How Maharashtra govt is commemorating 75th year of Marathwada’s liberation

The Maharashtra government is commemorating the 75th year of the liberation of Marathwada from the rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad with events in all eight districts across the region. These celebrations, which will see cultural and sports programmes, will continue till January 26 next year.

The ‘Marathwada Muktisangram’, or the movement for liberation of Marathwada, was part of the larger movement for the integration of the state of Hyderabad with the dominion of India. Between September 13 and 18, in what was dubbed as ‘police action’ or ‘Operation Polo,’ the Indian Army attacked Hyderabad, whose ruler Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII and his partisans were resisting the integration of the princely state into India, and ensured its integration into the Indian union.

This had come after a dogged movement, both violent and non-violent, led by freedom fighters and revolutionaries such as teacher-turned-ascetic Vyankatesh Bhagwanrao Khedgikar aka Swami Ramanand Tirtha, who was a leader of the Hyderabad State Congress. Tirtha’s followers like P.V. Narasimha Rao (Andhra Pradesh) and Shankarrao Chavan (Maharashtra) later became chief ministers of their states.

The Maharashtra government is organising a range of programmes in Marathwada from September 15 to 17. This will also see cultural events, marathons, orations, rallies, prabhat pheris, and singing and drawing competitions being organised around the theme of the liberation of the region.

Sudhir Mungantiwar, minister for culture, said Union home minister Amit Shah had been invited for the celebrations. Shah is likely to come to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) on September 17. Mungantiwar added that he had written to chief minister Eknath Shinde seeking that the state cabinet meet at Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) to mark the occasion. The state government has also planned a Rs 100 crore museum and memorial of the Marathwada liberation struggle in the city. It will have exhibits, an art gallery, a theatre and a library.

The events that preceded and followed the liberation of the state of Hyderabad, which comprised parts of present-day Maharashtra, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh, were violent. The Nizam’s policies were allegedly biased against his Hindu subjects, who formed an overwhelming bulk of the 16 million population. The right-wing Majlis-e-Ittehadul-ul-Muslimeen (MIM), led by the fanatical Kasim Razvi and his Razakars, who were resisting the integration demands, have passed into popular memory for their atrocities against Hindus. But the police action and its aftermath saw massive violence and retribution against the Muslim minority, which included killings, rapes and usurpation of properties and places of worship.

In Hyderabad, the princely state was the biggest employer. But despite their lower numbers in the population, Muslims accounted for higher representation in government jobs compared to the Hindus. Around 90 per cent of police officials and staff were Muslims. There was talk of hefty sums being paid for appointments and Hindu officials had little chance of career advancement.

Historian Setumadhavrao Pagdi, who was a civil servant in Hyderabad, notes that many Muslim officials had imbibed the communal spirit and a sense of superiority over the Hindus. Muslim bureaucrats and lawyers were in cahoots with anti-social elements from their community, who would also physically attack Hindu leaders. During official tours, lower-level Muslim officials would often camp for the night in village temples, thus upsetting local Hindus. There were also instances of the Muslim-dominated bureaucracy exploiting their own community.

However, in rural areas, the Hindus and Muslims shared a syncretic culture and religious beliefs. Muslims in villages that form part of modern-day Maharashtra spoke to the Hindus in Marathi, and at home, conversed in the Dakkhani dialect, which had a strong influence of Marathi.

Scholars like Ian Copland say there are “good grounds” for thinking that the Nizam’s rule affected Hindus more adversely than the Muslims. In 1931, Hindus comprised over 84 per cent of Hyderabad subjects, but Muslims dominated the government and “enjoyed a disproportionate share of its bounty”, by holding three out of four gazetted appointments in the public service and one in three places in state-run schools and colleges.

The Muslims had greater access to education due to Urdu being the medium of instruction from secondary onwards. Citizens, including Hindus, had to submit official letters and appeals to courts and government offices only in Urdu. The Nizam’s policies to impose Urdu on his non-Muslim subjects were flagged as a potential cause of communal tension by Sir Terrance Keyes, the British resident in Hyderabad.

Inspired by Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Ganesh festival was publicly celebrated in Hyderabad city since 1895 and marked the beginning of political awareness among the Hindus. These celebrations exacerbated communal friction. Hindus had to seek permission annually for the worship and procession of the deity and this was often denied on trivial grounds. Pagdi mentions that if Hindus stayed next to a masjid, they could not play music or musical instruments, sing bhajans or even clap loudly at the time for namaz.

In Hyderabad, the revivalist Arya Samaj had established a footprint soon after its birth in Mumbai in 1875. In Marathwada, it struck roots after its launch in 1880 at Kille Dharur in Beed district. By 1938, the Samaj had 250 branches in the princely state, and 20 of these were in the capital Hyderabad. The entry of Arya Samajists from outside the state and their criticism of other faiths, especially Islam, “roused indignations in the highest quarters.” Moulavis from other parts of India followed in the wake of the Arya Samajists.

The launch of the MIM in 1927 to protect the interests of the Muslims, and express loyalty to the ruler, further exacerbated the communal divide. The MIM reflected the insecurities of the Muslims, who were the socio-political elite but lacked the strength of numbers. To secure its place as the ruling class, and increase its numbers, it resorted to conversions, especially of Dalits. In his fortnightly report dated September 1, 1936, the British Resident in Hyderabad mentions the conversion of over 20,000 Dalits to Islam in a decade.

The Government of India Act, 1935, which led to provincial elections being held two years later in British India, was a watershed in the struggle of the people of Hyderabad. The Hyderabad State Congress was launched in June 1938 as the local arm of the Congress and sought civil and democratic rights and representative government.

Soon after his release from confinement in 1937, the revolutionary-turned Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar took over as the president of the Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar announced a civil resistance movement in Hyderabad to protest the Nizam’s policy towards his Hindu subjects. The Mahasabha’s agitation was also staffed by members of the Arya Samaj and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Hyderabad’s unique demographic and political situation made it fertile stomping ground for the Hindu right-wing.

The first batch of 12 Hindu Mahasabha protesters into Hyderabad was led by Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse. These protesters were arrested outside Nampally station and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment on November 30, 1937. However, the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS withdrew their protests in August 1939 after securing some incremental relief.

Ian Copland notes that “the political struggle in the southern Deccan was from the start tinged with communalism. It was the same story in Hyderabad, where the State Congress campaign for responsible government was increasingly overshadowed by an Arya Samaj-Mahasabha led agitation for jobs and religious rights for Hindus”. While the satyagraha was not expressly anti-Islamic, its scale and the fact that it was fought to secure ‘freedom of religion’ made it anathema to the state’s Muslim minority. Determined to protect their patrimony, the Muslims organised counter-demonstrations and exacted indiscriminate reprisals.

The MIM later emerged as the proverbial Frankenstein’s monster for the Nizam. Driven by mistaken concepts about Muslim superiority, the organisation and its rabid, firebrand leader Kasim Razvi resisted Hyderabad’s integration with India and unleashed terror on the Hindus with targeted murders, rapes, arson and desecration of temples. The bulk of Razakar atrocities were between India’s Independence Day and police action. The MIM wanted to maintain a Muslim state in the heart of India. The idea of an independent Hyderabad or a southern Pakistan in the Deccan covering 100,000 square miles, making it as large as Great Britain or Italy, would have jeopardised the future of newly-Independent India. This was among the reasons that forced the Jawaharlal Nehru government to annex the state using the military.

But contrary to popular perception, a section of Muslims wanted Hyderabad to integrate with India. Upset at the atrocities by the MIM’s paramilitary Razakars at Loha in Nanded district and the state machinery’s support to them, Farid Mirza, the tehsildar of Kandhar, resigned in July 1948. On August 13, 1948, seven Muslims, including retired government officials, publicly appealed to the Nizam to join the Indian union. On August 22, 1948, journalist Shoebullah Khan, who edited the newspaper ‘Imroz’ and criticised the MIM and the Razakars, was killed by their minions.

The communist leader Mohit Sen notes that the Razakars and their reactionary politics was resisted not only by the Hindus but also by a large section of the Muslim intelligentsia. Sen writes that while much has been made about the gracious, cosmopolitan life of Hyderabad in what is called the ‘pre-Police Action’ era, it was a feudal-colonial culture confined to a very few families against which the best of the Hindu and Muslim intellectuals were in revolt. It was based on the “most cruel possible exploitation of the peasantry and kept the overwhelming majority of the people illiterate and backward...”

The hostilities by the Indian Army that began on September 13 saw the outnumbered and poorly-equipped Hyderabad state forces and their irregulars, including the Razakars, crumble. Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan, the Nizam of Hyderabad, surrendered on September 18. The Nizam was destined to be the last ruler of his line, though his reputation for his usury and miserly ways would outlive him. However, police action and its aftermath saw massive violence against Muslims.

A mixed-faith committee commissioned by Nehru under Pandit Sunderlal, which toured Hyderabad from November 29 to December 21, 1948, drew a “very reasonable and modest estimate” that the total number of deaths in this pogrom could be between 30,000 and 40,000. They could in no way have been less than 25,000, the committee opined.

The Sunderlal committee report mentioned the horrors of murder, rape, abduction, loot, arson, forcible conversions, seizure of houses and lands and desecration of mosques that followed or accompanied the killing. The sufferers were the Muslims who formed a “hopeless minority” in the rural areas. The perpetrators of these atrocities were not limited to those who had suffered at the hands of the Razakars. The report said that “a number of armed and trained men belonging to a well-known Hindu communal organisation” from Solapur and other towns in the dominions of India and also some local and outside communists had led the rioters or participated in the riots.

The committee also quoted “absolutely unimpeachable evidence” about men belonging to the Indian Army and the local police taking part in the looting and other crimes. However, it also recorded instances wherein Muslims were defended and protected by their Hindu neighbours, often at a heavy cost, including their lives. The confidential notes attached to the report said that the Muslim-dominated police and administration had either connived at the atrocities of the Razakars or willingly co-operated in them as they “believed that the Razakars could alone save them from the Hindu raj and as such (they) had the support of the Nizam’s Government.” The few officers who thought otherwise, found themselves helpless.

This report was classified until recently and hence, the horror of these events does not form part of the public consciousness for those outside the region. However, a way out of the cycle of violence and retribution was shown by the residents of the Ujed village in Maharashtra’s Latur district. Since 1954, the residents of this village host the ‘Gandhi Baba Yatra’ to mark the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, making this the only such village festival named after the father of the nation.

This fair was started during the communally-surcharged period after ‘Operation Polo’ by village elders, both Hindus and Muslims, who wanted to cement over the differences between the Hindus and the Muslims. The yatra begins from January 23 or 24 and continues till January 30, which marks Gandhi’s martyrdom day.

Subscribe to India Today Magazine