Harekrushna Mahtab and the Integration of the Princely States with Odisha, 1947–1949: Leadership and the Making of Greater Odisha

Jhili Mahanta; Kanchan Sinha

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i05.87124

Harekrushna Mahtab and the Integration of the Princely States with Odisha, 1947–1949: Leadership and the Making of Greater Odisha

Author(s)	Ms. Jhili Mahanta, Dr. Kanchan Sinha
Country	India
Abstract	The emergence of Odisha as a modern and united province was far from being completed with its separation from Bihar on 1 April 1936. For more than ten years after this event, as many as twenty-six Garjat, or feudatory, states were still being ruled by their hereditary chiefs at will, without coming under the administration of British Odisha. This paper discusses the role played by Dr. Harekrushna Mahtab in bringing about the unification of the states with the rest of Odisha in 1947–1949, from the Orissa States Enquiry Committee’s investigation in the early 1930s, to his diplomatic failures in 1946, up to his important role at the Cuttack conference in December 1947 alongside Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon. This paper relies upon secondary scholarship in the field, newspaper accounts of events, as well as Mahtab’s own official biography written by the Odisha Government. There are several points of direct contact of this paper with dated archival letters – all referred to at second-hand, via one archivally grounded secondary source only, and the evidential base is detailed in the Method note and in the Data Availability section below. This paper argues that the contribution of Mahtab consisted of a decade-long involvement with the issue of the states, and that it made it possible for him to leverage the authority of the central government in shaping the settlement known as “Greater Odisha”. The paper also comments that the merger process, which was completed just thirteen months after independence, was left unfinished due to the fact that Seraikela and Kharsawan had remained part of Bihar.
Keywords	Harekrushna Mahtab; Garjat States; Prajamandal Movement; Merger of Princely States; Greater Odisha; Sardar Patel; V. P. Menon
Field	Sociology > Archaeology / History
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 5, September-October 2026
Published On	2026-09-04
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i05.87124

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Harekrushna Mahtab and the Integration of the Princely States with Odisha, 1947–1949: Leadership and the Making of Greater Odisha

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