The Andhra Movement Hyderabad State and PDF

This article was downloaded by: [Rama Mantena]
On: 30 October 2014, At: 12:57

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
India Review
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/find20
The Andhra Movement, Hyderabad

State, and the Historical Origins of the
Telangana Demand: Public Life and
Political Aspirations in India, 190056
a
Rama Sundari Mantena
a
University of Illinois at Chicago
Published online: 28 Oct 2014.
To cite this article: Rama Sundari Mantena (2014) The Andhra Movement, Hyderabad State, and the
Historical Origins of the Telangana Demand: Public Life and Political Aspirations in India, 190056,
India Review, 13:4, 337-357, DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2014.964629
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2014.964629
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
India Review, vol. 13, no. 4, 2014, pp. 337357
Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN 1473-6489 print/1557-3036 online
DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2014.964629
The Andhra Movement, Hyderabad State,

and the Historical Origins of the Telangana
Demand: Public Life and Political Aspirations
in India, 190056
RAMA SUNDARI MANTENA
The Andhra Movement and the Cultivation of Public Life

At present the Telugu-speaking region is witnessing a formidable political challenge to
one of the earliest successful linguistic nationalisms in post-independence India, which
Downloaded by [Rama Mantena] at 12:57 30 October 2014
instigated the breakdown of colonial administrative divisions and saw the emergence
of regional states organized along linguistic lines. The contemporary political upheaval
in Telangana concerning separate statehood unravels a loosely knit consensus on this
question of a cultural unity giving legitimacy for the formation of a new regional state.
Yet, we are ill-equipped to understand that the demand for a Telangana state has a longer
more complex history. In historical scholarship on India, an almost exclusive attention
paid to the formation of modern nation-states and the rise of political nationalisms has
impoverished our understanding of the dynamics of a territorial region with respect
to the depth of its investments in its social and cultural institutions, the relationships
forged between classes and castes entrenched in the region, and the emergence of polit-
ical ideologies concerning collective representation and rights attuned to the regions
internal dynamics. An earlier historiography emphasized the nation as a point of refer-
ence for understanding colonial technologies of enumeration in making culture central
to processes of identity formation.
While the focus on culture and identity of the nation and region helped to under-
stand the foundations of cultural nationalisms, it did little to illuminate the broader
discourses of political modernity and languages of citizenship in circulation in the
region. The region was more properly the site of political community and civic activity.
Consequently, the focus on national politics and identity led to the nation as a form
structuring our perception of the formation of the region, leading to an understanding
that the region was a replication of the nation and, hence, the circulation of the term
subnational. In addition, the examination of the important dynamic between the forma-
tion of religious majorities and minorities in defining the post-colonial nation states of
India and Pakistan led to a kind of ready acceptance of the inevitability of subnational
identities on the basis of religious and/or linguistic differences, as legitimate markers
of (political) collectivities. Furthermore, there has been good work on the formation of
regional linguistic identity attributing historical causation in the emergence of regional
politics to the affective relationship that was forged between community and language
Rama Sundari Mantena is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
338 India Review
in the nationalist period. For example, recent scholarship has helped us to question
the origin of the idea of the mother tongue lying in pre-colonial times by dismantling
discourses of linguistic nationalism to trace the fairly recent constitution of the mod-
ern linguistic community.1 These studies are a direct response to several decades of
scholarship on the imagined communities of nations and ethnicities based on religion
and language (and other shared markers of community).2 While it was a necessary and
an important task to unravel the discourses of various ethnic nationalisms and their
positing of their mythical origins, there is an urgent need to re-engage with broader
discourses of citizenship and political modernity that defined the politics of the region
from its emergence in the colonial and nationalist periods to its post-colonial afterlives.
There is an even more urgent task for more nuanced political histories that draw from
the insights gained in recent cultural and social histories of nationalisms in India.
This article revisits the early twentieth century to rethink the forces that shaped dis-
courses surrounding political communityspecifically the political community in its
regional articulation. This article begins with a review of the particular ways in which
the discourse of rights and political representation have emerged at the regional level in
post-independence India, and where a sense of the unique social, cultural, and politi-
cal dynamics that constitute the region distinct from the dynamics of nationalism and
national identity is derived. Specifically, the dynamics of a new discourse of politics is
examined in twentieth-century south India, primarily in the Telugu speaking districts
of the Madras Presidency and the Princely State of Hyderabad. With the institution of
representational bodies/institutions at the regional level, the extension of the franchise,
and the rise of a public politics based on liberal ideas of public reason and debate at
the turn of the twentieth century, we witness the emergence of the region as the site of
a distinct set of political dynamics. Another dimension explored was to provide some
answers to the question: How did national and international discourses of responsible
government and self-determination shape the region in early twentieth century India?
For south India, the focus in the historical and anthropological literature has been
on how language became a cultural marker of sorts at the expense of paying attention
to the political contestations to this assertion coming from disenfranchised caste groups
and regions. If we broaden our analytic vision, then we would be able to perceive the
fissures of the projected cohesive linguistic identity on the eve of Indian independence
leading us to better understand that conceptions of region and territory were not solely
anchored in cultural categories. Rather, if we are sensitive to the broader discussions of
political representation and the region at this moment, we might be able to better under-
stand why postcolonial India continues to harbor challenges from regional aspirations
for smaller statehood. My research aims to rethink the emergence of regional publics,
cultures of democratic participation in defining and negotiating not only multifarious
cultural identities, but also their relationship to the past, confronting societal inequities,
challenging traditional orthodoxies; in effect ushering in a new era of liberalism and the
increased use of the language of political rights and self-determination.
While clearly prior conceptions of self-rule articulated by Indian nationalists from
the Swadeshi Movement and the Home Rule Movement were circulating in British
India prior to World War I, it is worth noting the intensification of these concepts with
internationalist discourses of self-determination during this critical period. In 1918, the
Historical Origins of the Telangana Demand 339
Report on Indias Constitutional Reforms (The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms) pre-

pared for the Government of India states that World War I had a profound effect on
Indian nationalism. The language of liberty and self-determination used by American
and British statesmen to describe the ideological struggle of the war impacted colo-
nial peoples perception of their rightful place in a world of free nation-states.3 The
Report states:
The war has come to be regarded more and more clearly as a struggle between
liberty and despotism, a struggle for the right of small nations and for the right of
all people to rule their own destinies. Attention is repeatedly called to the fact that
in Europe Britain is fighting on the side of liberty, and it is urged that Britain cannot
deny to the people of India that for which she is herself fighting in Europe, and in
the fight for which she has been helped by Indias blood and treasure.4
The Report acknowledges that the Government of India is on a path towards greater
responsible government in which Indians would be gradually introduced into the

administration with greater responsibilities. It also states that the Government of
India had been up until then a system of absolute government. This is a clear recog-
nition that the old system can no longer continue, presumably because of Britains
ideological standing in the world of nations. Britains reformed-minded government
introduced changes in the government of India to foster the principle of self-
determinationthough considerably limited in colonial India. The language of liberty
and self-determination used by the British government not only had a profound impact
on broader currents in Indian nationalism; it also shaped regional conceptions of self-
government. This directly led to two demands made by regional activists such as those
who started the Andhra Movement (the principle actors who will be discussed in
the following section) in the Madras Presidency: one for provincial autonomy and
the other for the re-drawing of provincial boundaries based on a more rational basis
than the historical accident of imperial borders in British India. The impact of the
Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms on provincial autonomy in south India has been dealt
with by numerous historians, especially the advantage it gave to the Justice Party in the
Madras Presidency.5 The reforms also coincided with greater/stronger calls for redraw-
ing provincial boundaries based on linguistic criteria, however, which was spearheaded
by the Andhra activists.
The Andhra movement was not the first broad based movement to demand the
redrawing of provinces according to linguistic criteria. Consider the Oriya language
movement that began in the 1860s protesting the dominance of Bengali in the region
and demanding the use of Oriya in vernacular schools.6 This movement shifted to the
call for a separate province for Oriya speakers in the early decades of the twentieth
century. The Telugu intellectuals who spearheaded the Andhra Movement made con-
stant references to the other movements to legitimize their grievances and set their goals
for not only institutionalizing Telugu as a language of education but more importantly
to push for greater representative institutions better suited to initially developing the
geographic region of Coastal Andhra or the Northern Circars. In the February 24,
1913 issue of The Hindu a letter from V. Subrahmanyam of Triplicane asks:
340 India Review
Why did the dispatch of Lord Hardinge have such an impact on the Andhras alone
and not on others, say, the Malayalis or Kannadigas? The condition of the Andhras
in Madras Presidency resembled that of Biharis in the Bengal Presidency. They were
the second largest group in the Presidency. They were the second largest group in
the Presidency with similar grievances in matters of education and public service.
Neither Malayalis nor the Kannadigas were numerous in the Madras Presidency
comprising less than 10 percent and about 4 per cent respectively. The Kannadigas
were more numerous in Bombay but still only about 10 percent. Further in the
Madras Presidency, the literacy even in vernaculars of Malayalis and Kannadigas
was high. . . . Consequently the well educated Malayali or Kannadiga in Madras
Presidency had better chances for public service compared to their numbers and so
were not aggrieved like the Andhras.7
The Andhra activists through their primary organ the Andhra Mahajana Sabha (AMS)
founded in 1913 were busy comparing numbers, assessing majorities and minorities in
the provinces, and making demands on how best to develop their region, resources,
and their community. Strategies of colonial governmentality, specifically strategies of
enumeration such as the census helped to forge community identities based on lan-
guage and religion.8 These communities were further refined and called forth in the
early twentieth century when new political technologies were being introduced at the
regional level. We see the impact of the expansion of representative institutions as a
result of constitutional reforms leading to the formation of different constituencies in
south India: the Justice Party, the regional units of the Indian National Congress, the
Self-Respect Movement, and equally significant the Andhra Mahasabha. As historian
Christopher Baker argues, the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms instigated greater expan-
sion of native participation in the Madras government. However, both Irschick and
Baker link the reforms to the expansion and success of Non-Brahminism in the Madras
Presidency.9 One can extend this analysis to suggest that the expansion of representa-
tive institutions instigated a turn to the growth of regional parties, that is, the growth of
provincial politics and of political institutions. For the Andhra activists the expansion of
representative institutions and proposals for provincial autonomy brought forth discus-
sions of how best to break up big provinces such as the Madras Presidency to provide
greater powers and autonomy to significant regional/territorial communities within the
Presidency. During the height of Non-Brahminism, the Andhra movement faced some
competition. Telugu speakers were prominent in the Justice Party in Madras and they
posed a political challenge for the Andhra activists who were primarily Congress sup-
porters. Konda Venkatappayya, who was one of the leaders of the movement, initiated
the separation of the Andhra Congress unit.
Within this complex set of political currents in the Madras Presidency, how did lan-
guage become significant criteria for the demand for regional political autonomy? Civil
societal activism centered on language in British India tended to shift from a phase of
institutionalizing language to making a claim on territory and its resources (in the lan-
guage of development and modernization).10 While the processes of institutionalization
of language began in the nineteenth century, the latter phase was considerably shaped
by the new politics unfolding in the early decades of the twentieth century. Konda
Venkatappayya, one of the primary Andhra activists of this period, wrote on why
new provinces must be rethought along linguistic lines: If the people living in those
provinces are to have an organic growth and development, they must be constituted
into separate, handy, compact and homogenous entities, so that the natural binding
forces of society, such as, language and literature, custom and tradition, culture and sen-
timent, may have free play and promote unity, tolerance and responsibility and other
noble qualities characterizing a race or community entitled to self-government.11 The
devolution schemes of the colonial government provided greater levels of autonomy to
local and regional governments leading to the cultivation of what could be argued were
novel ideas of citizenship and public life. Intellectuals and activists hailing from regional
locations began to think of ways to foster community bonds and loyalty through
the cultivation of civic mindedness. Local and regional literary societies took the lead
in providing space for public discussion and debate over literary, social and political
issues, to cultivate public life, at the turn of the twentieth century. Associations such
as Young Mens Literary Association of Guntur, Viziagaram Literary Association, and
the Coconada Literary Association were established to provide such a space.

The first Andhra Mahajana Sabha meeting took place on May 20, 1913 presided over
by B.N. Sharma, a member of the Legislative Council of Madras, who later became
member of the Viceroys Executive Council.12 It was momentous in that it brought
together representatives from different districts of British India and from the princely
state of Hyderabad. At the venue for the conference, twenty-two gates were con-
structed each adorned with the names of poets, heroes, and heroines commemorating
Andhra history. The proceedings began with the song Vande Mataram expressing
allegiance to the nationalist movement and the meeting was conducted in Telugu.13
At the turn of the twentieth century, the impact of the shift to vernacular languages
in public speaking cannot be underestimated.14 B.N. Sharma told the audience at the
AMS conference that they were Indians first and sons of Mother Andhra second
balancing their regional affiliations with the compulsions of nationalism.15 This was
a common refrain of the Andhra activists lest they be mistaken as working against
the nationalist cause. In a sense nationalism in India was intensely fueled by anti-
colonialism. Regionalism on the other hand was not so much shaped by the politics
of anti-colonialism as such. Rather, regionalism was shaped by discourses of political
modernity and the introduction of representative government in the first two decades
of the twentieth century.
While clearly the Andhra activists began to promote language as the natural bond
that would be cultivated to create a political community at the region, they neverthe-
less knew that the nationalist movement was primary. The goal of independence for the
nation as outlined by the Indian National Congress was to take precedence over region-
alisms. However, the Andhra activists recognized that they could do both: cultivate
their regional political community while simultaneously working for the nationalist
movement. In fact the Andhra activists saw themselves as pioneers in outlining a strat-
egy for federated regional identities that would support a national one. At the first
AMS conference, two resolutions were reached: (a) to ensure efficient administra-
tion and the promotion of the best interests of the people of India, the Government
will sooner or later have to make language areas, the territorial basis of provincial
342 India Review
administration;16 and (b) that provincial administration, on such a basis, is neces-

sary in order that both the self government on colonial lines pleaded for by the Indian
National Congress and the provincial autonomy approved of by the Government of
India, may develop on healthy and natural lines, this Conference Committee, now
appointed, ascertain public opinion, on the question whether the government should
be asked to constitute the Telugu districts into a separate province.17 The argument
based of administrative convenience especially because a common language would ease
communication is part and parcel of the broader projects of political modernization.
Furthermore, the Andhra activists believed it was not only in their interests to push
for linguistically defined provinces. Writing a Memorandum on Andhra Province in
1938, Ramadas Pantulu quoted the standing committee of the Andhra Maha Sabha on
the relationship between a provincial identity and a national one:
The moment we visualize each of the fifteen or sixteen provinces constituted on

linguistic basis, functioning each in its own as, fostering its own language, pro-
moting its own culture, imparting its own instruction and administering its justice
through its vernacular language and dealing with its villages and their rural prob-
lems through the vernaculars of the heart, the very moment we visualize India
as a nation whose nationalism is not the steam-road-rolled product exhibiting a
dull uniformity, but as a harmonious combination of diverse cultures exhibiting a
fundamental unity.18
Even before the founding of the AMS, J. Gurunatham a member of the Young
Mens Literary Association (190304) in Guntur along with his associates U.
Lakshminarayana and Konda Venkatappayya discussed the potential benefits of sep-
arating the Telugu districts. Gurunathan was one of the founding fathers of this young
movement. At the time, he was a teacher at the Christian College of Guntur and then
secretary of the Rajah of Kurupam and a member of the Supreme Legislative Council.
He wrote in The Hindu on matters of advancing the cause of the Andhras. Gurunatham
also wrote a fascinating biography of Kandukuri Veeresalingam, a prominent nine-
teenth century Telugu writer and social reformer, in 1911 that offers us an insight
into some of the political discussions that were taking place in the early decades of
the twentieth century in the Telugu districts of the Madras Presidency.19 Gurunatham
saw significant changes taking place at the turn of twentieth century. His book on
Veeresalingam argued that social reformism was well intentioned but it did absolutely
nothing in developing the regions politically. Gurunatham argues that in order for
Telugu people to take part in the march toward self-government, there needs to be an
orientation towards the fostering of a political community at the regional level to aid
the political development of the region. Political development encompassed a great deal
from fostering civil societal institutions centered on the development and appreciation
of developments in the field of language and literature to conducting public debates on
what responsible government would entail for the region.
What were the regionalist-culturalist movements articulating besides making a case
for administrative convenience (an argument introduced by the colonial state)? Indeed
the region became the locus for new aspirations of cultural pride. However, more
importantly, it can be argued that the region became the site for the elaboration of lib-
eral civil societal institutions that would inculcate democratic virtues of citizenship and
reworked conceptions of egalitarianism. What these movements have in common first
and foremost is a civilizational defense of the region and language as worthy as any
other, which falls under cultural pride. Importantly, another commonality is the call
for adequate political representational institutions for the region. The region is con-
ceptualized and articulated as a territorial linguistic community claiming that language
would act to bind the community together and would inspire its speakers to work
towards the political unit of the region. Therefore, it is both a source of cultural pride
but most importantly a site for political modernity. B. N. Sarma at the first Andhra
Conference said that the Telugus need to be encouraged to cultivate a spirit of broth-
erhood, a nationality based on common tradition, interests and aspirations, and towards
uplifting themselves in the scale of nations by their education, character and wealth.20
Sarma recognized as other Andhra activists that linguistic pride or nationality based on
a common language had to be cultivated in order to create a cohesive political com-
munity. Cultural cohesion fostered through linguistic provinces would enable greater
democratizing of politics. However, cultural cohesion was not a given; it had to be
cultivated. In 1913, Konda Venkatappaayya went to the ceded districts of the Madras
Presidency to speak with local leaders and to convince them of the benefits of amal-
gamating the Telugu districts into one province.21 Clearly the Andhra activists knew
that there was no inherent natural community based on language that would lead to a
political community. It had to be cultivated and constructed and made politically viable
through producing consent amongst the various parties. Consent would come about by
carefully addressing the needs of all the Telugu-speaking districts. The ceded districts
were opposed to the demand for a separate Andhra province from the very beginning.
However, despite the hurdles faced by the Andhra activists, language was clearly pre-
ferred over caste and religion as markers of community as the latter were seen to be
more divisive.
As for the liberal aspiration for developing civil societal institutions, the region
became the ideal locus to conceptualize and cultivate the new citizen-subject of a self-
governing India. Venkatappayya wrote in 1913 that the Andhra movement is only an
attempt to open their [i.e. the Telugu peoples] minds to their present backwardness
and induce individual exertion as well as corporate action on their part to improve their
condition.22 The work of the movement was to cultivate great love for education and
culture to improve themselves and become better citizens; to create a spirit of coopera-
tion and mutual trust by educating people of the agricultural and commercial potential
in the region and to get the people to work collectively towards its progress and, impor-
tantly, to cultivate Telugu literature in order to disseminate the principles of modern
culture and enlightenment to the masses.23 Again, the clearly stated goals of the early
Andhra activists display the conscious effort that was put into the making of a dynamic
civil society.
Since the founding of Andhra Maha Sabha two decades later, there was a steady
discussion of how to develop the provinces as British India moves toward self-
government. The Andhra activists seemed to be on a path toward being granted a
new province in the 1930s. Back in 1919 when Montague was travelling around British
344 India Review
India interviewing various leaders, B.N. Sharma put forward a motion in the Imperial
Legislative Council for the creation of a separate province for Andhra. This was struck
down at the time because of the more pressing issue of Gandhis impending non-
cooperation movement. It took them a series of compromises from first convincing
Rayalseema districts that they will benefit from forming a state with Andhra. However,
after Andhra University was established at Waltair in the coastal districts in 1931, the
Rayalseema districts were reticent to join the coastal districts in the agitation for an
Andhra Province. This led to the demand to make Madras a joint capital for both the
Tamils and Telugus. The twentieth session of the Andhra Maha Sabha was preoccupied
with the question of Madras as the capital of an Andhra Province. First, the coastal
Telugus had to be convinced that this was beneficial for their province to have Madras
as its capital. Ramadas Pantulu writes that Andhra public opinion has come around to
the idea that fixing Madras as the capital for Andhra would aid industry, commerce
and banking in the province.24 The Rayalseema districts insisted on Madras while the
Working Committee of the Tamil Nadu Congress protested this new development.
A convincing case had to be made for Madras. The Andhra activists brought in Vavilla
Venkateswara Sastrulu and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan to provide arguments for why
Madras needed to be a joint capital. Vavilla Venkateswara Sastrulu provided an his-
torical argument that from the very beginning of English transactions in south India,
Telugu Brahmins were employed as translators and interpreters.
There were also prominent Telugu intellectuals in Madras contributing to its public
life such as Kavali Borayya the famed assistant of Colin Mackenzie, the First Surveyor-
General of India. For these reasons, Vavilla Venkateswara Sastrulu argues that Madras
has always been a Telugu city from its very foundations. S. Radhakrishnan offers a more
measured testimony for Madras to remain capital of an Andhra Province. He cites C.
Rajagopalachari speaking at the Madras Legislative Assembly on the question of an
Andhra Province. Rajagopalachari quotes the Montague Report on the idea that a com-
mon language is a strong and natural basis for provincial individuality. However,
it is not the only criteria. Rather, race, religion, geography, and economic interests all
should be taken into account. Beyond that the most important criteria/principle is the
largest possible measure of general agreement on the changes proposed, both on the side
of which is gaining, and on the side, that is the area that is losing advantage.25 In other
words, a consensus had to be reached (as far as possible) through public discussion and
debate, reaching out to those who were skeptical of the benefits of unifying the Telugu
districts and making Madras its capital. With World War II and the intensification of
nationalist agitation for independence, the issue of new provinces was temporarily laid
aside.
Hyderabad: The Disintegration of a Princely State

The Andhra activists from the Madras Presidency believed that the institutionaliza-
tion of language provided the best base for the cultivation of democratic institutions.
They acted on the idea by garnering the precarious loyalties of the people. However,
associational politics developed quite differently in the neighboring Princely State of
Hyderabad with different political aspirations. Hyderabad was one of the earliest
princely states that became part of British India through the subsidiary alliance
system in the late eighteenth century. Hyderabad bordered on the Madras Presidency,
Bombay Presidency and the Central Provinces of British India. In 1941, Muslims con-
stituted around 10 percent of Hyderabads overall population. However, the city itself
comprised of around 46 percent Muslims. The city was home to around 48.2 per-
cent of Telugu speakers and approximately 85 percent of the overall population was
Hindu.
The decades leading up to Indian independence saw in Hyderabad a surge of civil
societal activism despite many constraints placed by the states administration. One
overriding concern for this section is why and how did socio-political conditions in
Hyderabad compel the states subjects to organize along linguistic lines? What were
the institutional mechanism that enabled organizing along linguistic lines and how did
that shape political aspirations/futures harbored by the people. There was clearly much
cross-border interaction through civil societal associations. My concern however will
be primarily the Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad or the region of Telangana as it
forged links with their cross-border counterparts in the Madras Presidency. Telangana
eventually was integrated to Andhra Pradesh in 1956. The arguments made towards
the making of linguistic provinces by the Andhra activists took on a different political
dynamic in the context of Hyderabad where civil societal associations imagined dif-
ferent political futures. The most prominent challenge facing the people of Hyderabad
was that civil society institutions were severely restricted at the height of the nationalist
movement in British India. The Nizam, the nominal head of the princely state, pushed
for constitutional reforms to develop representative government institutions only when
feeling pressure from representatives from British India. Despite this reluctance, the
Hyderabad state witnessed the formation of dynamic civil societal associations demar-
cated by language with affiliations in British India. The impetus for the formation of
these associations is different from the emergence of regional/linguistic associations in
British India. In an early study of the political conditions in the Hyderabad state, one
reason that Carolyn Elliot put forward was that civil societal institutions were under-
developed within Hyderabad and representative government was not expanded as was
taking place in British India.26 While it may be true that the Nizam was reluctantly car-
rying on discussion of political reforms and banned political gatherings unless approved
by the state, there was nevertheless a proliferation of political interests, civil societal
groups, and charismatic leaders in the decades leading up to the forceful merger with
the Indian union.
Karen Leonard offers us a more nuanced historical picture of the internal dynam-
ics within Hyderabad. Instead of relegating Hyderabad a political backwater, Leonard
traces the development of a modern bureaucracy to the period of the successful Diwan
Salar Jang (185383). The period witnessed the successful fostering of non-Mulki (out-
siders) modernization schemes. Leonard argues that in the following years, the non-
Mulkis that were brought into Hyderabad by Salar Jang dominated political power and
continued with their modernization schemes. Most interestingly, Leonard argues that
new cultural-political ideologies emerged in the decades leading up to the Hyderabad
merger: Mulki cultural nationalism or a synthesis of Deccani nationalism and a move-
ment for Muslim sovereignty.27 However, what Leonard leaves out are a whole set
346 India Review
of other forces such as the regional parties with affiliations with Congress units in
British India: the Andhra Mahasabha and the Karnatak and Maharashtra Parishads.
Despite this lack, Leonard nevertheless offers us rich glimpses of how Deccani culture
was invoked by Mulki nationalism in these decades. Similar to what we witness in the
Telugu districts in the Madras Presidency, there was a proliferation of Urdu literary
societies investigating Deccani Urdu that fed into Deccani nationalism. Societies such
as the Osmania Graduates Association, the Hyderabad Political Reform Association of
1919, the Society of Union and Progress of 1926, and the Nizams Subjects League of
1935 are a product of these Deccani nationalisms that garnered/articulated political
loyalities to the Hyderabad state.28 The Nizams Subjects League in particular brought
together leaders from the Andhra Mahasabha and attempted to forge a secular alterna-
tive voice to shape the political future of Hyderabad. However, it saw an early demise
because it threatened the balance of power of Muslim elites who were more cautious
in aligning with what they saw as regional Congress supporters whom they viewed as
expressing Hindu interests in Hyderabad.
The radicalized youth of Hyderabad embraced linguistically defined regional groups

such as the Andhra Mahasabha, Maratha Parishad, and the Karnatak Parishad. John
Roosas work suggests that the regional cultural organizations were popular because
they claimed not to be political.29 Members of these associations while claiming mem-
bership in the regional groups within Hyderabad cultivated ties with their counterparts
in British India, which were becoming dynamic organs for anti-colonial nationalism.
In the framework of anti-colonial nationalism, Hyderabad appears to be a political
backwater as Elliot summarized in her explanation of its slow political moderniza-
tion.30 However, as Roosa points out, the nationalist period did not only produce
narratives of nationalism and patriotism but also gave rise to the complex story of
political democracy and citizenship in India: While rarely engaged in overt acts of
resistance to the colonial power, there were nationalists in Hyderabad from the late
nineteenth century onward endeavoring to build horizontal allegiances and workable
alliances between diverse communities.31 This observation would extend to British
India as well in particular the Madras Presidency. While Hyderabad was not a hot bed
of anti-colonial nationalism, it did witness radical challenges to the status quo and pro-
posals for alternate political futures. Primarily, the groups that proliferated in the 1920s
and 1930s attempted to have conversations on constitutional reforms and the political
future of Hyderabad as a consequence of what was perceived as the impending British
withdrawal from India. In many ways, rather than fostering discussion to shape the
political future of Hyderabad, the Nizam and his supporters attempted to thwart these
discussions.
If one were to look at the enduring set of historical forces that shaped these decades
before independence, Hyderabad went through some pertinent changes that prepared
the way for discussions of constitutional reforms by the state as well as shaping the
political aspirations of its people. Roosa argues that the reforms begun by Salar Jang
had given a clear advantage to Muslim recruitment.32 This became more apparent with
the introduction of the census in 1881. Salar Jang, conceived Hyderabad to be a Muslim
state contributing to the perception of Muslim dominance in the Nizam administra-
tion.33 This certainly did not mean an Islamic state in which religious laws would be
implemented to govern the people nor did the state harbor any plans to encourage
the conversion of the Hindu populace. However, it did mean that Muslims whether
mulki or non-mulki (outsider) would be recruited to man the civil administration to
give the state its character as Muslim (acknowledging its history, etc.). The modern-
ization schemes implemented by Salar Jang along with calls for constitutional reforms
starting in the second decade of the twentieth century nurtured the conditions for the
emergence of a thriving public sphere in Hyderabad, a public that would eventually not
only pose a challenge to the monarchical power of the Nizam, but also the dominance
of Muslims in the bureaucracy.34
This is precisely what happens in Hyderabad in the early decades of the twentieth
century when we begin to see the proliferation of civil societal associations speaking
to the different political/cultural needs of the educated populace. A primary political
and cultural association for Telugu speakers was the Andhra Jana Sangham conceived in
192122, established in 192324 and eventually renamed Andhra Maha Sabha in 1930.
However, it remained distinct from the AMS in the Madras Presidency. While the AMS
in the Madras Presidency was meeting annually to articulate their political interests as
well as increasing its membership, the Jana Sangham in the 1920s in Hyderabad was
a public forum for Telugu speakers to express their varied political and cultural inter-
ests. Interestingly, the Telugus felt it necessary to organize when the Nizam States
Social Reform Conference did not allow the use of Telugu at their meeting.35 We hear
a similar story of the origins of the Andhra Movement in Madras Presidency attributed
to when Telugu speakers felt neglected in a Tamil dominated Congress. This inspired
them to organize to form a separate association in which Telugu speakers would have a
public political forum. Interestingly in both cases in Hyderabad and in Madras, Telugu
speakers felt compelled to organize a linguistic unit for public discussion of issues rang-
ing from cultural-literary to political reforms. An important Telugu newspaper, the
Golconda Patrika (1927) was established by Suravaram Pratapa Reddy who presided
over the First Andhra Mahasabha Conference held at Jogipet in 1930. Ravi Narayana
Reddy, in his memoirs of this period, recalls that they chose to call the newspaper
Golconda instead of Andhra because the Hyderabad authorities would not have wel-
comed a daily with the name Andhra, somehow signaling to them that it would harbor
threatening political ideologies.36
The Hindu Mahasabha was also founded around the same time in Hyderabad in
1923. It brought together Maharashtrians, Telugus, Dalits, and Arya Samajists under
one group. The Majlis-e Itthehad al-Muslimin responded with the founding of a group
to unite all sects of Muslims in 1928 giving voice to what Leonard had called the defense
of Muslim sovereignty. Finally, when the Indian National Congress authorized polit-
ical activity in the princely states in 1938, the Provincial Committee of Hyderabad
State Congress was formed in 1938.37 This lead to a surge in political activity in
Hyderabad including student protests on the campus of Osmania University over the
singing of Vande Mataram. The Hyderabad government banned the formation of
the Hyderabad State Congress because it deemed it a communal organization and it
objected to its affiliation to the Indian National Congress. The Congress attempted to
protest this by calling for a satyagraha in Hyderabad. The Arya Samaj and the Hindu
Mahasabha also called for a satyagraha at the same time which led to Hyderabad facing
348 India Review
a massive political agitation that brought in large numbers of political activists from
British India. Between October 1938 and June 1939 around 7,989 satyagrahis were
arrested according to the British Resident in Hyderabad.38 The same report claims that
only 20 percent of those arrested were Hyderabad state subjects. The majority, in other
words, were from British India.
In addition to these associations, there were associations that tried to cross lin-
guistic and religious lines. Baqar Ali Mirza inspired by radical movements in Europe
returned to Hyderabad after finishing a degree at Oxford in 1927. He had taken part in
the International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in Brussels
earlier that year in 1927. Other notable Hyderabadis attended the meeting such as
Virendranath Chattopadhyaya and his nephew Jaisoorya Naidu.39 Mirza helped to
begin a new organization, Anjuman-e Taraqqi Hyderabad (the Society for the Progress
of Hyderabad) in 1928. The platform for campaigning was to be economic issues believ-
ing that an economic agenda would bridge the growing rift between the religious
communities. The Anjumans print organ was Raiyat (1927).40 Mandumula Narsing
Rao (18971976) as editor of Raiyat and member of the Anjuman attempted to stake
out the papers anti-sectarian identity. He wrote an editorial in 1935 expressing these
sentiments, if a few people were injured in religious squabbles; it matters little in a
society where thousands are perishing every day because of disease. 41 Rao in another
editorial wrote, These communal organizations (farqavarana tahrikat) may have their
origins in British India but their poisonous winds reach here too. As soon as people
started adopting ideas from British India, an era of evil mindedness and distrust began
in the state.42 It is interesting to note the perception that communalism was a disease
from British India that threatened to distract from the real political issues that should
bring people together in Hyderabad. It is also a testament to the differences of polit-
ical conditions and political discussion in Hyderabad in comparison to British India.
In other words, these two organizations were organic to Hyderabad and its politi-
cal climate. They address specific Hyderabad issues with respect to the integrity and
autonomy of Hyderabad as a political unit.
What these associations and their discussions reveal is a very different political
climate in Hyderabada political climate that was putting forward critiques of the
monarchical power of the Nizam, demanding constitutional reforms and the expan-
sion of representative institutions. The political ideologies as they developed under
the conditions of a modernized monarchy upheld by British colonial power differed
considerably from their British Indian counterparts. They shared some similar goals,
especially the groups that overlapped and had explicit ties with the Indian National
Congress, the goal of greater representational institutions moving toward a popular
democracy. However, even the Congress groups, liberals and socialists, had to work
under conditions of a monarchical power that did not openly engage in dialogue toward
greater constitutional reforms.
From the 1920s and throughout the 1940s, Hyderabad became a battleground of
sorts between the Nizams administration and the burgeoning public sphere that they
could not control nor manage. The reforms begun by Salar Jang in the last decades of
the nineteenth century transformed the state and its administration into what Janaki
Nair has referred to as monarchical modern, which upheld monarchical power and
simultaneously modernized the administration. This created the conditions for the
emergence of new publics that would eventually contest the monarchical power of the
Nizam. Furthermore, the Nizam had been steadily lobbying in the early years of the
twentieth century to have the British recognize Hyderabad as a sovereign state equiv-
alent to Britain. In particular, he and his supporters tried to have the British agree to
adhere to the earlier treaties that the British would come to its defense when India
became independent and Hyderabad would be engulfed by a larger potentially hostile
state. The Nizam believed that Dominion status was a possibility for Hyderabad. This
would have appealed to the Hyderabad civil societal associations if there was indeed
open dialogue between these groups and the administration over the political future
of Hyderabad. Because constitutional reforms posed a threat to the traditional power
dynamics of the Hyderabad state, this stalled any innovative thinking through of the
possibilities for political autonomy for Hyderabad. On the eve of Indian independence
when the Nizam realized that the Indian Independence bill did not allow for domin-
ion status to be conferred on Indian states, he voiced his protest to: the way in which
my state is being abandoned by its old ally, the British Government, and the ties which
have bound me in loyal devotion to the King Emperor are being severed.43 This lead to
tortuous negotiations between the Nizams Executive Council and the Government of
India and the Standstill Agreement that allowed for Hyderabad to exist autonomously
for a year during which time they would have to decide on either instituting responsible
government or ascend to the Indian Union.
The decade of the 1940s produced new tensions. Because the Nizam and his admin-
istration were unable to engage in an open dialogue on the political future of Hyderabad
with civil societal associations, the various political interests were in disagreement
with one another. This led to two developments in Hyderabad: The Majlis political
power and position along with the formation of the Razakars and the equally dramatic
emergence of the Telangana peoples movement. The former, in resisting Congress
strategy to advance into Hyderabad, formulated the position of the defense of Muslim
sovereignty or to keep safeguards in place that would not completely undermine the
political status of Muslims in Hyderabad. However it is important to keep in mind
the dynamism of the Majlis and its leader Bahadur Yar Jung who espoused different
political positions on constitutional reforms over the course of his political career. The
Telangana peoples movement brought new complications in the 1940s as AMS mem-
bers were taking active part in the struggle against landlords in Telangana. The Majlis
took the lead in outlining a position of defending the monarchy and held onto what
they saw would disappear without the authority of the Nizam: the Muslim charac-
ter of the state. In other words, they feared the loss of Muslim dominance with the
dissolution of the Nizams authority. The Majliss paramilitary outfit, the Razakars,
was preparing to defend Hyderabad from internal opposition and the Government of
India. Meanwhile, the Hyderabad State Congress members were jailed in Hyderabad.
This inspired cross-border Congress activism on the Maharashtra border. Congress
units were making raids into Hyderabad territory and attacking government offices.
On the Madras Presidency border, the communists were inspiring a peoples revolu-
tion in the villages of Telangana. The radicalism of the Telangana peoples movement
provides another dimension to the proliferation of the political in the first half of the
350 India Review
twentieth century: the eruption of politics and the coalescing of regional, local, caste,
and religious interests.
In the two decades preceding independence, it became clear that the political dynam-
ics within Hyderabad were very different from the Madras Presidency. The Andhra
activists in British India and soon within the Indian Union had only to contend with
Congress and its leadership in Madras over dividing up the province. In Hyderabad,
civil societal institutions had more contentious proposals to extend constitutional
reforms in the state and challenge the monarchical power of the Nizam. While in
Madras Presidency the kind of national government that would come into place was
largely agreed uponor at least Andhra activists took part in national discussions as
part of the INCby both the provincial political leaders as well as the nationalist lead-
ers. At the provincial level, the Andhra activists were fairly successful in making a case
of linguistically demarcated states as suited for better governance. In Hyderabad, the
civil societal associations were split in the articulation of their political interests. The
civil societal institutions such as the linguistically demarcated ones within Hyderabad
eventually aligned themselves with their counterparts in British India. The Majlis-e
Itthehad al-Muslimin, Anjuman-e Taraqqi Hyderabad, the Nizams Subjects League,
and the Comrades Association, on the other hand, attempted to address concerns inter-
nal and specific to the political conditions of Hyderabad with a greater likelihood of
retaining Hyderabad as a political unit. Moreover, because the Nizam was reluctant to
work with the various civil societal associations to produce consensus toward an agreed
upon set of constitutional reforms, the groups were contending with one another for
political power. The Majlis earned the favor of the Nizam because it purportedly stood
to defend the monarchical power of the Nizam. By the 1940s, those who advocated
strongly for the integrity of Hyderabad as a national albeit cosmopolitan unit were few
and far between.
Visalandhra, Nationalist Communists, and the Breakup of Hyderabad

In examining and comparing the emergence of civil societal activism in Hyderabad and
in Madras Presidencyspecifically the Andhra Mahasabhait is clear that they had
very different histories and political trajectories. While the AMS provided an meet-
ing point for Telugu intellectuals and activists from Coastal Andhra to congregate and
explore their common cultural and historical roots as well as to examine the pros and
cons for forming a political community on the basis of language. The AMS in Madras
Presidency achieved the goal of convincing Congress that Telugu-speaking districts
deserved their own Congress unit and thereby provided legitimate arguments in favor
of linguistic reorganization of states after the departure of the British. The AMS in
Hyderabad while sharing with their counterpart in British India the goal of cultural and
literary revival of Telugu, harbored different political aspirations. Clearly the AMS pro-
vided them a cultural and political forum to voice political ideologies to shape the future
of Hyderabad. Their primary concerns were not quite obviously the separate state of
Telangana but rather to push for constitutional reforms similar to the other civil soci-
etal groups within Hyderabad. However, a radical turn within the AMS in Hyderabad
introduced a new element to the mix: the political aspirations of the communists.
In 1946, Ravi Narayana Reddy, the then President of the Andhra Conference wrote
to the President of the Hyderabad State Congress (HSC), Swami Ramananda Tirtha on
the misguided policies of the All India States Peoples Conference (AISPC) to exclude
the Andhra Conference as a representative body because it harbored communists.44
He wrote: This means that the major section of the Leadership and local members
of the Andhra Conference who have made it what it is today will be excluded from
the State Congress. Any person confersant [sic] with political situation in Hyderabad
can understand the disastrous effects of such exclusion of the peoples movement in
the state.45 He goes on to write that it is not possible to have the members vote on
the potential merger of the Andhra Conference with the HSC because of the volatile
political conditions of the Telugu speaking districts:
Regarding the other letters I have received concerning the merger of the Andhra
Conference into State Congress, you have asked for a reply before 7 August. But
the latest decision of AISPC has created an unprecedented situation for Andhra
Conference, when it is asked to be merged minus the leaders who have built it
up. Such a decision cannot easily be taken by the Working Committee. Also in
the conditions of repression in which we are working and the big battles we are
fighting against Feudal Tyrants and police Zulum, it has not become possible to call
a meeting of Delegates who alone can decide the issue.46
Just a year before, Reddy wrote to the AISPCs general secretary Jai Narayanji Vyas
stating that the HSC was not representative. Rather, the three linguistically oriented
conferences, the Andhra, the Maharashtra, and the Karnatak Conferences were truly
representative. In fact the efforts made by the INC to make a single association the
sole representative is undemocratic Reddy writes. A report was sent to the AISPC
on repressive measures in Telangana states, The struggle that Andhra Conference
has lead in Jangaon Taluqa Nalgonda District, against the notorious Deshmukh,
Vishnoor Ramachandra Reddy, and the famous watandar, Kathar Ramchander Rao; the
fights Andhra Conference has conducted against the Jagirdars and other feudalism in
Warangal District and other places; and the campaign it has carried against the corrupt
officials, who hands in glove with the village tyrants, were actually fleecing the poor;
have all made the Andhra Conference the most popular organization in Telingana.47
The struggles they refer to were the peoples insurrection against landlords in the vil-
lages of Telangana supported by the communists in the AMS. By the mid-1940s, the
communists dominated the AMS in Hyderabad.
How and why did the three linguistically aligned associations become truly rep-
resentative according to Ravi Narayana Reddy in Hyderabad? The emergence of
these civil societal associations based on language were certainly strengthened with
the increased use of vernacular languages in public/political life: they reached a
broader public and cut across the urban/rural divide. The use of regional languages
in Hyderabad became a powerful device in increasing politicization and ultimately
cultivating political life and the democratic virtue of civic mindedness. As mentioned
earlier in both cases in Hyderabad and in Madras Presidency, Telugu began to be used
352 India Review
publically as a political tool. The turn to Telugu for public purposes clearly contributed
to expanding their constituency.
Interestingly, the call for a united Andhra or Visalandhra (merging Telangana dis-
tricts) initially seems to have come from Telugu speaking CPI (Communist Party of
India) members who called for combining Telugu speaking provinces from Madras
with those that were part of Hyderabad. The Visalandhra Mahasabha was formed in
1949. However, earlier in 1945, P. Sundarayya had already published a pamphlet advo-
cating the idea of Greater Andhra.48 Even before the idea emerged, it is important to
note that in the 1940s, within the Nizams Andhra Maha Sabha, the communists came
to dominate the association. Also important to note is the fact that P. Sundarayya and
Ravi Narayana Reddy, two pivotal figures in the Telangana movement of the 1940s,
were politicized through their immersion in Congress politics before they gradually
turned to communism. When the ban on the CPI was lifted in 1942, the CPI Central
Committee began to endorse the idea of the Indian union or federation consisting
of distinct nationalities: Every section of the Indian people which has a contiguous
territory as its homeland, common historical tradition, common language, culture,

psychological make up, and common economic life would be recognized as a dis-
tinct nationality with the right to exist as an autonomous state within the free Indian
Union or federation and will have the right to secede from it if it may so desire.49
Taking cue from the Soviets, the communists were endorsing the linguistic principle for
states reorganization. The recognition of the self-determination of nations within India
gave support to Andhra communists in their calls for the linguistic reorganization of
states. P. Sundarayya wrote a pivotal pamphlet calling for a united Andhra. Sundarayya
wrote, we believe that we must unequivocally concede to each of the seventeen grow-
ing nations in India the right to determine their destiny, their own sacred right of
self-determination through their constituent assemblies, based on universal adult suf-
frage.50 He continues, We believe that a free Indian Union can come into existence
only by the sovereign nationalities freely and voluntarily coming together and not by
denying to them the just and sacred right of self-determination.51 Regionalism was
endorsed by both the CPI and Congress leaders in Hyderabad and this ultimately led
to calls for the severance of the state along linguistic lines as the best political solution
to a monarchical modernity that reached its limits and ultimate demise.
In addition to the fostering of linguistic regionalism by the CPI and Congress, other
British Indian supported groups such as the Arya Samaj, and the Hindu Mahasabha
anticipated the demise of the Nizam and hoped that political forces would com-
pel Hyderabad to join the Indian Union. The All-India States People Conference
(AISPC), an organization formed by the INC, to encourage the pursuit and attainment
of representative government for the people of the princely states. In its inaugura-
tion meeting of 1927, it declared its objective as: the attainment of Responsible
Government for the people in the Indian States through representative institutions
under the aegis of their rulers.52 In reference to the 600 states and their standing in
the way of a composite Indian identity, Sitaramayya declares: They are the vestiges
of an ancient civilization and must perforce disappear sooner or later like their bet-
ters of the past. At present they only constitute a wedge driven by the British between
the people of India and their ideal of a composite nationality.53 The AISPC worked
arduously from its inaugural year to shape peoples movements within the princely
states to move toward not only representative government but also compelling them
to join the Indian union. Alongside these forces for compelling the princes to join the
Indian union, Congress also began discussions concerning linguistic reorganization of
states. In 1946, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, published a plea on linguistic reorganization of
states for the constituent assembly to take up the issue. He quotes Sir John Simon in
1929 on the issue:
When we come to consider the constituent elements out of which the federation
of British India is to be built we are met with an initial difficulty. Federation
schemes usually start with a number of clearly defined States each already pos-
sessed individuality and consciousness, whereas in India there are only a number
of administrative areas which have grown up almost haphazard as the result of
conquest, suppression of former rules or administrative convenience. No one of
them has been deliberately formed with a view to its suitability as a self governing
unit within a federated whole. Most of them are populous and extensive, having
regard to the cultural level and economic conditions of their inhabitants, to allow of
the easy working of the machinery of representative Government on a reasonably
extensive franchise (Vol. II, p. 15).54
Congress has recognized the need for the reorganization of states since 1920, follow-
ing the Nagpur congress session in December of that year. Three new provinces were
created in 1938: Sindh, NWF Province, and Orissa. Then, Congress resigned from
ministries before WWII, which deferred the question of Andhra becoming a separate
province. Then, in 194546 in the election manifestos the idea of linguistic provinces
was mentioned: It [Congress] has stood for full opportunities for the people as a whole
to grow and develop according to their own wishes and genius: It has also stood for the
freedom of each group and territorial area within the nation to develop its own cul-
ture within the larger frame work and it has stated that for this purpose such territorial
area or provinces should be reconstituted, as far as possible, on a linguistic and cultural
basis.55 While Congress was clearly on a path toward linguistic reorganization from
the 1920s, it began to change its course in the immediate post-independence period.
After newly independent Indias forcible takeover of Hyderabad from the Nizams
administration in September of 1948, Nehru remained hesitant on the issue of the
break up of Hyderabad. Because of the violence of partition and the communal violence
that erupted in Hyderabad between 194748, Nehru was careful to move gradually on
the issue. The communist uprising in Telangana also presented a clear challenge to the
newly independent Indian state. At this time, the question of unity and the economic
and political integration of India became of primary concern.
The 1948 Report of The Linguistic Provinces Commission, or the Dar Commission,
suggests that linguistic reorganization should not be conducted hastily. The commis-
sion was appointed by the Constituent Assembly of India on June 17, 1948 to report
on the question of formation of the provinces of Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka, and
Maharashtra. The commission toured for 26 days examining witnesses at Vizagapatam,
Madras, Madura, Mangalore, Calicut, and Coimbatore. Another tour took place in
354 India Review
October of that year in Hubli, Nagpur, Poona, and Bombay. One anxiety the com-
mission expressed is that the new Indian government is in a critical, volatile state with
the recent partitioning of British India, the ongoing war with Pakistan, and the refugee
crisis. Furthermore, complicating the plan to reorganize states on the basis of language
was the novel and precarious experiment the new government was embarking under
a new constitution with autonomous states and adult franchise without a national lan-
guage. However, there was a sense that the urgency came from the Congress promise of
linguistic provinces demanded by the people. This sensitive period of transition made
it a difficult moment to carve up the states. And, finally the commission also points out
the necessary time and work involved in building consensus for the reorganizations
plans. However, the impending critical situation that Hyderabad found itself in may
have been a catalyst to the hasty breakup of Hyderabad and that, consequently, led to
the formation of new states in the south.
Andhra became a state in October of 1953 after a series of unexpected events.
While it seemed clear that Congress was bent on delaying the process of reorgani-
zation of states in the immediate post-independence period, the latest generation of

Andhra activists stepped up their pressure on the Nehru government. Swami Sitaram, a
Gandhian, began a series of fasts for the creation of an Andhra province on August 16,
1951 (until September 20th) and again on May 25, 1952 (until June 15th). Potti
Sriramulu, another Gandhian, succumbed to a fast that took his life in December of
1952. Afterward, a violent reaction from the Telugu speaking population in Madras
forced Nehrus government to concede to the creation of Andhra. However, Madras
was not to be included. This was always the sticking point for the Andhra activists
from the 1930s. Most recently, both the Dar Commission and the internal Congress
report on linguistic reorganization did not see how Madras would ever become part of
a new state of Andhra. Meanwhile, in 1952 there was a student agitation in Telangana,
specifically in Warangal, protesting a potential merger with Andhra.56 There had been
a steady movement within Hyderabad as the breakup of Hyderabad was inevitable,
a movement towards Telangana statehood. There were clearly strong reservations
against joining Andhra. In Telangana, a mulki agitation erupted between 194852 in
response to the incoming coastal Telugu speakers who began to take up posts in the
administration of Hyderabad in the aftermath of the police action of 1948. While in
1955, the Andhra assembly passed a resolution to form a single state merging with
Telangana.57 However, the majority of members of parliament in Telangana supported
a separate state for Telangana in late 1955. Even the Golconda Patrika switched its sup-
port of a united Andhra in 1954 and began to support a separate state of Telangana
in 1955.58
The States Reorganization Commission (SRC) formed in December of 1953 after the
formation of Andhra in October 1953. The SRC recognized the administrative conve-
nience of language but it too hesitated to force Telangana to merge with Andhra. While
making statements and acknowledging how there are real differences in Andhra and
Telangana, the SRC initially rejected that Hyderabad should be retained as a unit. With
that premise, it stated the argument for linguistic reorganization for ease of communica-
tion within a given state. Language became primary in the commissions analysis of how
to redraw provinces. With the inevitability of the breakup Hyderabad, there seemed to
be no way of arguing against the linguistic argument to merge Telangana with Andhra
even with the growing opposition to the proposal. In order to satisfy the critics of the
merger, regional committees were to be formed to deal with the inequalities between
Telangana and Andhra.
Both 1953 and 1956 show fissures between regions: Rayalseema, Telangana, and
Coastal Andhra. Public life through civil societal activism in Madras Presidency and in
Hyderabad led to not only cultural revivalism of language and literature but also pos-
sibilities for political community and citizenship. When tensions were rising within the
AMS in the late 1940s, Mandumula Narsing Rao wrote an editorial in Raiyat against the
communist takeover of the association. He explains that the AMS is neither a students
association nor a textile mill workers union; it is not even a peasants association (kisan
sabha). Rather it is a public gathering for representatives of all parties and schools of
thought among all social classes and all Andhra people involved in public life.59 This
is the clearest statement on the novel dynamics of public life and political aspiration
that characterize early twentieth-century India: the undercurrents of the anti-colonial
nationalist struggle.
In conclusion, from the assurances of responsible government made by the
Government of India in the first decade of the twentieth century to its Indian subjects to
the post-World War I impact of the language of self-determination, political ideologies
erupted into public life and shaped the political aspirations of Indians. The language of
self-determination not only impacted the anti-colonial tenor of Indian nationalism, it
seeped into regional discourses of governance and the path toward popular sovereignty.
P. Sundarayyas, a leading figure in the Telangana peoples movement, invocation of
the language of self-determination in outlining the logic for linguistic provinces in a
free Indian Union illustrates the elasticity of these concepts and their mobility in mul-
tiple political contexts/discourses. Ultimately, popular forces instigated and nurtured
by the different political parties anticipated the dissolution of British India into a more
rationally ordered group of provinces linguistically organized. Moreover, political aspi-
rations as they erupted in the AMS in Hyderabad anticipated the dissolution of the
Nizams monarchical authority as part of the global movement towards representa-
tive democracy and popular sovereignty. The Telangana demand is the product of this
dynamic historical conjuncture between the end of an old monarchical order, the polit-
ical turmoil in the aftermath and the inauguration of a new state. While protests against
Telanganas merger with Andhra were clearly articulated between 1948 and 1956, the
logic of the linguistic argument made in the SRC took on its own momentum to silence
the opposition on the path toward linguistic reorganization. With the creation of the
Regional committees to assure the equitable distribution of resources in the new state,
Telanganas merger with Andhra began on an unsure footing. A plebiscite was never
conducted and the glimmers of protest never completely died out.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Benjamin Cohen (University of Utah) and Sumit Ganguly
(Indiana University) for organizing a stimulating AIIS workshop on Regionalism in
India in August 2013 that gave me the initial impetus for beginning a project on the
356 India Review
Andhra Movement and its connections with Telangana. Various people have provided
me forums for presenting arguments contained in this article allowing me to revise
my initial formulations. For this, I thank Marina Mogilner (University of Illinois at
Chicago), Fredrik Albritton Jonsson (University of Chicago), and Karuna Mantena
(Yale University).
NOTES
1. See Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 18911970 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997) and Lisa Mitchell, Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The
Making of a Mother Tongue (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009).
2. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(New York: Verso, 2006) and Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
3. See Erez Manela, Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of East-West Harmony and the Revolt
against Empire in 1919, American Historical Review 111, No. 5 (December 2006), pp. 132651.
4. Report on Indias Constitutional Reforms (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, India, 1918), p. 14.
5. See Christopher Baker, The Politics of South India 19201937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1976); and Eugene F. Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India, 1916-1929 (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1969).
6. See Pritipuspa Amarnath Mishra, Divided Loyalties: Citizenship, Regional Identity and Nationalism in
Eastern India (18661931) (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2008).
7. Quoted in K.V. Narayana Rao, The Emergence of Andhra Pradesh (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1976), p. 48,
fn 88.
8. See Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2001) and Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
9. See Baker, The Politics of South India, and Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India.
10. See Lisa Mitchells Language, Emotion, and Politics on the changes that Telugu underwent in nineteenth-
century Madras Presidency.
11. Konda Venkatappayya, The Andhra Movement (Guntur: The Radha Press, 1915), p. 13.
12. The meeting was held in Bapatla. There were 2000 visitors at the meeting including 800 delegates from Telugu
districts of the Madras Presidency, as well as from Nagpur in the Central Provinces and from Warangal and
Hyderabad in the Nizams territories.
13. Vande Mataram is a nationalist song/slogan, which can be translated as hail to the motherland has its
origins in the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal. It was also associated with growing communal tension.
14. See Bernard Bate, To Persuade Them Into Speech and Action: Oratory and the Tamil Political, Madras,
19051919, Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 55, No. 1 (2013), pp. 14266.
15. Rao, The Emergence of the Andhra Movement, p. 49.
16. Venkatappayya, The Andhra Movement, p. 20.
17. Venkatappayya, The Andhra Movement, p. 20.
18. The honorable V. Ramdas Pantulu, Memorandum on Andhra Province, Part 1. A General View of the
Problems Arising from the Formation of the Andhra Districts of the Madras Presidency into a Separate
Province (Madras: G.S. Press, Mount Road, 1939), p. 33.
19. J. Gurunatham, Viresalingam, The Founder of Telugu Public Life (Rajahmundry: S. Gunneswararao Bros.,
1911).
20. G. V. Subba Rao, ed., History of Andhra Movement, Volume 1 (Hyderabad: The Committee of History of
Andhra Movement, 1982) p. 203.
21. Rao, The Emergence of the Andhra Movement, p. 51.
22. Ibid., pp. 910.
23. Ibid., p. 10.
24. See Pantulu, Memorandum on Andhra Province.
25. Ibid., p. 37
26. See Carolyn Elliot, Decline of a Patrinomial Regime:The Telengana Rebellion in India 19461951, The
Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 34, No. 4 (November 1974), pp. 2747. Carolyn Elliot argues that with the
lack of political parties within the Nizams territories, Hyderabad witnessed more communal and divisive
politics rather than an encouragement of coalitions across religious and language affiliation/lines. In other
words, Elliot attempts to understand why Hyderabad appears politically backward and resistant to political
modernization. If we take Elliots assessment of the underdevelopment of political conditions in Hyderabad,
then it seems likely that a lack of institutional development to garner political sentiment led to the crisis of
the integration of the Hyderabad state to the Indian Union. While I am not entirely sympathetic with Elliots
developmental model of political modernization in her analysis of Hyderabad politics, there clearly was a
failure of consensus within Hyderabad on becoming part of the Indian Union.
27. See Karen Leonard, The Deccani Synthesis in Old Hyderabad, The Journal of the Pakistan Historical
Society Vol. XXI, No. IV (October 1973), pp. 20518.
28. Leonard, The Deccani Synthesis p. 213, ft. 1.
29. John Roosa, The Quandary of the Qaum: Indian Nationalism in a Muslim State, Hyderabad 1850-1948
(PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998).
30. See Elliot, Decline of the Patrimonial Regime.
31. Roosa, The Quandary of the Quam, p. 21.
32. To get a sense of the political and social conditions of Hyderabad in this period, Roosa provides figures for the
proportion of Muslims and Hindus in the administration. Discerning from the list of civil officials between
18941931, Roosa writes that the ratio of Hindus and Muslims ranged from about 1:4 to 1:5. In the mid-part
of the 1880s, Muslims held 5 out of 6 posts at the ministerial level, 10 out of 18 posts at the secretarial level,
and 152 out of 207 in the revenue administration and finally 52 out of 54 posts in the courts. See Roosa, The
Quandary of the Quam, p. 134.
34. Ibid.
35. Lucien Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration: Political Developments in Hyderabad State (19381948)
(New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2000), p. 21.
36. Ravi Narayana Reddy, Heroic Telangana: Reminiscences & Experiences (New Delhi: Communist Party
Publications), p. 1.
37. Kavita Datla, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 2013), p. 146.
38. Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration, p. 77. Benichou quotes a report sent to the Secretary of State by the
Superintendent (Political Branch), Hyderabad Residency.
40 Ibid., p. 410. Also see Mandumula Narasingaravu, 50 Samvatsaramula Haidarabadu (Hyderabad:
Mandumula Narasingaravu Smaraka Samiti, 1977).
41. Ibid., quoted on p. 411, from M. Narsing Raos Editorial in Raiyat, April 22, 1935.
42. Roosa, The Quandary of the Quam, quoted on p. 411, from M. Narsing Raos Editorial in Raiyat,
November 20, 1928.
43. VP Menon, The Integration of the Indian States (Madras: Orient Longman, 1997). First published in 1956,
p. 317
44. The AISPC was formed by the Indian National Congress.
45. Letter from Ravi Narayana Reddy, President of Andhra Conference to Swami Ramananda Tirtha, July 30,
1946, Nehru Museum and Memorial Library (NMML): All India States People Conference (AISPC), File
No. 66, part 1.
46. Ibid.
47. Ravi Narayana Reddy, Repression in Hyderabad State: Andhra Conference Leaders Interned, Nehru
Museum and Memorial Library (NMML): All India States People Conference (AISPC), File No. 66,
part 1, n.d.
48. See P. Sundarayya, Vishala Andhra (Bombay: Peoples Publishing House, 1945).
49. N. K. Krishna (ed.), National Unity for the Defense of the Motherland: Resolutions of the Plenums of the
Central Committee of the CPI held in 1942 (Bombay: Peoples Pub. House, 1943), pp. 2425.
50. P. Sundarayya, Vishala Andhra (Bombay: Peoples Publishing House, 1945), p. 72.
51. Sundarayya, Vishala Andhra, p. 73.
52. B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, The Indian States Peoples Conference. Presidential address of Dr. B. Pattabhi
Sitaramayya. Fifths Session, July 1819, 1936, Karachi, p. 2.
53. Sitaramayya, The Indian States Peoples Conference, p. 21.
54. Sitaramayya, Convention on Linguistic Provinces (Delhi: Delhi Printing Works, 1946).
55. Ibid., p. 10.
56. Marshall Windmiller, Linguistic Regionalism in India, Pacific Affairs Vol. 27, No. 4 (December 1954), p. 306.
57. Gautam Pingle, The Historical Context of Andhra and Telangana, 19491956, Economic and Political
Weekly Vol. XLV, No. 8 (February 20, 2010), p. 63.
58. Pingle, The Historical Context, p. 63.
59. John Roosa, Passive Revolution Meets Peasant Revolution: Indian Nationalism and the Telangana Revolt,
Journal of Peasant Studies Vol. 28, No. 4 (2001), p. 64.

The Andhra Movement Hyderabad State and PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Andhra Movement Hyderabad State and PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This article was downloaded by: [Rama Mantena]

On: 30 October 2014, At: 12:57

The Andhra Movement, Hyderabad

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2014.964629

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

The Andhra Movement, Hyderabad State,

The Andhra Movement and the Cultivation of Public Life

Report on Indias Constitutional Reforms (The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms) pre-

responsible government in which Indians would be gradually introduced into the

the Coconada Literary Association were established to provide such a space.

administration;16 and (b) that provincial administration, on such a basis, is neces-

The moment we visualize each of the fifteen or sixteen provinces constituted on

Hyderabad: The Disintegration of a Princely State

The radicalized youth of Hyderabad embraced linguistically defined regional groups

Visalandhra, Nationalist Communists, and the Breakup of Hyderabad

territory as its homeland, common historical tradition, common language, culture,

zation of states in the immediate post-independence period, the latest generation of

You might also like