Telangana at Every Corner

As the cause begins to dominate the region’s cultural life, the Centre should admit that there is no getting away from the issue

HYDERABAD ~ Bathukamma, a festival of devotion to Goddess Parvati that is unique to Telangana, has become yet another rallying point for the region’s ongoing stir for separate statehood. All activity in this part of Andhra Pradesh—political, festive or otherwise—seems to converge on that demand. For some 21 days now, life in Hyderabad and other Telangana districts has been crippled by a Sakala Janula Samme, a common people’s satyagraha.

People around speak in similar tones if not in chorus. “The expectations are very high,” says Vara Gayathri Prasad in Gatkesari, a village 35 km from the state capital, “All we want is an acknowledgment that [statehood] will happen, and an assurance that some steps will be taken in this direction.”

Gayathri, a housewife whose life revolves around her two kids and household chores, echoes those words, though this is perhaps the first time she is airing her views in public, as she goes about performing the Bathukamma ritual along with dozens of relatives, neighbours and village folk, all in their festive best. Thousands of people in the area draw strength to survive the hard routines of daily life from Bathukamma, worshipped as a life assurer. Women, dressed for the occasion in silks and jewellery, bring plates full of seasonal flowers and a lamp to place on the ground in front of a makeshift Parvati pandal of plaster-of-paris and wood. They then go around in a circle taking slow steps sideways, clapping thrice in unison and singing songs in praise of the Goddess.

It has been going on for centuries, yes, but if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the twist. The festive chants in the air, some of them blaring from music systems, carry not just the regular invocations, but also solicitations for Bathukamma to intervene in favour of having Telangana carved out as a separate state for its people. Hundreds of such devotional songs have been scripted, recorded and sold. According to a distributor, thousands of such CDs are being played across the troubled region. Many of these also serve as caller tunes, all the better to signal support for Telangana across telecom networks.

“All this has not been done by any political party. This is spontaneous, and speaks of people’s aspirations,” says Bomatla Giridhar, whose picture adorns a corner of a giant Durga flex banner at one Bathukamma pandal in Karim Nagar. A local festival organiser, he claims no political affiliation. But villagers insist this gangly youngster with a stubble is an aspiring politician who organises Ganesh and Dasara festivals to cash in on the goodwill of people.

Sakala Janula Samme, meanwhile, is being observed all across Telangana. In Warangal, a whole village went on fast on 2 October in solidarity with the cause. Residents of Murupparam also observed a day-long hunger strike, in which 3,868 villagers took part. Most cultural protests are spontaneous, but there are organisations that encourage them. For example, the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) has a cultural outfit run by its leader K Chandrasekhara Rao’s daughter, Kavitha, called Telangana Jagriti. This set-up has a band of women who visit different villages in the region and perform Bathukamma ceremonies. The party also has TV news channels airing all this, thus assuring publicity for cultural aspects of its so-called ‘people’s revolution’; T News and Namaste Telangana, a channel and newspaper owned by Rao, are especially active.

Media coverage has had its impact. “Ikkada Bathukamma chala rojulu ninchi aadthunnaru (Bathukamma is being performed here for many years),” says Gowramma, a woman in her seventies, adding that this one is special. “We want Telangana to become a state. That is our dream,” she says, sitting at her flower stall in Bhongir, 45 km from Hyderabad, and raising a fist in solidarity with the agitators.

Incidentally, the raised fist is a gesture associated with Naxals, who have also been active supporters of the statehood cause. In fact, they are said to have infiltrated groups of agitators among Osmania University students who have been at the forefront of the movement. It was these students who had pushed the state’s political parties to constitute a Telangana Joint Action Committee (T-JAC), which has issued a call for a ‘rail roko’ on 9-11 October. The agitators say that no train will be allowed to run in the region, India’s Prime Minister having failed to make any move to break the impasse.

Already, things are difficult with public transport having ground to a complete halt on 17 September in Hyderabad and other parts of the region. There are hardly any buses connecting the rest of Andhra Pradesh with Hyderabad city. Even inter-state bus services have stopped, affecting traffic to and from towns in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Private transporters had tried to ply the routes, but gave up after their buses were stoned. The state gov

ernment’s efforts to run a small number of services with police escort have only come to nought, as the police themselves think it best that everybody stays home. Trains are all that are left, and the rail roko is sure to leave people in a fix.

This has created another spiral of discontent. “Of course we are put to hardship, but no one cares, not the Centre, nor the Congress state government,” is a common refrain. Perceptions of apathy are heightened by the fact that the state government’s own employees have joined the stir. Close to 500,000 of them are on strike, including workers at collieries, the state-run transport corporation, power generation and distribution companies and other state units. Their no-show at work has had a ripple effect on neighbouring Karnataka, where a coal shortage from Singareni Collieries has led to power shortages, forcing the state to buy electricity from Punjab at a higher rate. Funnily enough, even AP is now planning to buy power from another state.

The state government, led by Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, has tried pacifying its employees with carrots and threatening it with sticks, but to no avail. When the government offered bonuses and festive cash advances, few turned up to claim them. When it warned teachers that they would be suspended if they didn’t turn up for work by 27 September, no one bothered.

“The Centre says ‘wider consultation’ is required, but with whom?” asks a spokesperson of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which wants the Congress to bell the cat and has made it clear that it will not participate in any consultative process. The party is averse to taking either a pro or anti-Telangana stand, and has only a Telangana forum in token honour of the cause. It has also lost some MLAs, one of them to the TRS. Ego clashes have led to many an angry word being exchanged between TDP and TRS supporters, despite the parties having fought the 2009 Assembly polls together.

But, even as the TRS positions itself as the only party dedicated to the statehood cause, there are many who may yet spoil its claim. In Hyderabad, the ruling Congress, which is losing its hold on its Telangana MLAs and MPs, is also portraying itself as a prime mover of statehood. The party is under pressure from legislators who threaten to resign all over again (their resignations were not accepted by the speaker the last time round). The political air is rife with terms and conditions. Members of the TRS and T-JAC who met the PM have demanded a ‘roadmap’, while local Congress leaders have sought a ‘time frame.’

As things go from bad to worse, industry in Andhra Pradesh is getting restless. Just the business losses for the past fortnight are estimated anywhere between Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 8,000 crore—don’t forget, it’s the festive season. But nobody wants to complain openly. Even the normally voluble infotech industry is silent. “It’s not just about brand Hyderabad, companies with units here are lagging on deliveries, as a result of which distant infotech units in Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and even Kochi are underperforming,” sighs an industry insider.

In New Delhi, the Congress seems more than a little confused about how to handle Telangana, with the perils of opening a Pandora’s Box of similar demands across the country weighing heavily on the party’s mind.

Is there a lesson in all this for politicians? There might be one in a T News video clip that shows a barber in animated banter with a politician getting his hair cut. The conversation veers to the T cause, with the barber asking the politician to resign for the sake of the people’s dream of statehood. The politician dithers, protesting as the temperature rises in the shop. The clip ends with the barber suddenly yanking off the cloth draped over the politician’s shoulders, pointing to the exit. The baffled politician says that the hair-cut is only half done. “Yes,” retorts the barber, “like you people have left the issue of Telangana half-done.”

The people of Telangana remember Union Home Minister P Chidambaram’s promise of 9 December 2009. They remember it only too well. And they are not in a mood to let the Centre leave it half done.

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