Surely there would be a faction that advocates for it, but here in this fictional timeline, assuming a more localized and more popular Nizam rule, they would constitute a minority and the monarch could take open-action against them if India weren't threatening with an annexation every now and then.
That is the problem with this timeline, either All Of India is united, other India is Balkanized there is no middle ground in this matter, as time after Independence was a volatile time period and it was either complete unity or complete balkanization
I still can't see regions other than South drifting away from India. They had an intertwined culture, and the economy of coastal areas like Gujarat was dependent on the hinterlands of the Gangetic plain. And they were the ones most affected with the partition of British India into two Dominions due to mass migration. Communal divisions will be hard to break in the North, the only place that has even remote possibility is Bengal, but if religious partition is done, they would be unsafe with a bigger Muslim majority state bordering them.
Hyderabad on the other hand can be viewed differently if they stand neutral and agree to cooperate with India in certain regions by forming a pact. The only place I see balkanization happen is in the South and nowhere else.
What about in a scenario with a POD in the early 1900s which results in a Dravidia Nadu movement gaining "critical mass" ala the Pakistan movement where on August 15, 1947, in addition to India and Pakistan, Dravidia gets its independence? Could Hyderabad have played off India and Dravidia in such a scenario?
What makes Hyderabad more special than any other region, if anything, Hyderabad would be a catalyst for Indian Balkanization, Every time in India, if one regions leave, all regions leave as well and no, the economy was not as integrated as you say it was, Punjab and Bengal was literally divided in two and it was deemed acceptable, why wouldnt other states leave India, seeing it as a short term loss for a long term gain
Maybe Hyderabad could become a source of tension between the two countries, basically a "Kashmir in the Deccan"?
Depends, if other linguistic groups feel that the proposed state will be Tamil dominated, they would eventually develop separate nationalist movements. Otherwise, the Hyderabad state will be faced with rebellions to join the Dravida Nadu state as people get democracy with not much fear of economic and political dominance of any one group.
An independent better industrialized Hyderabad state that is neutral in Indo-Pak conflict and an uncontrollable Telugu nationalist faction doesn't pose a threat like the Pakistan state which was actively trying to gain territory. Here, the goal of the monarch is to retain as much land as possible by making peace with India. If the people at Delhi feel that if the region will take up many resources to subjugate the separatist faction, they would not prefer doing it if they had the chance for peace and also gaining Marathi and Kannada lands of the region.
pretty much, though again, I doubt India would remain united after the Dravidian independence, perhaps all other states seek the same
Hyderabad is literally at the middle of India, Policy makers in India will invade it to secure internal unity, that it, there is no two ways around it, either India invades Hyderbad and annexes it or India fragments and Balkanizes
Let's assume the South balkanizes due to greater regional movements and the North doesn't. In this scenario the North doesn't have any need to annex Hyderabad to secure route to the South, especially if the state represents itself as a vehicle for expressing Telugu's aspirations of a nation state.
Let's assume only Hyderabad succeeds in forming a state by bringing together the Telugu regions and ceding other areas to Delhi, to ascertain that it doesn't want to entangle itself with other regionalist movements be it Pakistan or South Indian polities. Why would Delhi try to annex Hyderabad if they were willing to work with each other instead of spending a lot of money and manpower to actively subjugate a big population that has reservations joining it?
The closest I can see is a Independent North East India and South India, with all Indo Aryan language speaking states united, that is most likely
I'm not sure what were Neville Chamberlain's opinions on India & Indian Independence but one possible POD would be that Neville Chamberlain is still able to keep Britain out of the war, either because Hitler is slower at eating up Sudetenland or because Chamberlain is keep the course os rapprochement with Hitler, despite the latter's successes against the rest of Europe. Without expending manpower and resources on World War II, which would just become another European war (with a pacific war between Japan and US), the British are able to smarten up on the Independence movement and decide to raise local Indian leaders who will thwart Independence efforts. So from 1938-1948, they basically try to (ineffectively) suppress the Indian independence movement, while trying to get their own agents involved into the movement to render it inert.
This will blow up in their face as soon as even the local Indian leaders condemn the next "accidental" massacre by the British Raj Government. The local leaders would then demand independence for their respectively region and come up with an agreement to divide up India in an orderly fashion over a period of 10 years from 1948-1958. One of the leaders would be the Nizam of Hyderabad Mir Osman Ali Khan, who would rule over the state of Hyderabad Deccan (this state also controls the eastern coast from Vizagapatnam to Nellore, but had to give up the cities of Ahmednagar and Aurangabad to the nation of Maharashtra.
Other states would include -
-Kingdom of Mysore, ruled by Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar.
-Maharashtra nominally ruled by a federation of Maratha Chhatrapatis but actual power is held by Independence leaders like Laxman Vasudev Paranjpe, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Bhimrao Ambedkar, amongst others (Savarkar leads the conservative factions and Ambedkar leads the reformist faction while Paranjpe tries to take the centrist path between them).
-Bengal, a dictatorship under Subhashchandra Bose and his cadre of bengali fascists (also includes the North-eastern states and parts of Orissa).
-Travancore, a Malayali (Keralite) socialist nation led by Koyapalli Kelappan Nair.
-Madras Presidency, a Tamil dominion of Britain led by the Justice Party.
-Sindh and Kutch, a Gujarati-Sindhi nation led by the triumvirate of Vallabhai Patel, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Mohandas Gandhi (Patel leads the hindu faction and Jinnah leads the muslim faction while Gandhi acts as the glue that helps them stick together.
-Goa, a Portuguese colony.
-Punjab, a multi-religious Socialist nation lead by revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Sushila Trehan, Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi and Shambhu Datt Sharma.
-Baluchistan, a tribal federation.
-Kashmir and Jammu, a princely state lead by Maharaja Hari Singh who has to face a rebellion lead by Mohammed Abdullah Sheikh.
-Hindustan, led by Jawaharlal Nehru and is the largest nation which stretches from Delhi in the north to Indore in the south and from Jodhpur in the West to Patna in the East.
-Burma, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka which are just as independence OTL
Now if only someone could draw a map....
This will blow up in their face as soon as even the local Indian leaders condemn the next "accidental" massacre by the British Raj Government. The local leaders would then demand independence for their respectively region and come up with an agreement to divide up India in an orderly fashion over a period of 10 years from 1948-1958. One of the leaders would be the Nizam of Hyderabad Mir Osman Ali Khan, who would rule over the state of Hyderabad Deccan (this state also controls the eastern coast from Vizagapatnam to Nellore, but had to give up the cities of Ahmednagar and Aurangabad to the nation of Maharashtra.
Other states would include -
-Kingdom of Mysore, ruled by Maharaja Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar.
-Maharashtra nominally ruled by a federation of Maratha Chhatrapatis but actual power is held by Independence leaders like Laxman Vasudev Paranjpe, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Bhimrao Ambedkar, amongst others (Savarkar leads the conservative factions and Ambedkar leads the reformist faction while Paranjpe tries to take the centrist path between them).
-Bengal, a dictatorship under Subhashchandra Bose and his cadre of bengali fascists (also includes the North-eastern states and parts of Orissa).
-Travancore, a Malayali (Keralite) socialist nation led by Koyapalli Kelappan Nair.
-Madras Presidency, a Tamil dominion of Britain led by the Justice Party.
-Sindh and Kutch, a Gujarati-Sindhi nation led by the triumvirate of Vallabhai Patel, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Mohandas Gandhi (Patel leads the hindu faction and Jinnah leads the muslim faction while Gandhi acts as the glue that helps them stick together.
-Goa, a Portuguese colony.
-Punjab, a multi-religious Socialist nation lead by revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Sushila Trehan, Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi and Shambhu Datt Sharma.
-Baluchistan, a tribal federation.
-Kashmir and Jammu, a princely state lead by Maharaja Hari Singh who has to face a rebellion lead by Mohammed Abdullah Sheikh.
-Hindustan, led by Jawaharlal Nehru and is the largest nation which stretches from Delhi in the north to Indore in the south and from Jodhpur in the West to Patna in the East.
-Burma, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka which are just as independence OTL
Now if only someone could draw a map....
The communist revolution in Hyderabad was being actively supported by several South Indian members of the Indian National Congress and as it was rapidly gaining strength it could have definitely taken over the Hyderabad State. Hyderabad had Sidney Cotton arrange for a considerable amount of airlift of arms which remained undeployed and never saw action if they were indeed deployed those could have considerably increased the losses suffered by the communists. Nizam had planned a parliament to appease the Hyderabad State Congress in which half the members would be elected and again half of the elected seats would be reserved for the Muslims. That kind of setup won't work in a country where 13% of the population held 90% of the land and all the important posts. Unless they managed to become a fully democratic constitutional monarchy that eagerly supports India like a pet(serving as a valuable second vote in international organisations while being even more dependent like Nepal, before the Indian constitution came into force on 26th January,1950 (assuming that they survived till then) there is no way they can live even in the centre of a democratic India. A heavy handed action by India was just a matter of time.
Bottom line, as of 1948 an independent Hyderabad, or any other princely state, was DOA! Period. Finis. Any earlier POD that might enable an independent Hyderabad would release so many butterflies as to make the entire sub-continent unrecognizable compared to OTL. I am speaking of Mothra butterflies.