13/09/2022
MR MAKHDOOM MOHIUDDIN(REVOLUTIONARY URDU POET, FREEDOM FIGHTER & POLITICIAN) AND TELANGANA ARMED STRUGGLE (TELANGANA PEASANTS MOVEMENT)
Makdoom Mohiuddin
(February 4, 1908 - August 25, 1969)
He was the son of Mr Ghouse Mohiuddin, who was posted as a superintendent in Medak, district, Hyderabad State.
As a child, Makhdoom was religious person, completed school studies from Dharamvant High School Yakutpura, Hyderabad. A college student in the 1930s, completed BA and MA from Osmania University.
Starting with lyrical poetry around 1933-34, Makhdoom Mohiuddin eventually completed the study of almost all outstanding Urdu and Persian classical and contemporary works. He was soon drawn towards progressive, anti-imperial, socialist and anti-fascist thought. In touch with writers in Lucknow then, he soon formed the Hyderabad unit of the Progressive Writers’ Association.
On the lighter side, before he got heavily into the Telangana peasants’ rebellion, Makhdoon was believed to be very popular among his colleagues for his jokes and innocent mischief. His popularity as a poet also would grow in the 1930s, at the same time when he was translating famous works into Urdu. Eventually, he become a teacher at the City College.
Growing anti-feudal struggle. As his ties with the communists grew, he eventually also founded a student union in 1939-40. Politically charged, the period coincided with the rise of the Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen in the Hyderabad state under the Nizams. Other Hindu right-wing groups like the Arya Samaj were also active in the state.
Makhdoom, who began organising and lay foundation of trade unions and comrades association in the Hyderabad state, was arrested in 1946 as he had a warrant against him. He was soon released. However, he went underground.
It was the time of the Telangana Armed Struggle, a communist-backed peasant rebellion in the state against feudal landlords. Makhdoom was also jailed for a while and was one of those from the CPI who wanted to reconsider the armed struggle. During his prison time in 1951, he wrote his then famous poem ‘Qaid’. However, one of his most famous poems, essentially a battle cry against landlords, was ‘Jang-e-Azadi’.
'' Woh azadi azadi kya, mazdoor ka jisme raaj na ho''
LIfe as a Legislator Eventually, the armed struggle was called-off on October 1, 1951, and the CPI (then through PDF) contested in the first general elections of the Hyderabad state. Makhdoom had lost the polls in hyderabad but later on, won the Huzurabad seat in a by-election (as per sources) After unsuccessfully contesting the Parliament seat, he was elected to the Legislative Council where he was the leader of opposition in state council till his death in 1969. Apart from legislator he holds numerous positions and awards for instance :Chairman of AP housing board society, Chairman of Nagarjuna Sagar Dam, executive member/secretary of World trade union, Sahitya Academy Award etc.
While Makhdoom is today remembered mostly as an Muslim revolutionary urdu poet, many tend to, for political reasons, detach him from his communist party background. His contemporary and fellow CPI legend Raj Bahadur Gaur also remarked in his book that a “trend” to assert “Makhdoom the artist” was different from “Makhdoom the communist” had begun developing among the poet’s ‘friends’.
However, many who knew him, and are still around, say that Makhdoom was not in any such conflict. “So, Makhdoom the Communist and Makhdoom the Poet, both worked and wrote for the same cause -‘Victory for Love and Labour’, wrote Raj Bahadur Gaur his former comrade.
TELANGANA ARMED STRUGGLE
The prime players of the time, apart from the king Nizam were India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Union home minister Sardar Patel, India’s Agent-general to Hyderabad KM Munshi, Hyderabad’s last Prime Minister Laiq Ali, MIM president and head of the Razakars Qasim Razvi, Communist Party of India’s Ravi Narayan Reddy, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, P. Sundarayya (and others), and lastly Syed Ahmed El-Edroos, the last military commander of the Hyderabad state Army.
The agrarian social structure in the Nizam’s Hyderabad was of a feudal order. It had two kinds of land tenure systems, namely, raiyatwari and jagirdari. Under the raiyatwari system, the peasants owned patta and were proprietors of the land; they were registered occupants.
The actual cultivators of the land were known as shikmidars. Khalsa lands were chieftain’s land and out of revenue collected from these lands, personal expenses of the royalty were met out. The Deshmukhs and Desbpandes were the hereditary collectors of revenue for khalsa villages. In jagir villages, the tax was collected through jagirdars and their agents. Both the jagirdars and the Deshmukhs wielded immense power at the local level.
The region of Telangana was characterised by a feudal economy. The main commercial crops, viz., groundnut, to***co and castor seed, were the monopoly of the landowning brahmins. The rise of Reddis and peasant proprietors further strengthened the high castes and propertied class. The non-cultivating urban groups, mostly Brahmins, Marwaris, Komtis and Muslims, began to take interest in acquiring land. Consequently, the peasant proprietors slided down to the status of tenants-at-will, share-croppers and landless labourers
The course of events that led to the Telangana peasant struggle can be described as under:
The Telangana peasant movement was engineered by Communist Party of India (CPI). It is said to be a revolution committed by Communists. The Communist Party started working in Telangana in 1936. This regional organisation was affiliated to the All India Kisan Sabha an organ of CPI. Within a period of three or four years, say by 1940, the CPI had established its roots in the former Hyderabad state. During the period from 1944 to 1946, the Communist activities increased in several of the districts of Hyderabad. A proper framework was, therefore, prepared for launching a peasant movement in Telangana.
The next event which took place in Hyderabad and more actually in Telangana was the famine of 1946. All the crops failed and there was a crisis of the availability of fodder. The prices of food, fodder and other necessities of life increased.
This was a crisis for the tenants and the sharecroppers. Actually, the year 1946 provided all opportunities for engineering the peasant struggle. In the early July 1946, the peasants resisted the government orders. Militant action was taken by the CPI-led peasants.By the middle of 1946, the Communist propaganda was fully intensified and covered about 300 to 400 villages under its influence.
The second conference of CPI was held in March 1948. It resolved to give a revolutionary turn to the peasant movement in Telangana. The peasants later on were organised into an army and intermittently fought guerrilla wars. Writing about this part of the course of events of Telangana peasant struggle Hamza Alavi observes:
Telangana movement had a Guerrilla army of about 5,000. The peasants killed or drove out the landlords and the local bureaucrats and seized and distributed the land. They established governments of peasant ‘soviets’ which were integrated regionally into a control organisation. Peasant rule was established in an area of 15,000 sq. miles, with a population of four million. The government of the armed peasantry continued until 1950. Armed struggle was called-off on October 1, 1951, and the CPI (then through PDF) contested in the first general elections of the Hyderabad state.
Besides the peasant agitation, a parallel discontent was also taking place in Hyderabad. A para-military voluntary force, organised by Qasim Rizvi, was taking its roots. The members of this voluntary organisation were known as Razakars. This organisation was against the peasants. The peasants consolidated their movement in the face of the oppression of Nizam, activities of Razakars and the authority crisis in Hyderabad.
One of the major reasons behind Police Action is believed to be the fanatical Qasim Razvi, who started the Razakar (volunteers) militia, and indulged in atrocities. The issue with Razvi was his violence. The late Omar Khalidi in his seminal book ‘Hyderabad: After The Fall’ notes that, “Under Razavi’s charge the organisation (MIM) fairly quickly became a militant and somewhat frenzied party, accused, not without cause, of being fascist in both spirit and structure."
The Sunderlal committee report formed in the aftermath of Operation Polo states that 26,000 to 40,000 Muslims were killed in communal violence, mainly in the districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka of Hyderabad State.
The truth could not be further away movement in Telangana was not anti-Muslim, but anti-feudalism.
The fact of the matter is that unsung heroes like in Telangana prevented a pogrom against during a crucial period in history. Operation Polo was conducted to crush the communists. Osman Ali Khan was not even arrested and he went to become the Rajpramukh (governor) eventually Urdu revolutionary poet Makhdoom Mohiuddin, has no love lost for the Nizam.
On September 13, 1948, the Indian army marched into Hyderabad and within less than a week, the Nizam’s army and police surrendered without resistance. The police action, taken by the newly framed Central Government of independent India, was very quick to suppress the peasant movement. D.N. Dhanagare elaborates the police action as under:
On India’s part the ‘police action’ was taken to stop the Razkar frenzies as they not only created anarchic conditions within the state but also posed a serious threat to the internal security of neighbouring Indian Territory. The police action was, therefore, unsavoury but essential once the Razakars were overpowered, and a military administration set up the offensive was immediately directed at the peasant rebels in the troubled districts of Telangana. The superior Indian army spared no measure to suppress the communist squads.
The peasant movement in Telangana had to be withdrawn. Actually the police action gave a death blow to the Communist-led Telangana peasant movement. In this struggle, the movement had to suffer a lot. Fighting with the Indian army over 2,000 peasants and party workers were killed. By August 1949, nearly 25,000 Communists and active participants were arrested; by July 1950 the total number of detainees had reached 10,000. This should suffice as an index of the intensity of Telangana peasants struggle.
However we get an idea of how strong the CPI-led Telangana Armed Struggle was in Edroos’s own book, wherein he writes that the rural areas of Telangana under left-control had a stronger intelligence and that law and order even was in check, thanks to them. Many often forget that the Indian army was stationed in Telangana until 1951 to try and quell the peasant rebellion. It was however called-off on October 21 by the CPI after which the party took the democratic route and contested elections (through the People’s Democratic Front) in the first elections of 1951-52. In the aftermath of Operation Polo, Lt. Col. J. N. Chaudhuri, who led Police Action, took over as a military governor for 18 months, after which a provincial government under M. K. Vellodi existed till the first general elections. It may be noted that the last Nizam was made the Rajpramukh in 1950, while Razvi had been arrested and sent to jail for few years, after which he was allowed to leave for .
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