Lessons from the massacre of Muslims in Hyderabad State in 1948

Those who witnessed the massacres in Hyderabad in 1948 knew that they did take place, but they did not say it aloud, the skills to articulate it and the courage to challenge the silence of the government of India under the world-renowned secular prime minister Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru.
Some 65 years after the massacres, the contents of the report of the committee that was formed by the then Prime Minister to assess the ground realities became known and affirmed what was always known by people.
Some 40,000 Muslims were massacred in what was known the then Hyderabad state.
The army sent to subdue Razakars, a local resistance movement, participated in the killing, looting, and raping of Muslims.
Local Hindus and their religious organizations incited Hindu mobs and terrorized the Muslim population and engineered the massacres.
Secular leaders also did not lag behind as they also joined and incited the mobs killing Muslims. They grabbed the land left by fleeing Muslims and sold it to whosoever offered them cash.
Razakars also engineered the killing of vulnerable, innocent Hindus wherever they could lay their hands on.
The report was suppressed by none other than the prime minister himself. This censorship is a violation of all national and international norms agreed by all nations. Yet, this censorship is always imposed and people discover the truth or partial truth only decades or centuries later.
Here is what we can learn from this latest episode of government secrecy.

1.      People need to develop their own independent channels to document their own history. Don’t rely on governments, however, representative they may be, to document information that goes against it. Without a vigilant population, democracy does not function well.

2.      Muslim in India and elsewhere must ensure that every act of injustice and violence against them is digitally documented and archived.  For instance, it should not be left upon government sources to document the atrocities in Muzaffarnagar carnage; rather, Muslim organizations should document these atrocities and preserve them while publicizing them.

3.      Muslims in India and elsewhere should join the police and army in large numbers to balance those sectarian forces that often use their official badges to intimidate minorities. The presence of Muslims in law enforcement agencies, the bureaucracy, and the army as well as in other sectors of society is paramount to their security. For long, the Muslims have been admonished by many of their organizations not join the government jobs. Such a policy was not only wrong, but it has proved disastrous for the community.

4.      Muslims should have a legal defense committee to pursue their cases. Muslim organizations in Europe and North America and elsewhere should help them pursue the matter at international courts of justice or with Amnesty or Human Rights Watch or the United Nations.

5.      Muslims should strengthen them at the grassroots level by creating open self-defense units to ensure that when they are attacked, they have people to defend them. These groups should be transparent and work within the limits of the law.

6.      Never trust the government or the media fully. Media has its own interests and spins. Muslims have to develop their own institutions to document their plight and sufferings.

7.      Muslims should never defend any incident that violates the law or the fundamental principles of their religion. If Muslims are wrong, they should be able to call a spade a spade. They must ensure that the presence in any village or town is not a source of discomfort. For instance, Hindus in Northern India believes that all Muslims slaughter cows secretly even if it is legally prohibited. Slaughtering cow is not an act that would increase or decrease the faith of a Muslim. For creating goodwill and giving comfort to Hindu neighbors, Muslims must adequately ensure them that they do not slaughter cow or desecrate Hindu symbols.

8.      Muslims should also participate in welfare projects for the good of the common people in their localities to ensure that their areas are clean, peaceful, and respectful of all residents.

9.      Muslims should also involve in local governance through contesting elections at local levels to ensure their presence at all levels. They should join all those political parties that believe in the supremacy of Indian constitution and that are not sectarian in their nature.

10.  Muslims should create an emergency fund to help victims of violence whenever it occurs. They should be ready to face a violent situation in the coming months as national elections are fast approaching and several political parties would use Hindu-Muslim tension to serve their electoral interests.