Editorial for BP
Forgetting September 17 1948
“Kasim Rizvi the man of goons and fundamentalists called Razakars, warned the Home Minister of India that the Razakars would kill all Hindus living in Hyderabad.”
The boastful and barbarian Razakars ate dust within four days of the launch of the police action despite their declamation that the Indian Union will be defeated and the waters of the Bay of Bengal would wash the feet of His Exalted Highness,the Nizam. In the words of the inimitable and indomitable Sardar Patel, the Nizam became ‘His Exhausted Highness”.
By a strange twist of the past, many Razakars handed over most of their weapons to the communists who until September 1948 were waging a struggle against the Nizam and his Razakars and after September 1948 began to wage their armed struggle against the Republic of India, characterizing it as stooge of Anglo-American imperialism.
The Police Action was quickly followed by democratization and popular rule and majority righting of centuries of wrongs that Muslim rulers and their minions inflicted upon the vast Hindu people. Should this event of liberation of Hyderabad be celebrated and commemorated? Should there not be statues of Sardar Patel and Kulapati K M Munshi, Indian Union’s Agent General in those troubled times, in Hyderabad? These proposals came up from time to time, but the appeasing, frightened and 'secular' governments and parties would not agree. If we are celebrating Independence from British rule on 15th August, should we not celebrate liberation of the people of erstwhile Nizam’s dominions from the communal, fascist, India-hostile, Pakistan-friendly Nizam’s rule? “No”, say the 'secular' governments and parties. That is a shame. They do so on the plea that such celebrations and statutes and memorials to Sardar Patel and Kulapati K M Munshi hurt the sentiments of Hyderabad’s Muslims.Are not the sentiments of 90% of the people as valuable and respectable as those of a 10% minority, which is revivalist and is openly and stridently against this event of 17th September 1948 and its preceding four days. Should they have a veto whom the Indian people want to honour and commemorate? There is a gap between the thinking and actions of a frightened, appeasing government and parties on the one hand and that of the vast majority of people on the other. Are we really free of communalism, that too resurgent now? For how long would the tolerance and mildness and submission of the vast majority of India’s people last?