The Telangana separate state motion, which started in early 1950, has its roots within the armed battle waged by farmers and other people of the Telangana area which had been underneath the Nizam-ruled Hyderabad princely state.
Whereas India obtained Independence from the British in August 1947, the final Nizam held on to his Hyderabad princely state – which included 9 present-day districts of Telangana, 4 districts of Karnataka’s Gulbarga area, and 4 districts of Maharashtra’s Aurangabad area – for practically 13 extra months. The final Nizam tried to keep up management over his fiefdom utilizing his non-public militia referred to as “Razakars”, which was based in 1938 to keep up legislation and order however was a dreaded organisation underneath Syed Mohammed Qasim Razvi by 1947. The Razakar militia unleashed terror within the area by torturing and killing dissidents or anybody who supported them or spoke towards the Nizam, indulged in large-scale rape and arson, and looting of properties.
In response to Telangana residents from that interval, Razvi wielded a lot affect on the final Nizam that it led to the latter delaying the merger of Hyderabad princely state with the Indian Union. As Razakars clamped down on harmless households, the Telangana peasants launched an armed battle to liberate the area from them.
Historians state that by the point the Central authorities launched a army operation “Operation Polo’’ in September 1948 to safe the state’s merger with India, a majority of the Telangana inhabitants felt that the area ought to be a separate state.
In 1952, the primary elected chief minister of the erstwhile Hyderabad state, Burgula Ramakrishna Rao, confronted some protests in search of correct illustration of the Telagana individuals in his authorities. Comparable protests had been additionally held to press for a separate state.
In August 1953, the Centre appointed the States Reorganisation Fee (SRC) headed by Fazal Ali, Kavalam Madhava Pannikkar and H N Kunzru to look at the calls for for separate states in several components of the nation.
A number of individuals together with Prof Kothapalli Jayashankar, a Telangana ideologue, and Konda Venkat Ranga Reddy, one of many leaders of the armed battle, gave memorandums to the SRC, demanding that the area ought to be declared a separate state. Jayashankar and Reddy gave prolonged accounts of the social, financial, and cultural historical past of Telangana, in addition to the pure sources and geographic justification for a separate state.
Seven years after the area was liberated from the Nizam, in September 1955, the SRC submitted its report back to the Centre, recommending the formation of a separate Telangana state for 5 years with provision to merge it with Andhra state after the 1961 elections. Because the Centre didn’t take any motion, the Telangana individuals held protests for practically a 12 months. Politicians and elected members of Hyderabad state, together with Kanada and Marathi MLAs, had been divided over the difficulty of merger with Andhra. The Congress opposed the merger whereas the Communists supported it as a result of it will have strengthened them within the mixed state. Political leaders from Andhra additionally lobbied for the merger and in February 1956 the choice was taken to merge Telangana with Andhra Pradesh.
The leaders from each areas wrote and signed the Gents’s Settlement, which supplied safeguards towards the exploitation of and discrimination towards Telangana by the Authorities of Andhra Pradesh. On November 1, 1956, the Centre established the unified Andhra Pradesh – the Telugu-speaking areas had been merged with Andhra Pradesh, the Marathi talking areas with Bombay state, and Kannada talking areas with Mysore state.
Nonetheless, allegations of discrimination towards Telangana by the Andhra leaders began nearly instantly leading to protests and agitations. Political leaders, intellectuals, activists and freedom fighters felt that the Telangana individuals confronted discrimination in authorities jobs, schooling and medical amenities, public spending and civic infrastructure. Though “Mulki (locals)” guidelines had been in place to make sure that the natives didn’t face issues in getting authorities jobs, the Telangana individuals felt that they had been “violated” and that folks from the Andhra area who migrated to Hyderabad had been most well-liked as they grew to become “Mulkis’’ after dwelling there for 15 years.
The simmering anger and dissent exploded into the primary main separate state agitation in January 1969. It began when a person sat on an indefinite quick at Khammam railway station demanding a separate state of Telangana. College students and civil society organisations began related protests elsewhere and shortly the protests intensified throughout the Telangana area. Police opened fireplace throughout incidents of arson ensuing within the dying of 369 college students, which fuelled the agitation.
The protests additionally divided the then ruling Congress with a number of leaders popping out in help of a separate Telangana state. M Chenna Reddy first broke ranks with the Congress and together with different dissidents fashioned the Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS), which spearheaded the separate statehood agitation attracting primarily the youth as its help base. Though the TPS obtained some electoral successes, its leaders steadily gave up on the separate state demand because the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi didn’t present inclination in direction of addressing it, particularly after her social gathering gained a landslide within the March 1971 Lok Sabha elections.
The TPS ultimately merged with the Congress and the stir often known as the 1969 Telangana agitation ebbed away by 1973. Telangana’s intellectuals, activists, and political leaders continued to pitch for a separate state at numerous fora whereas highlighting the alleged discrimination the area and its individuals confronted from the governments dominated by Andhra leaders. For over twenty years since then, the Telangana motion remained dormant. In March 1982, the favored movie actor N T Rama Rao launched the Telugu Desam Celebration (TDP) invoking Telugu satisfaction, that united individuals throughout his chief ministerial tenure throughout 1983-1994.
Amid a multiplicity of opinions, there stays a view that the Telangana motion’s power obtained channelised into the Naxalite motion, which had engulfed Telangana at the moment. In 1996, Telangana activists like Akula Bhoomaiah and Belli Lalitha, who had been sympathetic to the Naxalite motion, began organising themselves and launched the Telangana Jana Sabha to revive the separate state motion. Telangana College students Entrance and Telangana Kala Samiti had been additionally fashioned at the moment with the identical goal. Nonetheless, a authorities crackdown on Maoists additionally affected these organisations which ultimately obtained defunct.
Within the late Nineteen Nineties, when the then BJP-led NDA authorities was contemplating the proposals of creation of three new states, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Uttarkhand, the saffron social gathering held its nationwide government assembly at Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh, the place it promised to additionally create a separate state of Telangana if it returned to energy. The BJP gave the slogan of “one vote, two states”, pledging that if the individuals voted for the social gathering, then Telangana could be fashioned. Nonetheless, the BJP dispensation didn’t fulfil this promise, though it created the three new states in 2000, angering not solely the Congress and TDP but additionally its Telangana leaders.
In April 2001, Okay Chandrashekar Rao, popularly often known as KCR, who was with the TDP and the Deputy Speaker within the AP Meeting at the moment, resigned, accusing social gathering chief N Chandrababu Naidu of not being critical on the Telangana statehood challenge.
KCR then fashioned the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) with the only real goal to take the Telangana statehood motion ahead. Prof Jayashankar grew to become KCR’s mentor and information as they sought to re-energise the agitation. Whereas people music and humanities had been an integral a part of Telangana society since ages, the peasant struggles, armed resistance, and the separate state motion gave a revolutionary contact to it.
Alongside the political battle for the separate state, people artists like balladeer Gummadi Vithal Rao popularly often known as Gaddar infused the agitation with soulful songs and music. He says that Telangana’s people music made unprecedented resonance amongst public since 2000 because it went together with the statehood motion.
Gaddar, sensing that the motion was being “hijacked” by the TRS which he alleged had grow to be extremely political, launched the Telangana Praja Entrance (TPF) in October 2010, aiming to unite Dalits and backward lessons and wrest management of the Telangana motion. He claimed that it was at all times confirmed that solely individuals’s actions have succeeded and never political events.
The Telangana agitation additionally made Telangana’s “Bathukamma”, a vibrant and vibrant pageant of flowers, very talked-about. It was earlier confined to villages however throughout the separate state protests girls broke into impromtu “Bathkamma” dance. Following its formation, the TRS attracted leaders and staff from throughout the political and ideological spectrum. Having been denied the separate state on many events, each underneath the Congress and the NDA governments, many disgruntled Congress, BJP, Left, TDP leaders and staff joined the TRS.
Whereas launching the TRS, KCR, in his speech, mentioned that it didn’t matter to him if its new members got here from the RSS or the RSU (Radical College students Union) supplied that they joined it with the only real intention of preventing for the separate state of Telangana.
The TRS spearheaded the Telangana motion by means of protests and agitations, at all times highlighting the alleged injustices and discrimination in direction of Telangana from the AP leaders. Nonetheless, with its electoral fortunes fluctuating it couldn’t then put satisfactory stress on the Centre.
Almost 9 years after the launch of the TRS, as protests engulfed instructional establishments within the Telangana area, some college students began dying by suicide demanding a separate state. Whereas KCR and different TRS leaders appealed to the scholars to not take the intense step, the suicide incidents stored taking place with the area turning right into a tinderbox.
On November 29, 2009, KCR began an indefinite quick demanding that the then Congress-led UPA authorities instantly desk the Telangana statehood invoice in Parliament. On December 9 night, the then Union residence Minister P Chidambaram issued a press release stating that the method of creation of Telangana state had been set in movement. Amid the celebrations the TRS softened up even because the Centre stored dragging its toes. The agitation modified arms, with the formation of the Telangana Joint Motion Committee (TJAC) headed by Prof M Kodandaram, a professor of political science at Osmania College, who stepped in when the TRS initially didn’t capitalise on the Centre’s December 2009 announcement.
The TJAC turned the agitation on its head, scaling up the protests, laying siege to Hyderabad, and utilizing techniques to convey the federal government to a halt and conserving it on the sting. Below Kodandaram’s steering, the scholars of all ages in schooling establishments united into a significant power with Osmania College because the nerve centre of the stir. The unions and associations of academics, docs, legal professionals, authorities staff, farmers, NGOs, civil society organisations, poets, and pro-Telangana teams joined a typical platform for the trigger underneath the TJAC, which subsequently launched protests just like the “Million March’’, non-cooperation by Telangana staff, pupil agitations in schools and universities, creation of district Joint Motion Committees, and laying siege to the Meeting.
The TJAC stored the pot boiling by taking out rallies with out authorities permission, at the same time as college students and protesters fought pitched battles with police and safety forces. What proved to be a turning level within the statehood battle was the launch of the Sakala Janula Samme (all peoples’ strike) marketing campaign on September 24, 2011 for 42 days, throughout which the whole lot got here to a halt in Telangana together with transport and different public companies. All of the highways within the area had been blocked and railway tracks had been jammed at a number of locations. Folks left their properties and camped and cooked and slept on the roads.
The “Million March” which was organised 3 times – on March 10, 2011, September 27, 2011 and June 19, 2013 – by the TJAC with help from the TRS, introduced lakhs of protesters to Hyderabad. The Telangana staff struck work for practically two months forgoing their salaries. Greater than 50,000 staff of the Singarenni Collieries didn’t go to work for 45 days regardless of repeated threats of pay cuts.
The Justice B N Srikrishna Committee, which was constituted to look into the separate Telangana state demand, submitted its report back to the Centre in December 2010. In its suggestions, the panel gave six choices: 1) Sustaining establishment – conserving Andhra Pradesh state as it’s with none change within the Telangana, Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra areas; 2) bifurcating Andhra Pradesh into Seemandhra and Telangana areas with each of them growing their very own capitals sooner or later of time, with Hyderabad as a Union Territory; 3) dividing Andhra Pradesh into two states – one among Rayala-Telangana with Hyderabad as its capital and second one among Coastal Andhra Pradesh; 4) dividing Andhra Pradesh into Seemandhra and Telangana with enlarged Hyderabad Metropolis as a separate UT; 5) bifurcation of the state into Telangana and Seemandhrâ as per present boundaries with Hyderabad because the capital of Telangana and a brand new capital for Seemandhra; and 6) conserving the state united and offering for creation of a statutorily empowered Telangana Regional Council for socio-economic growth and political growth of Telangana area.
All these choices recommended by the Committee had been rejected by the Telangana leaders who demanded a separate Telangana state comprising 10 districts.
Lastly, after 5 extra years of protests since Chidambaram’s December 2009 announcement, the UPA authorities ultimately tabled the AP Reorganisation Invoice, 2014 within the Lok Sabha on February 18, 2014 and on February 20 within the Rajya Sabha, passing it to carve the separate state of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh.