Moulvi Syed Alauddin: The Freedom Fighter Owaisi Wants To Honour With Warangal Airport Name

AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has written to Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy asking that the upcoming Mamnoor Airport in Warangal be named after Moulvi Syed Alauddin — a 19th-century preacher and rebel leader whose role in Hyderabad's 1857 uprising has largely faded from popular memory.

The request has put a spotlight on a figure historians describe as one of the Deccan's most significant, and least remembered, participants in India's First War of Independence.

Who Was Moulvi Syed Alauddin?

Syed Alauddin was born around 1824 in the undivided Warangal district of the Hyderabad State, the son of a man named Hafizullah. He later moved to Hyderabad city for religious education and rose to become the Imam of the Makkah Masjid, one of the oldest and most prominent mosques in the old city, built by the Qutb Shahi dynasty.

His position as Imam gave him a public platform and moral authority that he would eventually turn toward open rebellion against British power in the Deccan.

By the mid-1850s, resentment against British influence in the nominally independent princely state of Hyderabad was building. An uprising in Aurangabad, then part of the Nizam's dominions, saw rebels flee toward Hyderabad, where they were arrested by the Nizam's police. When the Nizam's government refused public pleas to release them, anger spread among Hyderabad's residents. Matters came to a head after Alauddin used a Friday sermon at the Makkah Masjid to openly call for revolt.

The Attack on the British Residency

On 17 July 1857, following a meeting at the Makkah Masjid, Alauddin and a Rohilla Pathan leader named Turrebaz Khan led roughly 500 men — some accounts put the number much higher — in a march from Sultan Bazar to the British Residency, the imposing building that symbolised British authority in Hyderabad and today houses Osmania University College for Women in Koti.

The immediate goal was to free a jamedar named Cheeda Khan, held prisoner inside. The Nizam's prime minister, Salar Jung I, had been tipped off and alerted the British Resident, so the attackers found the compound defended by artillery. The two sides exchanged fire through the night, leaving the Residency's walls pockmarked and the surrounding lanes strewn with casualties. By morning, the rebels had been repelled, and the effort to free Cheeda Khan had failed.

Capture, Trial, and the Andaman Islands

Turrebaz Khan was captured within days; he was later shot near Toopran while trying to escape custody, and his body was hanged near the Residency as a warning to others. Alauddin fled and, by some accounts, remained in hiding for roughly a year and a half with the help of a friend before he was eventually tracked down near Mangalampalli and arrested — different accounts place his capture anywhere from days to about two years after the attack.

He was convicted of sedition and transported to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands, popularly known as Kaala Pani, becoming — by several accounts — the first prisoner ever sentenced to the facility. Sources differ on the exact length of his imprisonment and the year of his death, with figures ranging from roughly 25 to 30 years in captivity and his death recorded variously as 1884 or 1889.

What is consistent across accounts is that he died in custody, having spent the greater part of his remaining life imprisoned for his role in the rebellion.

Why Owaisi Wants Mamnoor Airport Named After Him

In his letter, Owaisi welcomed that invitation and formally proposed the name “Moulvi Syed Alauddin Airport, Warangal.” He described Alauddin as one of the prominent freedom fighters native to the undivided Warangal district, closely associated with Hyderabad's resistance to British rule during the 1857 uprising, and argued that honouring him would be fitting recognition of a courageous but largely unsung chapter of the freedom struggle in South India.

Owaisi's letter also laid out the airport's own history to strengthen the case for a name with regional resonance. He noted that Mamnoor Airport was originally built in the 1930s under Nizam rule, making it one of the oldest airports in the country, and that it was constructed primarily to serve the region's paper industry and support nearby industrial establishments such as the Azam Jahi Mills in Warangal.

The airstrip has a layered history of its own: it was used by the British military during World War II after being handed over by the Nizam, was bombed by Indian Air Force Hawker Tempests during Operation Polo in September 1948 when Hyderabad State was integrated into India, hosted Jawaharlal Nehru in 1959 for the foundation-laying of Warangal's Regional Engineering College, and briefly served the IAF again during the 1962 war with China because of its distance from the conflict zone.

The Warangal Connection

Central to Owaisi's pitch is the fact that Alauddin was a native of the undivided Warangal district — the region the revived airport is meant to serve — even though the uprising he led took place in Hyderabad city itself, roughly 150 kilometres away.

This link between a local-born freedom fighter and a piece of regional infrastructure fits a broader, recurring pattern in India, where airports, stations and institutions are periodically renamed to honour historical figures with a claimed connection to the area, often reigniting public debate over whose legacies deserve civic recognition.

What Happens Next

Naming decisions for airports typically rest with the state government in consultation with the Airports Authority of India and the central Ministry of Civil Aviation, given that airport nomenclature can require formal sign-off beyond the state level.

Whether “Moulvi Syed Alauddin Airport” is eventually adopted will depend on how the Telangana government weighs Owaisi's submission against other suggestions received through its public consultation, and on the broader administrative and political process that follows.