A decade after the formation of Telangana, there is a new battle around the history of the State. At the heart of it is the role of civil society and students during the movement (udyamamu) that led to the birth of Telangana. A few days ago, the history page on the government’s portal (telangana.gov.in) was pulled down by the current Congress regime. The page cannot be found now and has led to comments on social media about the erasure of Telangana’s history.
But what part of history has been erased? The emblem of the State is set to be changed. Registration initials of TS is being changed to TG, the State song is being changed as is the figure representing Telangana Talli.
“What happened in the past will not change by the way it is written about it in the present. The history of Telangana will be what it is. There are no flaws in the emblem that was adopted by the earlier government. If need be, it should be debated in the State Assembly and put to vote,” says historian Sriramoju Haragopal.
“Individual antagonism should not affect people. Making so many changes is not a good practice. Ande Sri’s anthem, which we used to play on CDs and cassettes at the height of the movement, is too long for classrooms. A shorter version would have been fine but the poet did not agree to it,” says Mr. Haragopal who lost 1.5 years of academic life due to the 1969 movement for separate Telangana.
The 1969 movement was triggered by hunger strike by Ravindranath, a job aspirant, at the Kothegudem Thermal Power Station, which started functioning in 1966. It spiralled out of control and continued till 1973, claiming 369 lives. The academic life of thousands of other students was disrupted, wrecking their careers.
The page that has disappeared after the Congress came to power in the State had 694 words for ‘Final Telangana Movement’. It lists the sequence of events from 1997 resolution of the Bharatiya Janata Party for creation of Telangana till June 2, 2014, when the State was formed.
But it leaves out any reference to the groundswell of opinion and without any reference to the efforts of the civil society, the protests, the deaths, and the role of students of Osmania University in the formation of the new State. Erased from history was the role of government employees, APSRTC employees, advocates, and others.
“The agitation was brought to the streets by people who cooked food on the roads, who danced to Bathukamma songs on street squares, advocates who boycotted work, RTC employees who risked losing their jobs if they took part in the agitation but still went ahead. They are the real people who made Telangana possible. It was the students of Osmania University who stood like a wall and pushed ahead with the agitation,” says a State government employee unwilling to go on record.
One of the key moments of history in the formation of the State was the ‘Million March’ called by the Joint Action Committee under the leadership of M. Kodandaram who was chosen as the leader at Kalinga Bhavan. The students of Osmania University, who broke the gates of the campus and pushed the concertina-wire, braved the police and converged at the Tank Bund promenade.
A side-drama that led to the event was the mock marriage planned on the day at Ambedkar Bhavan, Lower Tank Bund Road. The 300-400 odd guests at the ‘wedding’ clambered down the stairs on the eastern side of the Tank Bund and ran through the road with red flags raising slogans. These were the students and leaders affiliated to CPI-ML (New Democracy) who breached the barricades. After that, chaos ensued with the police battling students, employees, and citizens on multiple fronts. By the end of the day, the statues that were installed during the time of Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao were vandalised and pulled down. Some were dumped in the lake and others dragged onto the road.
“What we are seeing now is revenge politics. It is a reaction to what happened in the past 10 years. The Secretariat building was functional but was pulled down. Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy is doing the same thing. K. Chandrasekhar Rao wanted to erase the history of Nizams, and the history of Andhras by taking the help from Andhra Pradesh contractors. There was resentment among the intelligentsia about the state of affairs and that is coming out,” says N. Venugopal, author of Telangana: State of Affairs.
As the battle for history intensifies every day in Telangana, missing from the picture is the inclusive nuance.
