History Explained: Why is 'Jinnah Tower' in Guntur a Warzone for BJP & YSRCP?

Before independence, Muhammed Ali Jinnah was expected to attend a meeting in Guntur. The tower is named after him.

The BJP wants Jinnah Tower to be renamed. YSRCP painted it in tricolour.

(Image: Namita Chauhan\The Quint)

In December 2021, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) National Secretary Y Satya Kumar triggered a new controversy, as he proposed to rename Jinnah Tower, a 77-year-old monument, in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. He wanted the tower to be stripped off the ‘traitor’s name.’

But why was a monument in Guntur named after the founder and first governor general of Pakistan – Muhammed Ali Jinnah?

On Republic Day, 26 January 2022, Hindu Vahini workers tried to hoist the tricolour atop the monument. Earlier, some BJP leaders had threatened to bulldoze the tower if the ruling government of AP was not to rename it. In the February 2022, the ruling YSR Congress Party attempted to put a lid on the BJP’s campaign by painting the formerly green coloured monument in tricolour.

History of the Tower

Situated in a circular enclosure on the Mahatma Gandhi road, the Jinnah Tower which is about 20-feet-tall was built around 1945, to commemorate a meeting for which Jinnah was invited as a guest. While Jinnah did not turn up for the meeting, local Muslim leaders named the tower after him, say those in the know.

Why was Jinnah invited? There are two stories about this.

According to one anecdote, in 1942, a local court in Sattenapalli division in Guntur district awarded death sentence to 14 Muslim men of Kommadipudi village. They were accused of communal clashes that had resulted in bloodshed.

Their families, with the support of community elders, approached Jinnah for help. He was a practicing advocate in the Bombay High Court at the time. The Muslim League leader, took up the case and won and the accused were released.

Guntur legislator Laljan Basha then invited Jinnah for a thanksgiving meeting. He could not come but sent his friend Liyaquat Ali Khan to address the gathering. Khan inaugurated the tower.

The second story is that Laljan Basha invited Jinnah to Guntur to address a public meeting in connection with India’s freedom movement. Jinnah sent Liyaquat Ali Khan, his representative. The organisers then built the tower, which resembles a minaret, to commemorate the event.

Even after the partition of India and formation of Pakistan, for some decades, there was no pressure to rename or demolish the structure. Guntur Municipal Corporation has been the custodian of the tower.

An Attempt to Rename

In 1966, there emerged a demand in the Guntur municipal council, to rename the monument. A municipal councillor proposed that the tower be renamed after Param Vir Chakra recipient Havildar Abdul Hameed, who was killed in the 1965 war between India and Pakistan. Hameed had destroyed eight Pakistan military tanks before he was killed.

A section of those who have documented this proposal said that the resolution was adopted but not implemented.

However, the current Guntur Mayor Kaveri Manohar vouched that the proposal was rejected.

Manohar is now monitoring the arrangements to protect the monument from attacks. The Guntur city police has laid an iron fence around the tower to prevent breach.

BJP’s Y Satya Kumar has proposed to rename the tower after former President APJ Abdul Kalam. He has also suggested the name of Telugu poet Gurram Joshua, a Dalit. Now, the tower is right at the centre of a political tug of war between the BJP and the YSRCP.

Why Did BJP Raise Objection?

The BJP and Hindu groups have been active in Guntur for long. Significantly, Kanna Lakshmi Narayana of Guntur, whose residence is less than two kilometres from Jinnah Tower, was the BJP’s Andhra Pradesh unit president till two years ago. Another senior leader P Manikyala Rao was the endowments minister in the TDP-BJP government, headed by N Chandrababu Naidu, that was in power till May 2019.

None of the BJP leaders or their cadres had brought up the tower when their alliance was in power. But, after the YSRCP came to power the BJP has stepped up its campaign in Andhra Pradesh.

Of late, the party has been bringing up issues which have never been controversial. For instance, the party leaders in Kurnool objected to the construction of a mosque alleging that it had no municipal permission. This led to strong protests and the police arrested Kurnool district in-charge of BJP, B Srikanth Reddy.

Political analyst Chalasani Narendra pointed out that the BJP has deliberately taken up the Jinnah tower issue in AP to get political and electoral mileage.

The BJP had earlier laid the foundation of its electoral success in neighbouring state Karnataka by taking up the Idgah issue in Hubbali. Several BJP leaders had tried to hoist the tricolour in the Idgah Maidan. The campaign clicked and the BJP could, for the first time, come to power in a south Indian state.

Will this strategy work in Andhra Pradesh?

"Jinnah is anti-India. Why should we have a monument in his name? We have great leaders like Abdul Kalam and Gurram Joshua, whose lives and works are ever inspirational to the generations," BJP state president Somu Veerraju told The Quint. He vouched that the name-change is imminent. "We are not asking them to name it after a Hindu leader. We want it be named after Kalam,” Veerraju said. Meanwhile, the tower continues to be a landmark in the city.

Tower Still a Noted Monument

Many district editions of Guntur's local newspapers used to have the photograph of Jinnah Tower behind their logos. Every city bus in Guntur passes by the Jinnah Tower.

The tower, now close to the Municipal Corporation office, in fact, connects the old and the new cities of Guntur. The old city, predominantly has Muslim population, while the new city is cosmopolitan.

"People who come to Guntur want to visit Jinnah Tower, and they are often asked if they had visited the tower when they get back home," said Syed Naseer, a historian who had penned 21 books on India’s Independence struggle and the participation of Guntur Muslims in it. He, however, said that he hasn't come across a detailed account of the history of Jinnah Tower in any compilation on Guntur’s history. "There is only mention about the monument."

Local journalists too said that nothing much has been written about the monument. "We have tea there. It is a commercial area surrounded by big and medium businesses," a scribe said.

Laljan Basha's grandson SM Ziauddin, who is now a leader in the ruling YSR Congress Party and advisor to the Andhra Pradesh government on Minorities' welfare, snubbed the controversy as unnecessary and unwarranted. "The tower has been in existence for over seven decades. The BJP and its friendly Hindu groups had never spoken about it till now. Their intentions to create communal issues for political gains are very clear," he said.

All communities in the state have a stake on the tower, Ziauddin added. "The people of Guntur have (sentimental) attachment towards this tower.”

(P Pavan is a senior journalist who reports on Andhra Pradesh and Telangana)