telangana's palestine

KHAMMAM: Chanda Lingaiah Dora, chairman and convener of the ‘Mannesima Rastra Sadhana Samiti’ (MRSS) on Saturday demanded the Centre and the State to accord the status of ‘national tribal festival’ or the tribal Kumbh mela to the ‘Sammakka Saarakka Jatara’ held once in two years at Medaram in Warangal district and make arrangements for it accordingly. In a statement issued here, he took strong exception to what he called, the Telangana JAC claim for considering it the Telangana festival. Its importance cannot be restricted to a region, he added.

very few people, drowned in all the static generated by the separatist movement, might have heard of it: i am talking about Mannesima Rastra Sadhana Samiti. the separatists tried to shout down lingaiah dora in a recent public debate organized by a telugu television channel for voicing his demand for a separate adivasi state. democracy, as defined by the separatist movement, is all people speaking up for telangana.

the incident happened in warangal, the capital of the kakatiya empire which had brutally put down seven centuries ago an adivasi rebellion led by two women, sammakka and her daughter saralamma. now the telangana movement claims to own samakka and saralamma.

the adivasis in telangana form around 12% of the population, a people bigger than palestine. and a nation, we always forget, before they became a minority. shouldn't they claim a state? there is not much of their geography left. all kinds of kindhearted people have over the centuries, and very rapidly in the last sixty years, in the name of educating, developing and liberating them have liberated a large portion of their lands, and much else, from their reach. so, in a dissent movement like telangana, lingaiah dora should've been honoured as the first among dissenters. but the separatists can't dissent against themselves, can they? for instance, they look at the singareni coal belt as a resource that was plundered by outsiders. and if they start thinking about what the adivasis think about their homeland being referred to as a resource by the original outsiders, would they become owners ever? so, is this movement about ownership or justice? when all the talk is about hyderabad, rivers, jungles, mines, lands, government jobs etc, could it be about justice?

the separatists have also acquired ownership over other adivasi rebellions, like the one led by komuram bheem in the first half of the last century against the nizam, who incidentally, also belongs to the trs and the separatist movement now. but one of their most crafty claims of ownership has been the siege they've laid to certain adivasi movements outside the state. jharkhand and chhattisgarh are, according to the theorists of the movement, hindi speaking states. could there be anything more disingenuous? when those two movements took roots, adivasis formed a majority in both regions. and the states were announced several decades later when the indian state had finally managed to reduce them to large minorities. the adivasis who had originally started those movements wanted adivasi states, but the indian state conceded their demands only after making them speak hindi. like the separatists who will start to listen to lingaiah dora only when he learns to stop speaking for himself?