TALES OF TRAVESTY
DR. JITENDRA SINGH
In the unbridled war of words unleashed by the announcement of Telengana becoming 29th State of the Indian union, among the several tweets appearing like a July-August monsoon shower was the one posted by our own fellow columnist Shobhaa De, known as much for her style as her satire, who wrote, this could also rake up the demand for a separate Mumbai State outside Maharashtra. Incidentally, the tweet did not attract as much attention as Raj Thackeray’s rejoinder that getting a State was not as easy as gettign a divorce, thus obliquely referring to Shobhaa’s much “divorced” status or, in other words, over thrice divorced personal status. Coincidentally, the other Twitter savvy person to make a similar comment apprehending many more Statehood demands from other regions including Jammu was the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister whose “divorced” or “undivorced” status can hardly match that of Shobhaa’s.
Be that as it may, the subject deserves a far more serious introspection rather than such unsavoury trivilisation intruding into the private lives of individuals. To put the record straight, without prejudice against any Statehood demand from anywhere, the truth is that unlike most other demands emanating from elsewhere in the country, the dmeand for a separate Telengana State had been pending ever since the dawn of independence in 1947 and the matter of fact is that even the “Nehru-Sardar Patel-Pittabhi-Sitaramayya” (JVP) Committee constituted in 1948 had in its report stated that though the time was not ripe for creating more States, a case could be made for a separate State for Telugu speaking people. This fanned a movement among Telugu speaking people who were then a part of the undivided State of Madras and one of the spearheaders of the movement Potti Sriramulu died on December 15, 1952 following a 56 day fast. Simultaneously almost, the demand for a separate Telengana state also began to appear in newspapers.
Down the line, the States of Maharashtra and Gujarat also got carved out of a larger Bombay State, more for reasons of linguistic criteria. Similarly lesser Punjabi speaking areas or more Hindi speaking areas of Punjab separated out to give birth to Haryana.
The point often missed is that most of the demands for a separate State from different parts of the country are not inspired so much by linguistic or ethnic identity but more so on account of a desperate feeling among people of certain regions that they have been, for political reasons, victims of discrimination, disparity and raw deal in matters of employment, education and development. Often, the deep underlying reason in such cases is that the powers-that-be have never considered these neglected regions as an important or viable vote bank for themselves. The case of Jammu can also, to a great extent, be perceived in the same perspective. And, the historic Amarnath agitation of 2008 went on to prove the point by going beyond being a mere land row agitation but evolving into a movement against six decades of cumulative grievance nursed by Jammu against discrimination suffered in the hands of Kashmir-centric rulers.
The answer is not too simple to be summed up in this brief column. The crux of matter is that the common man wants a fair deal. If it is possible without separating out…Fine! But, if the only option is to separate out, Umapathy drops Sahir’s poetic cue “Taaruf Bhoj Ban Jaye To Usko Bhoolna Behtar, Taaluk Rog Ho Jaye To Usko Torhna Behtar……”
Follow our WhatsApp channel