The Ministry of Home Affairs announced on March 12 that September 17 will now be recognised annually as “Hyderabad Liberation Day.” The MHA emphasised the significance of “Operation Polo,” pointing out that the former Hyderabad area did not gain independence alongside the rest of India for 13 months after August 1947 and that the Nizam rule ended on September 17, 1948, when Hyderabad was formally admitted to the Indian Union. Commemorating August 14th as the Partition Horrors Remembrance Day and September 17th as “Hyderabad Liberation Day” are both significant steps towards truth and reconciliation. August 14, 2021, is designated by the Modi government as Division Horrors Remembrance Day, a day on which the country honours the tragic realities of division.
The aforementioned events and the days they honour are significant in the history of contemporary India since they influenced our past, present, and future.
For the most part, Indian youth have not been aware of Operation Polo over the years. This part of our history is never taught in school textbooks to the generations of Indian youngsters. They are unaware that there once was a Muslim-ruled country where a vicious militia subjected the majority of its citizens, who were Hindus, to a reign of terror and torture. The Muslim monarch, who was regarded as one of the richest men on the planet, desired the union of his kingdom with Pakistan. Imagine such a large area belonging to Pakistan, smack dab in the heart of the Deccan Plateau.
With their skillful diplomacy and strict control over India’s then-so-called leaders, the British had left India with countless open wounds that would continue to bleed for decades. The establishment of Pakistan based solely on religious grounds, coupled with the hasty division of homes, livestock, villages, and families to satisfy Islamic demands for their nation and fulfil the political aspirations of certain “elite” Indians such as Nehru, was a surefire way to cause enough destruction to a nascent geopolitical state in a matter of years.
India’s current state of existence is practically miraculous. With hindsight, it is astonishing how Sardar Patel was able to not only hold the fragments together but also, when necessary, employ force, diplomacy, and all available resources with a decisiveness that was lacking in leaders of that era to fuse the pieces into a powerful nation-state. India persevered despite us being broken, bleeding, and engaged in twelve fights at once. And now, seventy-five years later, we’re stronger than ever.
Why did Operation Polo matter so much?
Many Indian generations passed away without ever learning about Operation Polo, Direct Action Day in 1946, or the 1946 Navy rebellion that brought the beleaguered British Empire to its knees and made them realise they could no longer “control” India. Few of us are aware that the split may have been avoided if our leaders had been more committed to the nation than to their own goals and vices. This memory loss is not a biological occurrence; rather, it has been purposefully caused.
In post-independence India, the narratives in politics, education, and the media have been deliberately crafted, managed, and manipulated to obscure the harsh reality of pre-independence India and the following events. We were raised to forget, to grow up unaware of our own identity and origins. “दे दी हमें आज़ादी बिना खड्ग बिना ढाल, साबरमी के सन्त तूने कर दिया कमाल.
It was presented to us as though Gandhi and his supporters had performed some sort of supernatural “non-violent” protest that led to India’s independence. We were led to believe that Nehru’s charisma and talent alone allowed him to become the prime minister of an independent India. Aside from a few unsettling conflicts and acts of violence surrounding Pakistan’s formation—mostly because it would have been impossible to overlook Pakistan and the wars India waged alongside it—we simply went to sleep on August 14, 1947, and awoke the following morning feeling content and independent.
Horrors committed by Razakar upon Hindus
Operation Polo required careful planning, foresight, and some difficult decisions that only Sardar Patel could make. It was not a one-day operation. Nizam of Hyderabad Mir Osman Ali Khan had permitted the Razakars to raid, rape, kill, and plunder Hindus throughout the state, establishing a reign of terror and murder to quell the growing aspiration of the Hindu majority to secede from India. In defiance of the “standstill agreement” with India, he established a semi-private Razakar force in Hyderabad and covertly loaned Pakistan Rs 15 million. India would have had another sizable Pakistan ‘within’ Indian territory if Operation Polo had not taken place and ended as it did.
Nizam Khan, alarmed by the increasing consciousness among the Hindu community in Hyderabad, commanded the creation of a quasi-private militia known as the “Razakars” in order to quell the protests. The Majlis-e-Itihadul Muslimeen (MIM, or AIMIM, as it is currently known) had a wing called the Razakars. In a matter of days, the Razakars were able to recruit one lakh Jihadis into their army.
“The Razakars had extended their activities from Hyderabad city into the towns and rural areas from the beginning of 1948,” according to historian Frank Moraes, “killing Hindus, kidnapping women, pillaging houses and fields, and looting non-Muslim property in a widespread reign of terror.”
Nehru knew all of this, but he continued to ignore the issue with his characteristic Nehruvian aloofness. He feared that both West and East Pakistan would strike back at any assault on the princely state. When it came to choosing to invade and absorb the state, Nehru hesitated.
At last, he was forced to concede when the Indian Army, led by Sardar Patel, overwhelmed Nizam. After five days, the Nizam submitted, and Hyderabad became part of India, not just geographically.
Consider for a moment what would happen if there was a “central Pakistan” inside of India in addition to West and East Pakistan surrounding the country on both sides. Operation Polo stopped that from happening.
What was the process of whitewashing? And how does it still go on today?
The first response from the Congress party, which ruled India for decades after independence and for nearly 60 years, to PM Modi’s announcement that August 14 would be honoured as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day was, “Pakistan will feel bad.”
The senior Congress politician expressed the opinion that India should “forget” that millions of Hindus were killed in a protracted, premeditated murder under their noses, all the while their beloved Nehru was seated in Delhi and the “Sabarmati ka Sant” did nothing. The “government” that was supposed to look after millions of Hindus had abandoned them to rot and die, forcing them off the lands of their ancestors and robbing them of their possessions.
Manickam Tagore, a Congress MP from Virudhunagar, Tamil Nadu, expressed worry last year over the CBSE’s decision to host exhibitions on the theme of division, claiming that doing so will incite animosity in the minds of the country’s youth. Tagore implored the Centre to rescind its judgement to “preserve” societal harmony.
Partition Horrors Remembrance Day was met with opposition from “secular liberals” as a result of the widespread corruption of whitewashing. They continued to speak as though Modi’s delusions about partition and the carnage it caused millions of Indians were nothing more than a small annoyance that should be forgotten.
There are still some living victims of the partition; the occurrence is not so old that we can ignore it or act as though it never happened. A third of India’s land area was taken away, millions of people were genocided, and we were given unfriendly borders to the west, north, west, north, and east as a result of the desire for a separate Muslim nation. It plagued us with decades of endless battles and stole from us vital coastal areas, woods, rivers, farmlands, mineral wealth, and holy mountains.
If we just ignore the pain of our inhabitants, what kind of justice will we be able to guarantee them? If we erase the past and give our children the impression that the only reason they are prosperous is because of the kindness and intelligence of a few chosen leaders, what kind of future would we be creating for them?
If we choose to ignore how difficult it was to get there in the first place, how can we preserve the territorial integrity of our country? Centuries of war, hardship, starvation, and bloodshed have given us what we have today. We must keep in mind that every square inch of India was gained through suffering and sacrifice.
Whitewashing India’s ugly realities with a pseudo-secular approach
Whitewashing is not just done on Direct Action Days, partition, or the liberation of Hyderabad. For many years, the Khilafat movement was portrayed to Indians as a “patriotic” Muslim campaign against British rule, rather than as a way for Indian Muslims to demand the creation of an Islamic Caliphate and express their resentment towards the British for overthrowing the Turkish Caliph. We were informed that the Moplah riots were a result of peasant protests against Hindu landlords. We were never informed that thousands of Brahmins in Maharashtra were slain, lynched, and attacked by the so-called “peaceful” Congress officials, who were ardent supporters of MK Gandhi’s Ahimsa concept. This occurred after Nathuram Godse killed Gandhi.
Indians were kept in a state of post-lobotomy ignorance for several generations. A dead white layer of secularism covered the stories that made us relate to the suffering and realities of our battle. The complex cultural and civilizational ties that constituted our sense of identity were broken, much like Radcliffe’s pen divided our ancestors’ ancestral homeland into two parts.
The Government of India is making sure that the current generation of Indians understands how difficult it was to secure a fragmented nation, how difficult it was to protect a wounded, bleeding country from enemies both inside and outside, and how hard our forefathers fought for our sovereignty to build today’s India by commemorating “Hyderabad Liberation Day” and Partition Horrors Remembrance Day.
We must face reality if we are to know who we are. Broken memories need to be exposed to the sun to help them heal, and the white paint needs to be scraped off the wall. The truth won’t put us in danger. The truth will set us free and make us stronger.