On Christmas Day, an incident in Kandlakoya village sparked outrage among the Hindu community after Medchal (Bhagyanagar) police intervened in the ongoing Ayyappaswamy Puja, citing noise complaints and discouraging religious activities on Christmas. The police, led by SI Ashok, entered the temple premises wearing shoes and asked the devotees to reduce the volume of the puja, a move that has been widely condemned as an infringement on religious freedom.

Claiming 'it’s Christmas,' police entered the Ayyappa Swami Pooja Mandapam wearing shoes and attempted to stop the sacred ritual, disrespecting our traditions. United in strong faith and resolve, the Swamis firmly resisted and upheld their dharma. This incident proves that unity… pic.twitter.com/epDS0P2e82

— Pratheesh Viswanath (@pratheesh_Hind) December 26, 2024

While the police claim the intervention was due to concerns over loud noise affecting nearby residents, the timing of the intervention — on Christmas Day during a Hindu puja ritual — has raised serious concerns. The incident unfolded when the police received complaints from local residents about the loud sound from the loudspeakers used during the puja. The authorities responded by instructing the organizers to lower the volume, citing disturbance to elderly residents and those with health conditions. However, many believe that this intervention was not solely about noise control, but rather an attempt to hinder the religious expression of Hindus.

What has angered many is not only the police’s unwarranted interference in a peaceful religious gathering but also their choice to enter the sacred premises with shoes, which is a clear sign of disrespect. Despite the claims that the police only asked for the sound to be reduced, the underlying issue of religious intolerance cannot be ignored.

 

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The police’s actions come against the backdrop of a growing sentiment that Hindu religious practices are often scrutinized and subjected to unfair restrictions, while other religious activities are allowed to continue without interference. Hindus, it seems, are increasingly finding their religious rights questioned, even when their activities do not harm others. In this case, the puja was being held within the temple premises, well away from residential areas, making the police’s interference all the more questionable.

(With inputs from Samayam Telugu)

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The post Bhagyanagar Police Attempt To Stop Ayyappa Puja On Christmas Day In The Name Of “Loud Noise” appeared first on The Commune.

What’s in a name? Restoration of lost pride, reclaimed honour, the healing of old wounds, a correction of historical accounts and much more! Indeed, whether we consciously recognize it or not, our identities and an acknowledgement of our past are irrevocably tied to names- our own names and the names of our nation, our states, rivers, mountains, cities, towns and villages.

A Nijam Today online telecast caught the attention of curious viewers. The presenter talks about the renaming of several cities across India, notably the ones renamed in Uttar Pradesh, associated with Hinduism, the native religion and way of life on the Indian subcontinent for a long time before the Islamic invasions of India. Old historic towns and cities in Uttar Pradesh, going back to the origins of Indian civilization, history, culture and religion going all the way back to the priceless universal philosophical wisdom of the Vedas, Puranas and the great Indian Epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Islamic names were forced upon generations of native Indians – why should the vast majority of Indian citizens put up with a consistent remembrance of cruel, inhuman Islamic invasions, forced conversions and several attempts at completely erasing the ancient, native Indian traditions, customs, distinctly Hindu heritage and way of life?

Under BJP rule, there was some long overdue atonement/ a sort of setting-right of wrongs and painful, unjust historical events. Faizabad was renamed Ayodhya, Allahabad was renamed Prayagraj Etc. Is It time to seriously consider renaming Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana? Present-day Hyderabad was once a proud and strongly Telugu “Bhagyanagar”.

A BJP meeting with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mr. Yogi Adityanath in attendance, was the right setting for the powerful thought for all great ideas start with a small thought! At the meeting, the strong, straight forward, no-nonsense man of many talents, Mr. Adithyanath challenged the audience to studying the history of Hyderabad and why a renaming of Hyderabad shouldn’t be considered.

No sooner than this was mentioned, India’s prejudiced anti-Hindu “seculars” including the Hyderabad based Muslim political outfit, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party (AIMIM) went on a rant. The AIMIM’s leader, Asaduddin Owaisi roared in shock and anger, challenged the name-change proposition and retorted that nobody could change the name of Hyderabad city to any pre Islamic, Hindu name!

It is now a strongly planted idea among the BJP cadre of the Telugu states, looking deeper into Hyderabad’s history before the city’s Islamic invasions and import of Muslim culture. At a large, well attended July 2022 BJP cadre meeting, PM Narendra Modi referred to Hyderabad with one of its pre-Islamic names, Bhagyanagar. Telangana is due to have its state elections before the end of this year. Put the two together. Will the thought set in motion, a popular public consensus resulting in a possible change to the city’s name, before the end of this decade?

UP Chief Minister, Adityanath’s comments and Prime Minister Modi’s reference to “Bhagyanagar” has led to a surge of interest in the history of the city among ordinary citizens while predictably, India’s Left-Secular, Communist, Minority parties are making every attempt to deny the very existence of a once vibrant ‘Bhagyanagar’. Will the Seculars succeed in distorting or negating historical facts of Hyderabad region’s ancient Hindu and Buddhist heritage?

Nijam Today’s team presented its Telugu viewers with a well researched analysis of the city’s history. Natives of the Telugu states and those that speak Telugu are familiar with Hyderabad being referred to as ‘Bhagyanagaram’. It is the Telugu term for Hyderabad often used in Telugu literature, poems, songs and various media platforms including Telugu films. A popular song from the 1972 film, the Akkineni Nageshwara Rao starrer ‘Vichatrabandham’ makes an often repeated reference to Bhagyanagaram as the ‘rajadhani’ or state capital while mentioning the Moosi river that runs through present-day Hyderabad. The lyrics were penned by the knowledgeable and well renowned freedom fighter, social reformer and writer-lyricist, Archarya Aathreya garu- no leader or political party had questioned it at the time, as it was a common reference to the city in the Telugu language. Yet when leaders of the BJP recently referred to the city’s previous, pre-Islamic name, Indian “seculars” and political parties made a huge deal of it, with a few claiming that ‘Bhagyanagar/Bhagnagar’ never existed.

The evidence of Bhagyanagar/Bhagnagar before the name change to Hyderabad:

1) Between 1608 and 1611, William Finch, an English businessman of the East India Company, learning about the history of the region including the Golkonda Fort, mentions Bhagyanagar in his memoir titled “Yearly Travels in India”. He clearly refers to it as a main city of the Golkonda region.

2) A Muslim historian, Dr Ghulam Yazdani in his 1944 book ‘The Antiquities of Bidar’, talks of the exploits of Mirza Ali Barid who usurped the throne of the then Bidar province but later fled to the city of Bhagnagar (Islamized version of Bhagyanagar) in 1601, seeking refuge.

3) The periodic news magazine titled “Islamic Culture” commissioned and patronized by the Nizams in power of the Hyderabad region, in its 1934 edition, mentions written communication exchanged between Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and Adil Shahi Sultan. The letters refer to the city of Bhagnagar. The English translation of the letters by Professor Rai Bahadur Surya Kumar confirm this to be a fact.

4) In another verifiable instance of written communication, letters from Golconda written by Mir Jhumla, the then wazir or minister/ advisor of the Deccan region, seeking assistance from the Mughal fanatic, Aurangazeb, mention the city of Bhagnagar – the verifiable source of this information dated between 1656 -1668, lies in the book of a French physician of the time, Francois Berlin titled “Travels in the Mughal Empire”.

5) The monthly periodical “Islamic Culture” published under the patronage of Hyderabad’s Nizams, refer to Bhagnagar, several times as they reference the city’s chequered past while talking about old, written communications between various muslim factions vying for the crown of the “Bhagnagar” region. In one of its 1943 periodicals, the Islamic magazine published a letter from a Mohammed Zahir Baig to a Yusuf Zulaikha, dated 1069 AH (Hijri, Islamic calendar) from the city of Bhagnagar. In the currently used Gregorian Calendar, the year 1069 AH denotes the year 1656 ACE.

6) In 1881, Thomas William Beale, a British civil servant published his book “The Oriental Biographical Dictionary” – a mughal historian named Kaifi Khan, refers clearly to Bhagnagar city and cites a popular, oft-repeated story from various sources, that Hyderabad was named after a queen of the Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah. According to this widely accepted story, the lady was a Hindu ‘nautch’ (dance) girl, Bhagyawati or Bhagamathi, that the Sultan fell in love with. An area within the current city of Hyderabad was named Bhagnagar after her. Her given Islamic name was Haider Mahal. The city was named Haiderabad (Hyderabad) in her honour after her death but the local people continued to call it by its previous name of Bhagyanagar or Bhagnagar. This story is widely accepted among the local people of the region to this day.

7) In 1617 ACE, Tariq Sultan Mohammed Qutub Shahi’s book mentions that Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah (the sultan that married the Hindu Bhagyawati/Bhagamathi) shifted his capital from the hitherto Golconda Fort/ City area to Bhagnagar.

8) At the December 1951 inaugural session of the 14th Indian Political Science Conference held at the Osmania University Arts College, Nawab Ali Yawar Jung Bahadur, the then Vice Chancellor of the university greeted his audience with a history of the city by narrating the story of Mohamed Quli Qutub Shah in the 16th century (1589 ACE) and his love for his Hindu wife, Bhagyawati /Bhagamathi, after whom he first named his new (shifted from Golkonda) capital city – Bhagnagar.

The area surrounding Golkonda and modern-day Hyderabad has a history of settlement dating back to the Iron Age, around 500 BCE. Since ancient and medieval times, the areas surrounding Hyderabad were consistently ruled by Hindu and Buddhist kings and queens right up to the 15th century when various Islamic conquests, resulted in the permanent establishment of Muslim rulers belonging to different dynasties. In anciebt times, this area was a part of the vast and powerful Mauryan empire ruled by King Ashoka, the Great. Subsequently, the area was ruled by the Satavahanas, the Ishvaku, the Chalukyas, the Kakatiyas and the Musunuri Nayaks before finally falling to various muslim forces from the 14th/15th century onwards.

Since ancient times and through the middle ages, the City of Golconda with its impressive Fort built by the Hindu Kakatiya dynasty and reinforced by Rani Rudramma Devi, was the capital of the region. It was only fairly recently in history that the later Islamic conquerors moved the capital from Golkonda City/ Fort to Bhagyanagar (present-day Hyderabad).

There is plenty of evidence of the current territory of the capital region, through the medieval ages right up to modern times, that Bhagyanagar/Bhagnagar was the name in use for present-day Hyderabad. ‘Bhagya’nagar (bhagya = auspicious in Sanskrit and other Indic languages) refers to a “city of good fortune” while ‘Bhag’nagar, the Muslim/ Urdu influenced, colloquial version of the name, refers to a “city of gardens”. Regardless of the debate between the two versions of Hyderabad’s previous name, Bhagyanagar or Bhagnagar, there appears to be substantial historical evidence that the area has a past, with a name not tied to its current name of Hyderabad. Hence, it’s fair game and a reasonable question – why can’t the city’s name be changed if its citizens so wish?

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After the debacle of the two main Communist parties – Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India Marxist (CPIM) – in the Bihar Assembly elections, their lackluster performance continued in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls too.

In the recently concluded Bihar Assembly elections, both CPI and CPIM secured a vote of less than 1% falling behind vote share of NOTA (None Of The Above).

The same has happened to both the Communist parties in GHMC polls the votes of which were counted yesterday (December 4).

The CPIM polled just 2,771 votes and their fellow comrade CPI ended up with 3,439 votes grabbing a meagre 0.08% and 0.09% of the pie. Both the parties put together received 6,210 votes i.e., 0.17% vote share.

On the other hand, NOTA received 29,076 votes amounting to 0.84% of the vote share which is more than 4.7 times the total votes polled by both the parties.

In the Bihar Assembly elections, the CPI got 349,489 votes and the CPIM got 274,155 votes grabbing a meagre 0.83% and 0.65% of the vote share. Both these parties managed to get 2 seats each, with the former contesting in 6 seats and the latter in 4 seats. NOTA received 7,06,252 votes i.e., 1.68% of the vote share.

The post Communists’ losing streak continues: NOTA gets more votes than both Communist parties in GHMC polls appeared first on The Commune.

The results of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections has given a jolt to not just Telangana but to the entire southern states with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) making solid in-roads into what was till now KCR’s fort.

Though the Telanaga Rashtra Samiti (TRS) has won 55 seats (43 seats less than what it had got last time), it has failed to touch the half-way mark. But it hopes to take the Mayor’s seat with the help of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMI).

On the other hand the BJP had has for emerged the second largest party, improving its share of seats and votes by nearly ten times. In the last elections to the GHMC in 2016, the BJP had won only 4 seats. In the seats that the BJP lost to TRS or AIMIM, it emerged second.

The Congress, in yet another humiliating defeat, ended up with just 2 seats.

Though a local body election, the BJP brought in star campaigners before the elections. Home Minister Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Bengaluru MP Tejasvi Surya had put in a charged campaign.

BJP National General Secretary (Org) B.L. Santhosh and Home Minister Amit Shah congratulated the BJP Telangana team for putting up a stellar performance.

Gratitude to the people of Telangana for reposing faith in PM @NarendraModi led BJP’s Politics of Development.

Congratulations to Shri @JPNadda ji and Shri @bandisanjay_bjp for BJP’s astounding performance in GHMC.

I applaud the hard work of our karyakartas of @BJP4Telangana.

— Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 4, 2020

WELDONE BHAGYANAGAR ……!!!! Great going team @BJP4Telangana You made a mark .

— B L Santhosh (@blsanthosh) December 4, 2020

Minister of Municipal Administration and Urban Development, KT Rama Rao, son of incumbent Chief Minsiter K. Chandrasekhara Rao said that the results were not as expected.

With this, the BJP has emerged as the reckoning force filling the vaccum left by Congress. The results of the GHMC elections signal that in the times to come, Telangana would have 2 main parties pitted against each other with the AIMIM being a party for the Muslims.

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