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When elephants fight it is the grass
that suffers. When two intellectual giants of India clash it is
the facts that take a beating. In their exchange in the Caravan
Magazine (June and November 2011) historian Ramachandra Guha and
Communist Party of India Marxist General Secretary Prakash Karat
debated past, present and future of Indian Communism. Their
respective representations of the events surrounding the
annexation of Hyderabad, however, were distorted and factually
incorrect.
Contrary to Mr. Karat’s denial the Communists did enter into an
agreement with the Nizam’s government. It was a result of this
agreement that the Nizam’s government lifted the ban on the
Communist Party on 4 May 1948. This much was attested to by
Communist leader P. Sundarayya who writes in the Telangana
People’s Struggle and its Lessons:
“The Hyderabad City Committee [Communist]…issued a press statement
that the Indian government, being a bourgeois-landlord government,
was allied with British imperialism, that we should oppose the
Indian army’s entry into Hyderabad and raise the slogan of Azad
Hyderabad (p.79).
Sundarayya later denied that any alliance occurred but that it did
was attested to by other contemporary records. A Madras
Intelligence Report of May 1948, for instance, states:
“The Communists are now alleged to be acting with the connivance
and sometimes in actual association with the Razakars and the
Nizam’s police. Whether this is true or not, it is quite
conceivable that the Communists have taken advantage of the
lifting of the ban on their party within the Nizam’s dominions to
make Hyderabad territory the base for their operations in Indian
territory.”
Similarly, A Kaleshwar Rao, Andhra Congress leader , in a report
to the Government of Indian in June 1948, clearly states:
“The Hyderabad government has lifted the ban on the Communist
Party and withdrawn all warrants of arrest against Communist
leaders. A pact is said to have been entered into between
Communists and the Ittahud-ul-Muslimeen.”
In the light of these evidences from multiple sources it is not
too far fetched to claim that the Communists did enter into an
agreement with the Nizam’s government and the Razakars.
Mr. Guha, in his response to Mr. Karat, states that “in 1946 there
were no Razakars at all.” This is incorrect as they were
officially formed in 1938. It can, however, be said that they
became aggressive and militant under the leadership of Kassim
Razawi in 1947.
Contrary to Mr. Guha’s assertion not all Razakars and members of
the Majlis were “supremacists.” These two organizations consisted
of Muslims and the lower castes with varying inclinations and
tendencies. This is attested to by the existence of extremist and
moderate wings in the organizations. In addition, many of them
were barely in their tendencies. It is surprising that Mr. Guha
who has done a masterful job of dissecting the various strands of
Indian nationalism has overlooked the diversity in the Hyderabadi
sovereignist movement. Perhaps his ignorance of the Urdu language
is to blame for this oversight.
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