Operation Polo September 13, 1948, an Indian Army of 36,000 invaded Hyderabad after declaring an Emergency in India. (There were 17 polo grounds in Hyderabad, that’s why that code name.)
In September of 1948, Hyderabad’s Muslims had gone through unimaginable and unforgettable trauma in their lives they called “Action”, short for the Police Action, a euphemism India had come up with for its forcible annexation of Hyderabad, the largest princely state it was surrounding, 82,698 square miles, almost equal to England and Ireland combined. For years they asked their new friends and acquaintances the question “Action kay time pay aap kaan thay?” When they asked me that question, I replied I was on the train which India had bombed at the Yadgir Railway Station.
On the afternoon of September 16, we were on board the last NSR train (Nizam State Railways) for Hyderabad. When it started pulling out of the station, an Indian Air Force’s propeller plane (perhaps a Hawker Tempest), with its engine switched off, stealthily swooped on it and dropped a bomb that missed our train and fell on a fully loaded bus, killing and wounding dozens. One should ask, wasn’t that attack on a passenger train a war crime, or police action crime, if you will?
Ours was the third and the last special train for government officers to send their families to the presumed safety of Hyderabad. After the Nizam had declared his independent sovereign status, India had blockaded his State and shut down its GIP (Great Indian Peninsula Railway Madras-Bombay train) that we used to take from Yadgir to Wadi junction where we had to switch over to the NSR for Hyderabad.
Please let me take you back just a little for you to have an idea of how things were around me in Yadgir, a commercially important town and taluqa of Gulbarga, district.
It is now one of the 30 districts of Karnataka. I had just entered the 8th grade in the government high school where my father was the headmaster. From my classroom one day I saw two visitors going into his office. Then, to my surprise, within minutes they were scurrying out. I was quite perplexed but had to wait until Abba came home after school, to know who they were and why they had to run out in such panic. According to him, one of them was the commander of the local Razakars and the other, the chief of their local Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen. They had come to inform him of their plans to train Razakars on the school grounds. He told them that he wouldn’t allow a political organisation to use the Government property unless they brought orders from his boss in Gulbarga, Mahmood Ali Baig Saheb, Sadar Mohtamim (Superintendent of Schools). On hearing that the commander got terribly upset and called my father “Congressi Ghaddar” (Traitor from Indian National Congress, opposed to the Nizam’s Sovereignty). That name-calling incensed Abba so much that he got up, grabbed his walking stick, and raising it up he shouted, “Get out from here,” and ordered his peon “Peer Mohammed! Inko gardan main haath daykay yhaan say nikalo.” Before he could put his stick down, they vanished.
Those days, I had been seeing well-built fierce looking followers of Siddique Deendar (Syed Siddique Hussain Chanbasueshwar of Karnataka) flaunting big beards and long hair, cut straight across in the back, donning green turbans on long white kurta pajamas and black vests, roaming around always in twos and threes. They carried cartridge belts across their chests and guns slung over their shoulders. I had been also noticing scraggy haggard-looking Razakars with lathis sprouting everywhere in khaki uniforms. You could feel the atmosphere becoming more and more combustible day by day. Newspapers were full of Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen chief Qasim Razvi’s bombastic speeches and nonsensical claims. Abba used to laugh at them in ridicule and derision saying how could this country lawyer from Latur make the Muslims of Hyderabad cannon fodder for the tanks and planes of the mighty Indian Union.
Now, when I am writing all this, I wonder at my father’s courage in openly and fearlessly letting his colleagues and other officers know where he stood on the politics of the hour. He never minced words to express his unhappiness at the formation of Pakistan. He loved Gandhiji and Maulana Azad. I never heard him talk about the Muslim League or praise any of its leaders. I recall my Nana and Mamoon going to Madras in 1941 to attend the Muslim League’s historic session and bringing me lots of gifts and toys. He never attended a single speech of Bahadur Yar Jung, even if it was just a stone’s throw away from our house. Muslim masses were so much impressed with him for his speeches going on for hours and hours, not my father. He called them empty promises and hot air. He didn’t agree with Ittehadul Muslimeen’s doctrine of the Muslim minority’s divine and historic right to rule over Hyderabad and calling it an Islamic state.
[My Nana and Mamoon Jaan had given a big party in honor of Bahadur Yar Jung at their house when the British released him from detention in Kashmir, perhaps 1943. I greeted him with a hug like I used to do to my Nana. When people told him whose grandson I was, he picked me up and carried me in his arms all the way into our house.]
In this divided house, there were times I was terribly confused. Nana and Mamoon were on one side and Abba on the other. I loved my Nana and Mamoon so much that I couldn’t imagine them being ever wrong. The good thing was that they never argued with him; they called him crazy and laughed at him, but only behind his back. I loved my father, too, but fear of his authority, control, and a low flashpoint would come in the way. I felt very proud of him when I heard from his old City College students how he could solve the toughest math problems which even their university professors could not. He believed in democracy, justice, secularism and human rights; for him, faith or religion had no place in politics, government, and relations with colleagues and neighbours. He considered Qasim Razvi’s henchmen in Prime Minister Laiq Ali’s cabinet, unfit and unqualified for the job; and predicted that they would lead the Hyderabadi Muslims to disaster. He also blamed the Nizam for his double games, fickle-mindedness and dillydallying on his State’s unavoidable union with India. He stuck out in our family and mohalla like a sore thumb for condemning the division of Muslims into sects, and not believing in Peeri Mureedi and Murshids.
In the second week of September, Abdul Hafeez Saheb, the Deputy Collector, had sent a messenger to Abba saying that there would be three special trains coming to Yadgir from Wadi next week, on alternate days, to evacuate families from Yadgir to Hyderabad. Abba could not decide when and how to send us all by ourselves, knowing that he could not leave his duty when the school was in session. When the two trains were gone and Abba hadn’t done anything, the Deputy Collector sent his messenger again with a stern warning that Hyderabad families must leave the next day on the last train and that the Indian Army had already entered the State from different directions. My mother asked us to start packing, and Abba arranged for the Head Chaprasi, Peer Mohammed Saab, to accompany us to Hyderabad with a promise to compensate him for his taking leave for us.
The next day, on his lunch break, Abba saw us getting into the tongas, but didn’t go to see us off at the railway station; for him being at his school was more important. Here, I recall reading his personal file that they let him take home when he retired. The principal of City College, Ahmed Hussain Khan Saheb, after Azam Jung Bahadur, had written this remark in it: “Faraz Shinasi ka yeh aalam hai kay pachhees saal ki khidmat main ek din bhi rukhsat-e-ittefaqui naheen li.” (He is so duty-conscious that in his service of 25 years he has not availed himself of a single day of casual leave.)
It’s true that everyone has his or her own worry; going to the station mine was our talking parrot that was traveling with us. There was a Customs checkpoint just before the station; I was afraid they might stop us from taking him along. Once we made it through that hurdle, I worried about the Railways asking us to buy a ticket for him. Ammijan had sewn a cover for his cage, and I had wrapped an old towel, too, to muffle any sound from him. I was always at the ready to shut him up if he started his long routine “My name is Zamarrud Pasha. Mitthu ko bhook lagi, meethi roti doa. La Ilaha Illal lah ….”.
Excerpted with permission from 1948 Hyderabad Readings, edited by Mohammed Ayub Khan, Anant Maringanti, and Gita Ramaswamy, South Side Books.
