Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said that India’s first Home Minister and Congress freedom fighter Sardar Patel “liberated” Telangana from Razakars and Nizams. Addressing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) election rallies at Jangaon and Korutla in Telangana, he slammed Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s (KCR) government for not celebrating ‘Hyderabad Liberation Day’ due to pressure from the Asaduddin Owaisi-led MIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, also known as MIM).

“We have decided that once BJP government is formed in Telangana, every year September 17 will be officially celebrated as Hyderabad Liberation Day,” said Amit Shah. He paid tributes to those who died while fighting the Muslim-led militia Razakars at Bairanpally village and  said if that if the BJP is voted to power, it will also commemorate the Bairanpally massacre on August 27 as 'Razakar Horrors’ Remembrance Day. This is also in the BJP’s manifesto, that was released two days ago on November 18.

Amit Shah’s statement pertains to the massacre of villagers in Bairanpally village in 1948, when peasants, led by the Communist Party of India (CPI), were leading an armed struggle against the landlords. The Razakars were led by the then Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM, which became AIMIM later) Qasim Razvi, who made it his mission to keep the erstwhile Hyderabad state independent after the British left India in 1947.

Several accounts of people in the Hyderabad state, which also included parts of southern Maharashtra and northern Karnataka, recount the atrocities of the Razakars. However, in Telangana, the Razakars were met with stiff resistance as the CPI had begun its armed rebellion against feudal landlords of the state from 1946 itself. Majority of the state’s landlords were Hindus, which is something the BJP and its leaders usually overlook or don’t take into account. The saffron party also omits the communist rebellion, which freed peasants during the revolution which took place between 1946 and 1951. 

On Monday, Amit Shah also said that a memorial will be constructed at Bairanpally to pay homage to the martyrs. He called the KCR government the “number one in corruption” in the country. “Once BJP comes to power, we will conduct an inquiry into all the scams and the corrupt will be thrown behind bars,” he said while alleging that many scams took place in the state during Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s (BRS) rule here.

The Union Home minister also alleged that the BRS government is indulging in minority appeasement, and added that after BJP comes to power in the state, it will scrap the four per cent government job reservation for Muslims and will increase the reservation of other groups. 

He reiterated the BJP’s promise that after the party comes to power, a member of the Backward Class (BC) group will be made the chief minister.

Targeting the BRS, MIM and also the Congress over their “family rule”, Amit Shah said, “BRS is a two generation party. Owaisis controlled the party for three generations while Congress is being run by the fourth generation.”