Politics
Dr T Hanuman Chowdary
Feb 24, 2023, 04:40 PM | Updated 04:40 PM IST
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“TRS to back MIM in local authorities MLC poll” is the headline in a recent edition of a popular daily in Hyderabad.
That there is an alliance between the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) (former TRS) and the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is becoming clearer with the passage of time.
17 September 2022, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the erstwhile Nizam’s Telugu, Marathi and Kannada-speaking areas was not observed as Telangana Liberation Day but, as dictated by AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, as National Integration Day.
Even in the new Telangana Secretariat, three places of worship got disproportionate floor area for their structures. The mosque reportedly got 4,334 sq ft; the temple, 2,713 sq ft; and the church, 1,911 sq ft.
The Muslim employees in the Secretariat are not the majority, they are even less than 10 per cent and yet they got the most area. The high allocation for the mosque is again believed to be as per the dictates of the AIMIM.
And now the Chief Minister of Telangana has agreed to the request of the AIMIM to allot a local authority’s MLC seat to the MIM’s nominee, Mirza Rahmat Baig.
Baig has been reported to be a personal chauffeur for an MIM legislator.
In this context, I refer to what Dr Ambedkar said:
“I was glad that India was separated from Pakistan. I was the philosopher so to say, of Pakistan. I advocated Pakistan because I felt that it was only by partition that Hindus would not only be independent but free.
“If India and Pakistan had remained united in one state, Hindus would be not independent and would have been at the mercy of Muslims.
“A merely independent India would not have been a free India from the point of view of the Hindus. It would have been a government of one country by two nations and of these two, the Muslims without question would have been ruling race notwithstanding Hindu Mahasabha and Jana Sangh.
“When partition took place I felt that God was willing to lift his curse and let India be one great and prosperous nation. But I fear that the curse may fall again. For I find that those who are advocating linguistic states have at heart, an idea of making the regional language as their official language. This will be the death knell to the idea of united India.
“With regional language as official language the ideal to make India one united country and to make Indians, “Indians First Indians Last” will vanish. (Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s Writings and Speeches, Vol-1, Page-146)
It is becoming clearer by the day that regional parties and their chiefs are willing to go to any extent in order to defeat the national and nationalist party.
Dr T Hanuman Chowdary is a Padma Shri awardee; Chairman, Pragna Bharati; Fellow, TCS; Convenor, Bharatiya Dharma Rakshana Samakhya; Former IT Advisor to Government of Andhra Pradesh; Founder CMD, VSNL.