Bloggers - Telangana Issues

Of late the most favourite and hottest topic among several bloggers from Andhra Pradesh, India is the demand for the separate Telangana state. Some of these bloggers started sounding similar to the political leaders from the region they are from like either Telangana or Seemandhra. This nomenclature again is from the political leaders of Telangana. But those leaders themselves are not exactly clear who will be the people of Telangana and the outsiders. Mr. KCR uses one way of identification one day and something else another day. Some other leaders use the sons of the soil concept. But again there is no clarity among them as to who constitute the people of Telangana. It is a fact that after the betrayal of the separate state movement by Mr. Chenna Reddy in 60s, many people from the erstwhile state of Hyderabad (whose districts form Telangana) started moving to other parts of Andhra Pradesh or had family relations through marriages to other parts of the state. Many of the leaders of Telangana have family relationships with people from other districts of the so called Seemandhra. Does this disqualify them to be people of Telangana? Or does this qualify their relatives to be people of Telangana? Nobody knows.

I will give personal example of my own family. According to what I heard from my father, my forefathers migrated from the Mysore kingdom to the Rayalaseema area during the reign of Tippu Sultan to avoid the forceful religious conversions. Rayalaseema was under British rule at that time. Any way they were settled for many generations in that area. My father came to Vijayawada in the late 50s and settled there due to his job. Coming to my mother side, my grandfather along with his children came to Andhra from Huzurnagar area which was part of the Nizam kingdom during the Razakar persecutions. After my education I am now settled in Hyderabad but was out for most of the last 25 years in various parts of the state and country due to the professional requirements. Now I would like to know what am I – a telanganite from my mother side or a seemandharite from my father side or does not even belong to Andhra if take the fact of my forefathers are from Mysore area which is now part of Karnataka.

The bloggers are flaming each others with such expletives which are often vulgar which cast doubts as to whether these people are educated or not. This applies to both sides and often appears as if these are the ghost writers for the political leaders they support. Most of these bloggers are highly educated, often working abroad or are with good professional background and yet show this kind of disgusting behavior which is at variance with their education. This kind of vulgar expletives only shows the basic culture / mental status of these bloggers proving the fact that people reflect their upbringing.

Recently I was reading a blog item by one Mr. Srikant which was talking about the persecution of children from Telangana in the schools in Vijayawada. This blog item narrates the experience of one of his relative’s son from a family which is highly passionate about Telangana in one of the corporate colleges in Vijayawada. It seems this boy got good marks in 10^th Class was admitted into a boarding junior college in Vijayawada for 11^th and 12^th (intermediate) and for the coaching for various entrance tests like IIT etc. According to him, the boy got such a good marks in 10^th class, they (his family, friends and relatives) were confident that he can qualify in the IIT entrance with a good rank. However after completion of the Junior college, it seems this boy did not get the expect level of marks nor could he get a good rank either IIT entrance etc., but could show a reasonable performance in EAMCET. When they enquired with the boy for this poor performance, the reason given by him is that he was persecuted by the other boys and even teachers about the telangana with such type of comments that he lost concentration and could not get good marks. This blogger gives a caution to the other parents telling them not to join their children in Andhra Colleges to avoid this kind of unpleasantness for their children. This could have happened as narrated by him as this is a normal thing at the peak of any political movement of this type. Because children again represent what their parents think most of the time as they are impressionable.

Now there are some basic questions about this incident as to why this was not avoided at an early stage itself

1. If the family is so passionate about separate Telangana state why join the son in Vijayawada which is in Andhra according to them?

2. Agreed that the educational facilities are good in Andhra, are they not good in Hyderabad? In fact the blogger claims that the best IIT coaching centre of Mr. Ramayya is in Telangana and this year most of the children from Hyderabad College got good ranks in IIT. Thank god that he has not segregated these rank holders from Hyderabad colleges again to Telangana and Seemandhra may be due a lack of information. If that is the case why joining the boy in Vijayawada?

3. This boy could have come home at least 3-4 times during his Junior college for vacations. Has he not told his parents about this persecution on any one of these occasions? If so why they have not shifted him to a college at least at the end of first year of intermediate?

4. Also there is a regular feedback from the boarding schools / colleges to the parents about the marks and progress of the student. Why the parents have not taken care about the poor performance in the beginning stages itself?

In fact some of these questions were raised by other bloggers in comments on this particular blog and the replies from the original blogger are not satisfactory at most of the places. It appears as if either the story is a manufactured one, or the parents did not monitor the progress of their son by intervention when there is a dip in the performance or the boy might be making up a story to support his poor performance. However Mr. Srikant is not ready to accept any of these reasons. According to his version and replies to comments there is nothing wrong with the boy and the anti-Telangana behavior of the students and teachers in Andhra College where he studied is the only reason.This is a disaster which could have been avoided earlier by the vigilant behaviour of the parents concerned.

The purpose of this article is to appeal not to promote such ideas among students any further.Already students in Telangana are suffering because of the loss of the educational year and this kind of negative publicity kills their prospects even further. Please use restraint when you are particularly talking about young children whose minds are impressionable.