Razakars (Hyderabad)

One of the pretexts for Operation Polo by India which led to its annexation of Hyderabad was the refusal by the Nizam to disband the Razakars. The Razakars were the main resistance to the Indian Army during the operation. After they were defeated, the Nizam surrendered and agreed to disband the Razakars. Qasim Razvi was initially jailed and then allowed to move to Pakistan where he was granted asylum.

They were involved in various human right abuses and committed atrocities including mass killings, rapes and looting of villages, against the Hindu majority (which overwhelmingly favored Hyderabad's accession with India), and against participants of the Telangana Rebellion.

History

With the Indian Independence Act 1947, the British left the princely states with the choice of joining either India or Pakistan or opting for full independence. However, by 1948 almost all had acceded to either India or Pakistan. One major exception was Hyderabad, where Mir Osman Ali Khan, a Muslim ruler who presided over a largely Hindu population, chose independence and hoped to maintain this with the help of the Razakars and entered into a standstill agreement with India on 29 November 1947 to maintain the status quo. The move was strongly resisted primarily by the Hindu subjects of the kingdom, who wanted state's accession with India.

In 1926, Mahmud Nawaz Khan, a retired Hyderabad official, founded the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (also known as MIM). The MIM became a powerful organization, with a principal focus of marginalizing the political aspirations of Hindus and progressive Muslims through its actions, including the insistence that Hyderabad be declared a Muslim state.

MIM "had its storm troopers" in the Razakars who were headed by Qasim Razvi, a Muslim educated at Aligarh University "who claimed Hyderabad was a Muslim state and that Muslim supremacy was based upon the right of conquest". The Razakars demanded special powers from the Nizam, which they started to misuse and the Nizam had to abide by their dictats. The Nizam sent a delegation to the United Nations to refer the Hyderabad State case to the UN Security Council.

The Razakar militia brutally put down the armed revolts by Communist sympathizers and the peasantry and even eliminated Muslim activists such as journalist Shoebullah Khan who advocated merger with India. The Razakars terrorised the Hindu population and its sympathizers, causing many to flee to safety into the jungles, uninhabited mud forts, or neighboring Indian provinces. The Hyderabad State Congress was banned and its leaders forced to flee to Bezawada or Bombay.