HYDERABAD: It is going to be a historic day not just for the BJP’s State unit, but for the party’s central leadership on September 17, Saturday. While Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the first union minister for home affairs, launched Operation Polo in 1948 to bring the rule of the seventh Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan to an end, the present Union Home Minister Amit Shah will attempt to rejuvenate the “spirit of nationalism” in the State on Saturday, when he will hoist the Tricolour and address people from a dais at Parade Grounds.
For BJP, Amit Shah receiving the guard of honour from the Central Armed Forces at Parade Grounds has great significance, as the party has been going all out to defeat what it claims, is the “corrupt, dynastic and autocratic” rule of K Chandrasekhar Rao. Though it was not a slogan during the movement against the Razakars under the Nizam’s rule in the 1940s, the three words bear striking similarities to the then Nizam’s rule. It was the 1990s, when BJP had first raked up the demand for celebrating September 17 as Telangana Liberation Day. After the formation of Telangana, the BJP has been rigorously pursuing its long-standing demand, which Chandrasekhar Rao has ignored. For the past six years,
The BJP has been conducting various activities in the villages which bore the wounds of atrocities perpetrated by the Razakars. This year is special, as the Centre has officially announced that it will hold year-long celebrations in Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra, commemorating the 74 years of liberation of Hyderabad on September 17, the day the Nizam Army had surrendered before the Army General Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri.
The martyrdom of Ramji Gond, the first tribal freedom fighter from the Deccan, who was killed along with a thousand of his fighters, has been depicted in a life-size model at Parade Grounds, where a dummy model of bodies hanging from a banyan tree has been set up. It signifies the event where Ramji Gond’s fighters were killed and hanged from a banyan tree in Nirmal district, which later came to be known as the ‘Veyyi Urula Marri’.
A photo exhibition at the Parade Grounds paints a sombre picture of the events that unfolded during the struggle for liberation. Though the Communists treat it as ‘Peasants’ Armed Struggle Liberation Day, TRS and MIM treat it as the ‘Telangana National Integration Day’ and Congress calls it ‘Telangana Merger Day’, the BJP has planned everything in a way that the dose of ‘nationalism’ is carried across to the Assembly elections in 2023, and the general elections in 2024. And this time, yet another Gujarati, a Home Minister, will be setting forth the war cry from the soil of Telangana’s revolutionary struggle.
“The BJP firmly believes that people should know their history. Till now, a vast majority of people don’t know when Hyderabad got its Independence and from whom. When you ask the children they don’t even know that it was against the Nizam’s rule that the struggle was waged on several fronts. We have been persistent in our demand that the true history of Telangana be made known. This is the first step towards achieving that goal,” N Indrasena Reddy, former BJP State president, tells TNIE.