Majlis- Ittehadul- Muslimeen Party role
The All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen or AIMIM is a recognized regional political party based in the Indian state of Telangana, with its head office in the Aghapura Hyderabad Telangana, India, which has its roots in the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen founded in 1927 in the Hyderabad State of British India. AIMIM has held the Lok Sabha seat for the Hyderabad constituency since 1984. In the 2014 Telangana Legislative Assembly elections, the AIMIM won seven seats and received recognition as a ‘state party’ by the Election Commission of India.
The party has roots back to the days of the princely State of Hyderabad. It was founded and shaped by Nawab Mahmood Nawaz Khan Qiledar of Hyderabad State with the “advice” of Nawab Mir Osman Ali Khan, the Nizam of Hyderabad and in the presence of Ulma-e-Mashaeqeen in 1927 as a pro-Nizam party.Then it was only Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) and the first meeting was held in the house of Nawab Mahmood Nawaz Khan on November 12, 1927. The MIM advocated the set up of a “Muslim dominion” rather than integration with India.In 1938, Bahadur Yar Jung was elected “president” of the MIM which had a “cultural” and religious manifesto. It soon acquired political complexion and, alongside the Muslim League, were collaborators of British-occupied India forces. After the death of Bahadur Yar Jang in 1944, Qasim Rizvi was elected as the leader.
Rajakars and Kasim Razvi
Syed Kasim Razvi also Qasim Razvi was the president of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party in the princely state of Hyderabad from December 1946 till the State’s annexation to India in 1948. Then he settled down as a lawyer in Latur. He was also lawyer in Latur’s court. He was also the founder of the extremist Razakar militia in the State and held the levers of power with the Nizam of Hyderabad, blocking the possibilities of his accommodation with the Union of India. According to scholar Lucien Benichou, “[Razvi] can arguably be considered to have been the political figure whose influence and unrealistic vision proved the most detrimental to the interests of the State in the crucial years of 1947–48.
fter the premature death of Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung (the founding leader) in 1944, the Ittehad party fell into fractious extremism. Razvi tried to establish his distinctiveness by advocating political reforms, even though they were not palatable to the Ittehad membership. Then he established his own association in Latur, named Majlis-e-Islah Nazm-o-Nasq, ostensibly to bring about reforms but more likely to establish his own independent following away from the mainstream of the party. In February 1946, the extremists in the party led by Abdur Rahman Rais staged a violent protest over the reconstruction of a mosque, burning down the house of the prime minister Nawab of Chhatari and Sir Wilfrid Grigson, the minister for revenue and police. The incident led to the resignation of the leader of the Ittehad. In the ensuing contest for the new president, Kasim Razvi defeated Rais to emerge as the leader of the Ittehad. His extremism matched that of Rais and the moderates in the party distanced themselves from both the candidates. From this point on, Razvi called the shots in Hyderabad politics.
The Hyderabad State was a Hindu-majority state that was ruled by the Nizam. When India became independent in 1947, like all the other Princely states, the Hyderabad State was also given the choice of either joining India or Pakistan. The Nizam wanted neither- he wanted to remain independent. The Nizam finally entered into a standstill agreement with India on 29 November 1947 to maintain status quo. Hyderabad state had been steadily becoming more theocratic since the beginning of the 20th century. 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 the principal focus to marginalize the political aspirations of moderate Muslims.
MIM “had its storm troopers in the Razakars who were headed by Kasim 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 helpless Nizam had to abide by their dictates. The Nizam sent a delegation to the United Nations to refer the Hyderabad State case to the UN Security Council. Qasim Rizvi and the Razakars had the additional agenda to persuade the Nizam to accede to Pakistan, instead of remaining independent of both India and Pakistan.
The Razakar militia brutally put down the armed revolts by Communists and the Peasantry and even eliminated activist Muslims such as Shoebullah Khan who advocated merger with India.The Razakars terrorised the Hindu and pro-India population causing them to flee to the Indian provinces.The Hyderabad State Congress was banned and its leaders forced to flee to Bezawada or Bombay. The Communist Party of India also became active in defending the general population from the Muslim Razakar militia.