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.

the s$#t in our minds

can't get this horrifying story out of my mind. can anyone suggest any ways of contacting those protesters? comment here or write to any insight member.

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.

-----------------------------------
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.

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.

'jai andhra' movement: does it have a social agenda?

self impression

wherever sound loses
silence wins
after digging for many days
your hands may become sore
but your eyes moisten
soon as you see a little water.

returning from cutting ribbons at all doors
i realized i had not opened the door to my own room
someone's calling me, repeatedly,
i thought i was being called
i realized later that they were calling themselves.
whenever i climbed up
they invited me with applause
but when i started for the next step
i heard someone asking me to step down.

i roamed all over the garden
a jasmine creeper caught my eye
it had its own personality
whatever it clung to was covered
it could look at the world on its own.
i will win the whole world
some victor
would arrive and win me,
it's useless

therefore
first, i will
win myself
then
i'll run the world.

that's my translation of katti padma rao's sweeya mudra ( from his collection of poetry bhoomi bhasha). padma rao is a dalit poet, telugu and sanskrit scholar, and activist-theorist whose hands have grown immensely sore with years and years of digging in and fighting caste from countless trenches across coastal andhra and the rest of the state. so, why is he fighting for a narrow, sub-regional cause now? the 'jai andhra' movement wants a separate state comprising coastal andhra and...? it's not clear whether they want north coastal andhra (3 districts) and rayalaseema (4 districts) to go along with them. or whether people of those regions want to go along with the 'jai andhra' agitators. many political leaders of rayalaseema want andhra pradesh to remain united, and if it's divided, they want a separate rayalaseema too, or even tag along with telangana. and as padma rao himself has admits in this interview, most of the political leadership and public opinion in coastal andhra (including north coastal andhra) and rayalaseema are in favour of 'samaikyandhra' or a united andhra pradesh:

What do the people of Coastal Andhra want?
Many are supporting Samaikyandhra due to several apprehensions. They need clear answers to certain questions - Will the new state be bound by Bachawath award on river waters? Will the Telangana doras let river water to flow towards the people in Coastal Andhra? There are 30 lakh middle class people from Andhra in Hyderabad. Only a hundred among them are exploiters. Every Telangana MP, including KCR has good connections with them. Telangana leaders say that these exploiters will be welcomed whole heartedly to invest here. Selfish people exist on both sides. KCR and Lagadapati are good friends. We want separate Andhra, irrespective of the formation of Telangana state.

does he have to fight for a separate andhra? if telangana is separated from andhra pradesh, what would remain is the old andhra state, comprising coastal andhra, north coastal andhra and rayalaseema. so, why does anyone need a separate agitation to fight for a separate andhra when they could as well join or support the separate telangana movement? one can think of a few reasons:

* because the overwhelming majority of the people in coastal andhra, rayalaseema and north coastal andhra support a united andhra pradesh and hence need to be convinced of the merits of bifurcation, as the jai andhra agitators see them?
* because the 'jai andhra' activists feel coastal andhra ( excluding rayalaseema, which was a part of the old andhra state) would develop faster in a separate state of its own?
* because the 'jai andhra' activists feel a particular region in coastal andhra ( excluding north coastal andhra, and comprising east and west godavari, krishna, guntur, prakasam and nellore districts) would develop faster in a separate state of its own?

the jai andhra movement doesn't seem to have decided on a region, or society, it should fight for. does it have a social agenda? katti padma rao had been one of the main architects of the dalit movement in andhra pradesh, had set its tone and tenor in the 80s, its agenda. but the agenda, if any, of the jai andhra movement hasn't been set by padma rao, but by certain upper caste politicians from the krishna-godavari region in coastal andhra: vasantha nageshwara rao and harirama jogaiah, senior politicians who have moved through so many political parties and factions in the last thirty years that the general public doesn't attribute any particular political agenda to them anymore. nor can they win from any constituencies in their home districts on the strength of their past performance as legislators or ministers. while fighting caste has been katti padma rao's lifelong mission, harirama jogaiah and nageshwara rao believe strongly in fighting for castes, or their own individual castes. harirama jogaiah has only talked about the kapus, for several years now, and had played a pivotal role in persuading chiranjeevi to enter politics and lead the kapu nation, or kapu nadu. the kapus, a large collection of peasant sub-castes, have long nursed the 'grievance' that no politician from their caste has ever occupied the chief minister's chair since the formation of andhra pradesh. there have been chief ministers from the reddies, kammas, and velamas: why should the kapus be denied? so dragging chiranjeevi into politics was part of that project. that's jogaiah's social agenda.

what's vasantha nageshwara rao's social agenda? a revival of kamma fortunes? it's even less inspiring. so, again, what's katti padma rao doing in the jai andhra camp, among people closer to the perpetrators of karamchedu and chunduru than the victims of both tragedies?

it was katti padma rao, and a few others, who'd been the driving force behind the protest movements of karamchedu and chunduru, in bringing together dalit leaders, activists and ordinary people from across andhra pradesh to take the voices of the victims to delhi, and to the rest of the country.

balagopal, in the august 15, 1987 issue of the economic and political weekly writes (in the article 'Karamchedu: Second Anniversary') :

The movement was fortunate in having from the start two leaders who were well known and respected in their own Tight for many years before Karamchedu. They are Katti Padma Rao and Bojja Tarakam, currently general secretary and president of the Mahasabha, respectively. Padma Rao belongs to the tradition of organised rationalism that has long been a signifi- cant movement in South India. Rationa- list and atheist associations-for all their dissensions and splits-have a sizeable membership and a larger audience, especially in the coastal Andhra districts. Padma Rao, who teaches Sanskrit (a peculiarly appropriate vocation for a dalit and a rationalist) in a college in Guntur district, is a leading rationalist, and within the rationalist movement has been a spokesman for the Marxist approach to the criticism of religion. Tarakam was even closer to the Communist movement, and was for some time an activist of Virasam, the Revolutionary Writers' Association of A P. As a lawyer, he was active in the civil liberties movement in the state, until he accepted a government pleader's job in 1983 and quit active association with the democratic movement.

Karamchedu brought these two men into the streets. Tarakam resigned his government pleader's job and Padma Rao more or less suspended teaching to settle down at Chirala and organise the victims of the assault, who have refused to go back to the village and have built a colony for themselves at Chirala. Slowly, the protest against a particular assault built itself into the Dalit Mahasabha, whose formation on September 1, was attended by about three lakh dalits and sympathisers. [emphasis mine].

K.Y.Ratnam also notes at some length, in the paper 'The Dalit Movement and Democratization in Andhra Pradesh' (you'll find the paper here), how katti padma rao had filled a crucial theoretical and leadership gap in the dalit movement in andhra pradesh in the aftermath of karamchedu, when widespread anger combined with despair was spreading across the community in general and the protesters in particular. he had helped the movement gain a new direction and much needed vigour, to put it very mildly.

so, what is he doing in the 'jai andhra movement' now? a movement without any identifiable social agenda? perhaps, you could say, padma rao's presence is the movement's only social agenda. has katti padma rao allowed himself to be 'won' by some passing 'victors'? does he plan to 'win himself' and 'run the world' ever?

more later.

the hindu problem

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.

from here.

time to recognize that the dalit problem or the muslim problem or the adivasi problem or caste problem is essentially the hindu problem. how much has india progressed since dr.ambedkar identified the hindu problem? well, it is more politically correct now: the caste problem is now the problem of 'excellence' and 'merit', the adivasi problem is the 'internal security' or the 'maoist' or the 'development' problem, the dalit problem is the 'poverty' or inequality' problem, and the muslim problem is the 'terrorist' or 'pakistan' problem.

and how does brahminized or hindu india deal with all those problems? tell itself that those problems are smaller than, say, the 'telangana' problem.

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.

telangani steel

Bangalore: Call it the search for the leadership particle. What was the magic behind Tipu Sultan’s sword? How was it crafted from the earth?

Researchers from Bangalore-based National Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) and UK’s Exeter University are tracing the origins of the metal used to make the Sultan’s sword, which was known for its toughness due to high carbon content.

Wootz steel, an exceptional iron ore grade which was first made in South India around 300 BC, is said to have originated in Telangana, between Hyderabad and Nizamabad.

“The high carbon content, which provides extra strength to the metal, was exported to Europe in the 17th century from Telangana. However, the production and technology have died down in the area. Our research is an attempt to revive ancient Indian metallurgy,” says the lead investigator, Sharada Srinivasan, who is also an NIAS faculty member.

The team has already interviewed traditional blacksmiths and the descendants of the last smelters of the region.

Wootz steel is the primary component of Damascan steel which was used to make the popular Damascus swords. Syrian blacksmiths used wootz steel slabs to produce extraordinary steel weaponry during the middle ages.

not just tipu, saladin too probably used a sword made with telangani steel. think of that. why didn't the professors think of it? telangani steel industry collapsed because of the andhraite rule, obviously.

sharad yadav typifies all obcs....?

neerja chowdhury mulling over the hindu women's reservations bill, in the indian express:

It goes without saying that if an OBC male can win from a constituency because of a combination of caste and other alliances at the ground level, the party should be able to get an OBC woman elected for the same reason, if that constituency becomes reserved. There is little chance of a parkati urban woman from Delhi or Mumbai winning from Mainpuri or Madhepura.

can't decide which one among those lines, thoughts, is the least offensive.

politics is so impure

k.g.kannabiran on the demand for a telangana state:

THE Telangana people’s demand for a separate State is a very constitutional one.

true. it is also relevant here to refer to what dr.ambedkar had to say about the insertion of the article 3:

Article 3 of the Constitution gives power to Parliament to create new States. This was done because there was no time to reorganize the States on linguistic basis for which there was a great demand.

back to kannabiran's article:

Very often public disorder is caused by bad governance and the movement for a separate Telangana was the direct consequence of flagrant and culpable indifference to Article 38 (2) which reads: ``The State shall, in particular, strive to minimize inequalities of status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals, but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations.’’ Failure to perform this obligation for over a period of sixty years gives us the right to ask for a separate State. Telangana has again raised the issue of rethinking a federal structure that would be manageable.

the people of telangana hadn't judged the governance in andhra pradesh through fifteen elections since 1956, correctly.

Article 3 of the Constitution of India provides for the formation of a separate State. The process has to be initiated by public demand. Now that there is a demand that formation of Telangana State be conceded -- and there is enough evidence on the ground that this is necessary -- the rest of the administrative processes can be dealt with by the Committee headed by Justice Srikrishna.

again, the people aren't the right judge of what is 'public demand' in telangana. only the separatists are.

We need to question the terms of reference set out for the committee, as it is not in order for the Government to ask the committee to go into the feasibility of a separate State. The constitution of the committee itself is recognition of the fact that the demand for Telangana is a legitimate one. Had this not been the case, this struggle would have been suppressed and ignored like other mass struggles. Paradoxically, although this struggle has been violently suppressed, it has not been possible for the government to ignore it. And this points to the recognition of legitimacy in the demand for a separate Telangana by the State.

there were around a hundred suicide attempts during the first anti-mandal agitation. a mass struggle?

In anticipation of situations where public demand might force re-examination of governance, the Forty-Second Constitutional Amendment introduced Part IV A, setting out the Fundamental Duties of Citizens, which, like the Directives, while not enforceable in courts, cannot be ignored in governance either.

In assessing the conduct of citizens and in assessing the character of the claims of citizens, the Fundamental Duties set down the permissible limits of governance and citizens’ claims. Such assessments lead to the evolution of constitutional culture.

Article 51 A (e) of the Constitution reads: ``To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people in India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities.’’ Large States contain large pockets of backward regions, which are largely neglected and do not receive the attention they are entitled to under the equality code of the Constitution.

kannabiran seems to have forgotten that the separatists have mostly shifted gear now: their demand for a separate telangana now harps on the theme of 'self-respect' and not 'backwardness'.

In all these years of the Constitution, we have not developed a constitutional morality or culture that enables us to act effectively on issues of plural societies that confront us from time to time.
The failure to comprehend the reasons for a separate State for Telangana may be attributed to the failure to understand the workings of plural governance.

Although the State of Andhra Pradesh was formed in 1953 on linguistic grounds, one of the principal grounds for a demand for a separate State was the uneven development of the Andhra region in relation to the Tamil region. This was done without the matter being referred to a States Reorganization Commission, which came into being after the Andhra State was formed.

The resistance of the government to conceding the demand for a separate state of Telangana raises for consideration the issue of citizenship and the rights that arise from it. We must remind ourselves that the inauguration of the Constitution represents the transition of Indian people from subjects to citizens who bear rights, vote and voice.

again, it wasn't the citizens of telangana who voiced their opinions in the last 15 elections?

another lawyerly voice, like this one. and in all these lawyerly voices, and in the professorial voices, and in the voices of the many rights' activists, you notice a barely concealed patronizing air, directed towards those among the great unwashed who commit the cardinal sin of voting, on the one hand, and a not so barely concealed contempt for those who get elected. the upper caste, educated middle classes of india grow more and more intolerant towards elections and politicians as yadav after yadav, or mayawati after paswan begin to claim more and more political space. politics is becoming so impure!

sad that kannabiran chooses to make this purely legalistic argument. like so many of the other, but much less credible, supporters of separation.

'they're asking for a separate state, not a separate country'

despite having a 'distinct' culture, as you're told in almost all the op-ed columns you'd read on the subject? why?

have been reading another article, by kalpana kannabiran and others ('On the Telangana Trail'), which tries to produce a sickeningly sweet account of how homogeneous telangana is, across social and religious divides, and how unitedly every telangani heart beats for telangana. yes, you'll also find lots of references to telangana's 'distinct' and 'composite' culture in the article. how can a culture remain 'distinct' and 'composite' at the same time? and what is it 'distinct' from? from other cultures in the neighbourhood? like the kannadiga, marathi cultures or only from rayalaseema and andhra cultures? or from the one 'national' culture the rest of india is supposed to harbour?

one of the telangana theorists, uppunoothala purushottam reddy of the congress, proposes this formulation: 'localisation is a cure for globalization'.

now, too many supporters of the telangana agitation, like ms.kannabiran, support it on the grounds that it is a 'democratic' movement, that it challenges the onslaught of liberalization and globalization etc. it's another matter that most of the political forces, the agitating students and intellectuals now spearheading the movement had long ago abandoned a demand for a 'democratic' telangana. all they want is a geographic telangana, which would yield not an inch of adivasi land to the adivasis, or upper caste benami landholdings to the dalits. nor concede any extra legislative representation to the obcs or the muslims.

is 'localisation is a cure for globalization'? globalization is a policy-philosophy of the ruling classes of india, cutting across political party lines. a telangani state can't change federal policy. don't these theorists know that? they do, of course.

from a certain perspective, it seems very clear to me that the problem is indianization or hinduization, not globalization. liberals like kalpana kannabiran and the sangh parivar, both supporters of telangana, share a vision of india that is upper caste hindu. for them, india is a readymade nation. for people like dr.ambedkar, it was a nation that had to be made.

how is hinduization a problem? this latest article by kancha ilaiah offers some clues:

I was shocked when one activist quoted a United Nations report stating that the average lifespan of tribals who live in those areas is just 40 years while the lifespan of people who live in the plains is 60 years. Their education levels are the lowest in the state and employment rate is also abysmally low. Their food consumption levels are worse than that of any dalit or other backward class (OBC) community of the state.

The Gond, Koya and Konda Reddy tribes were also finding it difficult to compete for their quota with the Lamabadas, who are plain tribes. They made all of us feel that 60 years of Samaikhya Andhra and democratic governance had done nothing for them. Hence, a separate statehood for them was presented as the best solution.

They are now planning to place their demand before the Srikrishna Committee and were asking our moral support.

Most of the upper caste Telangana leaders were of the view that those who live in the region should support Telangana and no other issue of caste, tribe, gender or exploitation should figure in the debate in any form. They are actually bent upon killing all other form of consciousness that exists in Telangana region and once the separate state is formed they would assume power and suppress other struggles for equality and improvement of life.

Many OBCs, Scheduled Castes and some Scheduled Tribes have been drawn into their fold because regional movements allow such space. But this has killed other modes of human consciousness.

for the congressi nationalists, and their marxist cousins, and the sangh parivar, linguistic identities are problems ('fissiparous tendencies' as they're often referred to in the mainstream media), that have to be 'solved'. so are caste and religion based identities. those are 'consciousnesses' which challenge the class based worldview of the liberals and the manuvaad of the parivar.

the movement for a separate telangana is neither a movement, as in a movement towards social progress, nor an agitation, a shaking up of a stratified society, but a bargaining ploy of the upper caste elites of the region. they wish to gain entry into the central elite of 'indians', or hindus. those who represent the essence of indianness, transcending language and caste (because most of them are from the upper castes, and hence above caste, and because they speak english or a sanskritised hindi, or both or a combination of both power languages) which has grown to the size of nearly half the population of urban india since independence. why do these elites, who have great contempt for lower class maharashtrians or kannadigas participating in sons-of-soil movements in mumbai or bengaluru, look upon the telangana separatists, using much more objectionable methods of harassing 'outsiders', with great respect and even affection? because all the separatists in telangana, i mean the most articulate and powerful among them, are asking for is an adjustment, an accommodation, and not anything resembling comprehensive structural change. they have neither the desire nor the courage to ask for real autonomy.

congress mp accuses congressmen of stoking riots in hyderabad

madhu yaskhi, congress mp from nizamabad, says congressmen from andhra-rayalaseema are behind the communal disturbances, which started last saturday, in the old city of hyderabad. why? the instigators, according to yaskhi, wish to displace the congress chief minister, and to portray the separatist agitation in a bad light. how did the riots start?

they started on saturday when some sections from a huge procession of hindu 'devotees' tried to 'replace green flags with saffron ones' while passing through muslim neighbourhoods. the sangh parivar was very obviously a part of whatever happened on saturday. that incident, and whatever other organized, as the police say, incidents of violence it has triggered since saturday: who, apart from the usual suspects like the parivar, thought up all the muky stratagems, and orchestrated the unfolding of all those incidents? are congressmen among the plotters and instigators?

since the late 70s, congressmen, of one faction or the other, have always needed riots in hyderabad to help them catch their 'high command's' attention. to displace this leader or that, and promote this dissident or that. this happened between 1978-82, when the city was rocked by long periods of riots and chief ministers had to be replaced every 18 months or so, and most notably in 1990 when y.s.rajashekhar reddy, a kind of permanent dissident then, reportedly played a big part in stoking riots so that chenna reddy, the chief minister, could be dislodged.

so both the hindu parties, the congress and the parivar could be involved. and as madhu yaskhi says, it could be congressmen from rayalaseema-andhra who are involved. and it could also be congressmen from telangana. muslims were attacked and their homes burnt down in a village in nizamabad a few weeks ago for refusing to join a separatists' rally. that village falls in yaskhi's own constituency: he doesn't seem to have too many ideas about who beat up the villagers and burnt their homes in his own constituency, but seems quite sure about what's happening in hyderabad.

the majlis, the most popular party in the old city of hyderabad, hasn't been too keen on the idea of a separate telangana. and muslims and the rest of the population in hyderabad haven't been half as enthusiastic as people in a few select districts in north telangana.

so, are the riots tied to the ongoing agitation for telangana? or to internal power struggles in the congress? if the choice is limited to those two options, i'd go for the second option, but i wouldn't rule out the first option totally. nobody knows for sure how the congress functions, or how congressmen function. madhu yaskhi himself is a very good illustration of how impossible it is to understand how the congress functions. a lawyer who worked with indian immigrants in the u.s., for nearly two decades, he suddenly landed the congress ticket for the nizamabad lok sabha constituency in the 2004 general elections, scoring over several very senior aspirants. how? well, he had money to spend, his detractors in the congress say.

the congress can't explain now why it took up the 'cause' of telangana in 1969, or why it dumped it in 1970. or why it took it up again 1999 and why it dumped it again in 2009. but madhu yaskhi jumps to definite conclusions, and makes definite accusations against his own partymen, barely two days after the disturbances started: could someone in the congress please explain what's happening, at least now? or ask its members to control their irresponsible urge to score points on every kind of occasion?

politics, divorced from logic

one of the many conflicting arguments of the separatists is that a separate telangana is a 'purely administrative issue' ('paripaalana paramaina ansham'), and its opponents shouldn't make such a fuss about it. another imaginary conversation between a separatist, 'q', and ordinary citizen 'a' (read the first here):

a: if it was only an administrative issue, why did you have to make such a fuss about it in the first place (asking andhraites to 'bhaago')?
q: because the andhraites have been blocking it for the last forty years or sixty years or 2,000 years.
a: why have the andhraites been blocking it for so many years?
q: because they want to continue to steal telangani jobs, resources, funds.
a: but why are you calling this a purely administrative issue then?
q: because the andhraites refuse to accept the fact that they've been stealing anything.
a: it isn't a purely administrative issue, then?
q: it is a purely administrative issue but the andhraites are making a big fuss about it.
a: again, why are the andhraites making a big fuss about it?
q: because they want to protect their properties, investments here.
a: the separatists will harm their properties, interests?
q: of course not. in fact, they will be welcomed with a red carpet in the new telangana state.
a: then why are they blocking the formation of the new state?
q: because they want to continue to steal telangani jobs, resources, funds.
a: not because they're scared about their interests, properties?
q: no, this is a purely administrative issue.
a: it's not about exploitation, then?
q: it is about exploitation because they've been stealing telangani jobs, resources, funds.
a: that doesn't seem to make it a purely administrative issue.
q: it is. telanganis want an administration free of exploitation by andhraites.
a: well, exploitation has to be proven with facts, figures.
q: the andhraites are cooking up all kinds of wrong figures.
a: that has to be proven too.
q: why? this is a purely administrative issue.
a: it isn't about exploitation?
q: it is about self-respect. we want the andhraites to respect our presentation of facts and figures which prove that they're thieves.
a: how can they admit that they're thieves?
q: that's the problem with them. no respect for our culture.
a: so, this is a cultural issue?
q: no, it is about self-rule, about administrative convenience.
a: why aren't the andhraites accepting the fact that it is about administrative convenience?
q: because they're scared about their share of waters from the krishna, godavari.
a: should they be scared?
q: absolutely not. there are tribunals for that, we don't want a drop from their share.
a: why aren't they accepting that?
q: it's only a few among them who are raising all these doubts, fears.
a: who are they?
q: big capitalists. they've interests, properties in hyderabad.
a: should they be scared about their interests, properties?
q: no. our laws offer them all protection.
a: why don't they believe you?
q: it is a cultural issue. they've no respect for our word. not even our language.
a: they don't speak your language?
q: our language is different.
a: you're demanding a separate state on linguistic grounds?
q: no, we're demanding a separate state on administrative grounds.
a: so, what were all the agitations, the rallies, the social boycotts, the dharnas, raids and gheraos about? where was the need to ask the andhraites to 'bhaago'?
q: because they exploit us.
a: why don't you prove it with facts, figures?
q: where is the need to prove it? the centre should realize that this is a political issue.
a: you mean political decisions should not be taken on the basis of facts, figures? on the basis of ground realities?
q: we've proven that the andhraites have been stealing telangani jobs, resources, funds.
a: they're disputing those facts, figures.
q: don't see why they are making such a big fuss about it. this is like a marriage, see? can't a wife get out of one if she feels she is being exploited?
a: yes, sure.
q: so, why can't we part like brothers?
a: you were talking about a marriage. exploitation has to be proved when asking for a divorce.
q: this isn't exactly like a marriage.. it's like a family, you know? don't brothers go their separate ways in a joint family?
a: yes, they do. they don't even need to file for a divorce.
q: that's what i mean.
a: so, this is not a marital issue but an issue between brothers?
q: yeah. like brothers splitting.
a: then why did you need to make a big issue about discrimination, colonization, loot etc?
q: well, we want to split because we've been exploited.
a: that makes it a racial issue. of one race exploiting another. why don't you go to the u.n.,?
q: we didn't talk of all andhraites, only a few among them. it's not a racial conflict, jaati yuddham.
a: let me get this right. it's not a conflict between all telangani brothers and all andhra brothers?
q: no. it's a conflict between all telangani brothers and a few andhra brothers.
a: why did you say: 'andhra waley bhaago' then? why didn't you name the few exploiting andhra brothers instead of asking them all to run?
q: look, this is a purely administrative issue. you're trying to make it racial issue.
a: like creating a new district?
q: yeah.
a: you could've made representations to the central government then.
q: haha.. governments don't respond to simple petitions.
a: you said it's a purely administrative issue, so you've to wait for the administration to react.
q: we waited for nearly 10 years until december 9th, 2009. the central government responded positively but the andhraites lobbied hard and the centre went back on its word.
a: why did the andhraites object if it's only an administrative issue?
q: for the last time: because they want to continue to steal telangani jobs, resources, funds.
a: is that why you had to wait for ten long years? because you had to drive home the point that the andhraites were stealing telangani jobs, resources, funds?
q: yes.
a: that means the central government will have to look into all those issues, right?
q: why? this is a political issue.
a: because you raised concerns about exploitation?
q: yeah.
a: because you explained how the exploitation happened: how telangani jobs, resources, funds were stolen?
q: exactly.
a: and you pointed out how all this amounted to 'discrimination'?
q: and colonization.
a: you've expressed serious cultural, racial, economic, social concerns.
q: and our democratic aspirations.
a: but now you want everyone, including the andhraites, to forget all your efforts to raise those issues, and not probe them or dispute your claims.
q: and help the central government to take a 'political' decision to create a new administrative unit.
a: so, why did you raise all those concerns in the first place?
q: because we wanted to make sure people understood that this is a purely administrative issue.
a: what..or which people?
q: the andhraites.
a: but you've been talking about discrimination, exploitation, neglect etc?
q: that was for telanganis, and other indians. so that pressure on the central government would keep increasing. we didn't want the andhraites to listen in, that wasn't for their consumption.
a: but you asked the andhraites to 'bhaago'. also called them 'colonizers', 'thieves' and lots of other names.
q: would the media listen to us, give us any space if we couldn't raise temperatures everywhere?
a: i keep forgetting what this issue is all about.
q: it is a purely administrative issue.
a: you mean you wish to grab the administration?
q: this is a people's movement, the politicians do not control it.
a: but you depend on the politicians at the centre for a solution.
q: yes, politicians should listen to the people.
a: are the andhra politicians listening to their people?
q: they're misleading their people.
a: about what?
q: the people are being told how separation is not a purely administrative issue.
a: but do the people in telangana believe it's a purely administrative issue?
q: we don't mislead our people. we tell them it's a 'brathuku poraTam', a struggle for survival.
a: for the andhraites, it's a purely administrative issue because they'll lose nothing, and for the telanganis it's not a purely administrative issue. why?
q: because they'll gain a lot from it.
a: like what?
q: jobs, resources, funds for development.
a: jobs, resources, funds which are being stolen by the andhraites now?
q: yes.
a: if the andhraites will lose nothing, neither any jobs nor any resources and funds from separation, then how will the telanganis gain anything from it?

this conversation could go on forever, and the contradictions would keep on piling up. had accidentally posted an unedited version yesterday, but i don't think this updated version will help you understand the separatists' logic, as seen from my point of view, any better.

the history of all hitherto unexciting society...

nice to be around when history is being made:

One is witnessing the process of ‘Telangana’ itself acquiring a history, identity and cultural integrity. Dalits, a strong presence in several forums, are contending that Telangana’s culture is a ‘Sabbanda culture’ that is predominantly non-Sanskritic or un-Hindu.

or made up:

Telangana region was mentioned in the Mahabharata as the Telinga Kingdom which said to be inhabited by the tribe known as Telavana and said to have fought on the Pandava side in the great war of Mahabharata. It is also evident from the fact that there is Pandavula Guhalu in warangal district (wherein Pandavas spent their life in exile (Lakkha Gruham))

And, in Treta yuga, it is believed that Lord Sri Rama along with his consort Sita Devi and brother Lakshmana, spent their life in exile at Parnashala on the banks of Godavari river which is about 25 km from Bhadrachalam in Khammam District of Telangana.

or being designed: discover how un-hindu or non-sanskritic telangana thalli ('mother telangana') is, in the words of her creator, here. if you can't read telugu, don't worry. you can feast your eyes on the telangani diamond 'koh-i-noor' in the goddess' crown.

dr.ambedkar on official language, linguistic states, surpluses, resources and 'exploitation'

a few points in the statement 'Maharashtra as a Linguistic Province' submitted by dr.ambedkar to the 'Linguistic Provinces Commission' or Dar Commission in 1948 that caught my eye:

The solution of the difficulties

9. If the problem must be dealt with immediately what is to be the solution ? As has already been pointed out, the solution must satisfy two conditions. While accepting the principle of Linguistic Provinces it must provide against the break-up of India's unity. My solution of the problem therefore is that, while accepting the demand for the re-constitution of Provinces on linguistic basis, the constitution should provide that the official language of every Province shall be the same as the official language of the Central Government. It is only on that footing that I am prepared to accept the demand for Linguistic Provinces.

10. l am aware of the fact that my suggestion runs counter to the conception of Linguistic Provinces which is in vogue. It is that the language of the Province shall be its official language. I have no objection to Linguistic Provinces. But I have the strongest objection to the language of the Province being made its official language where it happens to be different from the official language of the Centre. My objection is based on the following considerations:

(1) The idea of having a Linguistic Province has nothing to do with the question of what should be its official language. By a Linguistic Province, I mean a Province which by the social composition of its population is homogeneous and therefore more suited for the realisation of those social ends which a democratic Government must fulfil. In my view, a Linguistic Province has nothing to do with the language of the Province. In the scheme of Linguistic Provinces, language has necessarily to play its part. But its part can be limited to the creation of the Province, i.e., for demarcation of the boundaries of the Province. There is no categorical imperative in the scheme of Linguistic Provinces which compels us to make the language of the Province its official language. Nor is it necessary, for sustaining the cultural unity of the Province, to make the language of the Province its official language. For, the cultural unity of the Province, which already exists, is capable of being sustained by factors other than language such as common historic tradition, community of social customs, etc. To sustain Provincial cultural unity which already exists it does not require the use of the Provincial language for official purposes. Fortunately for the Provincialists there is no fear of a Maharashtrian not remaining a Maharashtrian because he spoke any other language. So also there is no fear of a Tamilian or an Andhra or a Bengali ceasing to be a Tamilian, Andhra or Bengali if he spoke any other language than his own mother-tongue. [emphasis mine].

later, in 1955, in his 'Thoughts on Linguistic States' dr.ambedkar had recommended that Hindi be made the official language of all states. but what he said in 1948, that the official language of a state should be different from the provincial language, should that principle have been applied to hindi speaking states too? dr.ambedkar didn't miss the provincialism or chauvinism of the hindi speaking states, and i feel he'd have talked more about it later, after the drive to impose hindi on the south in the 1960s by the central government. unfortunately, he passed away soon after the publication of his 'Thoughts on Linguistic States'. would he have stressed on the need to impose a language different from hindi as the official language of the hindi speaking states if he had lived into the sixties?

again, from his statement to the Linguistic Provinces Commission:

SHOULD THE MAHARASHTRA PROVINCE BE FEDERAL OR UNITARY?

20. I will now turn to what are known to be points on which there is controversy. There is no controversy regarding the unification of Maharashtra into one Province. The controversy relates to the way it should he brought about. One view is that the new Maharashtra Province should be a unitary Province, with a single legislature and a single executive. The other view is that Maharashtra should be a Federation of two sub-provinces, one sub-province to consist of the Marathi-speaking districts of the Bombay Presidency and the other of the Marathi-speaking districts of the present Province of the Central Provinces and Berar. The idea of creating sub-Provinces has originated from the spokesmen of the Marathi-speaking districts of Central Provinces and Berar. I am satisfied that it is only the wish of a few high-caste politicians who feel that in a unified Maharashtra their political careers will come to an end. It has no backing from the people of e fact that it gives me an opportunity to enunciate what I regard as a very vital principal. When it is decided to create a Linguistic Province, I am definitely of opinion that all areas which are contiguous and which speak the same language should be forced to come into it. There should be no room for choice nor for self-determination. Every attempt must be made to create larger provincial units. Smaller provincial units will be a perpetual burden in normal times and a source of weakness in an emergency. Such a situation must be avoided. That is why I insist that all parts of Maharashtra should be merged together in a single province. [emphasis mine].

that's quite clear. in 1948, dr.ambedkar was clearly in favour of 'all areas which are contiguous and which speak the same language should be forced' into a single province. which means he wouldn't have supported the idea of a separate telangana in 1948.

would he have supported telangana in 1955, when he wrote his 'Thoughts on Linguistic States'? he was more concerned with the smaller size of the southern states on an average, in terms of population, in relation to northern states.

more from his statement to the Linguistic Provinces Commission:

44. Secondly, the surplus from Bombay is not consumed by Maharashtra alone but is consumed by the whole of India. The proceeds of the Income-tax, Super-tax, etc. which Bombay pays to the Central Government are all spent by the Central Government for all-India purposes and is shared by all other Provinces. To Prof. Vakil it does not matter if the surplus of Bombay is eaten up by United Provinces, Bihar, Assam, Orissa, West Bengal, East Punjab and Madras. What he objects to is Maharashtra getting any part of it. This is not an argument. It is only an exhibition of his hatred for Maharashtrians. [emphasis mine].

45. Granting that, Bombay was made into a separate Province, what I don't understand is how Prof. Vakil is going to prevent Maharashtra from getting share of Bombay surplus revenue. Even if Bombay is made separate Province, Bombay will have to pay income-tax, super-tax, etc. and surely Maharashtra will get a part of the revenue paid by Bombay to the Centre either directly or indirectly. As I have said the argument has in it more malice than substance.

how about the revenue surpluses from hyderabad which the telangani separatists claim are being used to fund development in other regions? following dr.ambedkar's common sensical logic, one could say: the surplus from hyderabad is not consumed by andhra pradesh alone but is consumed by the whole of India. and: granting that, hyderabad goes with a new telangana state, what i don't understand is how the separatists are going to prevent andhra-rayalaseema from getting a share of hyderabad's surplus revenue?

finally, one last point from the statement:

59. To reconstitute Provinces on economic basis—which is what is meant by rational basis—appears more scientific than reconstituting them on linguistic basis. However, unscientific linguistic reorganization of Provinces I cannot see how they can come in the way of rational utilization of economic resources of India. Provincial boundaries are only administrative boundaries. They do not raise economic barriers for the proper utilization of economic resources. If the position was that the resources contained within a Linguistic Province must only be explained by the people of the Province and no other than it could no doubt be said that the scheme of Linguistic Provinces was mischievous. But such is not the case. So long as Linguistic Provinces are not allowed to put a ban on the exploitation of the resources of the people by any body capably of wishing to exploit them a Linguistic Province will yield all the advantages of a rationally planned Province. [emphasis mine].

so, what would dr. ambedkar have said about all the noise being made by the separatists that telangani resources, like coal from singareni, are being 'exploited' by people from andhra-rayalaseema? as you can see, dr. ambedkar would have approved of the 'rational exploitation' of resources. if the rest of india can exploit resources from bombay high, or jharkhand or assam, why should there be any objection to resources from telangana being used to meet power needs in andhra-rayalaseema? they're not being 'stolen', they're being sold. just as they're being sold to power plants in karnataka, maharashtra and other parts of the country.

how i wish the separatists would read dr. ambedkar's views with open eyes, and minds, before putting words into his mouth!!

join the 'mainstream'?

maya mirchandani, of ndtv, was born in 'Niloufer Hospital in Lakdi ka Pul, bed fee Rs 2/', around forty years ago. very thought-provoking :

Why am I wasting precious time saying all this? Because here lies the root of my total confusion over what should happen to Hyderabad, the city of my birth. Like me, Hyderabad too has multiple identities, cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic. And for much of its 420-year-old history, it's an idea that has been coveted and fought over by each one of its communities. While its more recent, post independence history is chequered with communal riots, and pro-Telangana protests, its early history is inextricably tied to the Qutb Shahi dynasty. Until some years ago, driving to Gachi Bowli from Mehdipatnam on the old Bangalore road, you could still see their tombs rise above the landscape. They are now being restored with funds from Iran- the spiritual and cultural fount for the city's Shia Muslims, many of whom are more or less confined to the old city, divided from the new by the natural boundary of the Musi River. A friend once said to me Hyderabad's communal cartography is evident, the lines between Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods absolute dividers, sometimes even referred to as "sarhad" or border. The same friend, a Hyderabadi Shia, a Left leaning management professor and itinerant poet, asked me last week what the creation of the state of Telangana would do to his identity.

The Hindus in Hyderabad are an equally motley lot. Conservative, Andhras who dominate the political landscape, and much of the big industry - Film, Pharmaceuticals, Real Estate, for example. And not to forget the Marwaris- who came in to trade in gems and jewels for the Nizams, and like the Sindhis have an entrepreneurial spirit that allows them to call anyplace home. Culturally completely different from each other, and I am not even going to get into the caste and class break ups within the different communities.

Add to this mix now, a third, even newer Hyderabad. HITEC city. Chandrababu Naidu's dream, of making it the Dubai of South India, this part of the city, spreading outwards even beyond Jubilee Hills (once the far end of town), has over the last decade become the city's showcase, with several visiting foreign dignitaries ensuring they make a pit stop at one of the symbols of India's emerging economy.

But this has only complicated Hyderabad's identity further. The massive influx of dollars during the IT, BPO boom has brought in a new transitory white collar population of foreigners, ex-pats, westernized outsiders with their swank cars, boutiques and fancy mansions right beside the old Irani hotels and crumbling bungalows of my grandparents era. They too are now an integral, inextricable part of Hyderabad's social fabric.

As the center's decision to create a new state of Telangana now focuses on the future of Hyderabad, since the city comes bang in the middle of its districts, the debate ranges from identity to economics. Hyderabad is Telangana's cash cow. The creation of a new state will ensure the wealth it generates is distributed among what are today Andhra Pradesh's poorest districts. But Hyderabad is also organically linked with the rest of Andhra Pradesh, as Andhras from Coastal Districts (like my mother's family) and Rayalseema made the inland capital their home generations ago. Are they now being told they don't belong?

Similarly, for the non-Telugu communities of Hyderabad- are they now being told they don't belong either?

one of the vilest remarks i've read recently, at one of the many separatist sites, was that muslims of hyderabad have stayed 'aloof' from the 'mainstream' (with the obvious hint that that's probably the reason why they aren't supporting separation). what is the 'mainstream'? another post from the google group which is 'tracking telangana' would give you an idea about what or who the 'mainstream' is:

Last Thursday (5th March), when Kaneez and I took an auto to go to Moghalpura near Charminar from Anveshi office, I got my first ‘class’ on Telangana from an auto-driver. In his late 20s he spoke in chaste Dakhani.

‘Madam, do you think Telangana will be given?’, he started the conversation.

‘We don’t know. What do you think?’, we asked him in turn.

chaste dakhani? there used to be a time when upper caste hindus would speak only chaste urdu with the lower classes, and also sometimes with their own womenfolk, knowing fully well that they couldn't respond in the same language, just to show them their place. dakhani, or 'unchaste' urdu if you like, evolved out of the collaborative efforts of the lower classes, hindu and muslim, to live upto their masters' standards of purity. but their masters only saw it as another illustration of their impurity. is dakhani mainstream now? you might find an answer at the end of the interrupted conversation:

“What do you think of MIM’s stand on Telangana?” (both of us assuming he is a Muslim, as he was speaking pure Dakhani, wearing surma and referred to Hindus as Telugus)

“They say, if we support Telangana, what will happen to Muslims in Andhra area? They should learn the problems of the people, talk to them, and then take a stand. Why do they go on taking the same old stand? May be they will say - give us the city and go!”

“But that will mean that they will lose power, isn’t it? If the city becomes Union territory, they won’t get anything!”

“I don’t know why they are taking that stand, madam. Probably they also don’t speak to the people, like all political parties..I talked too much. I never spoke to any passenger like this”.

Before getting off, we couldn’t resist asking his name. “Rajesh” he replied shyly.

who's 'mainstream'? the people 'tracking telangana', or the poor muslim driver who turned into an obviously 'impure' hindu? people of the second kind seem to be in a majority, broken up into many minorities like maya mirchandani. but they should join the 'mainstream', if they wish to be paid, i guess. such a foul term.