Telangana  formation and history

1.Telangana  formation and history

June 2 is Telangana Formation Day and this year marks a decade since India’s youngest state was carved out of Andhra Pradesh. The ruling Congress government in Telangana celebrated the event while emphasising the party’s role in the state formation process.

Time line of the formation of Telangana and important facts:

• Under the Congress-led UPA government, the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act of 2014 was passed for a separate Telangana state, the demand for which had been raised for decades.
• Capital city Hyderabad saw celebrations at the Parade Grounds on Sunday, where Chief Minister Revanth Reddy unveiled a new version of the state song ‘Jaya Jaya he Telangana’. Written by Telangana poet Ande Sri, composer M M Keeravani, who won the Oscar for his work in the film ‘RRR’, was behind the music.

Historical background

Pre Independence

Important facts about the Telangana as described below

• Telangana has a complex history and pre-Independence, it was a part of the princely state of Hyderabad.
• Present-day Telangana comprised the state’s south and southeast Telugu-speaking regions.
• The city of Hyderabad lay at the heart of the larger region, but unlike the areas around it, it was dominated by the Urdu-speaking Muslim elite. Ruled by Nizam Osman Ali Khan, Hyderabad was among India’s largest and most prosperous princely states.

When India achieved the freedom from British ruling in 1947 and partition occurred, the Nizam of Hyderabad was unwilling to accede to India, like most other princely states had done, even after multiple rounds of discussion with Sardar Patel’s States Ministry. In the meantime, the Razakars under Kasim Razvi terrorised the population, lest any attempts to overthrow the Nizam be made.

In order to usher in a modicum of stability in the state, India signed the Standstill Agreement with Hyderabad in November 1947, which stated that all administrative agreements that were in place between the Nizam and the British Crown would continue between the Nizam and India.

However, almost instantly, the Nizam violated the terms of the agreement. Not only did he let the Razakars run amok, he also restricted exports of precious metals to India, began negotiating with Pakistan, and stopped accepting the Indian rupee as legal tender. The Razakars even began carrying out “border raids” in neighbouring states.

Linguistic reorganisation of Andhra Pradesh:

Linguistic reorganisation and the creation of Andhra Pradesh While there were talks of statehood for Telangana in the 1950s, the region got merged with Madras and later Andhra Pradesh.

Important facts:

 The States Reorganisation Committee (SRC) came into existence in 1953 and submitted its report two years later. Notably, it recommended that Hyderabad be reorganised linguistically – the Marathi-dominant Marathwada would be integrated into the bilingual Bombay state and southwestern Kannada-dominant districts would be integrated into the Mysore state.

What was contentious, however, was the status of the Telugu-dominant Telangana region. While Andhra wanted to merge with Telangana to create a united Vishalandhra, the SRC itself did not favour this, instead recommending Telangana be a separate state till at least 1961, when it would be allowed to voluntarily merge with Andhra, if it so wished.

But the States Reorganisation Act passed in 1956 ignored this recommendation, merging Andhra State and Telangana into a single state called Andhra Pradesh, with Hyderabad as the capital. For some, like Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader K Chandrasekar Rao who was the first CM of the state and active in the state movement, this was the point where a struggle for a separate Telangana state began.

The struggle for Telangana and the creation Telangana State:

The sense of Telangana as a separate entity predated even Independence. Under the rule of the Nizam, the Telangana region had in-force Mulki Rules – domicile rules which ensured that only native residents were able to get government jobs in the region.

Since Independence, protests regularly broke out in Telangana demanding the strict adherence to these rules, the first one being in 1952. However, it was in January 1969, after the creation of Andhra Pradesh, that the region witnessed its most widespread protests yet. While the government sprung to action, promising to “transfer all non-Telangana employees holding posts reserved for Telangana domiciles”, the issue refused to die down.

Telangana Praja Samiti:

The protests gave birth to the Telangana Praja Samiti, which called for a separate Telangana state. Over the next few years, Mulki Rules were at the centre of protests as well as legal cases.

Finally, in September of 1973, Indira Gandhi initiated the 32nd Amendment to the Constitution, which declared that Andhra Pradesh would be divided into 6 zones, with reservation for jobs being decided on the basis of zones. As a result, the original Mulki Rules Act was repealed, and the movement for Telangana lost some steam.

It would finally be revived by KCR in 2001. A member of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), he resigned and established his own political party – the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) (now called the BRS) with the singular aim of creating a new state of Telangana with Hyderabad as its capital.

After extensive discussion on the specifics of the state boundary and the choice of capital (for the new Andhra State), Telangana came into existence around four and a half years later, in 2014. Hyderabad was chosen as the joint capital of both Andhra and Telangana for a period of ten years, after which Andhra would have to shift its capital.

-Written and edited by

Sushil Kumar Pandey

M.sc. (Physics), M.A. (Political Science ), LL.B., B.Ed.

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