People take part in a rally organised by BJP Minority Morcha under ‘Har Ghar Tiranga’ campaign ahead of Independence Day, at Charminar, in Hyderabad, Tuesday, on August 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI
On October 2, 1942, Hyderabad witnessed a revolutionary form of protest. A march of women who chanted: ‘Gandhi’s spinning wheel will have to be operated, white people will have to go to London (As Gandhi’s wheel spins, Whites have to leave to London).’ In a region where the writ of the Nizam Osman Ali Khan ran, this was nothing short of an explosive challenge to his authority. Hours before this protest, Sarojini Naidu was arrested. But other women carried on the peaceful protest to be arrested. Among them was Padmaja Naidu who unfurled the flag near the Residency Building.
The event was a testament to the fact that people in Hyderabad knew the British were the real rulers even if the Nizam Osman Ali Khan sat on the yellow masnad in Chowmahalla Palace. And it was different from the July 17, 1857 attack on the British Residency when minister Salar Jung saved the day for the British and the Nizam. Times had changed. This challenge to Nizam’s authority and the support for merger with India was much more widespread even before the Operation Polo that became a fait accompli.
The fervour of India’s independence movement bypassed Hyderabad on August 15, 1947. But not completely. The Congress gave a call for the ‘Join Indian Union Movement’ across the princely state of Hyderabad to be observed on August 7, 1947.
The State with its three linguistic regions was in ferment before and after India’s Independence. It took the form of Satyagraha and the Join Indian Union Movement crystalised it.
The Satyagraha that began in 1938was a simple affair with five members proclaiming themselves as members of the banned Congress organisation. The police would bundle the group (jatha) into the nearest police station and later imprison them.
The Join Indian Union Movement led to a mass awakening where the political activists would unfurl the Indian Tricolour in a public space knowing the serious consequences. The princely police machinery of the Nizam could not control the groundswell of backing for a merger with India.
The dramatic heroes in this fight were ordinary Indians who disappeared as soon as Hyderabad was merged with India.
Brothers Padamati Mala Kanakayya and Padamati Mallayya brought Independence to Warangal much before August 15 when they unfurled the Tricolour on July 29, 1946. The Tricolour in its current form was adopted only later by the Constituent Assembly on July 22, 1947. The brothers unfurled the flag in Warangal city and resisted its removal by the assembled mob of Razakars and Nizam’s police. The first to fall was Kanakayya. His brother managed to survive for six hours and was felled during a raid on his village.
Weeks later, on August 11, 1946, Veerabattina Mogalayya clambered up the eastern gate of the Warangal Fort and unfurled the Indian Tricolour. He defied the terror of Nizam’s stormtroopers called Razakars and the police to show his mettle. It was the same site where he had lost a leg during a fight with communal elements who came to disrupt a meeting of Andhra Saraswat Parishat. Mogalayya was later traced and killed by the Razakars in front of his mother.
While the memories of these freedom fighters have been nearly erased, in Begumpet village in Nalgonda, the Tricolour flutters high through the year. It was here, in the village square where the Nalgonda-Rangareddy Pala Utpathidarula Paraspara Sahayaka Sahakara Sangham (Milk Producers Cooperative Society– NARMUL) that Chigulla Mallaiah, Jitta Ramachandra Reddy, and Baddam Narasimha Reddy unfurled the flag on August 15, 1947. The flag is changed on Independence Day and again on Dasara. The statue of Mahatma Gandhi beside the flagpost was added in 1979.
The freedom struggle in Nizam’s Dominion was not limited to the Telangana area. Ganpati Amrite fell to bullets of Razakars while hoisting the Indian National Flag in Umari village in present-day Maharashtra in September 1947.
“The time has come for forgiveness for all those who sinned so grievously both before and after the police action. Without that there is no chance of any enduring peace of security for the people of any community here,” Padmaja Naidu wrote to the Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on October 1, 1950. It was eight years to the day she had planted the flag at the Residency Building in Hyderabad.
