From: dsr@balboa.eng.uci.edu (D.Sreenivasa Rao)
Subject: Re: On the birth of Andhra Pradesh (was Re: I HATE TAMILS)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 19 Aug 92 18:57:08 GMT

sundar@indigo1.hsis.uci.edu (M. Sundaramoorthy) writes : 
i> In article <1992Aug18.225035.16796@cs.wayne.edu> uds@parvathi.cs.wayne.edu (Seetamraju) writes:
>>
>>Basically, realize this : If tamilians hate to learn AN EXTRA language
>>because of hidden implications, and if that's ok : then how come
>>a bunch of people's desire to be ruled in their own language is
>>something to be sneered about ? eh ?  This was a thread I started
>>a few months ago, regarding madras `legally and morally' belonging to AP.

>       I think you need to join 'Telugu Desam' party and shout a slogan
>       'madharaas manadhe'. We Telugus are comfortable being in Tamil Nadu
>       and would not care even if someone goes on fast-to-death. 

     Neither here nor in the rest of your article have you attempted
     to answer the most important question Seetamraju poses : How come
     linguistically independent-minded tamil people blame the Andhras
     for demanding a separate linguistic state? If anything, I would
     expect something on the lines of "well, their movement exactly
     reflects our sentiments about language autonomy. Although we 
     started it, they took it to completion". It doesn't take a genius  
     to guess the reason for this inconsistency. In telugu, we have a 
     saying "nEnu chEstE loukyam, nuvvu chEstE mOsam" (means roughly 
     "if I do it, it is worldly wisdom; but if you do it, it is cheating").

>       It hardly makes any difference to us whether we are ruled by
>       MGR/Jayalalitha or NTR. (Of course, we have an advantage of saving
>       By the way 'historically' Thirupathi belongs to Tamil Nadu.
>       How about a discussion on this?.  

     I guess you missed the whole point of the discussion here. The 
     main thrust of the articles (by Sivaprasad, Seetamraju and me)
     is the following : the composite Madras state and the treatement
     of lingustic groups in that state are an important chapter in 
     south indian history, and it is necessary to evaluate the 
     events as objectively as possible. On the tamilnadu side of the
     divide, no body talks about this for obvious reasons; on the 
     Andhra side, nobody talks about it either because we somehow 
     subsume our Andhra identity and pride to (rather intangible)
     sentiments of patriotism and national pride. While the country 
     as a whole has sufficiently rebuilt its devastated morale after
     two centuries of British slavery, we in Andhra have somehow 
     not been able to recover our lost moral fibre, our sense of 
     identity, and our pride in being Andhras. It would evidently 
     be of interest to any telugu-speaking person to analyze this 
     situation, and understand what and how we are losing in the 
     game because of this lack of commitment among us. The current 
     thread is only an attempt to understand this by putting history
     in a proper perspective, and not a mud-slinging match to determine 
     which square mile belongs to whom.

--sreenivas--                                         [8/19/92]