Hyderabad Deccan Democratic Alliance (HDDA), Voice of Telangana (VoT) and the Nizam Family Welfare Association (NFWA) have taken serious offense to the comments made by a Congress MP about the Nizams to “settle his political score with Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao”, and asked him to desist from making such remarks.
In a statement issued here on Friday, president of HDDA Chiranjeevi Kolluri, president of VoT L. Pandu Ranga Reddy and a grandson of the VIIth Nizam, Nawab Najaf Ali Khan, also president of NFWA, said that the Congress MP had alleged that the Nizam had squirrelled wealth beneath the Secretariat building.
Without taking his name, they advised the MP not to drag the name of the Nizam in his “altercations with the CM”. The MP should know that Islam does not permit hoarding wealth and that too in the earth, they said, observing that the MP has a penchant for playing to the gallery.
The MP had not only insulted the Nizams but also committed the sacrilege of Islam, they said in the statement. It was Mir Mahabub Ali Khan, the VIth Nizam, who built a summer resort at the ‘Shikam’ land of the Hussainsagar (the heritage building in the Secretariat complex) and when he was about to enter the new building, he noticed a chameleon at the entrance and regarded it as bad omen and abandoned the edifice, they explained.
Abandoning the building (resort) without entering it would clearly indicate that the then Nizam did not hide any wealth there. After that the VIIth Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, had turned the vacant building into the Secretariat – Bab-i-Hukumat – and he too did not bury any wealth there.
Further, they pointed out that gold held no allure to the Nizams and the VIIth Nizam used the world-famous ‘Jacob’ diamond as a paper-weight. He rather led a spartan life with very few comforts and no luxuries and felt that he had a fiduciary duty to the people and was a trustee par excellence. It was Mir Osman Ali Khan who donated tonnes of gold to the Defence Fund of India after the Chinese aggression in 1962, they mentioned.
Stating that the MP had hurt the feelings of a community with his fatuous comment, they said that he should render an unconditional apology for what he had committed or else they would seek legal remedies. They were also taking the matter to the notice of AICC president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
