When the mantra of Vande Mataram lit the fire of freedom in Nizam’s territory

The ‘B’ Hostel of Osmania University has its door boarded up. The ‘A’ Hostel of OU is now walled up. “That building has collapsed. Don’t go there. There are huge snakes and the building may collapse on you if you go inside,” says the man who set up a hair-cutting saloon on the mud path. Inside the ‘B’ Hostel there is a photograph of Indian Social Revolutionaries that includes Gautam Buddha, Jyotirao Phule, and Ambedkar. There are no sounds of students or teachers. But it wasn’t so when the buildings were first built. There were large portraits of Rama and Krishna on the hostel walls inside the prayer halls for Hindu students but when it came to singing Vande Mataram, the Nizam’s government drew the line. 

In the winter of 1938, just when these buildings went up, the same hostel corridors and prayer halls echoed with the chants of ‘Vande Mataram’ after the Ramzan holidays. The chant got the goat of the Nizam’s government and became a mantra for freedom and nationalism in Nizam’s Dominion. A mantra and not a song as scores of students stood up for their right to sing the mantra.  Singing Vande Mataram was doubly brave as it was not the British but the Nizam’s Government’s writ which ran. The government saw it as a song fueling patriotism rather than its religious message.

But the outbreak of nationalistic fervour did not happen in the OU campus, it began in the schools of the Dominion. A 17-year-old P.V. Narasimha Rao sang the Vande Mataram in his school in Warangal and was expelled. Another 17-year-old Laddipalli Anjayya sang the same mantra in Secunderabad. He was caught, whipped, jailed for three days. Mahadev Singh Thakur was a Matric student (Class X) student in Karimnagar when he sang the mantra of Vande Mataram and was rusticated.

The chant did not begin in isolation. In July 1938, a provisional committee was formed for the Hyderabad State Congress to press for a representative government under the Nizam. But the Nizam government promptly invoked Public Safety Regulation and banned it. But the Congress workers remained undettered and began a satyagraha. 

The Hindu carried this report on December 30, 1938 where Mahatma Gandhi said that he would prefer the students going without their education to their attending institutions where a ban had been imposed on the ‘Vande Mataram’ song.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

The satyagrahis were jailed and beaten. One of the worst fates for uttering the mantra was by the satyagrahi Ramachandra Rao who was whipped in prison and at every blow he sang out Vande Mataram. Incidentally, Vandemataram Ramachandra Rao contested as an independent for the Assembly seat thrice and won, including once in 1967 against K.V. Ranga Reddy, grandfather of current Chevella MP K. Visheshwar Reddy. 

The GenZ of 1938

But the fire of Vande Mataram was lit by another GenZ in the Aurangabad Government Intermediate College where a teacher Govindbhai Shroff brought the revolution to the classrooms. On November 14, 1938, the students of Intermediate College in Aurangabad sang Vande Mataram on the college campus. Prompted by Govindbhai Shroff, a teacher, who was dismissed on November 9, for anti-national activities, the song sent ripples across the Dominion.  The hostellers of OU sang the same anthem on November 23, 1938 in the prayer rooms after returning from their Ramzan vacation. This was the  repeat of what the students were doing before the Dasara vacation in September. As the chant became more common across campuses Mahbub College, Hanamakonda, Gulbarga and other places, the Nizam’s Government clamped a ban on singing of the song on November 28. The same night, as students were coming out of the prayer hall, the university officials took the signature of the violators of the order. On November 29, the students were forced to leave the hostels overnight.

By the end of the protest on December 12, there was a mass rustication of students — 350 students were rusticated from Osmania University College. City College expelled 70 students, Gulbarga College (including High School students), 310 students were removed, 120 students were removed from Mahboobnagar High School.

The Hindu report from December 13, 1938
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

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At the heart of it was the debate whether the song was patriotic or religious. While the students claimed it was religious, the Nizam’s government did not buy the argument. All the higher education institutions were affiliated to the Osmania University and the anthem in the classrooms was the Asafia song “Do Al Men Riya Sabe” which meant “Let Nizam Live Long”. By invoking motherland, the mantra proved to be a challenge.

Jaisoorya Naidu, son of Sarojini Naidu, roped in the help of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose for the Vande Mataram Movement. He also drafted a plea to students to end the strike and get back to classrooms. Some of the students agreed. 

By June of 1939, a section of students apologised to the university officials with a caveat about the slogans they will use. These were: “Vande Mataram, Matrubhasha ki Jai, Shah-e-Osman Zindabad, Osmania University Zindabad, Hindu-Muslim unity-ki-jai, and Hyderabad State Zindabad.”

Later, during the Join Indian Union movement, the people started to greet each with ‘Vande Mataram’ instead of saying ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Namaskar’.