Once again, as it was in 1978 and 1980, the Congress’ road to regain the political crown in New Delhi seems to begin in Hyderabad. The party will display its recently-found vitality by holding its Working Committee meeting in Hyderabad on September 16 and 17, and topping it off with a public meeting addressed by its dowager queen, Sonia Gandhi, always a popular figure in these parts. What lends the day added interest is that the BJP/RSS will display its determination to hold on to New Delhi with a public meeting of its own on the same day at the other end of the twin cities, to be addressed by its head stormtrooper Amit Shah. The day, September 17, is significant in Hyderabad as it is the day generally celebrated as Integration Day (and which the BJP/RSS calls Liberation Day).
Apart from Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir and Junagadh too did not accede to newly independent India. J&K did so only on October 26, 1947 when the Pakistani raiders began knocking on the gates of Srinagar. The Nawab of Junagadh actually acceded to Pakistan, but a popular upsurge forced him to flee and a referendum on September 15, 1947 ratified the accession. But the RSS never celebrates Kashmir’s accession on October 26 and Junagadh’s on September 15. It only wants to celebrate Hyderabad’s ‘liberation” on September 17, 1948. It has a reason for this.
The BJP’s power base is in the old city of Hyderabad, which is the political domain of the Majlis Ithehad-ul Muslimeen, its mortal enemy. The MIM has its origins in the movement to establish an Islamic state in Hyderabad.
For a full 13 months after Independence the Nizam had tested the patience of the people of Hyderabad and the newly-independent Indian Union. The Nizam of Hyderabad, like the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, too entertained notions of an independent state and sought to widen the issue by moving the United Nations. His government consulted with Pakistan and began stockpiling arms. Within the Nizam’s realm, militant Razakars led by Qasim Razvi had stepped up their campaign of terrorising Hindus and whipping up religious sentiments among the Muslims.
At the time of India’s Independence, Hyderabad was the largest Indian princely state in terms of population and GNP. Its territory of 82,698 sq miles was more than that of England and Scotland put together. The 1941 census had estimated its population to be 16.34 million, over 85 per cent of who were Hindus and with Muslims accounting for about 12 per cent. It was also a multilingual state consisting of peoples speaking Telugu (48.2%), Marathi (26.4%), Kannada (12.3%) and Urdu (10.3%).
It was a Muslim dominated state. Typically, in 1911, 70 per cent of the police, 55 per cent of the army and 26 per cent of the public administration were Muslims. In 1941 a report on the civil service revealed that of the 1,765 officers, 1,268 were Muslims, 421 were Hindus, and 121 others, presumably British, Christians, Parsis and Sikhs. Of the officials drawing pay of Rs 600-1,200 per month, 59 were Muslims, 38 were “others”, and a mere five were Hindus. The Nizam and his nobles, who were mostly Muslims, owned 40 per cent of the total land in the kingdom. Quite clearly it was too much of a good thing for so few, and the time for its end had come.
As can well be imagined, there was absolutely no political activity in the kingdom for most of this period. The first stirrings began in 1927 when the Majlis-e-Ittihad-ul-Muslimeen was formed to unite various Islamic sects for “the solution of their problems within the principle of Islam”; and to protect the economic, social and educational interests of the Muslims.
In 1933, an association of “mulkis”, or local-born Hindus and Muslims, called the “Nizam’s Subjects League” was formed as a reaction to the continued domination of gair-mulkis in government, even though most of them were Muslims. This was soon to be known as the Mulki League. It was the Mulki League that first mooted the idea of a responsible government in Hyderabad.
In 1937, the Mulki League split between the more radical elements that were mostly Hindus and the more status quo inclined. This led to the formation of the Hyderabad People’s Convention in 1937, a prelude to the establishment of the Hyderabad State Congress the following year.
With this the movement for political and constitutional reform picked up momentum.
The Hyderabad State Congress agitation coincided with a parallel agitation led by the Arya Samaj and Hindu Mahasabha of V.D. Savarkar on Hindu civil rights. To a large extent, the interests of the Congress and the Hindu organisations coincided. This put them squarely against the Majlis, who were now led by Bahadur Yar Jung, who was also founder of the Anjuman-i-Tabligh-i-Islam, a proselytising Muslim organisation whose prime activity was the conversion of Hindus.
Bahadur Yar Jung was a charismatic figure became popular among the Muslims and had the ear of the Nizam, Osman Ali. Bahadur Yar Jung summed his goal very succinctly: “The Majlis policy is to keep the sovereignty of His Exalted Highness intact and to prevent Hindus from establishing supremacy over Muslims.”
The leadership of the Congress took more nationalist overtones after the arrival of Swami Ramanand Tirtha on the scene. Tirtha hailed from Gulbarga and as a young man became a sadhu. He became president of the Hyderabad Congress in 1946 and attracted around him several young men who rose to prominence in Independent India. Foremost among these was P.V. Narasimha Rao. Others included former home minister and Maharashtra chief minister S.B. Chavan, former Karnataka chief minister Veerendra Patil and former Andhra CM M. Channa Reddy.
While the Congress was gaining in strength, the Communists were also active in the Telugu-speaking areas. They captured the Andhra Mahasabha that was formed in 1921 to represent the interests of the Telugu-speaking people in 1942. Unlike the Hyderabad Congress, which took the cue from Mahatma Gandhi and launched a movement for democratic rights in the state to run parallel to the Quit India movement, the Communists joined hands with the Majlis to support the Nizam, who being a faithful ally of the British was fully immersed in the war effort.
The two celebrations truly reflect the ideological contest between the Congress-led INDIA alliance and the BJP-dominated NDA. One is celebrating its inclusive and secular identity, the other is trying to make it a reaffirmation of its majoritarian perception of India. It’s really a fight for the soul of India.
