My take on agitations - 3

I had promised that the third part of my take on agitations would follow soon, but there has been a two day gap since I was posting other things which I thought were topical. In the second part of "My take on agitations" I had dealt with how the Coastal Andhra Region was a part of the Madras Presidency and how that affected its development process in a positive way. I was also saying that the nature of development was mainly capitalist and that this process was aided by the resources that the region was endowed with. I had also made this brief argument that Telangana which was carved out of the erstwhile Nizam State did not see this kind of development due to the fact that the main paradigm of existence there was feudalism which was combined with the relative lack of resources. This I had said was the basis of cultural difference between the two areas. The word culture is often misunderstood. So it becomes my duty to clarify what that means, and what exactly I mean when I say there was a difference in culture.

I will take the lead of the British Analytical School in arguing that every time certain words are used they should be clarified in terms of their meaning since the same words could be carrying multiple meanings that emerge out of multiple contexts. Culture has been understood as a synonym of fine arts such as dance, drama, music and literature along with the various activities that are allied with them. Initially people talked of high culture and low culture, but over a period of time low culture was no longer a category and that meant that culture was the preserve of the rich and the upper classes of society. This is the commonsensical notion that gets perpetuated and reinforced time and again in all interactions of society. When I use cultural difference as a category I do not mean the superficial aspects of life. Culture for me is the way of life that has been adopted by an area or a grouping of people as the best possible to make a success of their quest for an organized life. Due to the differences in feudalism and capitalism it means that the ways of life in Telangana and Coastal Andhra were different culturally speaking. Now this is not a justification for the separate Telangana argument. At this moment it is just an exercise in mapping out the causes that have led to the current agitation, especially among the students.

At the point I would like to return to what I had called the question central to this desire for separation. And that is caste. In the Andhra State that was carved out of the Madras Presidency the dominant caste group were the Brahmins in spite of not having any numerical strength. This situation was challenged by the Kamma caste, the members of which believed that the position of power enjoyed by the Brahmins was only due to intellectual chicanery that facilitated them also becoming a land owning community. The ground that was fertile for this conflict was the Palanadu region which roughly corresponds with Guntur and Krishna districts of the Coastal Andhra region. The Kammas rejected everything Brahminical and even created a sub-caste of priests among themselves and these were referred to as the Kamma-Brahmas. Over a period of time the Kamma caste attained complete ascendancy and it was at this time the Nizam of Hyderabad enticed people from Coastal Andhra to come to Hyderabad in order to impart learning to the local people and improve the levels of development in the area. The Brahmins of the the Coastal Andhra region who had education in English fit the necessity to a tee and happily migrated to the Nizam State in search of better opportunities and better financial rewards. A key point has to be noted here. The number of Brahmins originally in the Telangana area was quite small and there was a huge upsurge in their numerical strength thanks to this migration. Hyderabad was the place that became the place to host this new migration since it was the capital of the Nizam State. This is a key point because this was one of the reasons for the first phase of the Separate Telangana agitation of 1969 under the leadership of Marri Channa Reddy. At that time it was felt that the purpose of developing the area was not served by the migrant Brahmins and that they took away opportunities of employment as well. This was also the time when the Kamma caste followed the Brahmins of Coastal Andhra. But unlike the Brahmins who were looking for employment opportunities, the Kammas who came much later went in search of opportunities in agriculture and unlike the Brahmins they went not just to Hyderabad but to the rural hinterland of Telangana as well. This was the time that irrigation projects such as the Nizam Sagar project were taking shape and wetland agriculture was introduced in the Telangana region. The communities from Coastal Andhra who had experience in this took advantage of the situation. The local farmers who were only used to dry land agriculture went up in arms citing this as an exploitative tendency. What did not help matters was the fact that the farming community from Andhra made very little attempt to assimilate into the local culture. Instead they maintained a separate physical and cultural existence. In the Warangal district the settlements of these people were called Guntur Pallelu and in Nizamabad they were called Camps. It is this inability to assimilate which became another cause for the agitation. The immigrant Brahmins for their part started a trend of mocking the language and the lifestyle of the local people. Apart from this the experience that the Coastal Andhra farmer had with wetland cultivation also led to his amassing more money here and it resulted in an economic disparity which was seen as a result of an exploitative process by the local people. This did not help the cause of peace and tranquility and thus began the first agitation for a Separate Telangana. The first agitation was bloody, claimed hundreds of lives and scarred the psyche of the people on both sides deeply.

I had intended to finish this piece today but constraints of time stand in the way. I will be back tomorrow and find a denouement for the story that I have started. Please bear with me again.