By Syed Zainulabedin, TwoCircles.net,
Hyderabad: The All India Industrial Exhibition (AIIE) popularly known as “Numaish” runs from January 1 to February 15 every year in Hyderabad for the past 73 years. It has become an annual event of the city with lakhs of men, women and children visiting and enjoying shopping, eateries and joy rides. About 15 lakh people visited the exhibition at Nampally. As only less than two weeks left for the closing ceremony of this 45 days event, the rush in exhibition is increasing day by day. Nearly 2300 shopping stalls are put up by various traders on the 23 acres land ranging from designer homes to cosmetics, home appliances to jewelry, kitchen ware to foot wear, apart from the model of government projects like Hyderabad Metro Rail, Department of Prison and Correctional Services, Fire Department and the Hyderabad City Police.
People enjoying in Numaish
The participating traders or stall holders are not from Hyderabad alone but they are from all over the country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, doing good business of their products such as carpet, textiles, handicrafts and leather. After a gap of few years this time 12 stalls were installed by some Pakistani traders. However, they were allegedly forced to windup two weeks ago, as some BJP workers staged a dharna in the exhibition protesting over the recent killings of two army men on LoC. Traders from Iran, famous for carpet and rugs, were also gone through same fate couple years ago following some controversy. Since then Iranian traders are boycotting the exhibition.
Entrance of Numaish
However, everyone seems to forget the pioneers of the numaish. Today’s All India Industrial Exhibition, largest and unique in the country in all terms (attendance, participants and business) in fact was started in 1938 as a 10 day local fair (Numaish Musnuath-e- Mulki) industrial product of the erstwhile Hyderabad State. It was the brain child of few graduates of Osmania University, those includes former UP Governor Mir Akbar Ali Khan, former Home Minister Nawab Ahmed Ali Khan, lecturer of prestigious City College Hyderabad Mahmood Ali, Prem Lalji Khaja Hameed Ahmed and others. They got patronage of the then Hyderabad Prime Minister Sir Mirza Ismail and Hyderabad Municipal Commissioner Mehdi Nawaz Jung who later served as Governor of Gujarat. The first exhibition was inaugurated by the Nizam of Hyderabad Nawab Osman Ali Khan at public gardens with just 100 stalls.
Mehdi Nawaz Jung
After running this exhibition for three successive years, the founders Osmania Graduates Association members formed an organization Hyderabad Exhibition Society and moved the location from Public Gardens to present location “Exhibition Grounds’ in 1946. In 1956 the society was registered with company act as a nonprofit organization and expanded its activities in the field of education, economic, trade and public health by establishing educational institutes mostly for girls like high school, degree , polytechnic and pharmacy colleges, holding seminars , trade meets and health camps round the year.
Nawab Akbar Ali Khan
It is unfortunate that the Hyderabad Exhibition Society (HES) haven’t remembered its founders today such as Nawab Akbar Ali Khan, Nawab Ahmed Ali Khan, Khaja Hameed Ahmed and patrons like Mehdi Nawaz Jung who played important role in making Numaish a grand event in the history of Hyderabad and its today’s success is the result of their efforts. The Exhibition Society now runs 18 educational institutions those includes five in its premises consists on 23 acres of land at a prime location Exhibition Grounds in Hyderabad, four in adjoining city of Secunderabad, two in Nirmal town of Adilabad district and three in Nalgonda district but none of these institutes are named after one of the founders. They are either on the name of Kasturba Gandhi, Sarojni Naidu, Kamala Nehru, Sardar Patel or Hindu goddesses. Although Society remembered one of its past member and secretary Late Shankar ji by naming a High School in his memory and posted only his picture on its official website as “Our Founders”.
Sir Mirza Ismail
Once dominated by Muslim bureaucrats, intellectuals, academicians, politicians the Exhibition Society now have only 11 Muslims in its list of 158 members. K. Jana Reddy Minister for Panchayat Raj is the President of the society for the past few years. It has become a tradition for society to rope in a minister or speaker of the state assembly as the head of the society. Among the notable few past presidents were P. Narsa Reddy, A. Madhav Reddy (Ministers) G. Narayana Rao and K. Suresh Reddy (Speakers).
Giant wheel ride
A Muslim member of the Hyderabad Exhibition Society on condition of anonymity admitted that society not also lost its glory but goal to serve people of all communities and “deliberately” forget the contribution of founders who worked relentlessly to make the exhibition an entrepreneur oriented. This is the clear evident of its partisan or biased attitude towards Muslims. The HES has become totally commercial now and always have eyes on revenue which is between Rs.5 -7 crores per year. Now its main focus is how to generate more money for its coffers. To another question he commented “Ab naam mein kya rakha hai” (what’s in a name) but added it really matters when everything revolves around only one person Late Shankar Ji, who was one of the secretary of the exhibition society. On literary side society used to conduct Indo – Pak Mushaira every year but this has been discontinued for several years.