Integration of Junagadh

01Accession to Pakistan

On 15 August 1947 Nawab Mahabat Khanji announced that Junagadh would join Pakistan, which accepted on 13 September. The state had no land border with Pakistan, it was surrounded by states that had joined India, and most of its people were Hindus. Its small dependencies of Mangrol and Babariawad had their own claims. Sardar Patel and V. P. Menon treated the accession as void. On 25 September an Arzi Hukumat, a provisional government of Junagadh’s people, was proclaimed in Bombay under Samaldas Gandhi, and its volunteers began taking over villages.

02The Nawab leaves, India comes in

India stopped supplies and moved troops around the state, and Indian forces entered Babariawad and Mangrol. With the treasury empty and the state isolated, the Nawab flew to Karachi in late October with his family and his dogs. His Dewan, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, then asked India to take over, and on 9 November 1947 Indian officials assumed charge of Junagadh. On 13 November Patel stood at the ruined Somnath temple and announced that it would be rebuilt. The plebiscite of 20 February 1948 confirmed the accession.

Place · Present temple consecrated 11 May 1951; earlier temples on the site from at least the 10th century CESomnath JyotirlingaThe first Jyotirlinga, on the shore at Prabhas where the Sarasvati meets the sea. Raided, razed and rebuilt again and again for nine hundred years, it was raised once more by free India in 1951.Read →