Telangana once more

'Jai Telangana' slogans from the govt. institute nearby, as men dance around in a circle and try to bring the few girls who've turned up for work into the circle.

Nearby, at a construction site, the contract labourers continue to chip away at granite. I have no data on this, but I see no Telangana supporters enlisting these migrant/contract/daily-wage labourers in their struggle for statehood. Surely they're one part of the demographic that will (supposedly) benefit if a new state is carved out?

A two-day bandh means no school, which means a kid who has to be entertained and (worse) demands time-share on the computer and the internet. Ha! There are plans to watch Star Wars. The world - both real and virtual - is full of stirring tales.

Apparently yesterday's events near the Assembly meant parents were taking kids out of school early. I was blithe and unworried, putting in a good day's work and the kid was happy at the thought of mid-week vacationing.

Interesting coverage difference between the Hindu and the Deccan Chronicle. The Hindu sounds disapproving of the 'mobs'; uses words such as 'vandalism' and mourns the damage caused to the 'beautiful facade' of the Necklace Road MMTS station. The DC calls the students 'activists' and shows photos taken from behind the riot police as they lob teargas.

Interesting times have once again washed up on our doorsteps. 

Short Thoughts on Telangana

I accompanied my friend to four interviews he conducted with people to talk about Telangana. (I see no reason to name them.)

The last person we spoke to talked about touring all the districts and speaking with all kinds of people. I asked whether landlords, tenant-farmers, labourers and the landless in Telangana were united in their demand for a separate state and whether there really was no conflict of interest apparent to them. I was told in reply, that the people said, ‘Just let’s get these Andhra landlords out of here and we’ll take care of the Telangana ones afterwards.’

I don’t even know where to begin: is this a unified perspective? How many people would one need to speak to before a different opinion emerged? And if they did, would it be reported faithfully? Is there a qualitative difference between exploitation by Andhra landlords and Telangana landlords? (Our exploiters are better than yours.) Were people really willing to gloss over internal differences in the belief that a new state would somehow successfully address all these questions later?


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One question that no one in favour of statehood for Telangana has managed to answer is, if it does happen, then what? By what methods will injustices be redressed, and will they only become possible after statehood? And specifically, on whose behalf are people speaking and why do they all appear to be long-time buddies if they really speak for many, many different kinds of views and people? (Which is to say, for a movement that claims to be diverse, why does its vocal component seem so uniform?)


I am suspicious of this tendency to say, ‘let’s get statehood first, and then let’s deal with other things later.’ What happens when that later comes? Whose opinions do you suppose will really be taken on board?

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I am also suspicious of anything that causes people to feel fervour. All this fighting for a cause, all this shivery sense of being caught up in making history.

One of the people we spoke to said, protest is performance.

Apropos of which, one person reacting to my column said I had trivialised the whole issue, talking about the Complaints Choir. I don’t see that at all.

On the same day that my column on Telangana appeared, The Hindu carried a news report of a three hour long play that was in the form of a court hearing, where Telangana was filing for divorce from Andhra. At the end of the play, Telangana is granted divorce it seeks.

I don’t see why a complaints choir can’t be as political a piece of art as that play. It might not be as palatable to the pro-Telangana section, but I’ve been told there aren’t nearly enough voices being heard (in journals and opinion-making circles, I mean) on keeping status quo.

(Not that a complaints choir would automatically be anti-Telangana; in fact I’m a little surprised that it was read that way.)

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I grew up in Hyderabad. If anything, I should consider myself a Telangani, because if I belong anywhere, it is here. I have felt the change in the composition of the city, mourned the loss of its Deccani speech more commonly heard in my childhood than it is now; the more leisurely pace of life; what I think nostalgically of as its cosmopolitanism.

I am also aware that such a nostalgia-driven view amounts to less than nothing as a political argument for statehood. Cultural identity is a problematic thing. In the last few weeks, I have wondered whether Telangana, with its cultural uniqueness argument, is most like Mumbai or Tibet: does it want to expel those it sees as not belonging to it, so that its unique identity (whatever that is) is preserved; or is it like Tibet, being flooded with outsiders and being homogenised in an demonstration of cultural hegemony?

It’s a flawed comparison, I see that. But I’m just trying to use it as a frame within which to try and articulate this bugbear of cultural identity. I think I’ll stick with aphorisms.

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One really disturbing development is the presence of police and militia in the city. Most of it is around the Osmania University, but even on the roads, outside the houses of ministers and near the offices of political parties, I can't remember when there were so many men with guns and so much barbed wire.

I find the argument made by the state, that their presence is necessary on campus because the Maoists have 'infiltrated' the student body, specious and self-serving.

What I find even more disturbing is that civil society doesn't seem to care about what happens on campus or on the roads, so long as it doesn't disturb their daily lives.

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This is not all but this is as much as I’m going to say on the subject.

Two Minutes Older: Mile Sur Mera Tumhara

For the last three months, I have avoided all talk about the one subject that is on the minds of even – if reports about human chains or suicide are to be believed – school children: I am talking about Telangana.

Then nearly a month ago, a friend visited. He was doing a project on federalism and wanted to research the Telangana movement. Having arranged all kinds of meetings for him, I thought it only right that I also be present as he spoke to lawyers, ideologues, students, activists, bloggers, dissenters and experts of all kinds including the friends I had gathered together at a dinner one evening. As he conversed with these people, I watched from the sidelines, occasionally asking a question or two to demonstrate that I was actually listening.

On the basis of this very scientific collection of narratives, I now have an opinion on Telangana that I am going to share with you.

The way I see it, Telangana is like Akira Kurosawa’s film, Rashomon. If you haven’t seen the film and know nothing about it, it is a complicated story-within-a-story. As the film begins, two people relate the events that took place a few days before. Their story is about a travelling samurai and his wife who are waylaid by a bandit. The wife might have been raped and the samurai is certainly left for dead and is found by a woodcutter, who is one of the two narrators of the story.

The film itself is a reconstruction of the central events, at the trial following the murder of the samurai, by four people: the bandit, the wife, the spirit of the dead samurai and the woodcutter. In each narrative, each of the characters displays different motivations and events play out slightly differently each time. It is not clear who one is supposed to believe or why.

The parallel is obvious. Listening to each of the people we spoke to, it was clear that everyone believed passionately in their perspective. There were those who believed in the spontaneous and democratic nature of the Telangana movement, its history and necessity. Some talked of the cynical wheeling and dealing that was taking place behind the scenes. For some the protests were a performance and the visible players were merely puppets for others holding the strings and biding their time. Others were convinced that statehood was one way of making sure that a different set of people got to make money. There were some who had travelled and spoken to people in every district of the Telangana region, and who told us of the different and differing smaller agendas that had brought people together under the umbrella of statehood.

Every one of those narratives only made the picture more perplexing. The comparison with Rashomon also made it clear to me that what I hear depends not just on who is saying it but who they think they are saying it to.

They did not know it, but at least one of those listening was (and remains) a resolute fence-sitter. Since no one has so far considered such a perspective on an important issue, I am here to offer it (unasked).

A year or so ago, another friend sent a link to a YouTube video. Since so much wisdom is to be found on the internet, I followed it like the sheep I am and found something called The Complaints Choir. The Complaints Choir is a group of people who gather together and sing out their complaints in perfect harmony. In the video I watched, they sang about toilet paper, jobs and neighbours.

In the spirit of providing a dose of humour to overheating sensibilities, here is my contribution to the Telangana issue: just as human chains and protests have their value in the political process, I suggest that getting things off one’s chest in song is equally invaluable.

I propose that those for and against Telangana get together and make a list of complaints they want to sing. They can rehearse until the Telangana Complaints Choir achieves vocal harmony even if they agree on nothing else. All the resulting levels of irony will make Rashomon seem like a simple story for children.

(An edited version of this in Zeitgeist, the Saturday edition of The New Indian Express.)

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Yes, it's a not very serious take on Telangana. There will be another post to talk about other things that came up in those conversations we had.