After Scoring Big In Hyderabad Civic Polls, Will BJP's Communal Rhetoric Work In Telangana Assembly Elections?

The annual Milad-un-Nabi procession that travels through the streets of Hyderabad starting at Dargah Quadri Chaman, culminating at Moghalpura, and sees the participation of over one lakh people, was postponed this year from September 28 as the date coincided with the annual Ganesh Visarjan festivities. The move was lauded by many as an effort to promote communal harmony in Hyderabad – the same city that had once witnessed looting, mass murder, and rape of Muslims after the state of Hyderabad became a part of independent India in 1948.

The city of Hyderabad is hence, not a stranger when it comes to being on the receiving end of communal violence and political leaders making inflammatory communal remarks. The BJP which has struggled to make inroads in BRS’ (Bharat Rashtra Samithi) stronghold, has often attempted to communalise electoral issues – going beyond clean water, sanitation, and other civic issues to proclaiming that Hyderabad would be renamed as ‘Bhagyanagar’. 

Political experts however say that the BJP has not been able to secure votes by raking up issues such as Ayodhya or ‘Bhagyanagar’ in South India. “They believe every house, every ward and every person must be touched by the party’s beliefs,” says Professor E Venkatesu from the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. However, this hasn’t reaped much results, at least in South India – Karnataka election results are a case in point, where BJP’s communal rhetoric hit a saturation level with the voters, he says.

But in the years and months leading up to the elections in Telangana on November 30, the BJP did try to stoke communal politics in its party meetings, election campaigns, manifestos and speeches by high-profile leaders.

Hyderabad local body elections – high decibel campaign

While there has been relative calm in Hyderabad since the formation of Telangana in 2014, a BJP leader’s derogatory comments against Islam and Prophet Mohammad stirred communal tensions in the Old City in August 2022. BJP MLA Raja Singh was arrested for his inflammatory remarks and simultaneously suspended from the BJP, only to be granted bail by a local court on the same day. Soon after his release, protests erupted in various parts of the city until Raja Singh was arrested again. BJP however revoked Singh’s suspension this year and offered him a ticket to contest from Goshamahal constituency in Hyderabad.

In the Muslim-dominated area of Charminar in Old City, many support AIMIM, which has traditionally been the bastion in the region. Mohammed Khan, a bangle stand owner in Chudi Bazaar, considered one of the largest markets in India, says that as AIMIM leaders have consistently won in this region, they are easily approachable to the common people. “If there is any problem, we usually just call up our corporator and he arrives here. This year too, we will be voting for the party,” he says.

However, the BJP has tried to make inroads into the region. This battle for power was seen during the civic body elections of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHM) in 2020, which witnessed a high-decibel campaign by BJP leaders, with many election analysts agreeing that the election for the Hyderabad Mayor seat has never been so intense as it was then. 

Although the BRS (then TRS) emerged as the largest party winning 55 of the 150 wards in the GHMC election, the BJP was a close second, winning 48 wards and the AIMIM of Asaduddin Owaisi secured 44. In the previous civic body elections in 2016, the BRS won 99 wards, AIMM 44 and BJP only four. While KCR’s party did bag the mayor seat, his party cadre must have felt the pinch of the jump in support for the BJP.

But why did these civic body polls matter? 

What was at stake was not just the mayor seat of Hyderabad, but also the ideological hold over the city of Hyderabad that has often been used in speeches of BJP leaders. During roadshows and rallies in the city, BJP leaders have promised voters that if the party came to power, the name of Hyderabad would be changed to ‘Bhagyanagar.’ The reason behind this which has been floated by many BJP leaders including Amit Shah is to make Hyderabad a 'mini Bharat' and 'emancipate' people from 'Nawabi rule'.

Hyderabad was founded by Quli Qutb Shah, the fifth ruler of the Quli Qutb Shahi dynasty. The name 'Bhagyanagar' is said to have been derived from the legend of 'Bhagmati', a woman dancer with whom Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, a ruler of Hyderabad in the 16th century, fell in love with. However, historians say that there is no evidence to suggest that such a queen even existed in the city. Despite this, stories narrated by some say that Hyderabad was named 'Bhagyanagar' after the dancer, and when she married the king and converted to Islam, she took on the name of Hyder Mahal, after which the city is currently named.

Another tale that has been quite often by BJP leaders is that the name ‘Bhagyanagar’ is related to the Bhagyalaxmi temple, which is attached to Charminar in the old city. During the run-up to the GHMC elections in 2020, BJP leaders would visit this temple to ‘seek blessings’. 

The word has also been used by BJP leaders from other states including Yogi Adityanath, Himanta Biswa Sarma and the Prime Minister himself. Just a day ago, Assam CM Sarma, while addressing a rally at Charminar, said that it would take ‘30 minutes’ for the BJP to change the name of Hyderabad to Bhagyanagar. 

While there is no definitive record as to when the Bhagyalaxmi temple was built, many media reports state that the temple encroaches on the protective perimeter of Charminar, as per officials from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The reports also say that the temple did not exist before Hyderabad state’s accession to the Indian Union as per the ASI – a position that Hindu groups oppose.

Meanwhile, other BJP leaders were at the forefront of leading provocative campaigns in the run-up to the 2020 polls. BJP MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar called for a “surgical strike not to kill but to weed out” Rohingyas, illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan from the Old City. Union minister and BJP’s Smriti Irani accused BRS and AIMIM of harbouring “anti-nationals” in the city – in the form of illegal immigrants – to further political gains. While there is no micro-level study to prove that these narratives had a hold over voters, the huge jump in seats for the BJP in the GHMC polls might indicate that its Hindutva rhetoric was gaining steam across some parts of the city.

However, what got lost within this narrative was the development concerns of the region. “There are no public toilets in the entire tourist area. We have so many tourists coming from all over the world, and there are no proper sanitation facilities for them. The area is also barricaded with heavy police presence which sometimes affects business,” Khan says.

Telangana Assembly Elections 2023

Walking on a similar path of contesting history, the BJP’s manifesto for the upcoming assembly elections sets “resetting the narrative of Telangana's history” as one of its key agendas. It also promises to deport all Rohingyas and illegal immigrants and wants to bring in an “anti-radicalisation cell to identify and eliminate potential threats, and sleeper cells of terrorist organisations and anti-India forces.” 

The party also promised that August 27, the date of the Bairanpally massacre, will be officially marked as Razakar Horrors Remembrance Day. The Razakars, a private militia backed by the Nizam, killed nearly 100 people in one of the worst massacres of the country in 1948. For decades, the BJP has been trying to present this conflict as a case of Hindu-Muslim conflict, even as historians say the armed struggle should be looked at through the angle of exploitation of the poor peasants and the terror perpetrated by Nizam and his supporters. The Razakars – with the support of the zamindars – unleashed violence not just on Hindus, but on anyone who opposed the Nizam’s rule, a freelance journalist writes in The Wire. However, the narrative set out by Hindutva ideologues has now also been shaped into a movie: Razakar: The Silent Genocide of Hyderabad, which is being bankrolled by a BJP leader.

Although the contest in Telangana is primarily between the ruling and incumbent BRS and Congress, the question remains whether this communal rhetoric will have any impact on BJP’s vote share in the state's Assembly elections.