Hyderabad: Hyderabad member of Parliament and Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) President Asaduddin Owaisi on Tuesday raised strong objection to the demand of BJP and Telugu Desam to celebrate September 17 officially as “Hyderabad Liberation Day” in Telangana saying this was an attempt to spread poison of communalism and divide the people of the state.

Speaking after releasing a book written by a senior Urdu journalist M.A. Majid in Hyderabad, Asaduddin Owaisi said that a sustained campaign was being run to tarnish the image of Nizams of Hyderabad by distorting the history and spread falsehood.

Apart from a series of articles on the merger of Hyderabad in to Indian union, Police Action and its aftermath, the book ‘Mere Taboot Par Jashn’ or ‘Celebration on My Coffin’ also contains the translation of report of Sundarlal Committee sent by then Prime Minister Pandit Nehru to investigate the atrocities during the Operation Polo in Hyderabad.

“Those spreading canard against the Nizam of Hyderabad forgot his generous contributions to a large number of temples in and outside his state”, Owaisi said reeling out the figures of his contributions.

“Last Nizam of Hyderabad Mir Osman Ali Khan had given generous annual grant of Rs19,460 to the temple at Bhadrachala and Rs10,070 to the temple at Tirupati”, he said. The party of district of Berar was given as a contribution to Sitaram Bagh Mandir in Hyderabad and various grants of temples at Madannapet, Shankar Bagh, Golnaka, and Thousand Pillar temple, Warangal, Rs1 lakh each to Shanti Niketan and an Institute of Pune to publish Mahabharata, 1 lakh each to Andhra University and Benaras Hindu University, and a grant Rs4,000 to Telugu Academy.

“The communal forces attacking Nizam also forget that he was the one who scrapped the Devdasi system and announced two year imprisonment to those perpetuating the custom,” Owaisi said.

He also recalled that a meeting of Hindu Maha Sabha in Hyderabad in 1931 was attended by 10,000 people and it had passed a resolution praising the cooperation of Nizam government. Maha Sabha wanted other princely states to learn a lesson from the Nizam of Deccan. “But today unfortunately some people are spreading communal poison hoping for political mileage.

Setting record straight

Referring to the Sundarlal Committee report, he demanded an open debate on it to set the record right. “Let there be a debate on the report to establish whether it was true or not in saying that more than 50,000 people were killed during operation Polo”.

Captain Panduranga Reddy, an activist and military historian paid rich tributes to Nizam and said that for nearly three years after the police action, the last Nizam continued as the head of the state and from 1950 to 1956 he was governor of the state.

“When he was on death bed in 1967 the government of India had offered him to be sent to London for the best medical treatment but he refused saying he had built Osmania Hospital and wanted to take the same treatment which was available to his people. He wanted to die in his homeland not in a hospital in London”.

Recalling that in 1964 Nizam had donated 5 tons of gold to the government of India in the presence of the then Chief Minister K Brahmanand Reddy for India’s defence, Captain Reddy wanted to know which other Indian prince had donated his wealth to the country. He showed photos of gold being loaded in the aircrafts at Hyderabad airport.

On the much touted violence and repression during Nizam’s rule, Panduranga Reddy said that four types of Razakars or volunteers were active and least violence was perpetuated by the Razakars of Qasim Razvi. Others like Police Razakars, Congress and Communist Razakars committed more violence to give a bad name to Hyderabad.

Quoting an article of K F Rustomjee, the former DGP of Maharashtra and BSF, Captain Reddy said that the policemen from Akola district in then Central Province were sent in to Hyderabad state in the garb of Razakars to create turmoil and blame the Nizam government. Rustomjee was SP of Akola at the time. He said people like Ramanand Tirath and PV Narasimha Rao were Congress Razakars active at the time. He called Communists as traitors and criminals, who encouraged violence.

Maulana Abdul Raheem Qureshi, president of Tameer-e-Millat who chaired the meeting, said that official celebration of September 17 in Maharashtra had caused deep communal divide as the occasion was being used to spread poison against Muslims by the official machinery and create hatred in the minds of Hindus.

“This is not good for Muslims, Hindus and entire country. This hatred will divide the country”, he warned.

“How can you call September 17 an Independence Day of Hyderabad? Was Nizam a foreign ruler”, he asked.

Author of the book M.A. Majid said that the coffin he referred in the book was not the coffin of only Muslims but it was coffin of Decccani Muslims, Hindus.

“This an attempt to preserve Hyderabadiat, our Deccani culture and identity”, he said.