Assertion

In a debate on Times Now on 11 March 2014, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) MP Asaduddin Owaisi made the following claim:

As far as the police action is concerned, let us do a programme on Pandit Sunderlal Report which clearly stated what happened…One lakh Muslims were butchered in the state of Deccan.

Owaisi’s claim was a response to the anchor Arnab Goswami’s factual questions that traced the antecedents of Owaisi’s party.

Facts

The modern day MIM is a reincarnation of the pre-Independence Ittehad-Al-Musalmeen, popularly known as the Razakkars who acted as the Hyderabad Nizam’s private militia. The Nizam refused to join his Hyderabad dominion into Independent India in 1947 and pressed for a separate Islamic state of Hyderabad for nearly a year based on the strength of this militia.

Subsequently, the Razakkars perpetrated untold violence in Hyderabad and surrounding regions targeting non-Muslims. Writing on this, K.M. Munshi in his Pilgrimage to Freedom says

I must point out that the most serious menace to the internal tranquility of the State and of all the bordering areas is the Ittehad-Al-Musalmeen (Razakars) organization which thrives mainly on the patronage and support of your government. Its avowed object is to secure the sovereignty of Hyderabad, which, according to its declared doctrines, vests only in the Muslim subjects of the Nizam. Its volunteer force is 1,50,000 strong and its leader Kazim Razvi has recently appealed for stepping up of recruitment by 3,50,000 more volunteers. This organization provides a fertile source of recruitment to the State Army and Police Forces. Its volunteers, Razakars, operate throughout the State in close collaboration with the State Army and Police Forces. They spread a reign of terror amongst the non-muslim population of the State and it is common knowledge that, although they have been inflicting widespread injury on person and property, they are generally immune from the processes and penalties of law. Assisted by the State Police, they frequently conduct raids on the neighbouring provinces of the Dominion… He (Kazim Razvi) has openly declared again and again that Hyderabad is an Islamic State and that sovereignty therein vests in the Muslims of Hyderabad. He has called upon the Razakars to liberate the Muslims of India from the Government of India… these pronouncements come from the President of the Party to which majority of the Ministers in your present Government owe allegiance, and are calculated to inflame the Muslims of the State and in the whole of India against the non-muslims and Dominion of India …

It was then that Home Minister Sardar Patel stepped in and ordered army action to liberate Hyderabad from the Nizam’s clutches. The Nizam gave up almost without a fight what with the Razakkars deserting him and declaring surrender barely within a week.

However, of late, there have been attempts to trace a certain Sunderlal Report which purportedly reveals a “hidden massacre” perpetrated by Patel. Neither is the effort new. An earlier IndiaFacts article on the issue is worth recalling in this context:

…all the articles that have been written on this ‘hidden massacre,’ base their assertions entirely on the unpublished Sunderlal Report. It is perplexing as to how an incident of communal violence as big in scale as the one claimed here, can go widely unreported in newspapers of that time, and especially in a period as crucial as the country’s partition and post-partition days when the whole world’s eyes were on India. Also, it is common knowledge that communal violence, however small in scale, leaves a lasting impression on the people affected by it. It is thus surprising how the people of this region are themselves largely unaware of this post-annexation violence, while they so vividly recall the earlier atrocities committed by the Razakars.

Efforts to keep the Sunderlal Report in circulation have been attempted by such writers as Swaminathan Aiyer and a BBC journalist, Mike Thompson. Quoting from the same IndiaFacts article, we find that both Aiyer and Thompson have practiced intellectual and factual deception:

If this was not enough, we are faced with yet another perplexing fact: the claim that the said Sunderlal Report is with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. It turns out that a researcher named Captain Pandu Ranga Reddy was told by the museum authorities in reply to an RTI query that the copy was not available with them! However, both Mike Thompson and Swaminathan Aiyar claim that the copy of the report was accessed by a few foreign researchers. However, it is not known why these people have not yet made the copy public. Thus, until the copy of the report is made public by the concerned authorities, writing speculative articles on the contents of the report contributes to unhealthy public discourse.

What is more, assuming that the Sunderlal Report even exists, we see that it holds no value because Sunderlal’s exercise was merely a goodwill mission and not a legal commission of enquiry!

And it is on this deception that Asaduddin Owaisi bases his claim on live TV.

Verdict

It is clear from the foregoing that Owaisi’s claim that one lakh Muslims were “butchered” in Hyderabad is a fabrication based on a report which is neither made public nor is a reliable source of facts of the liberation of Hyderabad.

IndiaFacts Fact Meter finds Asaduddin Owaisi to be an Incorrigible Liar.