NIZAMS PLOYS DURING WORLD WAR II AND THE ANDHRA MOVEMENT: During the II World War period, the Nizam had firmly and unswervingly sided with the British and was rendering valuable military support to them all through. Taking advantage of the critical situation of the British Rulers in those days the Nizam wanted to influence the British Indian Government to cede back to him the Berar Districts which were taken from him by the British and also the Machilipatnam Port and some districts of Andhra. There were numerous Muslim religious chauvinists in Hyderabad State in those days who demanded that the entire Circar districts (coastal Andhra) and Ceded Districts (Rayalaseema including Bellary) should be given back to the Nizam, who was but a symbol of the rule of Islam in Hyderabad, and a greater Osmanistan be formed as an Islamic State in the hinterland of India. The Andhra leaders had vehemently opposed such moves by the Muslim imperialists of Hyderabad State, and so did the Hindu Mahasabhaites too. In a resolution passed by the All India Hindu Mahasabha under the presidentship of V.D. Savarkar in December 1940 it was declared: This session of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha records its emphatic disapproval of the strenuous and widespread agitation carried on for the purpose that Berar and the Northern Circars and Ceded Districts of the Madras Presidency be handed over to the Nizam in recognition of the latters help in the War-effort and the studied silence of the British Government thereon. The Hindu Mahasabha demands of His Majestys Government an emphatic assurance that the said territories will not be handed over to the Nizam or to any Prince or Power and wants that any such move will be fraught with serious and far-reaching consequences and will be resolutely opposed by the Hindu Mahasabha by all means within its power. The Hindu Mahasabha further considers Gandhijis support to the transfer of Berar and other parts of the Madras Presidency to the Nizam and the suggestion, that the Nizam will be the Emperor of India as atrocious, and a gross betrayal of the Hindu Nation. In February 1942 Savarkar issued a statement sharply criticizing the proposed state of Osmanistan and, inter alia, categorically stated: “… if any re-adjustment of territories in connection with the Nizam State is to be considered at all, equity and urgency require that those Hindu districts of Andhra which were cut off in the past from the homogeneous Andhra Province and are now groaning under Moslem oppression in the Hyderabad State should be liberated from the Nizam rule and reannexed to Andhra, so that the earnest and most justified desire of the Andhra people to form themselves into an integral and unitarian Andhra Province should be fulfilled.” This was in the background of the case made out by the esteemed Professor Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiah, a naturalized Andhra Brahmin of Pudur Dravidian origin, for a Vishal Andhra (Greater Andhra) for the first time ever in the Andhra Week meetings held under the auspices of the Andhra University at Vizag in 1937. However, at that time Sri Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiah had advocated the formation of such Greater Andhra encompassing the Telangana and Mysore Andhra Districts also, even if it be totally under the Nizam Rule, saying that after all the movement for democracy was going to march ahead everywhere - even in the Native States, and the Nizam could be reduced to the status of a constitutional ruler in no time. By that time the II World War had not started and the demands for the restitution of Berar and Northern Circars and Ceded Districts was not made by anybody in the Hyderabad State, nor did the plans and demand for Osmanistan arise. Here itself it should be stated that the map of Andhra Desa originally drawn by Jonnavithula Gurunadham and Unnava Lakshminarayana in 1912 included Telangana districts; and the latter had gone on record to state that he and some others always thought of a larger Andhra Province including the Telangana Districts. The Congress Constitution, both in 1920 and in 1929, provided for the Telangana Districts to be attached to the Andhra Provincial Committee of the Congress. From 1935-36 onwards the Andhra agitators in the Andhra region used to prominently display Andhra Maps of 24 districts, including the Telangana districts. It is quite another thing that in practical politics the leaders of the Andhra movement in the Andhra region concentrated on securing a separate Andhra Province limited to 12 districts to be detached from the united Madras Presidency. All these developments took place much before the communist party had taken a categorical stand in favour of Vishalandhra, as espoused by Sri P. Sundaraiah in his famous ‘Vishalandhralo Praja Rajyam’ (Peoples State in Greater Andhra). [From my article For a united Andhra-Telangana-Seema published in FRONTIER in 2004].
Posted on: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 23:58:50 +0000
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