Thursday's celebration of the 50th anniversary of Hyderabad's liberation from the Nizam's rule showed how divisive such events can be. Far from seeing it as a unifying event, the three political parties which took the lead in commemorating it saw the event purely from their own limited perspectives.The Bharatiya Janata Party, which organised a large public meeting addressed by Home Minister L.K. Advani and other leading lights of the party to mark the occasion, stressed the role played by some religious organisations in the build-up to the police action that ensured the state's integration with the rest of the country.The Congress, as usual, remained content with recalling the role partymen played in the struggle against the Nizam's autocratic rule. The Communists linked the BJP's sudden interest in the event to the Muslim factor. Not to be outdone, Advani quoted V.P. Menon to say that the Communists had collaborated with the Nizam's notorious police forces. But at the end of all this speechifying andtrading of charges, what purpose did the event serve? But then the attempt was not so much to celebrate it as to draw political advantage from the event.Unfortunately, no political party has fought shy of exploiting for electoral gain its links with historical events. The Congress has always claimed that India owes its independence to the struggle put up entirely by the party against the British, forgetting that there were other streams of struggle too that had a profound impact on alien rule.The Communists, who are accused of playing a nefarious role during the Quit India Movement, have their own little struggles to project like the Punnapra-Vayalar struggle in Kerala and the Komagatta Maru episode involving Punjabi emigrants. Though the BJP and its earlier avatar, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, came into existence years after India became independent, this has not prevented it from making tall claims and appropriating icons from the freedom movement to suit its own political purposes.First it was SardarPatel who, the BJP conveniently forgets, was a loyal Congressman despite some differences he had with Pandit Nehru. Now that it suits the party, it does not mind eulogising the services of B.R. Ambedkar for it has a new votebank to build. On the other hand, its detractors are never tired of pointing out that the role played by the RSS during the freedom struggle was far from inspiring.These are irreconcilable differences which are best left to the historians to sort out. The dangers of politicians trying to correct historical wrongs were manifest in the ugly incidents that occurred after the demolition at Ayodhya. The competitive celebrations at Hyderabad were a reminder that political parties have not learnt their lessons from Ayodhya.India's freedom struggle was the combination of many struggles played by people in different places and at different times. It is not proper for any party to claim monopoly rights over them, particularly when the struggles were not fought along party lines in the firstplace. When the attempt is to take the nation into the 21st century, getting bogged down in divisive celebrations is self-defeating. Besides, if the anniversary of every struggle is to be commemorated, the country will have time to do little else. Hyderabad was, after all, only one among the 584 princely states of pre-Independent India.
