TRS won't revive old wounds; no plans to celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day
Hyderabad: The Telangana state government does not have any plans to officially celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day despite demands from the BJP and other organisations. “The government has no plans to celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day officially on September 17. It doesn’t want to revive past wounds,” a senior official told this newspaper.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had led the “Police Action” (actually a military action) against a reluctant Nizam and had merged the Hyderabad state with the Indian Union on September 17, 1948.
TRS against bid to divide society says K Kavitha
The TS government does not have any plans to officially celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day. TRS MP K. Kavitha said on Wednesday that the “moderate people” of TS did not believe in Liberation Day.
“We believe in the day when Telangana state was merged with the Indian union. Even during the Telangana movement, the TRS had celebrated it as a ‘Merger Day’ and hoisted the National Flag at the party office since then Andhra government would not recognise this day,” she said.
She added, “We have always said the Nizam was certainly very good in lot of aspects. One or two things go wrong in everybody’s rule. Babri Masjid (demolition) went wrong when Kalyan Singh was the CM. You can’t dig up history and try to divide society now. The BJP has always been taking that view, and the TRS is always been opposing it right from the movement days,” she remarked.
Stating that it was a “Merger Day”, not a “Liberation Day”, she said it was certainly not a day to bring out differences between Hindu and Muslim communities in TS.
Interestingly, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, as a Telangana movement leader, on August 23, 2010, in Warangal had warned the then Rosaiah government of a severe backlash if he did not celebrate the “Telangana Liberation Day” officially.
But after the TRS come to power, he followed the stance of previous governments and confined celebrations to Telangana Bhavan. The MIM, an ally of the ruling TRS government, has opposed official celebrations on the plea that it reopens past wounds.
Meanwhile, the TS BJP leadership has been quite vocal of late and has invited National BJP president Amit Shah to address a rally at Warangal on September 17 to relaunch the BJP with an eye on the 2019 elections.
Union minister for information and broadcasting M. Venkaiah Naidu has added fuel to the fire demanding official celebrations for the first time. He suggested that the TS government also followed Maharashtra and Karnataka governments, which celebrate Hyderabad Liberation Day.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his visit to Hyderabad on August 7, had advised the TS BJP to take up a “Tiranga Yatra” from August 15 to September 17.
