City commemorates victims of 1908 floods
Hyderabad, Sep 28(INN): A number of school children were among the large number of people who gathered at the historic tamarind tree in Osmania Hospital complex on Tuesday to commemorate the 102th anniversary of the Great Musi Floods which ravaged Hyderabad on September 28, 1908. Prominent writers, poets, academicians and environmental activists, besides the school children paid their respects to the victims of the floods. The commemorative meeting was organized by the Forum for Better Hyderabad along with other organizations.
The three centuries old tamarind tree was instrumental in saving the lives of about 150 people who clung on its branches to escape being swept away by the surging waters in the worst floods ever witnessed in Hyderabad. Recollecting the events as narrated by his father who was a young boy at that time, senior citizen Amjad Ali said that the river Musi had surged to such an extent that it widened up to two kilometers. The people of the city clung on to it, irrespective of any religion, he quoted his father as saying.
According to Ram Lal Tiwari and Shyam Prasad Tiwari, the then Nizam of Hyderabad Mahboob Ali Pasha took their ancestor Jhoomar Lal Tiwaris advice made an offering of a deity draped in a Saree and Kumkum according to Hindu tradition to the goddess Mahankali to propitiate the river. Jhoomar Lal Tiwari was the Raj Purohit of the Nizam of Hyderabad. That event marked the beginning of the Bonalu procession which continues even to this day.
News Posted: 28 September, 2010
|
