Pistol on the forehead of the Secretary of the State Department
When V.P. Menon went to the Viceroy with Maharaja Hanwant Singh on 9 August 1947 and Menon agreed to give special concessions to the Maharaja at the behest of the Viceroy, the Viceroy asked Menon to get the Maharaja to sign the entry deed. And the Viceroy went inside to meet the delegation of Hyderabad.
In the absence of the Viceroy, the Maharaja took out a revolver and told Menon that- 'If you starve the people of Jodhpur, I will kill you with a dog, but the Maharaja signed the inscription. According to Menon, after Hanwant Singh had signed the entry deed, Mountbatten left from another room and the Maharaja took out his revolver and pointed towards Menon and said - 'I will not dance on your signal.'
Menon said- 'If you think that you can destroy the entry record by hitting or threatening to kill me, then it is your grave mistake. Stop playing like a child. Just then Mountbatten returned. Menon told him the whole thing. Mountbatten tried to lighten this serious matter and started laughing. By the time the mood of the king of Jodhpur became normal. I went to his residence to drop him.'
According to Omkar Singh, the Maharaja did not have a revolver, but a small pen-pistol which he had made himself. He had signed the entry deed with the same pen-pistol. After signing the Maharaja jokingly told Menon that I can kill you with the same pen with which I signed. Menon was horrified. The Maharaja laughed a lot at this. Menon was stunned when the Maharaja opened a part of the pen and told that he could also use a pen and a pistol.
At that very moment Lord Mountbatten entered the room. He took the whole episode as a joke. Maharaja Hanwant Singh had told these facts to Omkar Singh in November 1947. The Maharaja gave this pen-pistol to Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten took it to London and presented it to the Magic Circle Museum in London. This pen-pistol is still safe in London. In the end the Maharaja had to sign the Instrument of Accession.
Tharparkar of Sodon went to Pakistan
In Sindh there was a centuries old kingdom of Sodha Hindu Rajputs called Umarkot. Before the arrival of the Mughals in India until the settlement with the East India Company, the Umarkot region was part of the Jodhpur state and under a treaty was given to the British government about a century before India's independence. Jodhpur Maharaja Umaid Singh was trying to get it again but he did not get success. When the partition plan of India was accepted, a delegation of Sodha Rajputs of Sindh came to Jodhpur and requested Maharaja Hanwant Singh to try to merge Tharparkar district of Sindh province into India and Jodhpur state.
Hanwant Singh wrote to the Viceroy that Umarkot should be returned to Jodhpur State but the Viceroy refused to consider the matter saying that the days of partition and independence of the country are near and all the border disputes are under consideration of the Radcliffe Commission. Now no action can be taken in this matter.
The Sodha Rajputs wrote a letter on this subject to the Central Government and also gave copies of it to Nehru that their language and culture is very similar to the language and culture of the Marwar state. Most of his marriage relations have also been done in the state of Jodhpur. Therefore, their territory should be merged with the state of Jodhpur. The All India Hindu Dharma Sangh also supported this demand of the Sodons. The demand of the Dharmasangh was that Sindh province should be bifurcated on the basis of Hindu majority and Nawabshah, Hyderabad, Tharparkar and a part of Karachi district should be merged into Jodhpur State. The Provincial Congress of Sindh also supported this demand.
President of Sindh Provincial Congress Dr. Chauithram Gidwani appealed to the Government of India that Hindus have a clear majority in Tharparkar district, so it would be justified to merge it with Jodhpur State. Maharaja Hanwant Singh talked to many leaders in Delhi, but no other leader took interest on this subject except Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. Mukherjee was in a minority in the Union Cabinet, so his efforts did not yield any results and the centuries-old Tharparkar state of Sodha Hindu Jagirdars went to Pakistan forever.