Discover Telangana

- Capt. Lingala Pandu Ranga Reddy

Indian minds could produce treatises like Vedas, Upanishads. However, they had not paid adequate attention to mundane happenings of the world. He muse of Indian History was not been presided over by Herodotus or Tacitus that’s why paucity of information is the bugbear of the Indian History. However, opposite is the true of Telangana History. We have been reading the history of Telangana written by motivated linguistic chauvinist.

More often than not all these writings are aimed at depicting Telangana region in poor light and to establish Andhra supremacy. The megalomania of Andhra’s is ubiquitous in every sphere of life. Recently Andhra Pradesh Legislative Secretariat brought out a booklet titled “Andhra Pradesh Legislature a Retrospect” for edification of Members of Legislative Assembly.

This is the Government of Andhra Pradesh’s version of the history. Naturally after a few years even scholars, educationists, thinkers and historians would regard this version as authentic. This is the case study of the booklet :

The A.P. Assembly Secretariat is willfully disseminating distorted information by rewriting history.

Firstly in page no. 12 para 3 it mentions “Meanwhile the State Reorganisation Commission under the chairmanship of Justice Fazal Ali submitted a report in 1955 and the Union Government has accepted the recommendation of State Reorganisation Commission Report.”

It is travesty of truth and preposterous to say this, the SRC had recommended for merger of Telangana with Andhra State. The SRC Page no. 107 para no. 386 succinctly and unequivocally avers :

“After all these factors taken into consideration, that it will be in the interests of Andhra as well as Telangana if, for the present, the Telangana area is constituted into a separate state, which may be known as the Hyderabad state, with provision for its unification with Andhra after general elections likely to be held in or about 1961 if by two-third majority the legislature of the residuary Hyderabad state expresses itself in favour of such unification.”

Secondly another glaring falsification of history of Telangana is in page no. 12 para 4 records “In accordance with recommendation of SRC report and keeping in view the over all support of Public the Union Government has introduced a constitutional amendment bill in the Lok Sabha to form a separate single state for Telugu speaking people by merging the Telugu speaking areas of Hyderabad state with Andhra State.”

Telangana people never wanted United Andhra Pradesh and always cherished their own Telangana state. The Government of India owing to certain constrains while accepting the SRC recommendations made two departures viz. Telangana and Vidharbha. The main reason was that if Telangana were given statehood the Nizam would continue as ‘Rajpramukh as the constitutional head of truncated Hyderabad (Telangana) state, because at the time of Hyderabad state’s merger with Indian Union the Government of India had given a written assurance to the Nizam that he would be the lifetime Rajpramukh. Hereditary appointments are against the republic spirit of the Indian constitution.

Page 25 para 93 of the SRC Report reads :
“i) Preservation and strengthening of the unity and security of India.
ii) Financial economic and administration considerations.
iii) Successful working of the National plan.
iv) Linguistics and cultural homogeneity.”

It is pertinent to make mention that Andhra Pradesh was not formed on the linguistic basis. If it were to be formed on the linguistic basis it would have got, Ganjam, Berhampur and Parlakmidi from Orissa state, Hampi (Bellary) which was capital of Vijayanagara (Telugu people) empire from Karnataka and it would not have got Tamil speaking areas of Tirupathi from Tamilnadu. It is curious to know the Andhra Maha Sabha when it was spearheading the Andhra State movement, gave a clarion call to Andhra to boycott both English textiles and Tirupathi (As it wall Tamil temple). True, people memory is proverbially short. It is also interesting to know late P. Thimma Reddy while vociferously denuding the inclusion of Bellary in Andhra Pradesh in the Andhra Assembly at Kurnool said that Rayalaseema districts were BACKward districts.

B = for Bellary
A = for Anantapur
C = for Cuddapah, Chittor
K = for Kurnool

He also said the acronym of BACKward would be real when Bellary was included. He also said that without Bellary, Rayalaseema was without head. (Discussion of the States Re-organisation bill 4th April 1956 : Vol VI pp 431). In same vein Shri Ram Chandra Reddy M.P, while discussing SR Bill in the Lok Sabha on 24-4-1956 he forcefully demanded for the inclusion of Bellary in Andhra Pradesh. He averred that “if Bellary is taken away, the portion of Rayalaseema will become not only still backward but also awkward”.

Thirdly Page 12 Para 5 of the booklet “with the enactment of the Andhra Pradesh State Act, the State of Andhra Pradesh was formed on 1st November, 1956 with Hyderabad as its capital. The emergence of Andhra Pradesh as separate state, purely on linguistic basis, is a turning point in this history of Independent India”.

Dr. B. Gopal Reddy while answering to Andhra state’s Legislative Members asserted in unequivocal terms that Andhra Pradesh was not formed on the linguistic basis. Consequently all Telugu speaking areas could not be merged in Andhra Pradesh.

Fourthly, it smacks of something like chauvinism. Here the Government of India in unequivocal terms rejected the theory of unilingual (Single) states. Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech in the Lok Sabha on states Re-organisation Bill, 1956 on 10th August 1956 said, “We do not stand for this principle of unilingualism.”

Fifthly, other glaring omissions were the very Hyderabad state’s name itself and names of it’s Chief Minister Sri B. Ram Krishna Rao and its Rajpramukh His Excellency Mr. Osman Ali Khan from the incumbency lists of Chief Minister and Governors. (Appendix II & III of the booklet Andhra Pradesh Legislature PP 38 & 39)

Lastly, another egregious howler in the booklet committed was in page 11 para 3 : “The Government of India took police action in September, 1948 and placed entire Nizam state under the military rule with major J.N. Chowdhary.”

The military officer was Major General not Major and the booklet without historical hindsight informs that the Government of India had established military rule in Hyderabad. It is totally incorrect. In a democratic country there is no room for military rule. If it were a military rule why the Government of India should refer “Operation Polo” as Police Action. It is interesting to note that the cost of Operation Polo was debited to the account of Ministry of Health of Government of India.

The booklet is deliberately demolished or distorted the identity of Telangana people. It is not out place to mention that the Telangana identity is not based on either language or religion; it is based on HISTORY. In the course of history cultural characteristics and structures are different from those in the rest of Telugu speaking areas. Telanganties instead of Telugu language cherish their HISTORY and TRADITION of cultural synthesis as their identity.

The booklet is prejudicial to the best interests of history in general and Telangana people in particular. The distortion of history could stand as paradigm for much of Andhra political life.

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