo. The move was strongly resisted primarily by the Hindu subjects of the kingdom, who wanted state's accession with India. In 1926, Mahmud Nawaz Khan, a retired Hyderabad official, founded the
Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (also known as MIM). The MIM became a powerful organization, with a principal focus of marginalizing the political aspirations of Hindus and progressive Muslims through its actions, including the insistence that Hyderabad be declared a Muslim state. MIM "had its storm troopers in the Razakars who were headed by
Kasim Razvi, a Muslim educated at
Aligarh University who claimed Hyderabad was a Muslim state and that Muslim supremacy was based upon the right of conquest". The Razakars demanded special powers from the Nizam, which they started to misuse and the Nizam had to abide by their dictats. The Nizam sent a delegation to the
United Nations to refer the Hyderabad State case to the
UN Security Council. The Razakar militia brutally put down the armed revolts by Communist sympathizers and the peasantry and even eliminated Muslim activists such as journalist Shoebullah Khan who advocated merger with India. The Razakars terrorised the Hindu population and its sympathizers, causing many to flee to safety into the jungles, uninhabited mud forts, or neighboring Indian provinces. The
Hyderabad State Congress was banned and its leaders forced to flee to
Bezawada or
Bombay. ==Annexation after Operation Polo==