Dt:14/4/21
Telangana’s Jallianwala Bagh
Dr T H Chowdary*
One hundred and two (102) years ago in Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh (garden) scores of people peacefully protesting against the British Raj promulgated rowlat act were mercilessly mowed down by showers of bullets fired point blanc by soldiers on order of Gen. O’Dwyer. It was an act of bestiality. Indian leaders demanded not only apology but punishment to the bestial O’Dwyer. The colonial imperial Britain honoured him, rewarded him. Indians have been unforgiving and are commemorating the martyrdom of fellow Indians ever since on 13 April (1919) of every year. A memorial to the martyrs in Jallianwala Bagh Amritsar reminds us of the brutality of the rulers.
2. A similar brutal butchery was perpetrated here in Telangana on 2 Sept 1947, not by the British rulers but by the soldiers of His Exalted Highness (HEH), the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nizam patronized private army, Razakars of his Majlis Ittehad-ul Muslamin (MIM) commanded by Kasim Razvi , Chief of the Ittehad.
3. 4000 people, mostly peasants from 25 villages around Parkala town in Warangal district marching in a column of twos , carrying the tri-colour flags of India and raising slogans like vande mataram and demanding that the Nizam State should accede to India. Nizam’s police began firing upon them. 15 were dead; the rest were fleeing. The Razakars pursued them with swords and killed many mercilessly. Some jumped into wells and died. This event of 2nd Sept 1947 has come to be known as Telangana’s Jallianwala Bagh, ever since.
4. But unlike the British perpetrated butchery in Jallianwala Bagh Amritsar in 1919 , the Telangana butchery by Ittehad’s Razakars and Nizam’s native Muslim police are conveniently unrecalled . Reasons are:
5. Communists in Telangana agreed with Kasim Razvi’s Ittehad and Razakars that the Nizam should not accede to India, but be independent ( in the hope they could defeat the Nizam, establish a communist state in Telangana and then eventually conquer the whole of India for communism); the Congress government is liberated Hyderabad, lifted the ban on the MIM and its Razakars to build Muslims of Hyderabad as Congress party’s vote bank; over time the regional party Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) struck an unofficial alliance with the MIM Razakars . Ove time, they revived Nizam’s times MIM as flourished with tacit support from Congress, the TRS and communists. Hyderabad MIM on revival has become AIMIM- All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslamin! Three generations of the Owaisi family (Abdul Wahed Owaisi, Salahuddin Owaisi, Asaduddin Owaisi and Akbaruddi Owaisi ) has proprietorised the AIMIM (just as Congress has been proprietorised by Nehru-Sonia family: Mothilal, Jawaharlal, Indira, Rajiv, Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka….)
6. The Owaisi’s and their AIMIM were never called upon to regret , atone and apologized for their anti-Hindu , Razakarist atrocities and their seditious activities in the period late 1920s to 17 Sept 1948. The Ittehad and Razakars declared the sovereignty over the Hyderabad State was not with the Nizam but in the Muslims of the State organized into MIM and protected by Razakars; in collaboration with Deendar , Razakars converted Dalits forcibly into Islam ; this private Muslim army Razakars , 300,000 strong at its meet in Sept 1948 committed every type of atrocities the Moplahs in Malabar committed during Aug 1921 to Jan 1922 – loot, rape, burning, forced conversion and marriage of the converted to the Muslims ; discretion of Hindu temples. The MIM and its Razakars indulged in all these atrocities on Hindus to prevent their movement for merger of the Nizam State with the Indian Union.
7. It is surprising that without a trace of remorse or regret the Owaisis-owned Hyderabad based MIM has become AIMIM and has been spreading its Islamist divisive intolerant political agenda into Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal , Tamil Nadu, UP, AP and Delhi. No intellectual , no political party or leader or historian has asked for an apology for the MIM/ AIMIM and its hereditary chiefs , the Owasis the Jallianwala Bagh type atrocities and abominations and sedition committed by the MIM and its Razakars during 1930 to 17 Sept 1948.
8. Nationalist parties and honest historians must recall the seditious and inhuman actions of the MIM whose successor is the AIMIM which is audaciously and without any sense of guilt with the pride of its past is spreading itself over the rest of India organizing Muslims into the mood of pre-Nizam Muslims and with the aspiration of becoming the king- maker in India’s several states.
9. The AIMIM and the Owaisis must be called to apologize for their past . The AIMIM should repudiate and regret its past. It should desist from organizing itself into the Muslim League of Md. Ali Jinnah with its theory of two-nations, Muslims and the rest.
10. It is heartening that the Tourist Department of the Government of Telangana is planning to develop Parakala into the like of Jallianwala Bagh of Amritsar and raise there an impressive monument to the peasant who were martyred in 1947. The voters in Bengal and Assam and elsewhere must be told of the seditious butchery of the Razakars of the MIM – AIMIM (842 words) .