How Osmania University's Action Ignited Flame Of Freedom In Hyderabad

HYDERABAD: Osmania University deserves no introduction. Its role as the vanguard of the agitation for the Telangana statehood in 1960s as well as in 2000s is well known. But little is known about its role in emancipating Hyderabad from the rule of Nizam through a students movement that fought for people's right to sing Vande Mataram.

The movement later on created leaders who include the ninth Prime Minister of India, P.V. Narasimha Rao, whose decision to end the much-maligned Licence Raj has changed the face of India, and lifted crores of people from poverty.

It was 1938. After decades of struggle, Indians forced British India to introduce a semblance of self-rule in provinces a year-ago, giving wings to aspiration for freedom among people in native states. Though the Indian National Congress remained focused on its fight against the British, local organisations drew inspiration from it to seek a greater self-rule from their rulers, including the Nizam of Hyderabad.

“The student world of Hyderabad State was the first to catch the flame… When the whole country was struggling for freedom, it was natural that youngmen would not keep themselves under an unnatural clime. All the more, this was true of the students of Hyderabad State,” Swami Ramanand Tirtha, one of the tall leaders of the freedom struggle in Hyderabad State, wrote in his book ‘Memoirs Of Hyderabad Freedom Struggle’.

The first shot, Swami Ramanand Tirtha wrote, was fired at Aurangabad. “The students of the Government Intermediate College in whom patriotic sentiments were being developed and fostered by Shri G.M. Shroff, who was then a member of the staff, were moved to the quick… They refused to sing the Asafia song. They would rather recite the national song, the Vande Mataram.”

College officials acted to quell what they considered an act of sedition. Shroff left his post, wrote Swami Ramanand Tirtha, to organise a student movement to assert their right to sing Vande Mataram.

In no time, the flame of Vande Mataram reached the B Hostel of Osmania University.

According to The Freedom Struggle in Hyderabad, Volume 4, “The Osmania University College had, then, three magnificent hostels called A, B and Temporary, each with two Prayer Halls, one for the Muslim students and the other for Hindu students… In the month of September before the Dasara in 1938, it was detected that Vandemataram was being sung by the Hindu students in the prayer hall. The Warden of the B Hostel was alerted, who instructed the Prarthana Mandir to keep the Prayer Hall closed. Students did not mind the closure for the time and offered their prayers including Vandemataram in the corridor.”

The four-part The Freedom Struggle in Hyderabad is an official account of the freedom struggle in Hyderabad published by the state government between 1950 and 1966.

Later, the university officials thought the closure of the prayer hall was a result of an error of judgement. So the prayer hall was reopened and prayers, including Vande Mataram, were sung without hindrance until the university shut for a month-long Ramzan holiday.

When the university was reopened on November 28, 1938, however, the students were greeted with a notice banning the singing of Vande Mataram in the university precincts as it was claimed to be “political and controversial in nature”. Students appealed against the decision, but officials remained steadfast in not allowing Vande Mataram in the campus.

Unmindful of the consequences, the defiant students went ahead with their prayers, including Vande Mataram, at 9 pm. The next day, university pro-chancellor Qazi Mohammed Hussain ordered students to remain confined to their hostel rooms. He demanded an apology from the students and an undertaking against singing Vande Mataram for not taking action against them.

While the students remained confined to their rooms, they refused to tender an apology for singing Vande Mataram. The university officials, however, escalated the issue by suspending the students who sang Vande Mataram on November 28 and threw them out of the hostel using police force in the dead of night. One of the students, who faced suspension, was Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao, a native of Laknepalle village near Karimnagar.

Since most of the suspended students were from areas far away from Hyderabad, the Jain Mandir in Sultan Bazar and several prominent people in Hyderabad offered accommodation.

The suspension snowballed into a crisis that Hyderabad State had never seen. Day scholars of Osmania University boycotted the classes in support of hostel inmates and other education institutions joined the cause and remained shut.

Mahatma Gandhi issued a statement supporting students, which was published in Deccan Chronicle on December 25, 1938 and spoke in support of them in his letter to Hyderabad Prime Minister Sir Muhammad Akbar Nazar Ali Hydari. Congress leaders like Subhash Chandra Bose, and Jawaharlal Nehru wrote letters to students supporting their right to sing Vande Mataram and implored them against tendering an apology. Hindu Mahasabha leader V.D. Savarkar too supported the students.

A determined Nizam government, however, let the situation worsen by rusticating 350 students. Once a student was rusticated, other educational institutions were not supposed to admit him without getting a clearance from his erstwhile institution. The vindictive Nizam government used  this rule to ensure that the education of 350 students stopped midway as a punishment for their open defiance.

Much to the chagrin of the Nizam government, Nagpur University vice-chancellor Dr. Tukaram Jayram Kedar ignored this rule and allowed 350 rusticated Osmania University students to complete their education.

In his assessment of Osmania University students’ Vande Mataram movement over two decades later, Swami Ramanand Tirtha writes, “The Vande Mataram movement had a profound impact on the minds of a whole generation of young men. In the lives of many students, this movement brought an unexpected turn and kindled the first flame of patriotism and defiance against tyranny. Several leaders of today (1960s) hailing from the erstwhile Hyderabad State owe their initiation into the political field to the Vande Mataram movement.”