Hyderabad: For the longest time there was a silence maintained by the central and state governments when it came to events surrounding the annexation of the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad to India, which transpired on September 17, 1948. There was barely any mention of it, let alone a clamour or noise. However, things changed last year when both the Centre stepped in to observe it, which then forced the Telangana government to also do the same with its own spin. This year is no different.
Operation Polo, known as Police Action in local parlance, is the military operation through which the erstwhile Hyderabad state, run by its last Nizam Osman Ali Khan, was annexed to India in 1948. The princely state then comprised of what is today Telangana, parts of Maharashtra and parts of today’s Karnataka state. In total, it ran across 82,698 square miles and had 16 districts, half of which were in Telangana.
Operation Polo or Police Action: Sequence of events in Hyderabad
Operation Polo took place after months of negotiation between Hyderabad’s Nizam and the then Indian Union failed. However, the historical incident is not a singular event that transpired, as it ran parallel with a full-scale Communist Party of India (CPI)-led peasant uprising in Telangana, which began much earlier around 1946.
Moreover, the formation of a Muslim-led militia called the Razakars led by Qasim Razvi, the then head of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), only made matters worse. Razvi’s group antagonised every voice of reason and he also had a big hand in scuttling any chances of a friendly agreement that could have led to a more amicable solution between the Hyderabad state and the Indian government.
After every possible negotiation having failed, the Union government-led by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Home minister Sardar Vallabhai Patel sent the army on September 13, 1948. What many call a war in fact took about five days to end. Syed Ahmed EL-Edroos, the last commander of the Hyderabad State Army surrendered, and thus ended the reign of the Asaf Jahi Nizams.
However, it is the aftermath during which large-scale violence was unleashed on Muslims, especially in the Marathwada areas of Maharashtra and the Karnataka districts of the Hyderabad state. The Sunderlal Committee report estimates that 26000-40000 killings.
Hyderabad State: Telangana Armed Struggle continues
In Telangana however, the matter was entirely different as the communists and peasants continued their armed struggle against the state-appointed landlords, known as Jagirdars. The Telangana Armed Struggle was finally called-off on October 21, 1951, and the CPI formally joined the Indian democratic system. That, in a way was the formal end of things connected to Operation Polo or Police Action.
Aftermath of Operation Polo, and politicisation of history in Hyderabad
What was left otherwise after Operation Polo in the aftermath was a big scar of the psyche of Muslims. The Hyderabad state was eventually reorganised, with the Marathi speaking parts going to Maharashtra and the Kannada speaking areas going to Karnataka. The remaining Telangana region was merged with the Andhra areas of the Madras Presidency to form the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh state in 1956.
As we know, for other reasons like cultural clashes and feelings of oppression here, Telangana was eventually bifurcated in 2014 from Andhra Pradesh. It is here that things changed entirely for the present state we are in, given that the issue of observing any kind of event to mark Operation Polo was majorly non-existent in the first few years as Telangana was still on its feet and reviving its economy.
“The BJP and RSS has been pushing for Hyderabad Liberation Day from the beginning. The Congress itself has marginalised the people of Hyderabad historically, as Hyderabadis were never in any decision making when it came to the state even after the immediate aftermath. This has been the case since then itself,” said historian Sajjad Shahid.
Once things settled eventually, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began demanding the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government in Telangana to observe September 17 as ‘Hyderabad Liberation Day’. Things went awry when the Centre announced that it would observe year long ‘celebrations’ to mark the event. In the right-wing discourse, the phrase is essentially a malicious one to denote the ‘liberation’ of the state from the Nizam of Hyderabad, which is anything but true.
In 2023, caving under pressure, the then Telangana government eventually observed ‘National Integration Day’ instead, something even the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) supported. This year, the ruling Congress is observing ‘Telangana Praja Palana Dinothsavam’. Interestingly, chief minister Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy on September 10, her death anniversary, also announced that the state will rename the Womens’ University after Chakali Ailamma.
Previously also, ex-chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) had praised Ailamma and also CPI leader who led the Telangana Armed Struggle Ravi Narayan Reddy. These developments are interesting, given that for the appropriation of a Telangana-ness, one cannot ignore the fact that important personalities have to be remembered, even if they were from other parties.
In fact, it will be easier for the Congress this time to honour such people, given that the CPI is currently is in an alliance with it. A political analyst who did not want to be named said that the recent ‘Razakar’ movie by BJP leader Gudur Narayan Reddy did not get a big reception, which showed that it did not really have any effect.
“However, it adds to the BJP’s narratives on the issue and it will now be a reference point for right wingers. A lot of people still have sympathy or love for the Nizam, but we can’t just ignore the mistakes Osman Ali Khan made in Hyderabad which led to Operation Polo. It is undeniable that his bad decisions allowed the Razakars to function and today that is the stick BJP uses to beat Muslims with on this issue. They obviously won’t differentiate or see that not all Muslims support the Nizam,” the analyst added.
September 13: Indian army’s commences Operation Polo
According to Hyderabad of the Seven Loaves by El-Edroos, a Company of Pathan soldiers were the first to receive “the blow” at Naldurg as it did not withdraw in time once the Indian army began marching in to the Hyderabad state. After that another infantry company at Tuljapur in the same area also suffered casualties and that was pretty much the total fight put up by the Hyderabad state army.
The Indian army entered Hyderabad from the Bombay-Hyderabad main road, finally ending Operation Polo. “I realised the hopeless situation which we were in and any clash by our troops with the advancing Indian army would have only led to guilt feelings and probably harder terms of surrender,” wrote Edroos, who was eventually jailed by the Indian government for a few months until an inquiry cleared his name.
According to Edroos, the Razakars had suffered heavy casualties at Bidar where they tried to take on the Indian army. Many fellow men of Qasim Razi reportedly fled and threw away their uniforms in local lakes along with their weapons. The Hyderabad state barely had anyone to fight for it in reality.
In fact, we get an idea of how strong the CPI-led Telangana Armed Struggle was in Edroos’s own book. He writes that the rural areas of Telangana under left-control had a stronger intelligence and that law and order even was in check thanks to them. Many often forget that the Indian army was stationed in Telangana (Hyderabad state) until 1951 to try and quell the peasant rebellion.
It was however called-off on October 21 by the CPI after which the party took the democratic route and contested elections (through the People’s Democratic Front) in the first elections of 1951-52.
In the aftermath of Operation Polo, Lt. Col. J. N. Chaudhuri, who led Operation Polo, took over as military governor for 18 months of Hyderabad, after which a provincial government under M. K. Vellodi existed till the first general elections. It may be noted that the last Nizam was made the Rajpramukh in 1950, while Razvi had been arrested and sent to jail for nearly a decade, after which he was allowed to leave for Pakistan
