lessons from paramakudi for telangana

does anyone seriously believe that the telangana agitators now pleading/begging/cringing before the congress brass in delhi are liberators? do they seem to be upholding telangani self-respect? or that they care about decentralization?

their actions disprove all three claims.

why do all those valiant 'revolutionaries' from telangana seem like so many unctuous petitioners outside a high powered public official's office? because they are exactly that: petitioners seeking recognition.

this is no revolution. it's something that has happened many times in the past, across many regions.

every major state in india has 100-300 castes. at the top of this pyramid are around 10 castes, on an average, who are always over-represented in the houses of legislature, judiciary, bureaucracy, media, education and academia, industry, trade, cinema etc. their presence in all those fields helps them dominate the field of culture and ideas too. all the rest are under-represented in all fields.

in the north, castes identified with the top three varnas are a natural part of the top layer of the pyramid. other castes like the kayasths, khatris, jats etc had to fight for a place in those top ten. and colonialism helped them, through building more democratic public institutions and providing them employment in the bureaucracy and the army. after independence, a few more upper obc castes joined the empty spots in the top ten, and are still trying to consolidate their position. though they've managed to increase their presence in houses of legislature, they haven't been able to make much strides in other fields. meaning: they're under-represented in all other fields associated with wealth and power and hence still sound very subaltern. the continuing hold of the yadavs and nitish kumar on large sections of people in those states is proof of this.

outside the north, or u.p-bihar specifically, the top three varnas are sparsely distributed, so it's the shudras who form a overwhelming majority of the top ten. the three states where the british had presidency towns, witnessed a quicker spread of education among the shudras which led to the first major non-brahmin assertion movements. the top ten spots were quickly filled in tamil nadu by the time the dmk first assumed power, the marathas, kunbis and other associated peasant castes who form more than one third of the population in maharashtra also managed to fill all spots in that state.

this process was as fast in some princely states like mysore and baroda etc, but much slower in hyderabad state. so slow that it is happening only now in telangana, one century late. almost.

the rise of all those shudra castes-- from jats to gounders to nadars to ezhavas to kammas to vokkaligas to yadavs -- were revolutionary movements too. but they failed to fulfill their promises because the pyramid democratized itself a little at the top, partly in response to their struggles, co-opted them, and managed to retain its character. moreover, it had managed to increase the number of loyal defenders guarding it, more sentries to pour hot oil on those wishing to ascend to the top, or even bring down the pyramid.

now this process of efforts to expand the top layer of the pyramid, to create the top ten spots, is happening in telangana. the elite in telangana, which was only brahmins, reddies and velamas for too long (the muslims having been dislodged by 'independence'), wants to consolidate its own position, expand its influence outside politics, agriculture and government. even in those three fields it feels severely constrained by the stronger position of the much advanced andhra elite. so it's come around to  making a little space for a new set of aspirants among the obcs-- the goudas, munnuru kapus, yadavs especially-- who had risen since the emergence of the telugu desam, so that they could help in its struggle with the andhra elite.

more than a year ago, someone had asked me: why do you oppose this process? if it accommodates a new set of players, even if very few, at the top, doesn't it mean one more progressive step towards democratization of society?

that's the problem with the pyramid. it seems to be expanding its top layer a little, but that's always an illusion. it's only responding to changes in population growth, which has been higher in the last one century than any other time in history.

one reason why i want andhra pradesh to remain united: it'll keep the elites of all regions, and new aspirants,  always engaged in a struggle with each other. that would open up more cracks in the pyramid.

but the major reason is that the assertion movements of ambitious shudra castes until now have only meant the rise of those castes, a strengthening of the elite and the caste order. caste assertion movements have been anti-caste only in initial stages and have inevitably become caste-reinforcing movements.

and the expansion of the elite club has also, inevitably, meant more atrocities on the dalits, adivasis and the religious minorities.

paramakudi has strengthened my convictions.     

jayashankar, mythmaker

We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, it is passion. It is not necessary that it shall be a reality. It is a reality by the fact that it is a good, a hope, a faith, that it is courage. Our myth is the Nation, our myth is the greatness of the Nation! And to this myth, to this grandeur, that we wish to translate into a complete reality, we subordinate all the rest.

that was benito mussolini on myth.

jayashankar liked to say: i think in urdu, write in english and speak in telugu. all the the feudal elite of hyderabad state before independence could also have described themselves in that fashion. the top 5% of the people who prospered and were entitled to many privileges while the rest weren't worth even primary education in their own language. telugu, the people's language, therefore, held that kind of relevance for him-- a language you used to communicate with the lower classes, to tell them they need to know little other than to serve. not a language for the expression of high thought. and he always knew better than the people-- even when the people's representatives overwhelmingly voted for a united state for the telugus, he knew that the majority, which in his view consisted of himself and a reactionary, minuscule minority comprising a few feudal elements, were not in favour of andhra pradesh.

his politics completely derailed the process of evolution of dalitbahujan consciousness and politics for the last decade and more in andhra pradesh. when the dalitbahujans should have been asking for their own rights-- their stolen entitlements, jobs, resources and share in political power-- he appropriated their angst and converted it into a fictitious regional divide.

he brought back the forces of hindu nationalism and savarna casteism into telugu politics.he trivialized people's aspirations for greater decentralization and democracy. he leaves behind a political legacy that upholds retrograde myths over facts, lumpen muscle over dissent and democracy.

right to overrule

The "Right to Food Campaign" is an informal network of organisations and individuals committed to the realisation of the right to food in India. We consider that everyone has a fundamental right to be free from hunger and undernutrition. Realising this right requires not only equitable and sustainable food systems, but also entitlements relating to livelihood security such as the right to work, land reform and social security. We consider that the primary responsibility for guaranteeing these entitlements rests with the state. Lack of financial resources cannot be accepted as an excuse for abdicating this responsibility. In the present context, where people's basic needs are not a political priority, state intervention itself depends on effective popular organisation. We are committed to fostering this process through all democratic means. [emphasis mine]

that's the foundation statement of the right to food campaign.please check the highlighted line again: don't our elections produce 'popular' governments? if elected governments don't represent 'popular' organisations, who does?

the barely concealed contempt for india's politics, democracy and the ordinary indian who considers himself a participant in both can also be noticed in the dazzling rhetoric of other 'right to..' campaigners. indian politics can't handle this serious stuff, so here's what the indian state, through its 'civil', hence neutral and untainted by the filth of politics, bureaucracy needs to do to deliver these 'rights'. in effect, what the campaigners want the state to do is to overrule the the 'politics' of the elected government.   

and they've been succeeding. the nac is filled with these campaigners, and the nac, of course, talks to sonia gandhi more often than the elected government does. and why does the elected government have to consult with sonia gandhi? because sonia gandhi is the party. if she didn't nominate every one of the 'elected' lawmakers (down to panchayat sarpanches and even ward members, sometimes) and if her endorsement wasn't required for the 'election' of the lowliest official in her party across the country, you could have said: the congress is bigger than sonia gandhi.

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that was a draft i had worked on 7 months ago. a couple of days ago, i see that sonia gandhi is not just congress party, or the government. she is god. food and consumer affairs minister k.v.thomas says:

“The draft Bill is ready now. I don’t say it is in line with NAC or not. But it is in line with what is in the mind of Madam Sonia Gandhi,” he said.
“The principle of Sonia Gandhi is that every citizen of the country should get legal cover toward a certain quantity of nutritious food, not simply foodgrains,” he shared.

in the 7 months since i started on this post, the priests of civil society have moved much closer to god, through the lokpal coup d'etat, pushing parliament into more 'ineffectiveness'. this current move shows utter contempt for not just parliament, elected through popular vote, but also ignores totally a majority of those who participate in the popular vote-- cultivators and workers. one wonders if god, while nodding her assent to all the sanctimonious mumbo-jumbo her civil society priests were chanting before her, had thought even a little about the answers they didn't have?

* who shall pay for the increased procurement? the fci procures, and if it pays a higher msp to the farmer, the govt will have to dole out a greater amount by way of subsidies to the pds. in balancing these two actions, will the farmer always not get paid less to keep the subsidies lower? or will the msp not be a function of the pds prices, always? should cultivators and workers continue to pay with stagnation and death for the food security of the urban middle classes?
* wheat and rice, the brahmin grains, will drive this increased procurement, as always. what about the farmers who produce less brahminical cereals like jowar, bajra etc?
* will surpluses continue to be procured from 3-4 states? wouldn't that destroy any incentive for food security in the majority of states, like it has done in all these years?
* shouldn't food security be a concern of the states, primarily, regions within the states, and districts within regions and blocks within districts and villages within blocks to be more meaningful?
* rice is a water-guzzler and has taken away a much needed resource from millions and millions of ordinary citizens, especially in northwest india, a region which never produced rice in much quantity before the so-called green revolution.. who will pay for this water, which means thirst, hardship, lack of basic sanitation.. dry toilets and again stagnation, caste and much more?
* there is increased competition among many states to build costly but ineffective irrigation systems to tap water to grow rice and other such crops.. who will pay for all the bad blood among states and regions? for the ecological disasters and the adivasi displacements? does india need more rice, at such heavy costs?

questions. one can think of many more questions, but the priests know better, i guess.  

manoj mitta's lathi-wielding logic

If a woman who was forcibly married asks for a divorce on grounds of cruelty, can a court rule against it? Can a court rule that she cannot be liberated from her marriage, however bad, without her husband's consent? That's the kind of dubious logic the Sri Krishna Committee employed when suggesting, as its "second best option", that the Telangana region (the erstwhile Hyderabad state) cannot be divorced from the Andhra and Rayalaseema regions (the erstwhile Andhra state) unless the latter agree.

when an issue involves more than 80-100 million people, you can rest assured that there'd be more than 80-100 million opinions. and when some experts are called into apply their minds to the issue, you can be doubly sure that they'd produce several hundred pages of observations and analysis on the issue. then the woman, whose case mr.mitta so passionately (and patronizingly) makes, becomes the women of telangana, andhra and rayalaseema. she also becomes the adivasis, the dalits and the muslims of the the three regions. and the obcs and all the varieties within them. and she splits further into sub-castes: and into dominant and marginalised communities, into urban and rural women, men and children. and into the various segments and divisions of views within all those fragments. mitta finds it hard to digest all that democracy, i suppose. so he squashes it to down an easily chewable one voice: a woman whose case needs to be made (because she can't make it herself, you see).

mitta should understand the difference between two people and a hundred million people. a recent article by ram puniyani on the ideology of the rss says:

According to this ideology a Hindu industrialist and the Hindu beggar are supposed to have similar interests! A Muslim entrepreneur and a Muslim sweeper or beggar is supposed to have similar interests. So a Hindu king in History and poor Hindu farmer-Shudra are on the same page. It looks at history as unified Hindu community standing against others and so on, as if all Hindu Kings were hunky dory with each other and supping with the Shudras and poor peasants of society. The communal ideology, irrespective of any religions in whose name it operates, changes the horizontal social differences into vertical ones’. The society has divisions according the rich and poor, privileged and deprived. According to this ideology what matters is the vertical divisions according to one’s religion. This ideology as such focuses on issues of identity and undermines the real worldly problems. It is an attempt to undermine and sweep under the carpet the unjust social system, where the major contradiction is social and economic. It is a way to hide one’s birth based privileges under the guise of religion. Religion is a potent instrument as faith is its central component. Abuse of faith for political goals generates blind social hysteria, which is used to promote the political and social agenda of communal organizations. This pattern applies to all the faith-religion based politics. 

mitta too reduces all horizontal differences into a vertical divide between telangana on the one hand and rayalaseema-andhra on the other. and further vulgarizes it by reducing it into a marital issue between one woman and one man. and mitta's choice of the figure of a woman to represent telangana in his folksy, khap-like, analogy: please note that there's no vertical division between mitta and the woman. he's her natural spokesperson, of course. in mitta's worldview, as all horizontal divisions between vast millions of people should naturally collapse into one coherent vertical schism, it's also very 'democratic' that all women (read: all those segments, divisions and fragments i talked about earlier) of telangana..and elsewhere should bow down, collectively, to men like mitta. or the hindu/patriarchal/upper caste 'majority'.

trust the times of india to never rise above its pimply-faced market.

wholesome drought

there's a flood of angst against the uid here. you'd think they've a lot to say, but look at this:

The Unique Identification (UID) project is presented as a sunny solution to the nightmare of access to the Indian social benefit system. Though the Bill states that it does not relate to benefits and services, the spin, symbolised by the wholesome image of Nandan Nilenkani, is that it will end the deprivation of the poor.

hasn't all spin in india, over 'socialism' 'secularism' or 'development' or 'rights' always been symbolised by such 'wholesome' brahminical images as nehru, indira gandhi, aruna roy or p.sainath etc? yes, brahminized india does face a drought of more marketable images but the articles featured at the site also seem to reflect a drought of ideas. all the fury seems to be focused on only one theme: invasion of privacy. privation isn't as big a concern.

the private concerns of the brahminized classes have always been the biggest problem for indian democracy. from land reforms to public schools, which wholesome idea did they not sabotage? a member of an online group opposing uid says:

I am horrified just thinking of the potential of a Mayawati or a Lalu to abuse this scheme for political ends (for example)!!

as i said, the privations of the majority have always been less important than the private 'purity' of these folks.

the business of telangana

kancha ilaiah offers some advice to 'hyderabad capitalists':

“We will not allow your business in Hyderabad”, they say. “We will not allow your cinema industry to run; we will not allow even your cricket match to take place”.

You have pacified them by bribing them. Of course, you have also aided and abetted a united Andhra movement alongside.

What worries me most is the way the leaders growing around such movements have become richer day by day.

Thanks to this, your economic activity has been going on without hurdles. After each such threat, it is the threat giver’s wealth and health that is increasing. But the general health of Telangana — the economic health of its aam aadmi — has been deteriorating.

In the late 60s and early 70s the Telangana movement was conducted mostly on legs and bicycles. The bigger leaders of the movement were moving in jeeps, and even the biggest ones could only boast Ambassador cars.

Yet they conducted agitations that shook the Centre, inspired the youth to brave bullets and also won elections — 11 out of 14 parliamentary seats were in the pocket of Praja Samithi.

Of course, that movement also caused loss of lives and disrupted education. Lot of public property that Telangana people would have used for their advancement was damaged. The agitations also pushed the region backwards in the field of education. And no great moral leader or intellectual emerged from the movement. And most importantly, Telangana did not become a separate state.

But the fact remains that no leader made money out of that movement. Only Mr Chenna Reddy made political capital.

Now look at the present Telangana movement and its drivers. All you see is money, money and more money. Where is it coming from? Obviously much of it is coming from you. You see this movement as an inevitable evil and want to handle it as carefully as possible.

There is a saying that Capitalists like corrupt Communists. Not only can the corrupt Communist be bribed, his presence also gives a bigger moral licence to the capitalist to exploit workers more and more.

apart from politicians, too many other people from other classes seem to have developed an increasing interest in the telangana industry over the last several years. out of work film actors. directors. hardly working government babus and teachers. lawyers looking for prosecutors', magistrates' posts. thousands of aspiring legislators and corporators. you name them. if the road to telangana itself holds such huge business potential, think about the hold of the destination for them.

look at kcr himself. in the beginning, it was only kcr. and then a couple of his nephews joined the 'agitation'. one of them became an mla twice. somewhere along the way, he managed to lose his hawai chappals and managed to buy himself more trendy footwear and much else. and then kcr's son left his job in the information technology industry in the u.s., and decided the telangana business was much more lucrative. he was soon followed by his sister and brother-in-law. and numerous cousins and other relatives are also hanging around..what does all that illustrate?

and then there are more smart people waiting in the wings, like lots of successful telanganis working abroad. like a few in the telangana development forum for instance. it's difficult to say how many of them will be chosen as candidates by mainstream political parties in the next elections for the andhra pradesh or telangana assembly (it doesn't matter which, really) but many of them are saving money to buy tickets, i'm sure.

the normalisation of abuse

Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) leader and MP Vijayashanti was released from jail on bail Saturday evening, a few hours after she was arrested for making inflammatory remarks ahead of the July 27 by-elections in Telangana and sent to judicial custody.

A city court granted bail to the actress-turned-politician, who alleged that police misbehaved with her and said she had decided to take up the issue with the prime minister and Lok Sabha speaker.

After her release from Chanchalguda jail this evening, she told reporters that the way a woman MP was treated by the police was shameful. 'My only crime is that I gave a slogan,' she said referring to the allegedly provocative remark she made a few days ago. [emphasis mine].

and what were the inflammatory remarks (or slogan, as the actress mp says) the news report talks about? 'aDDangaa narikEddAm' (or loosely: cut them, as with a sword, in half). that was her reminder to some women who had recently joined the party. cut who in half? those who oppose a separate telangana state, of course.

'telangANa ku aDDostE aDDangaa narikEddAm' ('we'll cut those who oppose telangana in half')- that was the slogan she was referring to. a slogan so popular now that everyone, from separatist politicians to school kids, chant it quite casually, whenever they're lost for words, almost.

until the election commission took note of it a couple of days ago. did it violate the 'model code of conduct' now in operation due to the by-elections in constituencies vacated by the trs mlas in protest against the delay in the formation of a separate telangana?

HYDERABAD: Chief electoral officer I V Subba Rao said on Saturday that the Election Commission has nothing to do with the arrests of TRS Medak MP Vijayashanti and Sangareddy Congress MLA T Jayaprakash Reddy. Six nominations were filed on the second day of the notification.

The CEO said that the commission took cognizance of the statements of Vijayashanti and Jayaprakash Reddy and informed it to the ECI. The EC has not directed the police to arrest the leaders. There are certain provisions in the law for the police to arrest and they have acted according to that, said Rao. The EC issued notices to Jayaprakash Reddy on Saturday and asked him to reply by July 5.

what do you understand from that news story? forget the 'model' code of conduct imposed by the election commission, the slogan violated the 'normal' code of public conduct expected of ordinary citizens! which means, all those thousands, lakhs, of slogan chanters all through the last ten years could have been charged with the relevant provisions of indian laws!

and such obnoxious slogans and other forms of vituperation etc have been 'normal' currency in all the 'democratic' discourse of the separatists over the last several years. how normal? check the broad smile on the the actor-mp's face (in the videos you'd definitely find somewhere on the net) when she was repeating the slogan during the event which caught the ec's attention.

back to the stone age

back. my apologies to everyone who's commented and looked around here. have been a little tied up and could only focus on the shared mirror, a site that shall feature the creative work of both established and new dalitbahujan writers. please take a look.

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a couple of events that caught my eye in the recent past:

* an honour killing. reportedly the first in the south..but where are the separatists? why don't you hear someone shout in pride: jai telangana? more banda* culture than sabbanda culture.

* and some more sabbanda culture was also displayed at mahbubabad where y.s. jaganmohan reddy, y.s. rajasekhar reddy's son, was supposed to visit families of people who'd died of 'shock' etc when ysr died. democracy, in the separatist stone throwers' view, would get vitiated if anyone exercised their freedom of speech against the 'people's view', even indirectly, that a separate state is a holy cause. and jaganmohan reddy, as heir to ysr's fiefdom, apparently believes feudalistic loyalties are the lifeblood of democracy.

talking of feudalistic loyalties: a commenter/s ( i think it's a single individual) has been stalking my earlier posts with some strange comments. one says, something like: kodandaram reddy, leader of the telangana 'joint action committee' had legally dropped the caste-suffix 'reddy' from his name after the karamchedu incident.. my question is: should we be grateful to him for doing that?

a dalit when he adds the name of his caste to his given name, like manda krishna 'madiga', is trying to tell you he is proud of his lineage.. proud of all the heredity of honest sweat and pure toil the name signifies. on the other hand, i've always looked at the flaunting of upper caste surnames as a kind of an assault on the rest of humanity. an open declaration of faith in a racialist ideology. reddies and kammas and rajputs and brahmins etc would do themselves a favour by dropping those crutches and learnt to live without them, in my view. i believe it isn't nice to call yourself rajput. or reddy. or whatever.

like i said earlier, the telangana movement doesn't have any social content. it uses all the emancipatory jargon, airs all the right theories of exploitation, but.. the primary instincts of the separatists are very status-quoist. and their respect for debate and therefore democracy sometimes descends to the level of discourse in the stone age.

* banDa: telugu for rock/stone.

democracy is also jantar mantar

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed at the admission stage a writ petition for a direction to the Centre and Andhra Pradesh to implement the provisions of the 1956 Gentlemen's Agreement of Andhra Pradesh.

A Bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justice Deepak Verma dismissed the petition filed by one M. Narasimha Swamy of Hyderabad, seeking enforcement of the Agreement contending that it had been violated.

The petitioner submitted that the Gentlemen's Agreement provided safeguards with the purpose of preventing discrimination against Telangana by the Andhra Pradesh government.

“The alleged violations of this Agreement are cited as one of the reasons for the demand for separate statehood for Telangana.”

you've probably heard the argument that the maoists are not involved in the separatist movement. and that's very true, in my view. the maoists are quite busy right now in various other states. but would the maoists agree with the argument that global corporations aren't involved in the war in chhattisgarh or orissa?

the maoist contempt for parliamentary democracy, or 'bourgeois democracy', is well known. don't you notice strong traces of that contempt in the lawyer's petition before the supreme court?

the maoists have gone over to chhattisgarh and places further east, but if you listen closely you can still hear the ringing echoes of their voices in telangana. a telugu saying tells you, roughly: the husband turns into the wife and vice versa after living together for some time. telangana has lived with maoists for over forty years, it's not unreasonable to expect maoist thought to have left its traces. and the maoists are a political party, and they've every right to propagate their views, and not only because they have a lot of reasonable things to say. and i don't find anything wrong with others expressing those views, or the separatists expressing those views.

elections in a parliamentary democracy, as the maoists say, might only produce legislatures which endorse and work for the interests of the ruling classes. but do the lawyers, professors and politicians from mainstream political parties now leading the separatist movement, who want a parliamentary solution to the problem, also believe in what the maoists say? if yes, haven't they chosen the wrong solution to the problem?

from prof.jayashankar to the abvp hoods gheraoing film stars to make them chant 'jai telangana', everyone of the separatists has expressed, at various times, the view that the 15 elections to the state assembly held since 1956 did not reflect popular opinion in telangana. you might think they all believe in a 'new democratic revolution'. but no, they don't all believe in maoist ideology, it's only their political language that seems unable, anymore, to rise above the grammar and idiom set by the maoists. and there are many among them who don't wish to rise above that grammar. and the contagion seems to have spread too: in arundhati roy's 'lovely, 'beautiful' and 'fabulous' chhattisgarh, you hear the same ringing echoes.

in one place, roy asks, something like: should the adivasis have sat in a dharna near jantar mantar?

no, but i expect people like roy to sit in a dharna near jantar mantar. people like vara vara rao and prof.hara gopal to sit in a dharna near jantar mantar. i know, they've tried those things a lot of times, but you can't expect all the 'biggest internal security threats' to take up guns and die all the time. it's okay for the sections of the brahminized classes supporting 'democratic protests' to continue to preach contempt for electoral democracy and jantar mantar because all they need to do is produce evocative prose about how 'lovely', 'beautiful' and 'fabulous' those struggles and deaths were, either in telangana or chhattisgarh, not a hair on their own carefully disturbed heads disturbed. but should they continue to disparage jantar mantar, and jeopardize so many dalitbahujan lives, only because they've a difference of opinion with people from their own baradari like manmohan singh or whoever on who should have a right to loot chhattisgarh or telangana: the government owned companies and babus or private corporations and babus? because the bauxite in chhatisgarh, for instance, shall continue to be prized as 'national' wealth, by a socialist or a liberalized india, no matter what. wouldn't it be nice if they could spare a thought for those 'lovely', 'beautiful', 'fabulous' strugglers, once in a while?

so, why don't they keep trying those dharnas at jantar mantar? because they can always return to india international centre in the evening (and not forget to take their cousins, the maoist bosses and their corporate counterparts, along with them) and continue the debate in cooler climes, over wine and whatever, with montek singh ahluwalia or p.chidambaram. and the impure masses, in telangana or chhattisgarh, can stop expressing their 'democratic aspirations' through their deaths, rather than their votes.

be warned

less than half a dozen google pages yielded so many dire threats from assorted newspapers, ezines, portals, video sites, blogs etc., ignore the typos and heed the warnings:

Professor Kodandaram warns Jayaprada

TPJAC warns recalcitrant legislators of social boycott

Prof Jayshankar warns of civil war on Hyderabad

Harish rao warns Chandrababu & Erraballi

T Harish Rao warns Telugu Desam Party over Rajya Sabha seat

Harish Rao warns Chiranjeevi and Lagadapati

KCR warns Political Parties

KCR warns Cong against backtracking on Telangana

KCR warns Central Government

KCR warns Chandrababu

KCR warns to Centre high command

Don't provoke Telangana: KCR warns Centre

KCR warns of catastrophe if Centre goes back on Telangana

KCR warns Centre against going back on Telangana

kcr warns about militant action

Don't dilly dally on creating Telangana, warns KCR

KCR warns of catastrophe

KCR warns of emotional flare-up

KCR warns Police & CM

Kavitha KCR Daughter Warns Adurs release in Telangana

for those who haven't heard about the other leading players in this popular, telangani social drama: kodandaram reddy and jayashankar are both professors and 'ideologues' of the movement, while harish rao is kcr's nephew and trs mla and kavitha is kcr's daughter. ktr, kcr's son, has also indulged in a lot of dialogue-baazi, but google seems to have not paid much attention. as i had tried to warn you earlier, this is a very democratic struggle and everyone gets to warn everyone else (including other telanganis).

why was kancha ilaiah attacked?

don't know until now how ilaiah views the encounter. i am sure ilaiah wouldn't have filed any complaint with the police, or other authorities because the interlopers were students. but is there any other way in which you could see this incident but as an attack on dr. ilaiah's rights, his family's basic rights? there has been very little in the media on what actually happened, apart from this news story, and there haven't been any other follow-up reports, as far as i could see. but why was kancha ilaiah attacked? what he wrote around a few days before the incident gives us some clues:

Finally it has resulted in the setting up of a committee. I only hope that this committee headed by a very reputed former Supreme Court judge and comprising other eminent people from different disciplines would do a worthy job of finding a solution to this vexed problem.

In an age of digital democracy the pro-Telanagana forces must provide enough evidence to the committee to persuade it to establish a separate state.

No agitating political force can say, “We will boycott the committee,” in a democratic process. The people who do that would only play with lives of Telangana people, as that would amount to saying “We would like to keep the question alive for making money and for seeking votes.”

But do they know the price the people of Telangana have been paying for the last 50 years? The issue has to be resolved once and for all.

Those who have been claiming to have taken part in Telangana agitations all their lives should also understand that the region has given permanent employment to some old types of agitators.

While Telangana has proved that it has the nerve to keep on fighting, it has also proved that constant agitations keep a region underdeveloped. The world has not changed so much through street fights as it did through deployment of brainpower in labs and libraries and changing the contours of production in the fields.

Of course, political struggles are important and engendered democracy and socialism but the Telangana struggle has no such transformative agenda.

Our students and youth should not be street fighters and self-immolators. Quite tragically, this agitation run by shortsighted people and underhand dealers made it the biggest “suicide” movement ever.

Yes, we should blame the Centre, the skillful Andhra operators, but we should blame more those who are counting those bodies to collect money.

and so on. wouldn't the separatists, so steeped in 'democracy' that they speak for 'everyone' in telangana even when they burp, consider those harsh words an attack on their 'democratic struggle'?

remembering anandpur sahib

shaik ahmed ali thinks a political mafia has taken over hyderabad:

The process of creation of separate Telangana state is going on in reverse direction. Usually, any government first examines a particular demand (Telangana in this case) through an expert panel; based on panel's recommendations, it consults all the concerned parties; builds consensus and then makes a final statement.

But Home Minister P.Chidambaram first made a statement acceding Telangana; then the government tried to build consensus; later, it invited all parties for talks and now it announced the constitution of an expert panel to study the demand. This reverse process has badly hit the lives of common man in the entire Andhra Pradesh.

that's congressism. it could've talked with reasonable people in punjabi civil society about the anandpur sahib resolution, but it talked to bhindranwale. congress, the main hindu party in the country and the chief political vehicle of the brahminized classes, can't believe any reasonable people exist outside the congress: that will go against the principle of caste it upholds. so one can see why the anandpur sahib happened. resolution no.1 of that historic meeting starts like this:

Moved by Sardar Gurcharan Singh Tohra, President, Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, and endorsed by Sardar Parkash Singh Badal, Chief Minister, Punjab.

The Shiromani Akali Dal realizes that India is a federal and republican geographical entity of different languages, religions and cultures. To safeguard the fundamental rights of the religious and linguistic minorities, to fulfill the demands of the democratic traditions and to pave the way for economic progress, it has become imperative that the Indian constitutional infrastructure should be given a real federal shape by redefining the Central and State relation and rights on the lines of the aforesaid principles and objectives.

The concept of total revolution given by Lok Naik Jaya Parkash Narain is also based upon the progressive decentralization of powers. The climax of the process of centralization of powers of the states through repeated amendments of the Constitution during the Congress regime came before the countrymen in the form of the Emergency (1975), when all fundamental rights of all citizens was usurped. It was then that the programme of decentralization of powers ever advocated by Shiromani Akali Dal was openly accepted and adopted by other political parties including Janata Party, C.P.I. (M), D.M.K., etc.

Shiromani Akali Dal has ever stood firm on this principle and that is why after a very careful consideration it unanimously adopted a resolution to this effect first at the All India Akali Conference, Batala, then at Anandpur Sahib which has endorsed the principle of State autonomy in keeping with the concept of federalism.

find anything very unreasonable there? it was just a people standing up for themselves. there is some bluster, some combativeness in the rest of the resolution/s. but it was mainly an impassioned demand for respect. underlying it was a plea: please don't sc$%^ around with us minorities. today, as a telugu, i feel very connected with the sikhs of those times.

a recent article in world sikh news discusses the resolution:

Framers of Indian system of governance took care not to rock the boat too much after the British left and decided to invest the Center with excessive powers to hold the new republic together. The trauma of Partition, the resistance of some princely states to integration with the Indian Union, the secessionist ideologies of some political groups, etc, made the preservation of the integrity of the new-born nation the topmost priority of the rulers after independence and this got reflected in the new constitution.

The Centre's mandarins dictate where the investments for the downstream production facilities would go. They give concessions to poorer or hill states that work against Punjab. The concurrent power of the states meant virtually nothing, since the ultimate power of approval is with Centre. Regional assertiveness is seen as a rebellion. Aspirational movements like the one led by the Sikhs in the 1980s and early 1990s were given bad name and wrongly projected.

while anandpur was about standing up, about refusing to be ruled down from delhi, the political and intellectual leadership of the telangana movement is bringing groveling back into style.

while anandpur was about redefining centre-state relations, the telangana movement has begun the process of pushing everything back to delhi. in a way, it has rendered meaningless all the progress that states have achieved in wresting some reasonable powers from the centre in the last thirty years since anandpur sahib. and the biggest joke is that these pairvikars, these inveterate courtiers leading the movement have chosen to describe themselves as fighting for 'self-rule'.

can't help thinking ahmed ali's observation that a political mafia is ruling hyderabad is true not only about the present, but could also be interpreted as a prophecy of sorts. the telangana movement has questioned the rationale of hyderabad, not delhi, unlike the regional movements of the past. a democratic movement? hardly.

dr.ambedkar on the reorganization of states

dr.ambedkar had some interesting things to say on the consolidation of the north and the balkanisation of the south:

What the Commission has created is not a mere disparity between the States by leaving U.P. and Bihar as they are, by adding to them a new and a bigger Madhya Pradesh with Rajasthan it creates a new problem of North versus South.

The North is Hindi speaking. The South is non-Hindi speaking. Most people do not know what is the size of the Hindi-speaking population. It is as much as 48 per cent of the total population of India. Fixing one's eye on this fact one cannot fail to say that the Commission's effort will result in the consolidation of the North and the balkanisation of the South.

Can the South tolerate the dominance of the North?

It may now not be a breach of a secret if I revealed to the public what happened in the Congress Party meeting when the Draft Constitution of India was being considered, on the issue of adopting Hindi as the national language. There was no article which proved more controversial than Article 115 which deals with the question. No article produced more opposition. No article, more heat. After a prolonged discussion when the question was put, the vote was 78 against 78. The tie could not be resolved. After a long time when the question was put to the Party meeting the result was 77 against 78 for Hindi. Hindi won its place as a national language by one vote. I am stating these facts from my personal knowledge. As Chairman of the Drafting Committee I had naturally entry to the Congress Party enclosure.

These facts reveal how much the South dislikes the North. This dislike may grow into hatred if the North remains consolidated and the South becomes disintegrated and if the North continues to exercise a disproportionate influence on the politics of India (See Map 1).

To allow one State to have such preponderating influence in the Centre is a dangerous thing.

Mr. Pannikar has referred to this aspect of the case. In his dissenting minute he says:

"The consequence of the present imbalance, caused by the denial of the federal principal of equality of units, has been to create feelings of distrust and resentment in all the States outside Uttar Pradesh. Not only in the Southern States but also in the Punjab, Bengal and elsewhere the view was generally expressed before the Commission that the present structure of government led to the dominance of Uttar Pradesh in all-India matters. The existence of this feeling will hardly be denied by anyone. That it will be a danger to our unity, if such feelings are allowed to exist and remedies are not sought and found now, will also not be denied."

There is a vast difference between the North and the South. The North is conservative. The South is progressive. The North is superstitious, the South is rational. The South is educationally forward, the North is educationally backward. The culture of the South is modern. The culture of the North is ancient.

Did not Prime Minister Nehru on the 15th of August 1947 sit at the Yajna performed by the Brahmins of Benares to celebrate the event of a Brahmin becoming the first Prime Minister of free and independent India and wear the Raja Danda given to him by these Brahmins and drink the water of the Ganges brought by them ?

How many women have been forced to go Sati in recent days and immolate themselves on the funeral pyre of their dead husbands. Did not the President recently go to Benares and worship the Brahmins, washed their toes and drank the water ?

The North still has its Satis, its Nanga Sadhus. What havoc the Nanga Sadhus made at the last Hardwar Fair! Did anyone in U.P. protest against it ?

How can the rule of the North be tolerated by the South ? Already there signs of the South wanting to break away from the North.

Mr. Rajagopalachari has made a statement on the recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission which has appeared in the Times of India of the 27th November. 1955. This is what he says :

" If it is impossible to put the States Reorganisation Schemes in cold storage for the next 15 years, the only alternative is for the Centre to govern India as a unitary state and deal with district officers and district boards directly, with regional commissioners' supervision.

" It would be utterly wrong to fritter away national energy in dispute over boundaries and divisions conceived in the drawing room and not on the background of conditions that have resulted historically.

" Apart from the general convictions of mine, I feel that a large southern State is absolutely essential for preserving the political significance of that part of the country. To cut the South up into Tamil, Malayalam and other small States will result only in complete insignificance of everybody and, in the net result, India as a whole will be the poorer."

Mr. Rajagopalachari has not expressed himself fully. He did do so fully and openly to me when he was the Head of the State and I was the Law Minister in charge of drafting the constitution. I went to Mr. Rajagopalachari for my usual interview which was the practice of the day. At one such interview Mr. Rajagopalachari, referring to the sort of constitution which the Constituent Assembly was making, said to me, "You are committing a great mistake. One federation for the whole of India with equal representation for all areas will not work. In such a federation the Prime Minister and President of India will always be from the Hindi speaking area. You should have two Federations, one Federation of the North and one Federation of the South and a Confederation of the North and the South with three subjects for the Confederation to legislate upon and equal representation for both the federations."

These are the real thoughts of Mr. Rajagopalachari. They came to me as a revelation coming as they did from the innermost heart of a Congressman. I now regard Mr. Rajagopalachari as a prophet predicting the break-up of India into the North and the South. We must do everything to falsify Mr. Rajagopalachari's prophecy.

It must not be forgotten that there was a civil war in the U.S.A. between the North and the South. There may also be a civil war between the North and the South in India. Time will supply many grounds for such a conflict. It must not be forgotten that there is a vast cultural difference between the North and the South and cultural differences are very combustible.

In creating this consolidation of the North and balkanisation of the South the Commission did not realise that they were dealing with a political and not a merely linguistic problem.

It would be most unstatesman like not to take steps right now to prevent such a thing happening. What is the remedy ?

in his notes, dr.ambedkar struggled with several problems raised by the reorganization of states, weighed the pros and and cons of linguistic states (which he favoured), and also formulated some principles for the creation of new states. more on that later.

it's the economy, stupid

in 1999, when the congress chief, out of power and therefore of sound hearing, allowed the local legislators (from telangana) in andhra pradesh to form a separate pradesh congress committee for telangana region, it seemed like the congress was giving some thought to the question of telangana. a year before that, the bjp had passed a resolution at a party meet in kakinada in coastal andhra promising the bifurcation of the state.

now, ten years later, it should be evident to everyone paying some serious thought to the issue in the state that: no one outside the state, least of all in delhi, has been paying any serious thought to the issue. that should tell them a lot about how to go about solving their problems. and help them understand democracy, federalism and politics as practised in india better. and also make them rethink on pretty ideas like: india, citizenship, rights etc.

that rethinking might not cure anyone of suicidal tendencies, it might actually prompt more suicides, but... one could at least attribute more rational motives to those suicides. can't be anything but a cynic now.

but i still hope some serious thought would be paid to some basic economic questions of how viable bifurcation or trifurcation is. like the questions jayaprakash narayan raises in this article:

There are serious economic issues to be examined on the issue of carving out a separate State in Andhra Pradesh. First, the capital city is a serious bone of contention, and once people and investors lose faith in the future, it will decline rapidly.

This will hurt both Andhra Pradesh and India, because large cities are now important clusters of growth, and if a Mumbai or Delhi faces economic hardship, the whole nation will be impacted by the fallout.

Second, parts of the coastal region are agriculturally well-developed and have resources and surpluses. For instance, the coastal region generates surplus revenues in the power sector, and is subsidising power for farmers in Telangana and Rayalaseema. A separate State will be burdened by an unviable power sector.

Costal regions are always engines of growth all over the world. Telangana is land-locked, and losing the costal region would retard growth and opportunities. Again, this is the first time a land-locked region is seeking to separate from the coastal belt. When passions subside, the pain and deprivation will be felt.

Water resources are always a bone of contention in a monsoon-fed country. Even in a relatively well-managed city of Mumbai, enjoying abundant rainfall on the West coast, water riots took a life recently. In a water-starved region, river water disputes will escalate, and sharing of Krishna and Godavari waters will be a nightmare.

In the K-G basin off the Andhra coast, abundant natural gas reserves have recently been found, and are being tapped. Already, there is the challenge of sharing natural resources between the home State and the rest of India, and now Telangana will be further depleted.

Large, unviable lift irrigation projects — at a capital cost of Rs 3-4 lakh per acre and Rs 40,000 per year per acre maintenance cost — have been unwisely proposed in Telangana. They will be a permanent drain on the economy of the region, undermining it without ensuring benefits.

while agreeing with most of what he says on telangana, i'd like to add that coastal andhra and rayalaseema would also face serious problems if they choose to stay together or split further into two more states.

among indian states, one'd notice two approaches to the issue of development: one revolves around wanton exploitation of whatever natural resources are available and badly mismanaging their distribution in the name of building agricultural wealth and surpluses on the one hand , and using those surpluses in trying to build 'industrial clusters' or one or two urban engines of growth on the other. apart from the majority of indian states, the indian government itself practises that approach. the second approach is the one that had been followed in kerala for a long time, what i'd call the people-oriented approach. an approach that focuses on building people's capabilities, as amartya sen would say. the second approach is of course more democratic, needs and wastes less natural resources, and creates fewer socio-economic divisions.

given the fact that the debate on division still seems to be conducted mostly along a perspective born out of the first approach to development, one can confidently predict that all three regions of the state, divided or together, would always find problems in the management of the two key, in their view, resources: power and water. will try to look at the problems as i understand them, very briefly, in the rest of the post.

telangana, as dr.jayaprakash narayan points out, would face problems in the short to medium term in the area of power. building new capacities in thermal power (through coal, of questionable quality, from singareni in which the separatists seem to put much faith) would require time, and the shortfall could have a fatal effect on both the city of hyderabad and the progress of industrialisation in the new state and on agriculture. in the area of water, there is very little the new state could do to improve availability in the krishna basin region, comprising primarily the two very backward districts of nalgonda and mahboobnagar. the question of how much can be tapped from the godavari hasn't been fully answered by the separatists, but again as dr.jayaprakash narayan points out, the costs involved could be too high.

rayalaseema could face the worst water and power problems: its hopes hinge on more water from the krishna, which isn't there, and from the godavari which runs entirely through the telangana and coastal andhra region. the proposed polavaram project on the godavari is supposed to divert some water to the krishna basin region in coastal andhra so that rayalaseema could use more water from the krishna. in the event of division, the completion of polavaram, and of the implementation of the original allocation plans seems very... problematic.

the north coastal region in the state (including the growing city of visakhapatnam, a potential capital for the new state) another very backward region in the state, also depends on the completion of the polavaram project for its current and future water needs. any change in plans could impact negatively vizag's potential. two other districts in the south coastal andhra, prakasam and nellore, also have water-starved regions.

and there's also the question of not having a city like hyderabad to act as an engine or driver of industrial growth, which could severely affect overall economic development in both the regions. and building one new capital city, or two new capital cities, would cost much more than what most people seem to think.

telangana: already behind bars

“The 30 lakh people, who visit their native places in Andhra for Sankranti, will not be allowed to return. The Andhra lobby should not lobby against our genuine agitation and against the aspirations of the people of Telangana,’’ speakers at the Telangana Vidyarthi Garjana said.

one particular student leader repeated that threat, a day after the meeting. there were many more such dire warnings issued at the meeting. the threats were addressed to ordinary office-goers, factory and white collar workers, small and big businessmen (and their families) from andhra and rayalaseema living and working in the city of hyderabad.

liberals sitting several flying hours away from hyderabad might see in the telangana movement the democratic aspirations of the people of the region. if they were ever made to suffer for a few hours the claustrophobic atmosphere, progressively built by the votaries of the movement in the last ten years, in universities, news rooms, courts, government offices, panchayats and even schools across the region that leaves no space for debate (leave alone disagreement) outside the subject of telangana, they'd realize that a day or two at the rss headquarters in nagpur or any of the several jungle hide-outs of the maoist party would be much more democratic. i hope that'd also make them pause and think: why are the most hardened supporters of telangana from either the sangh parivar or the maoist family?

today, somewhere on the net, i found this line:

If you can not express yourself you are already behind bars.

there are around 3.5 crore or more people in telangana (including hyderabad). even in the most sweeping landslides in any general elections in the region or elsewhere in the country, winners haven't been able to garner more than 50% of the polled vote (not all the votes, mind). that means 100% of the people voting 'yes' on any issue is a practical impossibility. then why does it seem like an impossible idea for anyone to hold a public meeting of even 10 people supporting a 'united andhra pradesh' in any place outside hyderabad in telangana? and since the last one month, even in hyderabad? assuming 100% of all telanganis support the idea of a separate state, given the fact that at least 30 lakh people of andhra origin live in hyderabad and neighbouring districts, is it stupid to think a few of those 30 lakh people would like the city to be a part of a united state? so, why don't we hear a single one of those voices, clearly, at a public forum? the threat of violence is very real. it hasn't spared politicians, film stars, businessmen: what chance do ordinary voices have of publicly airing their honest views?

most of the agitating students at the meeting at osmania university are from obc, dalit backgrounds. on other occasions, when they were fighting equally passionately for other causes like scholarships etc, or unfilled reserved jobs, there wasn't 1/10th as much support from the political classes (now, since the agitation started, mps and mlas from all parties visit them almost every day) or the media or the huge contingent of lawyers willing to rush to the high court or the state human rights commission or the top officials in the government to protect their right to assembly etc.

is it the democratic aspirations of the people, of the lower castes of telangana, that are shaping the current agitation or is it the ambitions of a new class of businessmen-contractor-politicians who see endless rent-seeking possibilities in a new state that's driving the effort to cleanse the region of all dissent and democracy?

separated

sad that the telugus should allow 'higher' powers to manage their affairs. that they should celebrate their subjugation and call it freedom. that they couldn't share water, jobs and now cities.

i wish all telugus would ponder over the question: if delhi 'gives', and you 'receive', what kind of power do you have over your lives? some democracy.

democracy at work

He also demanded that Centre-sponsored schemes be pruned, arguing that the state suffered trying to match Centre’s grants.

nitish kumar in bihar complains that he doesn't have money, while over the last couple of weeks, parties in the coalition at the centre were working hard, engaged in serious negotiations over who gets what ministry, so that they could serve bihar better.

they used to say: democracy is about villages managing their own affairs, and districts theirs and so on... what can delhi do if the villages just throw up their hands and return the power in their hands to the districts, which pass them onto the state capitals which in turn push everything back to the centre? so delhi makes democracy work extra hard at the centre, to make up for all the passing-the-buck-ness in the villages and districts etc- no pair of grubby hands in the coalition should remain idle!

all that unused power generates so much money in delhi that it has to spend hard working years thinking up schemes to help the poor in bihar. it definitely helps that there are so many do-gooders around in the coalition, everyone competing to get into the right portfolios, ministerial berths that are seeing a lot of action from an investment perspective, to serve the poor in bihar and elsewhere. it's so heartening to see democracy work! when would the ingrates in the villages understand its power?

for once, swapan dasgupta is almost right

'Emergency: an era of discipline' was the cryptic certificate of approval issued by the senile Bhoodan leader, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, a testimonial faithfully stamped on every postcard and inland letter form. 'The Leader is right, the future is bright,' proclaimed a gigantic hoarding in Delhi's Connaught Place, sponsored by a 'progressive' weekly from Bombay. From the smoke-emitting rear of the capital's three-wheeler taxis, Indians were reassured that 'The nation is on the move'. And the Congress president, D.K. Barooah, announced matter-of-factly that India is Indira.

The Communist Party of India organized conventions against fascism and leftist intellectuals cheered with unconcealed glee as 'Hindu communalist' teachers were rounded up and petty traders forced to sign statements supporting the 20-point programme of the prime minister. As the education minister, S. Nurul Hasan, purged the arts faculties of undesirables and made Marxism the guiding philosophy of the social sciences, notables like the British Labour Party leader, Michael Foot, toured India and gushed over Jawaharlal Nehru's daughter.

The grotesque parody didn't stop here. After Sanjay Gandhi was anointed Arjun by a fawning N.D. Tiwari, it was time for fascistic inanities to take over. 'Talk less, work more' became the mantra of the Sanjay brigade. The Youth Congress has 'stolen the thunder', a proud mother proclaimed. From the sidelines, Ambika Soni, Jagdish Tytler, Kamal Nath and Lalit Maken cheered. 'Sanjay Gandhi's rise to power,' wrote Russi Karanjia in Blitz, 'came to us as History's own answer to our prayers'. Other venerable editors like Khushwant Singh agreed.

Much of the grim history of the Emergency can be pieced together from the two volumes of the Shah Commission interim report, David Selbourne's richly documented An Eye to India and John Dayal and Ajoy Bose's Delhi Under Emergency. In addition, Janardhan Thakur's All the Prime Minister's Men provides riveting pen portraits of the individuals who propped up Indira Gandhi's tyranny. It's a shame though that most of these books are either out of print or, in the case of J.C. Shah's report, conveniently withdrawn from circulation. The only available account of those dark days is In the Name of Democracy, an apologist account of Jayaprakash Narayan's perfidy and Indira Gandhi's compulsions, by the text-book historian Bipan Chandra.

funny, it's swapan dasgupta who's asking you to remember the emergency in this article (i was looking for articles marking the thirtieth anniversary of the emergency- but didn't find many). in any other democratic country in the world, the mainstream left would be taking out the marches. you'd find several kinds of liberals, progressives, and other kinds of leftists ranging from the ultra-left to the infra-left (forget the word- i hope you get the picture) in india who'd bore you to your after-life with grim tales about how hindu nationalist politics or neo-liberal policies are marginalizing more and more sections of india. but not one of them would trace the roots of either the successful co-option of the government machinery by modi during the gujarat pogrom or the successful subversion of government by the cpm in nandigram to the emergency. to lessons learnt from indira's rule. why does the nationalist right in india want to remember the emergency while the left prefers to hide it? because the hindu-right wants to remind 'the regional parties, the followers of Ram Manohar Lohia' etc., of the thread that supposedly binds them together. and because the left wants you to forget sanjay gandhi, devkanth borooah, ambika soni, lalit maken, jagdish tytler, kamal nath, m.l.fotedar, r.k.dhawan, bansi lal, mohammed yunus, akbar ahmed, h.k.l.bhagat, jagmohan, dhirendra brahmachari, v.c.shukla, nandini satpathy, sajjan kumar, maneka gandhi and a thousand, a million other congressmen and women for whom the party and the leader became more important than the country. just as buddhadeb bhattacharya 'is not above the party', as he admits now. but both the right and the left in india, nurse in the innermost recesses of their arrogant savarna souls, the greatest admiration for indira gandhi and her methods.

think: would jagdish tytler have gone around delhi goading on murderous hordes in 1984 if we hadn't started forgetting the emergency as soon as it was over? if we had paid serious attention to the emergency and to the evil personalities and processes it had engendered? it wasn't just tytler, and it wasn't just turkman gate. it wasn't just censorship, it wasn't just misa. it wasn't just a hundred thousand politicians, mediapersons, social activists, ordinary citizens in jail, it wasn't just torture and murder and maruti. it wasn't just 'kissa kursi ka' and it wasn't just the young prince being entertained by jayaprada and other nubile starlets on special trains. it was power and powerlessness. it was the rationing of freedom and the flaunting of authority. it was your life and their liberties over it.

it was indira's emergency that taught the most successful politicians of today, on the right and the left, how you and i amount to nothing, despite democracy.