Home Minister Amit Shah had a lot to say during his weekend visit to Telangana to celebrate the anniversary of the Nizam of Hyderabad's accession to India. He said the central government has decided to celebrate September 17 as "Liberation Day" from the rule of the Nizam and the Razakars. The Razakars as we know, were the Nizam's private militias under the control of Qasim Rizvi who was allowed to go to Pakistan. Shah accused those who rule Telangana, and those who had ruled India, of being scared of present day Razakars which is why they did not observe the day. In his message of gratitude to those who, according to him, fought the Nizam and Razakars, he specifically mentioned the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj. And of course repeated his gratitude to Vallabhbhai Patel. Thus India's Home Minister presented it as a classic case of Hindus vs Muslims - and the Indian army "liberating" a state from the grip of a despotic Muslim ruler under the leadership of "Iron man" Patel.
You could call this a distortion of history, a deficit of truth or a bunch of lies. Whatever.
Yes, there was a "liberation" in Telangana, only it was not the chronology recited by Amit Shah. The rule of the Nizam was one of cruel feudal oppression based on the power of the zamindars, the Deshmukhs, the "doras" as they were called. They included the Hindu upper caste rural elite who provided a strong support base for the Nizam's rule. The Razakars were used in great measure to support these Hindu and Muslim oppressors, the symbols of the Nizam.The system was based on revenue collections for the Nizam's coffers through rack renting, through forced slave labour, the "vetti" system, mass evictions and takeover of the land from cultivating peasants, the provision of free services to the landed families. Sexual exploitation of poor rural women was rampant.
In 1946, the peasantry, the landless, the artisans, the women in the districts of what is now Telangana under the leadership of the Communist party-led Andhra Mahasabha, took up arms against the hated regime of the Nizam. This struggle was for the liberation of the peasantry and landless workers, the Dalits and Adivasis, from the heavy burden of feudal oppression. There was no element of religion in the struggle. The oppressors were both Hindu and Muslim just as the fighters against them were also Hindu and Muslim peasants. In the following years till 1951, when the struggle was withdrawn, facing the might of the Nizam and the Razakars, the peasants fought and liberated more than 3,000 villages, establishing "gram raj" based on justice and equality and the land distributionof 10 lakh acres; they attempted a radical transformation in social relations against the caste system and the subordination of women. More than 4,000 were martyred in this struggle. The symbol of this struggle was Ailamma, the heroic woman from an oppressed caste in Palakurthi village in Jalgaon Taluka. The hated Deshmukh of this area, V Ramachandra Reddy, sent his armed goondas to forcibly harvest the crop from her field where she and her family were tenants. Supported by the Andhra Maha Sabha and the red flag, she fought back and finally prevented the loot of the crop. This acted like the proverbial spark and the prairie fire of resistance spread. This struggle for liberation from the Nizam, from feudal oppression, from the British colonial rule, greatly weakened the rule of the Nizam. The Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha were nowhere in sight. The glorious history is available in the book written by P Sundarayya, a leading Communist organizer at that time, and later the General Secretary of the CPI(M).
It is a fact of history that the Nizam refused to accede to India. Under pressure from the liberation struggle of the peasantry and the government of India, he signed the "Standstill Agreement" with in November 1947 which legally gave him a year of transition during which foreign affairs, defence and communications were to be under the control of the government of India, while he was permitted control of domestic affairs. Patel was Home Minister. It was he who made the compromise. Within the next six months, Indian troops were withdrawn from Telangana by Patel, leaving the field open to the Razakars. The Nizam used this period to mount an offensive against the peasant armed struggle, to shore up his own rule, to maintain secret contacts with Pakistan - but he could not procure the amount of arms necessary. When the government of India finally decided to act on grounds of his having broken the agreement, he was so weakened that it took just four days for him to surrender to the Indian Army. He signed the Instrument of Accession but - and this is the chronologyabsent in Amit Shah's narration - he was restored his titular role as Raj Pramukh by the Nehru-Patel combine. A strange type of "liberation" - when the oppressor is rewarded as Raj Pramukh! The army stayed on in Telangana to mount an offensive against the armed struggle of the peasantry, and committed atrocities not less than the Razakars. More than 10,000 Communists were locked up in detention camps in inhuman conditions, where many perished. Another 50,000 were in military camps, targets of brutal torture. The gains of the liberation of "gram raj" against the Nizam's rule by the peasantry were stamped out by the Indian Army. While the Nizam retained his wealth and his status, and the rule of the feudal oppressors was sought to be restored, the fighters against the Nizam were punished. It was the reverse of "liberation."
But what was the role of the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha, praised by Amit Shah? They had no role in the struggle against the Nizam. It was after his surrender that these two organisations started a wave of communal attacks against Muslims in revenge for the earlier atrocities earlier by the Razakars. A "Goodwill Mission" was sent by the central government to assess the situation. It was led by Pandit Sundarlal. In his report he stated that only three districts were "free from communal trouble." All these three were where the armed liberation struggle had taken place. In the others, the worst were in Osmanabad, Gulbarga, Bidar and Nanded - now in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The "Sundarlal Report" described the reality of the main victims being poor Muslims in rural areas where they were a minority. Thousands were killed, women raped, forced conversions took place with tattooing on the forehead. Who were the perpetrators? The report stated "We found definite indications that a number of armed men belonging to a well-known Hindu organization from Sholapur participated in these riots and in some cases actually led the rioters." Which was the "well-known Hindu organization"? There were two operating at the time in those regions - the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj. None of those responsible for the communal conflagration were arrested. The report also mentioned the Communists, but mixed up their armed struggle with the communal riots.
There is another equally important piece of historical evidence of the role of the Hindu Mahasabha. It was not against the right of Maharajas to declare independence as long as they established a Hindu State. In June 1947, the Maharaja of Travancore, Sree Chithira Thirunal, through his Dewan CP Ramaswamy Iyer, declared his intention to establish a state independent of India. In a widely-quoted essay "Rare Earths: The Cold War in the Annals of Travancore", Professor Itty Abraham attributes this confidence to the deposits of rare earth and thorium about which, according to him, there were secret negotiations by Travancore with British interests. On June 11, 1947, Aiyar declared Travancore's independence. He even declared Khan Bahadur Abdul Karim as Travancore's representative to Pakistan! This is more than the Nizam did! While the people of Travancore mobilized against this, led by the Communists and the Congress, the Maharaja received support from, yes, the Hindu Maha Sabha. VD Savarkar, the icon of present day rulers, sent a telegram within a week to Iyer. The text is available in Abraham's essay. "The Nizam, Muslim Ruler of Hyderabad has already proclaimed his independence and other Muslim states are likely to do so. Hindu states bold enough to assert it have the same rights...I am supporting the maharaja and the far-sighted and courageous determination to declare independence of our Hindu state of Travancore." So this was the real role of the Hindu Mahasabha straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Far from fighting the Nizam, they accepted as inevitable his independence and used that as the reason for another princely state - a Hindu state - to not accede to India.
The Hindutva right have a soft spot in their DNA for the monarchs and the feudals as long as their religious identity fits in with the falsification of history. The fact that their oppression targeted peasants and the poor of the same religious denomination is of no consequence, since for them, religion is about politics, not belief. Even as the Nizam's rule is described wrongly as Muslim versus Hindu, other rulers, like the Travancore Maharaja and Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir are forgiven their trespasses against the unity of India. Thus the shameful declaration by the Central Government that Maharaja Hari Singh's birthday will be celebrated as a holiday in that state is a bid to replace history with false chronology. It was Hari Singh who first declared willingness to sign a "Stand Still" agreement with Pakistan, and later declared his intention to remain independent from both India and Pakistan. He finally had to sign the Instrument of Accession to India under pressure from the massive popular mobilisations and anti-feudal struggles of the Muslim peasantry led by Sheikh Abdullah and the National Conference, who demanded accession to India. Today, Hari Singh is glorified and those who fought for Kashmir to remain with India are vilified through the narrow lens of religious identity.
Gleaning truth from facts. A wise proverb that those in responsible places may want to follow.
Brinda Karat is a Politburo member of the CPI(M) and a former Member of the Rajya Sabha
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.