The late Congress chief minister, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, managed to keep the Telangana issue from boiling over through a policy of carrot and stick. TRS broke its alliance with the Congress in 2006. TRS was headed for a spilt and its members were caught in scandals and criminal cases. TRS fared poorly in the by-polls which followed the mass resignations by its MPs and MLAs. The party came a cropper again in the 2009 general elections despite its ‘opportunistic’ grand alliance with TDP and Left parties.
“He had not even mustered enough courage to contest the Greater Hyderabad civic body elections last month. But, our party arrived to his rescue and helped him rise like a phoenix from the ashes,” the Congress leader scoffs.
“The Telangana agitation in 1969 was started by the people of the region when they felt that the Andhra leaders had flouted the Gentlemen's Agreement, worked out during the merger of Andhra state and Telangana region in Hyderabad state. The supreme sacrifice of 400 glorious fighters went in vain after Telangana leaders like Marri Chenna Reddy fished in troubled waters,” Rajaiah of Telangana Writers’ Forum tells TSI. With the newly launched Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS), Reddy romped home during 1971 general elections with 10 Lok Sabha seats out of the 14 from Telangana. But TPS merged with the Congress. After assuming office of the sixth chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in March, 1978, Chenna Reddy announced that a separate Telangana was no longer an issue.
“But it was always an issue with the people of Telangana, ever since the mid-1940s,” Jayasankar, the TRS ideologue, says. According to him, “some people in the Hyderabad state under Nizam migrated to places like Nagpur and Bezwada (Vijayawada now), to get rid of the atrocities of Razakars in connivance with Nizam rulers. People in Nagpur were affectionate in providing the migrants shelter and food, whereas the ‘materialistic’ Andhras exploited them with higher rentals and high prices for commodities. They were also heckled for the language they spoke.”
Durgam Ravindar, a scholar and writer on Telangana affairs, recalls a few more bitter experiences of the people of Telangana during 1948-52, when Hyderabad state was under civil and military administrators’ rule.
“That period saw a huge influx of people of Andhra region into Telangana. They took away all the new positions. Lakhs of Andhrites migrated to Telangana occupying many positions in government offices, banks, schools, colleges, universities. A huge number of of businessmen from Andhra also arrived who had sold off their lands and assets in Andhra. They set up business in the Telangana region,” he said. When the people of Telangana realised how Andhraites were able to secure jobs using fake certificates of Mulki (local), they started a protest called ‘Gair Mulki Go Back (Non-Mulki Go Back),” he says.
Besides their own experience of marginalisation, the forewarning of the chairman of first States Reorganisation Commission (SRC), Sayyid Fazl Ali, against the merger of Andhra state and Telangana region during the mid 1950s, contributed to escalation of tensions. In the report, Fazl Ali asserts that, “educationally backward people of Telangana may be swamped and exploited by the more advanced people of the coastal areas.”
“He had not even mustered enough courage to contest the Greater Hyderabad civic body elections last month. But, our party arrived to his rescue and helped him rise like a phoenix from the ashes,” the Congress leader scoffs.
“The Telangana agitation in 1969 was started by the people of the region when they felt that the Andhra leaders had flouted the Gentlemen's Agreement, worked out during the merger of Andhra state and Telangana region in Hyderabad state. The supreme sacrifice of 400 glorious fighters went in vain after Telangana leaders like Marri Chenna Reddy fished in troubled waters,” Rajaiah of Telangana Writers’ Forum tells TSI. With the newly launched Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS), Reddy romped home during 1971 general elections with 10 Lok Sabha seats out of the 14 from Telangana. But TPS merged with the Congress. After assuming office of the sixth chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in March, 1978, Chenna Reddy announced that a separate Telangana was no longer an issue.
“But it was always an issue with the people of Telangana, ever since the mid-1940s,” Jayasankar, the TRS ideologue, says. According to him, “some people in the Hyderabad state under Nizam migrated to places like Nagpur and Bezwada (Vijayawada now), to get rid of the atrocities of Razakars in connivance with Nizam rulers. People in Nagpur were affectionate in providing the migrants shelter and food, whereas the ‘materialistic’ Andhras exploited them with higher rentals and high prices for commodities. They were also heckled for the language they spoke.”
Durgam Ravindar, a scholar and writer on Telangana affairs, recalls a few more bitter experiences of the people of Telangana during 1948-52, when Hyderabad state was under civil and military administrators’ rule.
“That period saw a huge influx of people of Andhra region into Telangana. They took away all the new positions. Lakhs of Andhrites migrated to Telangana occupying many positions in government offices, banks, schools, colleges, universities. A huge number of of businessmen from Andhra also arrived who had sold off their lands and assets in Andhra. They set up business in the Telangana region,” he said. When the people of Telangana realised how Andhraites were able to secure jobs using fake certificates of Mulki (local), they started a protest called ‘Gair Mulki Go Back (Non-Mulki Go Back),” he says.
Besides their own experience of marginalisation, the forewarning of the chairman of first States Reorganisation Commission (SRC), Sayyid Fazl Ali, against the merger of Andhra state and Telangana region during the mid 1950s, contributed to escalation of tensions. In the report, Fazl Ali asserts that, “educationally backward people of Telangana may be swamped and exploited by the more advanced people of the coastal areas.”
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