Articles

Replay of India 1946-47 in Andhra Pradesh 2009-10

• Md. Ali Jinnah's grand father was a convert from Hinduism to Islam. Jinnah became the irresistible and strident partitionist repudiating the common heritage and asserting a different identity .
  
  Sri Kalwakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao's grand father emigrated from Vijayanagaram to Siddipet. Sri Chandrasekhar Rao has become the most strident and militant exponent and leader of the movement for partition of Andhra Pradesh and creation of Telengana state.

• The rest of India opposed the partition of India while 98.6% of the Muslim electorate voted for the partitionist Muslim League in 1945-46 elections to the Central Legislative Assembly. Telengana people seem to be overwhelmingly for separation while the rest of Andhra Pradesh seems to be opposed to separation.
  
  Although there had been public opinion and even movement for separate Telangana in 1956 and 1969 the recent one since 2003, under the leadership of Chandrasekhar Rao is the most strident and hate-spewing . There is now no referendum or any election in the nature of the 1945-46 elections in India regarding the demand for the separation of Telengana .

• Md. Ali Jinnah asserted that Muslims and Hindus are separate nations; they share no common heros they have no common social or political philosophy and therefore they can never be one nation state and if they are forced into it, it would be a disaster more for Hindus than for Muslims.
  
  The TRS leader and the partition philosophy assert that though Telugu is the common language, Telengana people have a different culture and heritage. They can never be together with Seema-Andhra people in one state.

• In order to force the division of India, the Muslim League launched Direct Action on the 16 of Aug 1946. It was violent. It was specifically aimed against those who opposed the partition, namely Hindus. Sir Zafrullah Khan ( an Ahmadia Muslim. Ahmedias including himself had been expelled from Islam, later on in Pakistan ) thundered that the millitant actions of Muslims in order to achieve the division of India would make people forget the violence and slaughter and carnage that Nadirshah and Hulaku Khan had wrought . People will forget them and would remember only the violence that the Muslim League would unleash on the opponents of partition.
  
  Like Zafrullah Khan, a tall leader and intellectual and philosopher in the Telengana Rashtra Samiti Prof. Jayashankar (former Vice Chancellor of Kakatiya University) theoretician has threatened a civil war , if Hyderabad is not included in the proposed Telangana state (which of course they are destined to have).

• The feuding Muslims & Hindus did not settle the issue of partition among themselves. It was left to a foreigner, Lord Louis Moutbattem the British Governor General of India to settle the issue by diving the country to create Pakistan .
  
  The people of Telangana on the one hand and people of Seema-Andhra on the other hand are not able to settle the issue among themselves. They have left it to be settled by a foreign -born lady who is controlling the destiny of the Congress and the country.

• Pakistan expelled all Hindus and Sikhs from its western wing soon after it was founded. From the east wing, which is now Bangladesh, the expulsion was slow and spasmodic.
  
  At the lower levels of the TRS, emotional upsurge in favour Telangana is being built by promises that all the properties of the Seem-Andhra people settled in and around Hyderabad would be available for Telengana people. So would the jobs that Seema-Andhra people's are now having come to the Telangana people .

• The Muslim League and Jinnah had more faith in the British than in their Hindu neighbours and co-citizens.
  
  The TRS is having more faith in the descendents of Razakars than in their cousins from Seema-Adhra.

• The large scale attacks in 1946-'47 on the properties and persons of Hindus and Sikhs and Buddhists in what would be Pakistan , frightened and convinced Hindus that partition was a lesser evil than incessant riots, loss of life and property and peace. So the Hindu Congress (Gandhi, Nehru, Patel etc) which stoutly opposed partition ate crow, lost face ad caused loss of lakhs of people's lives and then conceded partition.
  
  It appears that the opposition of the Seema-Andhra politicians to the creation of Telengana would end up just like Congress's opposition ( till June 1947 two months before the inevitability, 14.08.47) to the partition of India.

• Wisdom and the message of history dictates that the necessary steps to create the State of Telengana be initiated immediately and a date say, 15 Aug 2010 be set for its ( re) birth. An experts Commission ( of non-Telugu speaking people) should be set up for the division of assets and liabilities; transfer of officials and offices an d records; mechanisms formulated for completion of the all the projects ( like Jala Yagnam,power generation, Indiramma Houses for the poor) and their financing and safeguards for the lakhs of Seema- Andhra people who have made Hyderabad and its environs, their home as it was the capital area of Andhra Pradesh for more than 53 years and for the development an d prosperity of which they have poured their money,enterprise and effort.

The decisiveness that Clement Atlee, the Britian's Prime Minister and Lord Louis Mountbatten showed in 1947 should be a lesson for the political leaders of India, especially Sonia Gandhi.