I was not in Hyderabad on March 10, when the Million March happened. My first intimation of the news came via a tongue-in-cheek facebook comment which said:
the Telangana separatist movement has today officially become a Hindutva movement, the state BJP top leader heads rally (comprising TRS, various Communist groups’ activists) pledging commitment to Telangana, after having vandalised the statues of : Sri Sri, 20th century progressive poet; Gurram Joshuva, a dalit(?) poet [contemporary of Srisri] ; Brahmanaidu, 11th century Vaishnavite caste reformer and statesman [in Palnadu what is now North Western Guntur, at the edge of Chola empire] etc.. Jai Telangana! Jai Sri Ram! ……
That Hindutva and Maoism will be important political forces in the new Telangana is hardly a revelation to anyone familiar with the region. Both support the separate state and both have long term interests in the region. The real question is just how powerful can they be, what forms will they take and what can we foretell about the future from the contemporary articulations of these two forces (as in joining) with other ideological formations. In the near total absence of any critical analyses of the movement in recent times, I took the facebook comment as yet another reminder of what is persistently and dare I say perversely, overlooked by observers. What follows is not meant as a categorical statement but as a set of scattered speculations to find a way forward.
If I am to name one single organisational axis in today’s Telangana – I would call it caste. Almost everything in the movement is organised along caste lines. (Gender rarely appears as a category of mobilisation here although minority, i.e. Muslim, and ST as in a a few tribes do surface occasionally). Yet, it is ‘caste’ without any radical potential. Caste identities are called forth more as bargaining chips in a power game rather than as counter-hegemonic forces. This toothless – clawless ‘caste’ identity dovetails neatly into the idea of Territorial Telangana where the entire debate on caste is folded up into how many seats and which posts and which benefits are being promised to which identity. With glib confidence, the hallmark of neoliberal populism that was ushered in by Chandrababu Naidu and practised with panache by YSR; KCR promises that a dalit will be the first chief minister of Telangana state, Wakf Board lands will be restored to Muslims and so on and so forth. Just say Jai Telangana and make a wish, and ye shall receive a promise – would appear to be the strategy. In such an atmosphere, caste associations multiply by dividing and prosper by pursuing short-lived alliances leaving little room (and time) for critical elaboration of how to build counter-hegemony.
At first I thought Territorial Telangana would anchor all these identities to elaborate a counter hegemonic discourse. I recall some of the early discussions first with Prof. B. Janardan Rao and later with Prof. Kodandaram between 1998 and 2002; about prospects for the Telangana movement as an opportunity for a broad democratic restructuring. What seemed to be the most promising aspect of the movement was the sheer proliferation of identities each of which seemed to articulate a sharp, situated critique of power. But over time as Territorial Telangana became the single-most dominant framework for arbitration it seems to have closed up all openings for criticism. The first indication of this came when Prof. Kancha Ilaiah who advocates a Dalit Bahujan Telangana (see an elaboration here ) raised some initial questions about the direction of the movement in an article titled Telangana Dream Sours in Deccan Chronicle on Feb 13, 2010, and faced the ire of the students of Osmania University as reported here. Since then, he has not written much in any local dailies although he has not completely fallen silent. He wrote Contrary Theories in Asian Age,Nov 1, 2010. I am not a closet dalit-bahujan ideologue trying to coax people into supporting Kancha Ilaiah’s BC Telangana nor am I a libertarian pushing for the protection of individual right to free speech. I am just pointing to the urgent need for finding openings in the dominant discourse of Territorial Telangana and hold them open for some fresh air to come in. That is the only way in which the Navi Telangana that Biju raises a slogan to here and many others seem to silently wish for will stand a chance.
Let us face it, in the end-game, hegemonic power blocs want to remain largely intact if not consolidate further. What are these blocs in Telangana composed of and what are their cultures ? a) Those sections that continue to benefit from the political culture of vassals and overlordism consolidated in Telangana by the Centrist national Congress in the 50s and 60s (yes, this is still alive and kicking); b) those sections that benefited from the culture of social and political entrepreneurship first coming to life during NTR’s regime and becoming much more aggressive during the Chandrababu Naidu’s regime. During YSR’s tenure both these cultures have actually managed to merge although its representatives maintain a ritual distance from each other.
TRS, a phenomenon of the last 10 years is largely an admixture of the above two cultures, being marginal to centers of power in both, the party displays a tremendous amount of capriciousness, and stays on course not because of any internal compass but simply because of pressures from below, above and the flanks. That none of the above three actually hold any promise of transformation, that none of the leaders have any integrity to speak of, is quite well known in Telangana. Representatives of all three are often jeered at by young people at rallies. Even at the Million March, many leaders were attacked by the students.
On the sidelines of these major power blocs are a number of new civil society groups composed of largely overseas Telangana activists, tech savvy NGOised resident Telanganis and a diverse array of activists from the left and the right.
All these groups realise that there is a seething resentful mass of people underneath who face police repression, chronic unemployment and underemployment and persistent agrarian crisis which has now become generalised and spread to a variety of interlinked crises – in governance and economy from the household level to the broader urban level.
The movement has successfully framed this entire crisis as being caused by Seemandhra politicians for which the only solution lies in creating a separate Telangana. It is not surprising at all then that what we witness on a daily basis in the name of Telangana is a grotesque drama in which all protagonists are constantly trapping themselves and others in particularisms and putting their contorted selves on public display. The public utterances by the vocal groups is confined to two major issues: 1) How can we take credit for the formation of Telangana as and when it is formed 2) How can we establish that all others are traitors to Telangana. None of these groups can afford to allow the Telangana movement to result in any universal values, for doing so will mean letting the genie out of the bottle. Yet, no political movement can have lasting success unless it generates new social principles, and new cultures of praxis. So where is it all heading?
On 13th March when I returned to Hyderabad, the media was still awash with commentary on the Million March. Andhra Jyoti has carried an editorial yesterday which hopefully will conclude the unending stream of words. I have not seen the other newspapers but Andhra Jyothi carried a full page of short comments from a number of culture people including a very plaintive complaint from Ketu Viswanatha Reddy asking : ‘At a time when Telanganavaadam is on the ascendancy, I find it unacceptable that Seema is being equated with Andhra. Even feminists will not appreciate the demolition of Molla’s statue.” [Molla is a 17th century woman poet of kummari caste (potters)] That remark to me captures the limits of the Telangana movement – Molla belongs to women, kummari belongs to dalit bahujans and the fact that she lived in Srisailam makes her belong to… that Molla and Annamacharya were people’s poets who challenged hegemony in all kinds of ways is of no consequence to this debate for it is cast primarily in terms of who owns these icons. (It was never of any consequence to its Andhra opponents, but this need not be a competition in who is the worse).
If ten years ago, we thought the movement’s promise was the emergence of a broad progressive social coalition with geography as one of the many important organising principles, today, we are presented with what looks like such a coalition. Yet, there is something unconvincing about it. The coalition that we are seeing seeks to cast the political challenge in terms of exclusively territorial identification. It sets itself up against coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema and it does not brook claims to internal differentiation. It is turned so introverted that that it even claims that no other region in India can learn from Telangana’s experience or make similar demands. Although some of my friends might argue that this is only a tactical move in the face of the Union Government’s concern that similar demands may arise from other regions, I am now convinced that the key arguments of the Telangana movement rest on the claim that its oppression is the most unique and the most exacerbated one in the whole country. By design, in its very constitutional framing, this articulation of Telangana is so narrow that it can have no broader relevance to anyone outside Telangana, no implications for Indian democracy.
So on March 13th, when I returned to Hyderabad, I started out to go and see the debris on Hussain Sagar and then I heard that a number of people on the Tank Bund were offering flowers at the feet of the demolished statues, holding banners apologising to the great souls. At least one person was banging his head against the feet of one of the demolished statues, crying inconsolably and begging to be forgiven. I lost the urge to go to the Tank Bund. I have had enough melodrama for a life time in the last one year.
So, here is my tribute to the statues which should not have been installed there in the first place, a piece of sobering realism: Janaab Akbar Ali Khan and Naram Krishna Rao both whom I consider to be fine sons of Hyderabad, raised strong objections to the installation of statues on Hussain Sagar. Their objections were based on both cultural grounds and on engineering grounds. The Hussain Sagar is actually an earthen dam and its walls need to breathe for the bund to be safe. To install the statues, the Government was at that time going to extend the thickness of the tankbund, using granite and concrete which effectively sealed off the breathing, covered up a temple (you can see the temple now in a cubby hole where the lower tank bund meets the Indira Park Road). But this is a very small part of the transformations that have taken over the Hussain Sagar in the last 40 years, and turned it virtually into a cesspool. The Million marchers made no dent into any of this. Demolishing the statues or even inserting Telangana icons into that row of statues leaves the foundations of the problem intact. And if the past year is any indication, there appears to be a consensus between the Telangana movement and the Samaikyandhra advocates to leave the foundations of problems untouched!
[Thanks to Bhaswati, BharathBhushan, Vageesan, Burra Ramulu and the source of the facebook comment (which must remain anonymous for I dont have the time to ask for his permission to out him here) who knowingly and unknowingly challenge me and remind me of the limits and potentials of Telangana. ]
Anthanna,
you are there again. Current round of telangana conflagration has its roots in late mid 1990s. It has been articulated as an identity movement by the people stood for socio political transformation of system. since the birth of TRS the Transformation tenor of te movement is almost evaporated for that matter subdued under the idea of GEOGRAPHIC TELANGANA. discussing any substantial issue is either branded as a heretic talk or as mere idealism . It is collective failure of the trans formastive streams of telangana be them the left democratic or dalih bahujan . Neo liberal on slaught is biting in to the vitals of telangana.Majority Telanganits missed the buss in the days of STATE CENTERED DEVELOPMENT ERA( the welfare state era) and are being pounded now in many ways with neo lib policies. Hence when ever a sensible question about what will be the future lives ,human conditions of of majority people of Telangana is raised it is scoffed down or underplayed or burried in silence.
It is major question what has happens to those TRANSFORMATORY forces in telangana? where are they? are they waiting for Geographic telangana happen first?
How to dove tail the issue of Territioral telagana with Trasformative telangana? any takers/
Dear Anant,
I second what vageesan said. This is precisely the kind of experience one goes through when he/she tries to open up any discussion in this direction. For the last one year, i have been working with a lot of students who are directly part of the on ground agitation. Nobody is ready to listen/sit down and brainstrom about the kind of telangana we want for ourselves. Is it just a territorial telangana or a transformative telangana? The one and only question i encountered is ” Can you assure me a separate state? We will then sit and talk about the hows and whys”. I think this is a sentiment shared across the spectrum.
Lets hope the idea of a transformative telangana will dominate the popular discourse once the territorial statehood is assured.
Dear Anant, thanks for that very provocative piece. It made me realize that some of the things that I have taken for granted about Telangana movement need to be spelt out for discussion.
a) First, let me say why the idea of ‘territorial telangana’ appeals to me.
Mana vooru, mana bhoomi, mana ganulu, mana neellu, mana vudyogaalu, mana nadulu – all terms denoting ‘territorial’ identity – would have sounded extremely odd even one and a half years ago in Andhra Pradesh, one of the states that pioneered policies of globalization – that aimed to prize away such ‘ownership’ to harness it towards ‘development’. High commodification of land especially in the heart of Telangana, i.e Hyderabad, consumer ownership of water through water users’ associations in rural areas, mantra of development that sought to maximize the profits from already high yielding agricultural lands and the destiny of the region connected to the ‘global’ prospects – this was the status. The available political space was limited – a naxalite past that threw out landlordism but brought heavy police presence, an entire generation of bright young rural leadership eliminated in the course of decimating naxalism, a middle class that theorized the region’s problems and bled for the region’s farmers but was helpless in the face of the forces of globalization and a political class which was unwilling to fight for the region’s problems. To ‘outsiders’ like me who have been hearing the case for Telangana through late B. Janardhan Rao from the mid 1990s, the concept of ‘Telangana’ seemed incredulous at best. And the arrival of the demand for ‘territorial Telangana’ seemed a huge relief, not because it is best in itself, but because it is being articulated by a people, democratically and peacefully, in large numbers, in the times of global capital, where the governing logic is to look after self-interest, within the precincts of law, without ever bothering about what happens to other people, leave alone geographical bodies like regions!
b) As a person invested in public-political activism, I find the current Telangana movement significant for the following reasons:
It has brought out a large number of middle class people into the streets in support of ‘territorial Telangana’. Whenever a small group of us organized a protest in front of Osmania University gate, against police presence or brutalities, the crowd soon swelled to hundreds, often passersby on scooters or in cars. In my fifteen years of participation in Hyderabad protests, I never saw middle class passersby joining the protests. Perhaps this is the reason why the police sought to remove the handful of activists like us two months ago from there, Jeevan, Devaki, Vasudha, Sajaya, Kaneez, Shyamala etc. perfectly law-abiding citizens who posed no threat to anyone whatsoever!
It has put a stop to the dream of protest-free ‘globally -governed Hyderabad’ at least temporarily, by making each and every space into a space of protest – courts, streets, universities, government offices etc.. After getting rid of the newly acquired inhibition towards protest in the global city, now, we, the city-zens have learnt to protest anywhere freely, including the designated place -‘opposite Indira Park’. Freedom, I think, (Foucault?) depends on practice. And this movement is teaching us (yet again) that practice of reclaiming the public spaces to protest (if not anything, I will count this as the greatest contribution of this movement!)
It has, at many moments, enabled a reversal of relationship between the subaltern sections and the middle classes – auto-drivers, bandi/dabba waallahs, ‘lumpens’ have become educators of middle classes about intricacies of injustice to Telangana. Many of us have had direct experience of this when taxi drivers and auto drivers talked at length about Telangana during airport drops or local trips.
It has enabled a large number of democratic groups (I hesitate to call them ‘civil society’ groups) to have conversations about the range of issues in Telangana, including the future policies. Groups and individuals who would perhaps not see eye to eye are exchanging information, chatting in internet spaces and building alliances. New groups like lawyers, students or doctors have joined these conversations. This, I think is, extremely pertinent for the future of democracy (if not, civil society) in Telangana, whether that is with TRS or Congress or TDP.
It has also brought into question the nature of ‘political representation’ in an electoral democracy. The treatment meted out to leaders of all parties (gherao, boycott, burning of effigies, questioning in the media, physical attacks) for their unresponsiveness – to central government stand, suicides, arrests of agitating people or their alleged complicity with Seemandhra leaders, is, I think, unique in the history of Indian democracy. Leaving aside ‘the exploitation of peoples’ sentiments by TRS’ such events cannot be orchestrated with such regularity and need to be taken as expressing the real disgust of people with their ‘un-representativeness’.
c) Why I think that Telangana state/elite/political parties should not be equated with Telangana movement:
As I accept that the movement in Telangana is a democratic one, the question for me is to think what the relationship would be between state and democracy in future Telangana. This is not the first time that such a question has been posed in India, it is as old as Indian nation-state. Dipesh Chakravarthy noted how Nehru, the ‘inciting’ mass leader during the nationalist movement began to adopt the language of ‘governance’ as soon as he became the Prime Minister. And the critiques of Indian nation-state for its non-inclusiveness of women, Dalits, tribals and Muslims are too numerous to be even cited here.
But, for some time now, the terrain of theory has shifted to understanding the relationship between state, democracy and civil society in India. The elite-led notion (civil society led) of democracy (or the leader-led notion of democracy) or thought of Indian democracy as a gift of the state has long been given up. Many commentators, especially Partha Chatterjee, Javeed Alam, Aditya Nigam have noted the tortuous relationship between democracy and the Indian state. That the democratic upsurge from below and the state-directed legal and policy initiatives have hardly matched (especially in the global, corporate regimes) is no secret in the Indian context. So, we don’t need to fear that TRS or any other formation in future Telangana would bring about democracy or to bring pro-people policies here! What we can perhaps look forward to is how this movement will exert pressure on the future governments. It is of course necessary for the democratic upsurge for Telangana to be translated into ‘desirable’ policies or ‘equitable’ polity, but it would be hasty, at best (cynical, at worst) to dismiss the significance of this movement for Indian democracy.
@ Vageesh and Rakesh,
Biju’s earlier post basically suggests that if transformation is not on the agenda now, it will be difficult to articulate it later. This question of timing should be taken seriously. I think what Biju is saying is that once the hegemony is consolidated with territorial Telangana formation, the opportunities that are available in the heat of the movement now will disappear. This is why I think it is important to find ways to tease out what it is that participants in the protests are saying. What kinds of stories are they telling. What kinds of life experiences and aspirations are coming to bear on their present actions.How do they interpret the actions of the other actors ? We should document these scraps of conversations in detail and see how things can be pieced together in alternative combinations. For example, Vageesh’s conversations with sarpanches in Telangana… Rakesh’s conversations with students in Warangal…. Vishy’s conversations with families of people who have committed suicide…we need to pull them together in all their particular details and work with them carefully. Transformation may not have become a political agenda but without some (even if unarticulated) desire for ‘change’ people would be mobilised to this degree. What is that desire and how is it translating into territorial Telangana ? That is the starting point. What is bizarre is that although the large number of people that are mobilised today are below 40, the injustices that are being talked about are almost exclusively those of an older generation. It need not be so.
@ Suneetha
1) A sense of ‘belonging’ is a powerful emotion. It is not a ‘given’ that because it has come to the surface in a time of wide-spread alienation and disembedding, that it is automatically democratic and progressive. One needs to work consistently to work with it to articulate progressive and democratic politics. If the Telangana movement even today is by and large broadly democratic it is because of the history of this region and because of the structural location of the majority of the youth that has been mobilised. Not because of the leadership, not because of the intellectuals. It is this failure that is the most disturbing and disappointing part of the movement. If this blog fills that vacuum, or at least opens up spaces for conversations that can go offline that will be a major accomplishment.
2. Reclaiming public space – this needs to be documented. I have been wanting to do a piece for some time on Osmania campus. (I hinted at this some time in early 2010 in my article in Andhra Jyoti titled aatmahatyala samskruti ekkadidi ?). I agree that it is about practice, but practices have to be ritualised for actual and sustained reclamation to happen. Documentation, interpretation
critical elaboration and celebration are very very important for that ritualisation. Otherwise, what is gained this morning will be lost by this evening.
3. Autorickshaw, taxi drivers and bandiwalas becoming the educators — again something worth documenting in detail. I am saying this because you are talking about an extremely street-smart male population mainly from OBC castes from small urban centers in Telangana and to some extent urban dalits. We have to listen to our own conversations with them very carefully and transcribing them in detail is a useful thing to do. I do it as often as I can and I am just wondering if we should start a category of posts here just for that sort of thing.