vangapandu's 'yem pillado'

found the movie ardharatri swatantryam on you tube and chopped vangapandu's song from it. t. krishna doesn't look a very convincing vangapandu.

watch it here. 

part 2 of interview in 'prairie schooner'

Q. What are the sources that the poets are drawing from currently? Is there a conscious rejection of mainstream rendering of texts, especially the traditional epics, etc.? If so, how? 

A. I am reminded of something Dr Ambedkar had said in his book, “Untouchables or The Children of India's Ghetto.” Let me quote:

"It is usual to hear all those who feel moved by the deplorable condition of the Untouchables unburden themselves by uttering the cry "We must do something for the Untouchables." One seldom hears any of the persons interested in the problem saying “Let us do something to change the Touchable Hindu .” It is invariably assumed that the object to be reclaimed is the Untouchables. If there is to be a Mission, it must be to the Untouchables and if the Untouchables can be cured, untouchability will vanish. Nothing requires to be done to the Touchable. He is sound in mind, manners and morals. He is whole; there is nothing wrong with him. Is this assumption correct? Whether correct or not, the Hindus like to cling to it. The assumption has the supreme merit of satisfying themselves that they are not responsible for the problem of the Untouchables. How natural is such an attitude is illustrated by the attitude of the Gentile towards the Jews. Like the Hindus the Gentiles also do not admit that the Jewish problem is in essence a Gentile problem." 

When the Dalit speaks of democratizing Indian society, the “Touchable Hindu” talks of nationalism; when she speaks of equality and the spread of education and opportunities, the Hindu posits it against merit; when she talks of rights and justice, he dismisses it as identity politics; when she argues for diversity and inclusiveness, he pays it lip service and dreams of Hindu supremacy in the region and a spot in the elite club of world powers.

The “Touchable Hindu” still remains utterly clueless about the Hindu problem. He is the one who is consciously rejecting the Dalit discourse all the time.

Whereas the conscious Dalit now attempts to speak of all—from the Shudras to Adivasis to Muslims and other religious minorities to women to the disabled to the sexual minorities – and does it by actually going on the streets to demonstrate, build solidarity, produce advocacy literature and wrangle with political society, the Touchable Hindu becomes ever more self-absorbed, obdurate and privilege-focused.

So the sources are diverse: lived experience, the wada and the world. Pain, deprivation, humiliation, inequality, oppression, festivity, faith, protest, celebration, battles, revolution, pogroms, love, nature, labour, hopes, genocides, lynching, victories and losses from the wada, the village and the world. As Sikhamani expresses it very lucidly in his poem, “Seashell:”

Though you've separated
My ocean from me
I've assimilated the whole ocean in myself.
Whatever inference
You may draw from that roar,
I speak that language. 

Listen to the Dalit segregated from his fellow men, the poet seems to be saying: “you can listen to the infinite roars of the ocean,” just as you do when you hold the seashell, separated from the ocean, close to your ear, and listen “with patience.”

When you listen to her, you’ll also hear the roaring pain of history, as in the words of Kalekuri Prasad:

I was Shambhuka in the Treta Yuga 

Twenty two years ago, my name was Kanchikacherla Kotesu 

My place of birth is Kilvenmani, Karamchedu, Neerukonda 

Now Chunduru is the name that cold-blooded feudal brutality 

Has tattooed on my heart with ploughshares 

From now on, Chunduru is not a noun but a pronoun 

Now every heart is a Chunduru, a burning tumour; 

I am the wound of multitudes, the multitude of wounds: 

For generations, an unfree individual in a free country 

Having been the target 

Of humiliations, atrocities, rapes and torture 

I am someone raising his head for a fistful of self-respect. 

In this nation of casteist bigots blinded by wealth 

I am someone who lives to register life itself as a protest  

I am someone who dies repeatedly to live 

Don't call me a victim 

I am an immortal, I am an immortal, I am an immortal 

~ ~ ~

please read the rest of the interview here.

interview in 'prairie schooner'

nabina das interviews me for 'prairie schooner', lit magazine:

~ ~ ~

Q. Imagining that the larger community has little or no idea of "Dalit Literature," tell us something about it.

A. It’s not very difficult to imagine that the larger community has little or no idea of "Dalit Literature." That tells us something about it; that the literature of the former ‘untouchables’ should largely remain untouchable even now, when it is available in such profusion, tells us how desperately the world wants to stand still and hold its breath so that it will go away.

Does this larger community figure in Dalit writing? 

The larger community is never absent in the Dalit writer’s imagination. The whole world throbs like a bad tumor in her imagination.

When Yendluri Sudhakar takes a walk in Chicago, he hears Martin Luther King:

When I walk in Chicago
The roar of Martin Luther King's
Word flames
Rings constantly in my ears
Like a chant!

K. G. Satyamurthy ('Sivasagar’) faces death in Jaffna:

Jaffna! Jaffna!! O Jaffna!!
When the night was flying as a vulture
You blew up as a landmine
I died without realizing it
I died in Jaffna.

He is imprisoned in South Africa with Nelson Mandela:

So many prisons
But only one life

He is singing in Tiananmen Square:

The tear drop that splits
On the edge of dark night’s sword:
In the clasp of the gallows
The song that shall wake the sun!

Writes a love letter to Saddam Hussein:

The river Tigris
The Kurdistan hills
The Baghdad streets
The Iraqi grains of sand,
I love Your love for them.

 And he grieves for Santiago:

Santiago! Santiago!
What treachery stabbed you in the back?
What treachery made you stand unarmed before your enemy?
What treachery deprived you of your people’s army?

We can then say that the Dalit poet has a global scope in her work?

The Dalit poet breathes the pain of the wretched and the marginalized in Chicago, Jaffna, Santiago, South Africa, Baghdad and Tiananmen Square as naturally as she inhales the daily treachery, repression, rebellion, seclusion, and defiance of the Dalitwada. Dalitwada is the Dalit settlement outside the village which is always so planned that it can taste even the wind only after it has passed through the village first. The wada which deserves only the leftovers, the remnants, the dregs of everything, including air: who would understand the need for community better?

Who would understand the need for peace and solidarity better than someone who has been engaged in an endless, unequal war she never sought? A war so unequal that generation after generation has to depend solely, and paradoxically, on the enemy itself to sustain its continued participation? Therefore, the wars and unrealized deaths in Jaffna or Santiago or Baghdad or Afghanistan or the Congo or anywhere and everywhere else aren’t unfamiliar to the Dalits in even the most remote, totally-shut-off-from-the-world wadas in India.

Because, as Sivasagar says:

Listen! Listen to the untouchable word:
Between the village and the wada
There's a Kargil,
From grandfathers' forefathers' age,
Burning between us;
This Kargil war
Hasn't stopped, it goes on.

The war between the caste village and the caste-less wada is the oldest conflict in the world. But the world still flickers in the Dalit poet’s heart more brightly than any lamp lit across the world in memory of dead soldiers.

Pydi Theresh Babu mourns the slow death of a world being consumed by globalization:

Nothing is overtly visible
You can’t hear my breath
In my song
You can’t hear my music
In my procession
You can’t see my play
In my street
You can’t see my ware
In my bazaar

Paradoxes. Contradictions. Why should a Dalit in the wada, who should be happy to be free of the village, embrace the whole world, in such unfettered love?

How do you see these contradictions being resolved? 

As Satish Chandar sees it, the Dalit is a revolutionary staking claim over her body, land, spirit and humanity:

My land's not mine, they said,
I became a revolutionary
My body's not mine, they said,
I became a feminist
My village is not mine, they said,
I became a Dalit

She wants a whole new world, nothing less:

Finally,
I am not even human, they said,
Step away
I've become a human bomb.

~ ~ ~

please read the rest of the interview here. 

అనర్థ శాస్త్రం

పైసాలో
పదోవంతు
పదిలో ఐదుగురికి
పంచితే
వాళ్ళిళ్ళళ్ళో పస్తులు
పొలాల్లో ఆత్మహత్యలే
పండుతాయి

ఇద్దరే
యేడుపాళ్ళు
యేడురోజులూ తింటే
మిగతా ముగ్గురికి
వారానికి మూడు రోజులు
రెండు పూటలూ
యేడుపే

పైసాలో
ఇంత భారతముంటే
పార్లమెంటు
యిద్దరి సుఖం కోసం
పరిచిన పరుపే
అవుతుంది
పంచాయితీ పెట్టండి!

అవతార పురుషుడు

బాబు భజ్రంగి
పటేల్మని
కులం దాటిన ప్రేమికుల్ని

కడుపు దాటని పాపల్ని
పరశురాముడో
పరమ కంసుడో
అవతారమెత్తి
పొట్టన పెట్టుకున్నాడు
నికృష్ణుడు

పదిమందిలోనే
యీ పదేళ్ళూ
పటేలై
పంచాయితీలు
పెద్దరికాలు నెరిపాడు
దాక్కుని అణగదొక్కుకొని
నక్కి నక్కి
కలుగుళ్ళో క్యాంపుళ్ళో
కారాగార కర్మనుభవించింది
వాడి కల్కవతారానికందని మనమే

గోవుకీ గోధ్రాకీ
పుట్టినోడు కాదు
మతంలోనే మందిలోనే
గోవర్ధనగిరికి ముందు
కులానికి గోత్రానికి
పొట్ట చీల్చి పుట్టి
భూమిపై పగబట్టి
వామనుడై
కాంతిని విడగొట్టి
నిచ్చెన మెట్లకి వురేసి
వివర్ణం నిండిన తలల్ని
పటేలని వణికిపోయే మనల్ని
సరైన పాతాళంలోకే
తొక్కేస్తున్నాడు. 

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.     

good taste, 'bad woman'

she'd congratulate folks who wished to give her an award on exhibiting such good taste .when a big studio owner tried to bully her into going down on her knees and begging for compassion and forgiveness for appearing a few minutes late on the sets.. she did what some future chief ministers would never dream of doing..she walked out of the sets and the film and the studio. and built her own studio and made her own films and bullied her own ex-'heroes'. and also wrote stories in which saases and bahus were best pals.

-----------------------------------------------------------
a 5 year old draft written in bhanumathi's memory.

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.

mEmavudaam

wrote some mad verse in telugu:

నీకూ నాకూ
మధ్య అడ్డుగోడై
ప్రేమా దోమా
యేదైనా వుంటే
కూల్చేద్దాం!
మనం మేమవుదాం
చేతనైనంత వెలమవుదాం
వాడికి మేతవుదాం
దేవ్డిల వెట్టవుదాం
రెచ్చిపోయి రెడ్డవదాం
అదందాం ఇదందాం
అదవదాం ఇదవదాం
అడ్డంగా నరికేద్దాం
యెవడూ దొరక్క పోతే
పోనీ పోతే
యీ ఫోరడి ప్రాణం
యింకో పోరడి ప్రాణం
ఆత్మహత్యై
ఊదుబత్తై
ఉద్యమ పద్దై
గల్లా యెగిరేసుకొని
చెప్పుకొనే గొప్పై
నీ గుడిసెల నిప్పై
వాడి భవన్లో నోట్ల కుప్పై
నోటికొచ్చిన తత్వమై

అమ్మ కడుపును తన్నిన
అయోమయమై
నిన్ను చంపిన వాడి
అమరత్వమై...

అమరత్వం ఆధ్యాత్మ్యం
అల్లమెల్లిగడ్డ
వాడవసరం
మన ధర్మం..
అంతా యెనకట్లాగనె
సనాతనంగా
తలొంచుకుని పాటిద్దాం
మెడలిద్దాం యేళ్ళిద్దాం
పాలిద్దాం చేళ్ళిద్దాం
వాడింట్ల కాకి
పక్కోడు కొడితే
మనం గాయపడదాం
వాళ్ళిద్దరి నదులు వాళ్ళకు
పంచుకుందాం
మన నోట్ల మట్టంతా మనదే కదా?
పెంచుకుందాం..
వంచుకుందాం
వాళ్ళిద్దరి పగలూ
పోటీలూ
మన కుండళ్ళోకి
గొంతుళ్ళోకి గుండెళ్ళోకి
బేగాని షాదిల..
అంతా అప్పట్లెక్కనే
బుద్ధున్ని కూల్చి
శివున్ని
జైనుల్ని కొట్టి
విష్ణువుకి పెడదాం
మనం వండిన ప్రసాదం
మనం అడుక్కుందాం.

finding soodrahood in telingana

It has also been noticed that in speaking the Teloogoo, the Soodras use very few Sanskrit words; among the superior classes of Vysyus, and pretenders to the Rajah cast, Sanskrit terms are used only in proportion to their greater intimacy with the Bramins, and their books; and when we find even such Sanskrit words as these classes do adopt, pronounced by them in so improper and rude a manner as to be a common jest to the Bramins, who, at the same time, never question their pronounciation of pure Teloogoo words, I think we may fairly infer to be probable at least that these Sanskrit terms were originally foreign to the great body of people. 

from  the 'Introduction' section of the 'A Grammar of the Teloogoo Language, Commonly termed the Gentoo...' by A.D.Campbell. published in 1816, around the same age as when the nizams of hyderabad were either gifting away or being made to 'cede' the coastal andhra and rayalaseema regions to their colonial overlords.

two centuries later, if campbell were still around, he'd probably notice again that the 'Soodras' still can't get a hold on any sanskrit word without taking little conscious preparatory pauses. and their pronunciation still causes much jest among both the 'bramins' and those 'pretender' classes who have developed a much 'greater intimacy' with the bramins.  

when the the srikrishna committee submits its report to the central government today, and when delhi acts on it: both actions should be seen as the 'bramins' exercising their suzerainty over the 'soodras' of 'Telingana' (as campbell calls the whole of telugu speaking lands, including what are now referred to as 'coastal andhra' and 'rayalaseema' and other regions which are now a part of other states) yet again. as implied in the short paragraph, forces 'foreign to the great body of people' have always played a great role in the life of the 'gentoos'. brahminism and sanskrit, holding sway for several centuries couldn't destroy the ethos of the soodras even until the nineteenth century. it remained 'pure teloogoo'. but that project is still on, because soodrahood, innate to such pre-hindu cultures as the telugu culture, still poses the greatest challenge to the brahminical idea of india. and will, always. but how long should the soodras remain tethered to the trenches, fending off one assault after another, never attempting to subdue the enemy? they have to realize that soodrahood can also be a weapon, not just a shield to ward off the bramin's attacks. 

i remember an excellent post by dr.p.keshava kumar, teacher of philosophy and occasional blogger, on how the dalit movement is trying to deal with brahminism in tamil nadu-- let me quote a passage from the post in which he tries to explain the political philosophy of thol thirumavalavan of the viduthalai chiruthaigal katchi:

Let me elobarate further, tamil identity is not just a linguistic identity. As an eminent philosopher Wittegenstein said language is the form of life. Life has to be understood as social life. Social life exists in our social relationships. The social relationships are much rooted in our cultural life. For Thirumavalavan, tamil identity means it is all. He believed that tamil society is much more democratic society. There is no trace of caste system and is different from Brahminism, Hinduism and Aryanism. This distinct identity is maintained for so many centuries. On contrary to this our existing relationships hierarchy prevails there exists one over the other. The caste system is responsible for this. The hindu religion had the sole responsibility for strengthening it. It is the characteristic of brahminism/Hinduism which is internalized into Indian nationalism. In the course of time even it influencing the tamilians. Again to revive tamil identity one has to necessarily annihilate this caste system.

the democratic roots of soodrahood in telingana (i mean campbell's telingana, of course) have to be found again. one needs to dig a little, but not very deep because an outsider like campbell could spot them quite easily a couple of centuries ago.

on superior ignorance

i was foolish enough to join a facebook page which said 'telugu'... the administrator started a discussion and made the following comments, among others:

'People say their Dialect is being made fun of, YES your are speaking one of the Ancient and respected language in the world, which has its own grammar, and every sound and every word has a distinct meaning , and you are mixing it with Urdu... AND HINDI ,and call it a new language ? is there a grammar to this language? If yes please prove it and get yourself a new language, States in india were formed on the basis of language not dialects, do you know how many states should we break india into if we start dividing states on the basis of dialects? Please understand that because of 800 year old muslim rule , your language got influenced and corrupted, instead of correcting it now, they are suppoting it, it is almost supporting NIZAM period as golden era'

[...]

'i agree with you on one topic which is evolution of language from different phases, but here the case is you were forced to speak in hindi in tyrant Nizam rule, so it wasnt influenced but it was forced change and for a long time, ...now what im saying is, that rule is over , that phase is gone so time to correct certain words which arent part of telugu at all, meeru ee dialect ayina teesukondi, Srikakulam, vijayanagaram, godavari, raaylaseema, still you can prove the existence of grammar in those dialects,telugu basha goppadaname adi, telugu basha evovle ayina mana base grammar epudu maaraledu, apudu, epudu , ade base, ade rule, kaani ikkada complete different language took over more than 90% of the language , if we are to take that into telugu language than, im sorry .. i give up.'

that is telugu thandri, if you haven't recognized him by now. he owns the language, of course. i've heard similar lectures all through my life, but less so in the last two decades. but this particular lecturer went beyond the usual spiel and tried to find a solution for the language of the telanganis: purify it!

the racist belief that people of a certain region need to be 'corrected'-- you don't need to ponder much over how those kind of prejudices take shape in indian minds. is there any other society in the world which has so relentlessly pursued 'purity' in everything?

now here's a telangani who spouts some other kinds of biases mixed with very liberal generalizations:

Many people of my background grew up feeling defensive about the "crudities" of our dialect because of the manner in which they were run down or derided in the "popular culture" of Andhra Pradesh, defined by the more influential people from coastal districts.

Telugu cinema reflected this bias most blatantly as its heroes and heroines invariably and unmistakably spoke the coastal dialect. If the Telangana dialect made it to those films at all, it was heard from the mouths of villains or comedians.

Maa Bhoomi was, therefore, a liberating and cathartic experience for me, even if there was nothing "heroic" about the protagonist, a lowly peasant, who joins the underground armed struggle because he could anyway do nothing when the local zamindar forced his girlfriend into sex.

I could relate to the smallest of the Telangana peculiarities woven into its narrative: the manner in which the peasantry, for instance, was shown addressing their social superiors with the egalitarian nuvvu (equivalent to the Hindi tu), rather than with the honorific meeru (like aap) apt to be used in coastal Andhra.

let me see: i should feel great relief that the actor mehmood who caricatured the hyderabadi or telangani in dozens of movies is now dead. don't need to feel inferior anymore!

the first authority on telugu, and language in general, didn't think these words/phrases were telugu: 'samajayitalle? hau ra, gedaklilli vachinav? KOnaaki,podugaala..' it's quite evident to me that his knowledge of telangani dialects doesn't go beyond the borders of hyderabad. he isn't even aware that there are more than one dialect in telangana. his imagination is severely constricted by his own limted interaction with telanganis (which is a fair conjecture, i think, given his prejudices) and depends heavily on the even more severely constricted interpretation of dialect/s, culture/s of telangana by telugu film makers. and you'll notice that manoj mitta, the second authority on telugu too shares many of those traits: a limited understanding of dialects, regions, cultures, popular cinema. and a stunted sense of history. and the line '..when the local zamindar forced his girlfriend into sex'.. a casual, throwaway line. no reflection at all on how oppressive society of that age was. he reduces the general environment into a particular, 'local' incident.

and both experts assume the role of speaking for whole regions so very casually!

more later..

do-it-yourself history kit

lingams, vaishnavaite figures, a half parsvanatha. and there are probably also some buddhist influences in the temple complex, battlefield of ancient politics, where these nearly thousand year old reminders of telangana/telugu history (and also kannada history) were so callously stacked up.

one set of believers obviously built the structure first. and then another set of believers invaded the place, and selectively destroyed and rebuilt the place to celebrate their beliefs. and then another set of invaders emerged. and then another. and these battles happened long before the muslim rulers ever set foot in telangana. the disagreements, and the battles, as one can see, were quite fierce. now, trace the history of that mongrel shrine. who were the good guys and who were the bad guys?

the easy way out is to follow the path of the telangana separatists: pick up one figure and break the rest into shards with it. follow the example of the ancient invaders.

the method of telangana: some stalinism, some hindutva

it was said, when stalin stopped talking at any public event, you were not supposed to stop clapping. you're not supposed to stop clapping, ever. not until the guy beside you has stopped, who of course will only stop when the guy on his other side has stopped, and so on. we seem to be slowly but steadily moving towards the emergence of a similar oppressive environment in telangana.

nallamotu chakravarthy's crime was to write that it was okay not to clap, to argue that there are enough reasons not to clap, even.

we've the hindutva gangs-- rss, vhp, bajrang dal, ram sene etc-- on one side. and you think- and this is what the so-called 'liberal' mainstream media tries to project-- the maoists and random movements based around 'cultural sentiments' or 'aspirations' like the telangana separatist movement on the other side. that their methods and goals are different. are they really on the other side? both of them use sheer muscle, many times, to put forth their points of view. and to throttle dissenting voices. in the recent by-elections in telangana, everyone of the main contestants, in every constituency, were assigned a posse of nine gunmen each in the north telangana constituencies by the election commission. everyone, except the trs and bjp candidates needed them. why? because the maoists support separation and consider the trs an ally. and an ally's ally is also a friend, of course. so the bjp is now one of the maoists' closest friends in telangana, i suppose. there's no other side.

so it wasn't really surprising watching on television some of the most famous 'civil rights' activists in andhra pradesh trying hard to find excuses for the separatists' intolerance on monday. if they'd tied themselves up in a few more knots, they could have produced an excellent defense for the rss' attacks on some television channels' offices a few days ago. maybe they'd someday.

as i said, there's no other side. not in the stalinist worldview of the hindutva gangs or the maoists and the numerous groupie elements clinging to them, like the shiv sena and the trs.

the goondaism of the telangana separatists at fellow blogger nallamotu chakravarthy's book launch function needs to be condemned.

an article in 'danse macabre'

an article i'd written on dalit poetry in telugu had been published here:

A television news report I'd seen a few years ago captured this strange tale of a small clan of people living atop trees less than five hundred miles from my desk. They ate, relaxed, slept and lived on the branches of peepul trees in a farm adjoining a village. They belonged to a community of swineherds, people who normally live inside villages or on their fringe, interact with other villagers every day and have a role to play in village life, not a chunk of pre-history that forgot to erase itself, evolve. How could they become so unsure of all firm ground?

Their story illustrates the ineffable nature of the reaches of marginality in Indian society: the abyss of marginality could be lurking outside your door. A single mis-step, and you could drop off the horizon.

Land and caste are dominant themes in poetry in Telugu, by poets from the Dalit Bahujan (or the ‘lower’ castes) communities, because land, as little as a quarter of an acre, means a firmer hold on rural economic life and caste determines your chances of inheriting or acquiring land.

Narayanaswami laments, as though he is talking to himself:

anytime
anywhere
land's the problem
the problem's only land
a little land for food
or for your death
the problem's wholly land

please read the rest of 'I'll weep like Karamchedu!' at the danse macabre, 'Nevada's first online literary magazine'. thanks, nabina, for all the support.

a state within a state

p.s. krishnan, an ex-bureaucrat who had worked in andhra pradesh for long, and had also served on the mandal commision, in v.p.singh's team and as adivsor to arjun singh a few years ago on the obc reservations issue, suggests an innovative solution to the telangana issue:

The widespread demand for the establishment of Telangana State has met with opposition in the Andhra area on two grounds: (a) The general sentiment against division of the linguistic State of Andhra Pradesh and against the division of the Telugu-speaking people; (b) Apprehension about protection of Andhra interests in Telangana, especially in and around Hyderabad city, and particularly the protection of the large number of people of Andhra origin who came to Hyderabad because it is the capital of their State and made it their home. Leaving aside a handful of big industrialists and realtors, they belong to the middle class, the lower middle class and even unorganized labour who have invested a lifetime’s savings in Hyderabad and Greater Hyderabad over two or three generations. Most of these properties are no more than a house or a residential plot or investments in some small trade or profession.

It is possible to reconcile the sentiments and fulfil the aspirations of both Telangana and Andhra people by adopting the following measures for which a Constitutional framework exists, and to which suitable modifications / adaptations can be made:
(i) Establishment of an Autonomous State of Telangana within the State of Andhra Pradesh.
(ii) The Autonomous State of Telangana should have its own Legislature and its own Council of Ministers.
(iii) The Legislature of the Autonomous State should have power to make laws for Telangana in respect of matters enumerated in the State List or in the Concurrent List. Power to make laws includes power to repeal or amend existing laws with prospective effect in the interest of the people.

Whether every item in the State List and Concurrent List should be brought within the purview of the Legislature of the Autonomous State of Telangana or whether a few items of common interest, e.g., law and order in Hyderabad/ Greater Hyderabad, should be kept out is a matter to be settled by detailed negotiations.

In the case of the latter, if it is agreed to by all sides in detailed negotiations, it could be brought into the concurrent list or a new category of concurrent list involving the Autonomous State of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and the Indian Government.

iv) This will also mesh with the larger concern over terrorists targeting major cities of India, including Hyderabad, for which mega policing, aerial surveillance, etc., are being thought of but will be possible only with Central participation.In that case, what is done for Hyderabad in the present context will become a model in respect of other metropolises of India in the larger context also.

v) A mechanism can be created, maybe an expert commission or some other, for equitable sharing of water resources between the Autonomous State of Telangana and the Andhra area of Andhra Pradesh. In addition to this, there can be, on the basis of negotiations, a permanent expert commission to pursue matters on a continuing basis taking off from the award that will be issued by the commission set up under statute.

vi) Formula for sharing of taxes, especially taxes generated in Hyderabad city, can be evolved on the basis of correct financial principles and available statistics by an expert body and through negotiations. There is the experience of what was done in this regard about 40 years back as part of the budgetary exercise.

vii) Hyderabad, which is embedded within Telangana, should continue to be part of Telangana and capital of the Autonomous State. The futility of any effort to alter this should be evident from the aborted move in the late 50s of the last century to separate Bombay (now Mumbai) from Maharashtra as a Union Territory and the delay this caused in the formation of the linguistic States of Maharashtra and Gujarat and the bitterness that this delay gave rise to and the agitations that it set off for a few years and other events of that period ending with the bifurcation of the bilingual State into Maharashtra (including Mumbai) and Gujarat.

At the same time, since formation of the Autonomous State of Telangana does not require the division of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad can also continue to be the capital of Andhra Pradesh. Thus, the dispute and problem relating to Hyderabad can be avoided.

viii) Andhra interests that have grown in Telangana, especially in Hyderabad city and its surroundings in the last half-century, should have all lawful protection in the Autonomous State. In particular, a system should be created under the proposed Constitutional route to ensure law and order, and security and sense of security, for the people in Greater Hyderabad.

The advantages of the above route are that a) Telangana will get autonomous statehood while preserving the existing Andhra Pradesh State and b) the unfortunate bitterness that has grown between the people of the two regions may also disappear with the emergence of an agreed solution as is possible on the above basis.

This opportunity can also be utilised to provide Constitutional systems for the protection of the people of the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and their lands and other interests and also to provide proper Constitutional, legal, institutional and organizational systems for securing the economic, educational and social advancement of SCs, STs and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, including BCs of Muslim and Christian communities.

The autonomous State concept was earlier applied in the case of Meghalaya which, of course, later became the State of Meghalaya. But, the situation in Andhra Pradesh is more propitious than it was in the case of Assam. The “ethnic” difference between the Assamese (Ahomiya) plains people of Assam, and the Khasi and Jaintia and Garo tribes of the erstwhile Assam / Meghalaya Autonomous State / Meghalaya State does not exist between the people of Telangana and Andhra. The disturbing external factors experienced in Assam do not exist in Andhra Pradesh. Further, the political experience and maturity of the people of Andhra Pradesh promise longevity for this Constitutional arrangement of autonomous State within a State in the case of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

If it comes about and succeeds it will not only help resolve the present impasse in Andhra Pradesh in a positive way and put the people of the autonomous State of Telangana and of Andhra Pradesh on the path of development, welfare and equality, it will also set up a model for resolving similar aspiration-based movements in regions of other States. This issue cannot be wished away or brushed under the carpet.

Realizing the strong sentiments in favour of linguistic States (which also had a democratic justification), the Constitution- makers provided in Article 3 for formation of new States. This was utilized on several occasions. Also, the Indian leadership showed resilience in the matter of Article 343 and the Eighth Schedule and its expansion from time to time. All these helped meet powerful regional/linguistic sentiments (which also had a democratic content) and simultaneously strengthened India’s federalism and unity.

i think a division would be disastrous, for many reasons, for both the telugus and india. the current level of 'sentiments' in favour of telangana don't reflect a permanent divide, in my view. and these kinds of 'sentiments', history tells me, have a way of changing shape and even location and may reincarnate as new upheavals in coastal andhra or rayalaseema in the near future. this is not a 'problem' that the ruling classes of india can 'manage' and 'deal' with over a couple of years and go back to being the same ruling classes of india, later. because the telugus seem to have been around even before there was any india, and political schisms over centuries haven't been able to cause any serious damage to their ability to separate and regroup. and separate and regroup.

so i find some of krishnan's suggestions interesting, because they seem to take a saner, more mature approach to dealing with this 'problem', not because i agree with them totally.

cutting off one's nose

an excellent analysis (in telugu), by sam gundimeda, of why some dalit activists/leaders in telangana and andhra-rayalaseema seem to think that separation would solve the problem of categorisation. and the author's view? he thinks it won't solve the problem, and i concur with him completely.

in another post, he wonders why dalits of andhra are supporting the movement for a united state when the movement is led by upper caste businessmen who wish to protect their businesses and properties in hyderabad, especially when those big businessmen don't even employ dalits, except in the lower rungs.

will those who have businesses and properties in hyderabad be affected by the creation of a new state? the answer is a clear 'no'. the indian constitution offers enough protection to those who own businesses and properties anywhere in the country.

the creation of a new state shall not stop either lagadipati rajagopal of lanco or kavuri sambasiva rao of progressive constructions or a few others like them from doing business or acquiring more property in hyderabad, or telangana. in fact, the creation of two or three or four new states (telangana, coastal andhra, greater rayalaseema and kalinga-andhra) would help them much more than other sections of society, in general, and businessmen in particular. because, as businessmen with special interest and experience in the field of construction and infrastructure, in the event/s of the creation of one or two or three new capitals each requiring 50,000 crores or 1,00,000 crores or much more of investments in infrastructure in the next ten years or twenty years or more, wouldn't business opportunities for them go up several times?

both lanco and progressive constructions have operations across the country now. please check those websites: lanco, for instance, has projects in around 11 states. logically speaking, i think companies like lanco would like nothing better than one or two or three new telugu speaking states where the company's top bosses would have strong links with both the political bosses and the top layers of the old/new bureaucracies (including those in telangana).

so, why do businessmen-politicians like l.rajagopal or k.sambasiva rao support the idea of a united state? as businessmen, as i pointed out, they should prefer division. but i think as politicians, they can't afford to ignore the concerns of their constituents, especially the vocal middle classes. and there are hundreds of other elected politicians, apart from those two and a few more, who aren't businessmen and they don't see much sense in division either. those two businessmen-politicians are more important to the separatists in telangana, than to the supporters of a united state, because they are so very easy and visible to point out, to caricaturize by infusing a lot of speculative masala about their deeds or misdeeds in popular discourse, build a not-very-savoury figure of a typical andhra politician. and by logical extension, build a strong stereotype that shall serve to demonize all people from andhra-rayalaseema as not-very-pleasant human beings, progressively, in the eyes of the average telangani. and that stereotype shall embrace everyone, eventually, irrespective of class, caste or creed.

i think it's good to start thinking about what all the classes, starting from the lowest, of andhra pradesh start to lose if the state is bifurcated or trifurcated or cut up into more pieces. one can't support or oppose division depending on what your traditional oppressors are doing because your enemy's enemy isn't always your friend. to use another cliche, to put it more eloquently: one can't cut off one's nose to spite one's face.

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.

new cities, new human costs

part wild speculation induced by more wilder speculation elsewhere on the net, part outpouring of disgust:

chandigarh was built over 26,000 acres and hosts around 8 lakh people now, or around 1.6 lakh families. even if a slightly smaller city, for around 5 lakh people, was planned for andhra-rayalaseema, purely to host the administrative paraphernalia of a new state, what'd it cost the new state? in the last ten years, prices of real estate in random districts (with or without empty lots of the size indicated) from vizag to tirupati, depending on which place the bookies chose to bet on, shot up every time the debate on telangana got warm. the numbers quoted have always been over one crore an acre (people who have more authentic information, please correct me). so the land required for the new city itself could cost the new state anything between 5,000 to 20,000 crores or much more. if the new city is planned as an extension of an existing city, the costs would be much more.

how much more would the building of the city actually cost? the offices, homes, roads, parks and the rest? and the water, sewerage, electric supply systems? and how many villages or other human settlements would've to make way for the new city? and how long would the process of acquisition go on? and how could factors like litigation, unwilling sellers, environmental concerns etc affect the costs and time involved in building the new city? and so on.

and who will pay for all those costs? there has been very loose speculation about packages. who will pay for the package? the central government hasn't paid a single paisa as a package, by way of some kind of compensation, to any new state that has been formed until now. and packages on other occasions have not been handouts, purely. and why would the government of india, or all the people of india to be precise, pay for any package to clean up a purely telugu mess?

kishen reddy of the bjp says that the special package be funded through some form of cess on the city of Hyderabad for a limited period rather than running to large financial institutions for loans. the kishen reddies of the world have all the bright ideas to solve any critical problem, but most of the time, they spend a lot more time on turning all the bright ideas their constituents build into critical problems. by the time the bjp and other parties are done with it, i doubt if hyderabad would be capable of paying for its own sanitation needs.

one other kind of people who have proved themselves immensely capable of bright ideas, or at least fantasizing endlessly about bright ideas have been telugu techies across the world. to save telugukind, i propose that techie foeticide is something we all have to seriously start thinking about. you can't spot a techie in the womb? i'm sure the existing techies would solve that problem.

***********

the 25,000 crores or 50,000 crores or 1,00,000 crores or more that would be used to build the new city (or the two new cities) over the next 5 or 10 or twenty years, has already started propelling flight of capital from many existing cities. it's already taking away many jobs in the informal sector, and by the time it's finished, many villages, districts, regions across the two new or three new states would have to be starved more and more of much needed government funds (and private funds, as they'd start flowing to the new city) to build the new city. by the time it's finished it could cost four times as much as originally planned, like ysr's infamous jalayagnam programme. and a few more separatist movements.

wouldn't it be simpler and more useful if we stopped speculating or fantasizing about grand new worlds and started improving whatever we have now? i remember the 1,000 small towns plan dr.jayaprakash narayan had talked about during the last election. here's the gist.

a thousand small towns could be improved and strengthened to provide urban services, create employment and build new avenues for trade and industry centered around agricultural products with the same amount of money as would be needed (but wouldn't be enough) to build the new city. those small towns would help millions of landless labourers, marginal farmers and artisans move out of occupations that are dying in the villages. the new city would be built to house about 50,000 to 1,00,000 new babus and their families who would be a bigger, longer drain on the new states than the unbuilt city. you don't need to be a techie to do that kind of math.

more the voice of the prosperous and the articulate

found this interesting article on the current telangana movement by a participant in the 'hypocritical' 1969 movement. his characterization of the current separatist movement as a voice of the prosperous and the articulate is something that i agree with to a large extent:

But this time it is not a voice of the backward and the cheated. It is more the voice of the prosperous and the articulate. It is more the demand for a share in power first and then for power exclusively by a new coterie of self-centred elite of Telangana basking in the relative development of the region over these 2-3 decades since the earlier agitation. However, to hide the reality this new class is inventing and singing the songs of backwardness and betrayal to hoodwink the masses who otherwise may not join their bandwagon. It is not as if the entire saga is a mere figment of imagination - we cannot say that there has not been or there is not any backwardness at all in the region, that there has not been or there is no cheating at all of the people of the region, etc. But it is a case of clear exaggeration of the actuality, a blowing-out-of-proportion, of making mountain of a molehill, of the alleged exploitation, oppression, humiliation and suppression of the Telangana region, its people and its leaders. On the contrary the real facts of the situation are that over the decades, especially keeping in view the very low base, the very backward state under the Nizam Rule with which Telangana had started and with which alone any real comparison of development indices can be made, Telangana has progressed more rapidly than other regions of the State. This has created a very powerful and articulate middle class, which is now espousing the cause of separation in which alone it sees its salvation if it were to ascend to the portals of exclusive power. In a sense this is a problem of affluence and not of poverty - of course relative affluence of a powerful middle class.[emphasis mine]

that's an extract from a post by mallikarjuna sharma, who as a student had participated in the 1969 separate telangana movement. the post is long, but carries a crisp summary of the history of the telugus, the telangana peasants' struggle, separation movements in the state after 1956 and so on. the author also clearly points out the 'dishonesty' of the current lot of separatists, in quoting selective history and facts and figures, and tries to present a more realistic picture of development in the three regions.

those who'd like to get an objective overview of all the issues involved, please go read the article. though it seems to have been originally written and published a few years ago, most of his arguments still remain valid. but i warn you, it's very long, and the author i suspect, is not very familiar with formatting, for online audiences, all the large quantity of information he puts together into appropriately short sections (to fit the short attention spans of the internet age).

lastly, would like to quote another interesting paragraph from the post which i think loudmouthed shashi tharoors of the maoist movement like kishenji, and left-oriented students at osmania and kakatiya universities need to read:

In this context I think I should also say something about my personal experience during the Separate Telangana movement. I was not only a keen observer of but also a sort of participant too in this hypocritical movement. I was an engineering student in Warangal at that time and an activist in the just split away Marxist-Leninist group (called Charu Mazumdar group) mainly in the student front. I was even arrested once in connection with that movement but somehow managed to escape from police custody. Along with another student comrade I represented our student wing at the Kavali Conference of the Student Federation of India, which at that time was almost exclusively in our i.e. revolutionary students' hands. It was I who proposed the resolution that the Conference adopt a resolution for "People's State in Separate Telangana" and persuaded it to do so. Of course I did all that under the dictates of Comrades K.G. Satyamurthy and K. Seetharamaiah who were our party leaders at that time. I was quite ignorant about the Andhra Mahasabha movement in the 1930-48 period or the Vishalandhra movement of the later days. I did not know even about the developments which led to the communist party espousing the cause of "Vishalandhralo Praja Rajyam" (People's State in Greater Andhra) which was parodied in the above slogan given by our leaders with regard to the Separate Telangana movement. But soon the naxalite movement broke out in Telangana and I was one of the first amongst the student activists to go underground and plunge into the 'armed struggle' and that naturally 'separated' me from the Separate Telangana movement, which we considered not so important as compared to our liberation struggle for seizure of power though we did support it. However, the communist revolutionary group led by Tarimela Nagi Reddy and Chandra Pulla Reddy had strongly and efficiently opposed the Separate Telangana movement at that time and we were fuming and fretting about it criticizing them left and right (just as the People's War group comrades would now do with other 'revolutionaries' opposing the present Separate Telangana movement) and asking what business 'revolutionaries' had to oppose an anti-Government mass upsurge, etc. But later my study of the history of Andhra and Telangana, especially of the vicissitudes of the communist movement in our state in the background of the history of the international and national communist movements as well as the betrayal of the Separate Telangana movement by Channa Reddy and the like other feudal, bourgeois leaders convinced me about the correctness of the stand taken by Nagi Reddy and Pulla Reddy at that time.

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.