From: dsr@balboa.eng.uci.edu (D.Sreenivasa Rao)
Subject: On the birth of Andhra Pradesh (was Re: I HATE TAMILS)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 19 Aug 92 01:58:49 GMT

vprasad@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes : 
> In article <41552@ogicse.ogi.edu>, partha@mse.cse.ogi.edu (R. Parthasarathy)
> writes:
> >
>> is right or wrong is to be discussed later. No, Tamils are not the ones
>> who campaigned for linguistic division of the whole nation. Ever heard
>> of Potti Sriramulu? He was a Telugu speaking man. He fasted to death
....
>> of men under EVR demanded a Dravida Nadu from the British even before
>> our independence. Such a state was supposed to consist of the four southern
>> states. [source: MJ Akbar's "India the Siege Within].
>>
>       I find it very irritating that people blame Andhra Pradesh for being
>       the first linguistic state in the nation and thus "setting a chain
>       of linguistic carvings of the country". And Potti Sriramulu is being
>       very unfairly criticized. Ever think of the logic behind his demand? 
>       Apparently not.


Excellent article by Siva Prasad on the birth of Andhra Pradesh.
Emotions apart, there is a crying need to examine relevant history
as objectivley as possible. It is undeniable that the composite 
Madras state was not exactly the beacon of tolerance and justice,
atleast as far as Andhras were concerned. 
 
The following are excerpts from an article I wrote long ago that
discussed this issue (in a much wider context, of course) that could
perhaps enable some factual analysis :

------------------Begin included article-----------

[.....]
   For whatever reasons, the British encouraged setting up of educational
institutions in India and usually located them at places most convenient to
their centres of administration. Consequently, Madras was lucky to have an
University and other professional institutions in those early days. [....]
Since education was closer home to the tamil speaking populace, it happened
naturally that a lot of them made their niche in civil services and technical
areas, and were a widely regarded intelligentsia in those days.
[....]
    For reasons explained solely by insensitivity and slavish attitude
towards British legacies, independent India thought it fit to continue
status quo with regard to administrative organization of the country. As
a result, coastal Andhra and rayalseema became part of the composite state
of Madras, and a long story of deprivation began. The state adminstration
was predominantly controlled by tamil-speaking people (for obvious reasons), 
while Andhra languished. Due to the difference in language and the resultant
communication gap, discrimination against these areas was rampant and was, 
regretfully, worse than during the British time. 

[....] Despite healthy contributions to the state's economy, Andhra was 
denied even basic educational facilities, and it seemed it was being 
done for a reason - an imperialist reason. For example, whole of Andhra 
had but one University, one engineering college, and one medical college.
By then, there were some excellent and well established institutions in
the tamil-speaking regions. Discrimination in all walks of life, ranging
from education to governement jobs to developmental assistance was the 
order of the day(1). Apart from education, the development of telugu language 
and culture suffered. Developments such as railways, infrastructure
for future growth, etc. were being to denied to telugu-speaking regions.
[....]  The predominant public opinion at that time was
running in favor of a draviDa nADu, the leaders of which so presumptuously
included Andhra in their plans. Significant portion of the tamil leadership
harbored sentiments and put forth arguments very similar to what the 
British did when denying freedom to India : how can an illiterate bunch
of people like the Andhras rule themselves? How can they survive at all
without the benefit of superior tamil intellect? (2) Some of the leaders of
the freedom movement were shameless perpetrators of this iniquity and were 
virtually villains as far as the populace of Andhra was considered.

[....] This general resentment, coupled with the able leadership, caused
the movement to snowball and take the form of a popular uprising. The thick-
skinned state administration, headed at that time by none other than Rajaji,
denied it as a mass movement and tried to stifle it out by the most barbaric
of means, with disatrous consequences. It was not until Sriramulu died that
the central govt realised the gravity of the situation. Whole of Telugu-
speaking parts were literally aflame and the situation was totally out of
control. It was then that Nehru conceded the idea of language based
reorganization of states. 

[....] The birth of Andhra gave birth to the concept of linguistic
states, which is by far the most far-reaching step the Indian Union has 
taken after the British left. Naturally, there was a lot of governmental
propaganda that projected this very idea as "unpatriotic", "belligerent",
"short sighted" and "dis-establishmentarianist". Unfortunately, the leaders
of separate Andhra movement had to put up with a lot of such obstacles,
and had to contend with a powerful government machinery bent on painting a
wrong picture of the movement. It was easy for people to get swayed by such
propaganda, specially given the fact that those were the early days of
independence and a sense of patriotism was running high among the common
folks. For decades after this, the country was fed on the concepts of such
nationalistic fervor, and movements such as the separate Andhra movement
were projected more as an aberration rather than a genuine demand for 
justice. The projection of history that we know today never speaks of
the iniquities that existed in the composite Madras state, and the
seperatist movement is mainly painted villainic. Our youngsters are
told in their history books that being an Indian entails a messianic
denouncement of such "seperatist" tendencies, and that since it was
Andhras who started it, we have to somehow be the black sheep for any
problem that the country faces due to such language-based administrative
organization of the country. 
[....] [as part of Epilogue]
Indeed, it is not an
exaggeration to say that Andhras were the ones who first stood up to the 
nation and pointed out its multifariousness, and protested against the
insensitivity of the Union to the aspirations of the regional people,
which in itself constitutes a great service to the democratic and federal
ideals on which India boasts of having been founded. 
[....]

Notes : (1) I have a close family member's personal experience to 
            vouch for this. And several among older acquaintances.
        (2) These are actual quotes by DK party officials as quoted
            in "the Hindu". They are in turn quoted in "History of
            Andhra Pradesh", by Dr. P. Raghunatha Rao.
        (3) Apart from the above book, several books on Andhra 
            history give this information and analysis. I can give a 
            complete list of references later on, if there is any 
            interest. 

--sreenivas--



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