Another storm in the T cup

 

 

Chairman Mao had said, “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” Well, in Telangana, politics is definitely about shedding blood. In the latest bout of suicides, as many as three dozen youths laid down their lives in an apparent fillip to Telangana’s claim for statehood. Garnering maximum television footage, TRS supremo K. Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR), the biggest apparent champion of the cause, shed tears remembering the latest martyrs. Ironically, the viewers are sceptical of the credibility of his tears. In the six decades of struggle for a separate Telangana, KCR is not the first leader to be distrusted but definitely the latest.

“He, I suppose, is the luckiest politician of the times. Whenever his integrity is at stake, the Congress, of course unintentionally, comes to his rescue. He owes much to our party,” a vexed Congress leader quipped in distress.

The leader’s reference was to the hasty and imprudent announcement of the Union home minister P. Chidambaram in favour of a separate Telangana. AICC spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed’s ‘confessions’, on the run-up to the announcement, before the media in New Delhi, further augmented the waned glory of KCR. According to Ahmed, the precarious situation prevailing in Telangana with TRS chief KCR’s fast entering the 11th day, propelled the UPA government to issue the midnight statement.

The Union home minister’s announcement led to a constitutional crisis in Andhra Pradesh, as 143 MLAs of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema, cutting across party lines, made a beeline before the Speaker with resignation letters. Normal life in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema has been paralysed ever since. Meanwhile, the comments of Ahmed vindicated the obvious ‘pressure’ under which Chidambaram made the announcement. Thus, he spilled the beans before a dozen disparate stakeholders in a new map of India. The message was to shun mere crying but to pick up the kitchen knife threatening either murder or suicide.

The late Congress chief minister, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, managed to keep the Telangana issue from boiling over through a policy of carrot and stick. TRS broke its alliance with the Congress in 2006. TRS was headed for a spilt and its members were caught in scandals and criminal cases. TRS fared poorly in the by-polls which followed the mass resignations by its MPs and MLAs. The party came a cropper again in the 2009 general elections despite its ‘opportunistic’ grand alliance with TDP and Left parties.

“He had not even mustered enough courage to contest the Greater Hyderabad civic body elections last month. But, our party arrived to his rescue and helped him rise like a phoenix from the ashes,” the Congress leader scoffs. “The Telangana agitation in 1969 was started by the people of the region when they felt that the Andhra leaders had flouted the Gentlemen's Agreement, worked out during the merger of Andhra state and Telangana region in Hyderabad state. The supreme sacrifice of 400 glorious fighters went in vain after Telangana leaders like Marri Chenna Reddy fished in troubled waters,” Rajaiah of Telangana Writers’ Forum tells TSI. With the newly launched Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS), Reddy romped home during 1971 general elections with 10 Lok Sabha seats out of the 14 from Telangana. But TPS merged with the Congress. After assuming office of the sixth chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in March, 1978, Chenna Reddy announced that a separate Telangana was no longer an issue.

“But it was always an issue with the people of Telangana, ever since the mid-1940s,” Jayasankar, the TRS ideologue, says. According to him, “some people in the Hyderabad state under Nizam migrated to places like Nagpur and Bezwada (Vijayawada now), to get rid of the atrocities of Razakars in connivance with Nizam rulers. People in Nagpur were affectionate in providing the migrants shelter and food, whereas the ‘materialistic’ Andhras exploited them with higher rentals and high prices for commodities. They were also heckled for the language they spoke.”

Durgam Ravindar, a scholar and writer on Telangana affairs, recalls a few more bitter experiences of the people of Telangana during 1948-52, when Hyderabad state was under civil and military administrators’ rule.

“That period saw a huge influx of people of Andhra region into Telangana. They took away all the new positions. Lakhs of Andhrites migrated to Telangana occupying many positions in government offices, banks, schools, colleges, universities. A huge number of of businessmen from Andhra also arrived who had sold off their lands and assets in Andhra. They set up business in the Telangana region,” he said. When the people of Telangana realised how Andhraites were able to secure jobs using fake certificates of Mulki (local), they started a protest called ‘Gair Mulki Go Back (Non-Mulki Go Back),” he says.

Besides their own experience of marginalisation, the forewarning of the chairman of first States Reorganisation Commission (SRC), Sayyid Fazl Ali, against the merger of Andhra state and Telangana region during the mid 1950s, contributed to escalation of tensions. In the report, Fazl Ali asserts that, “educationally backward people of Telangana may be swamped and exploited by the more advanced people of the coastal areas.” Five decades of forced juxtaposition repeatedly proved Fazl Ali’s presumptions on the uneasy alliance between two unequal economic partners. This apprehension was also shared by B.R. Ambedkar, though in a general way. “Why do Tamils hate Andhras and Andhras hate Tamils? Why do Andhras in Hyderabad hate Maharashtrians and Maharashtrians hate Andhras? Why do Gujaratis hate Maharashtrians and Maharashtrians hate Gujaratis? ……….. The hatred is due to the fact that they are put in juxtaposition and forced to take part in a common cycle of participation, such as Government…….So long as this enforced juxtaposition remains, there will be no peace between the two…,” Ambedkar had written in Thoughts On Linguistic States. “Telangana has been backward for centuries. The most crucial infrastructure element — irrigation system — was never developed here though both the Krishna and the Godavari flows through it. In contrast, coastal Andhra aggressively lobbied for and got a network of canals that took river waters deep into some districts,” BJP MLA Kishan Reddy told TSI.

Coastal Andhra settlers are often accused of exploiting Telangana’s resources. But, the seed of every demand did not merely lie in the perception of economic neglect. The cultural and lingual hegemony of neo-colonial Andhraites has widened the gulf, the diametrically conflicting economic interests adding fuel to the fire. Hence, it is more an emotional problem rather than an economic glitch. In spite of being neighbours, the two cultures were poles apart. This persistent disparity is not at all unknown to the agitators of ‘united Andhra’ but they have practical reasons.

“Assets worth millions of crores in Telangana region, particularly in Hyderabad, are owned by coastal settlers. Once the state is divided, the fate of these assets would be volatile,” a member of Telangana Settlers’ Forum expresses his apprehension.

So, as Chandrababu Naidu made a flip-flop on the electoral assurances in favour of a separate Telangana, the non-confirmative Chiranjeevi, confined to head the deserted legislative ramks of Prajarajyam, and MiM is opposing a separate Telangana state tooth and nail. It seems the Congress has a Herculean task cut out.