My take on agitations - 2

I had promised that I shall be back to talk more about what I was already talking about in my blog yesterday. I had stopped at a point where I was talking about the agitation in question being now governed by laws of physics than by a direction given by any ideology. That brings me to the point where it becomes not just pertinent but necessary to understand the rationale behind the desire for a Separate Telangana. I am aware that there is a big and clever history behind the seemingly easy to understand agitation. It would be a little boring to go into the exact details of that history but I shall most certainly not avoid any of the details that are of significance to understanding this situation today.

I am quite convinced that the origins of this movement or agitation for a Separate Telangana have their roots in the carving out of the Andhra State from the erstwhile Madras Presidency that existed during the British Rule. Here, at this point it may be of significance to make a certain point about one social variable that has been the scourge of this country. I am talking about the caste system. The caste system has had and still does have the ability of what Hegel called "aufheben" or "aufgehoben" which gets translated into English rather poorly as sublation. What I want to say here is that caste started of to serve a particular reason which was cosmological in its beginning but went on to become a social category and now it is firmly a political variable. The point that is to be noted here is that while the content of caste was cosmological it was more likely devoid of a notion of power, but when it metamorphosed into the social and the political it certainly became a variable that was used to exercise power. Here comes the sublation bit. Let us simply say that sublation or "aufgehoben" is a situation where the form of something while seemingly constant has a content that is evolving as per times. That in my opinion has definitely happened with caste. If we were to look at the scholarship that is available to us on caste, most do not even seem to understand its cosmological beginnings and simply think of its existence as always being social. The slightly more perceptive among the community can see its transformation into a political entity but do not make the necessary linkages that are necessary to understand the causes behind the transformation. I am sure, I can be asked as to what this exposition on caste has to do with the larger purpose that I have set out with. The answer is straight forward. If one has to understand the question of separation then one has to understand the politics that go behind the desire.

So to come back to the point that I was making, understanding the reason for the carving out of a Separate Andhra State from the Madras Presidency holds the clue for understanding the separate Telangana agitation. In the early decades of the twentieth century one saw in the Madras Presidency region a rise in politics that was apparently based in the Dravidian vs Aryan politics but in reality was based in a caste rivalry. Most of the jobs in the Indian Civil Service of that time were occupied by Brahmins who constituted about 2% of the population. The Dravida Kazhagam and the Justice Party started movements demanding a caste census and providing jobs on the basis of the percentage of population in one caste. This meant if there n% of people in one caste then n% of the jobs available were to be given to members of that caste. One can see the origins of the quota system here. This too is of enormous significance for us in understanding the logic behind the Separate Telangana movement. The Brahmins (most of whom were Telugu speaking people) did not like this proposal and what started of as a Dravidian Vs Aryan thing was given the shape of Tamilian vs Telugu dimension and to cut a long story short this led to the carving out of a Separate Andhra State years later. The point of significance here is that what all I have described here are developments that took place in the Madras Presidency region which because of being under British rule saw a fair amount of capitalistic development and progress. What aided that process was the fact that the Andhra of then which is the Coastal Andhra of today is rich in resources starting from water, to soil and all other things that contribute to prosperity and development. This Coastal Andhra region was merged with the Telangana and the Rayalaseema region to form Andhra Pradesh when states were created on linguistic basis.

The time is now appropriate for the insertion of a paranthesis. When people in general talk about India as being Federal or Quasi- federal (the latter a most inappropriate description of the Indian system of governance) system of government the temptation is to compare it with the United States of America. All comparisons are legitimate as long as they serve the purpose of enlightenment but not if they serve the purpose of confusion. In India that is what has happened, confusion. Mr. K.T. Rama Rao a leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi said why should India be contented with 25 states when the USA has 50. The ridiculousness of this will become obvious when one sees the huge difference in the way in which the USA and India have come into being. To put it very briefly the federalism of the USA was a coming together of a pre-existing States to form a union of sorts. In India it has been the other way round. First it was the creation of an India and then the effort to see how it could be divided into constituent states to facilitate better governance. The variable chosen was language and thus states were born. India first and constituent states later. Now we can close the paranthesis. The necessity of this paranthesis will become obvious at latter stages of this piece.

And so Andhra Pradesh was born out of clubbing the Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema and Telangana regions. What is important for us to recognise is that while Coastal Andhra saw development of the capitalist variety thanks to its being administered by the British, the Telangana region saw little or no development at all. The reason being that it was a part of the Hyderabad State which was administered by the Nizam and the society here was feudal and more agrarian. The difficult bit for Telangana was that it was deprived relatively of resources such as water and many areas of it fell in the rain shadow region. Though the people of Coastal Andhra and Telangana were Telugu speaking the cultures from which they came were different. You could say Capitalism vs Feudalism. I have not spoken of Rayalaseema and will not either since till most recently it was not a part of this process at all. I will therefore concentrate upon the Coastal Andhra vs Telangana aspect alone.

This part two too is long enough to merit a break. I will continue the discussion and for that I will be back with more very soon.