Seventy years ago, on the intervening night of August 22-23, Hyderabad was witness to one of the most barbaric assassinations in its history. Shoebullah Khan, the editor of an Urdu daily, was waylaid on his way home and his right palm was chopped off for writing against the Nizam and Majlis Itehadul Muslimeen. The four assailants then pumped three bullets into him at point-blank range and then disappeared into the night.
Burgula Narsing Rao, then a 16-year-old Intermediate student of Nizam College, remembers the night as if it happened yesterday. “We used to live in Chappal Bazaar from where the Urdu daily Imroze edited by Shoebullah Khan used to be published. He used to live across the road in Lingampally area. On the fateful night, I said ‘Khuda Hafiz’ to him and closed the gate and stepped into the house when our household help Chandraiah fretfully knocked on the door saying he has heard gunshots,” remembers Mr. Rao.
The run-up to Partition and Indian Independence was one of the most tumultuous times in Hyderabad. Caught in a cleft stick by lapse of British Paramountcy and Indian Independence, the Nizam's princely State eyed its chance as a sovereign country: Osmanistan. Wading into this intractable situation, the Urdu press was divided into two sections, one that advocated Independence and another that wanted a merger with India and a representative government. “The Nizam had declared Independence on June 11, 1947 based on a concept of ‘An al Malik’ (I am sovereign). There was a lot of tension as people were threatened on the streets. My family members were sent away to Vijayawada. Some others sent their families to Bangalore. I and my cousin were staying in the house when the assassination was carried out just outside our house,” says Mr. Rao.
Imroze was launched by Ramakrishna Rao and his brother Ranganatha Rao to be a voice of the Congress and Communists. Shoebullah, who lost his Senior Sub-Editor’s job after another Urdu newspaper Raiyat was banned became the Editor and immediately became a target of ire for the MIM and its leader Khasim Razvi. “Days before the assassination of Shoebullah, Razvi warned that the right hand will be chopped off if anyone writes against the Nizam or MIM. They carried out their threat. When we took him home, Shoebullah whispered to me: Babu, main jaa raha hoon .” Shoebullah died three hours later at the Osmania General Hospital on August 23, 1948.
The assassination of Shoebullah Khan roused Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who said: “Even a dissenting Muslim doesn’t have safety in Hyderabad.” And on September 13, 1948, the Indian Army moved in on four fronts on Hyderabad.
Burgula Ramakrishna Rao, from whose house Shoebullah Khan published Imroze , went on to become Hyderabad’s first and last elected Chief Minister before States’ reorganisation on linguistic lines in 1956.
