Off-centre | ‘Sar Tan Se Juda’ in Hyderabad: What is the way forward?

Let the truth be stated as simply as possible. In “secular” India, one Hindu man is in jail for allegedly insulting Prophet Mohammad, while a hundred Muslim agitators, who called for his beheading, have been released from custody. But, as we all know only too well, one simple truth may actually hide a thousand lies. The bigger question is whether a society and nation which supposedly lives by the dictum Satyameva Jayate — truth alone triumphs — prefers to face one simple truth or countenance a thousand lies?

The fact that those who chanted the slogan, “Gustakh-e-Rasool Ki Ek Hi Saza, Sar Tan Se Juda, Sar Tan Se Juda” (Sladering the Prophet has only one punishment, separating the head from the body, separating the head from the body), must have known that it was also associated with the murder and beheading of possibly at least six people across the country including Umesh Khole, Kanhaiya Lal, and Nishank Rathore only adds to the gravity of the situation. Can we afford to ignore this lethal association or chain of events?

That the Hindu man in question, T Raja Singh, was a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA, a Member of the Telangana Assembly, as well as the party whip, only complicates matters. Singh, like former BJP party spokesperson, Nupur Sharma, has been suspended by the BJP. Like Sharma, Singh’s “crime” was that he had supposedly denigrated the founder of the Islamic faith in a video. In that video, he referred to the same biographical detail of the prophet’s marriage to his third wife, Aisha, which the defrocked BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma had dared to mention on national TV. We must return to this issue later.

But first, who were the slogan shouters? They were supposedly members or supporters of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). The meaning of the name of the party, the United Alliance of Muslims, ought to reveal its intentions and affiliations. Its present leader and party president is four times Member of Parliament from Hyderabad, Asaduddin Owaisi. A suave, London-trained Barrister-at-Law, he is known, in one breath, to show himself the defender on the Indian Constitution, but in the very next breath, also defend, the most flagrantly “communalist” beliefs and practices.

His own younger brother and five-time Telangana MLA, Akbaruddin Owaisi, is known for his inflammatory, fiery, and communally charged speeches. Most recently, he was in the news for offering obeisance at the grave of possibly the most anti-Hindu of Moghul emperors, Aurangzeb. Any surprise that Asaduddin Owaisi also allegedly used his influence to obtain the release from custody of those who shouted “unconstitutional” “sar tan se juda” slogans?

Let us consider where and why this happened? In the city of Hyderabad, also known as Bhagyanagar, which is the capital of Telangana state, a communal cauldron is brewing. Its history goes back at least a hundred years ago, when groups supporting the Nizam of Hyderabad, the prince most loyal to the British empire, and once the richest man in the world, began to worry about the future of the state he ruled. Particularly among the feudal Muslim elite that was in power, some even dreamed of an independent Muslim country after the departure of the British from India.

A group of these supporters of the Muslim kingdom and its Nizam formed the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM). The first meeting of the party was held at the residence of Nawab Mahmood Nawaz Khan “Qiledar” (or holder of the fort) on 12 November 1927. The gathering was blessed by the Ulema-e-Mashaiqin or body of Muslim religious leaders and holy men. After 1938, when Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung was elected its president, MIM gradually turned from its religious and cultural orientation to an overtly political one. The MIM was not in favour on integration with India but instead advocated a “Muslim Dominion” or Millat within the country. Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung was himself known by the title “Qaid-e-Millat” (leader of the nation).

After the death of Nawab Bahadur Yar Jang in 1944, Syed Mohammad Qasim Razvi (1902-1970), assumed the leadership of the MIM. He was also the founder-commander of the dreaded Razakars, the Muslim separatist “storm troopers,” who had influence, some would say control, over the last Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII (1886-1967). No wonder Razvi was dubbed “the Nizam’s Frankenstein monster” by the Indian government. The Razakars, a paramilitary organization led by Razvi, wanted Hyderabad to be turned into a sort of “South Pakistan.” Razvi mobiled some 1.5 “volunteers” for this plan.

With West, East, and South Pakistan, not to speak of the “disputed” territory of Jammu and Kashmir in the north, it would only be a matter of time, they believed, before an Islamic Union of India would be established. There are also maps of such a projected state from those times. The atrocities of the Razakaars, which included killings, rapes, looting, and torture of Hindus in the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad are well-known and extensively recorded. It was Sardar Vallabhbhai’s “Police Action” in 1948 which crushed the Razakars and forcibly integrated the state in the Indian Union. Qasim Razvi himself was imprisoned and the MIM banned in 1948. After nine years in prison, Razvi was released only after he undertook to emigrate to Pakistan, where he was given asylum.

The AIMIM, in its present form, was revived in 1958 by Abdul Wahid Owaisi, the father of Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi and the grandfather of Asaduddin Owaisi. It is, without question, a dynastic party, dominated by one family. The party website omits all references to what some would consider its sordid and blood-soaked, separatist past. Today, it arguably stands for Muslim communalism if not separatism, even if under the garb of Indian parliamentary democracy underwritten by the Constitution.

The AIMIM’s country-wide aspiration to be the predominant representative of the Muslims is well-known. Indeed, one might even go so far as to say that Asaduddin Owaisi is the new Mohammad Ali Jinnah-in-the-making. From such a perspective, the AIMIM’s repeated lapses into hardline postures are not acts of momentary forgetfulness from their stated objectives, but necessary gestures to keep their flock together and show themselves as uncompromising champions of Muslim cultural and identity politics in India.

[To be continued]

The author is a professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Views expressed are personal.

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