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The Andhra Movement, Hyderabad State, and theHistorical Origins of the Telangana Demand: PublicLife and Political Aspirations in India, 1900–56

Rama Sundari Mantena

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and the Historical Origins of the Telangana Demand: Public Life and Political Aspirations inIndia, 1900–56, India Review, 13:4, 337-357, DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2014.964629

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India Review, vol. 13, no. 4, 2014, pp. 337–357Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN 1473-6489 print/1557-3036 onlineDOI: 10.1080/14736489.2014.964629

The Andhra Movement, Hyderabad State,and the Historical Origins of the Telangana

Demand: Public Life and Political Aspirationsin India, 1900–56

RAMA SUNDARI MANTENA

The Andhra Movement and the Cultivation of Public LifeAt present the Telugu-speaking region is witnessing a formidable political challenge toone of the earliest successful linguistic nationalisms in post-independence India, which

instigated the breakdown of colonial administrative divisions and saw the emergenceof regional states organized along linguistic lines. The contemporary political upheavalin Telangana concerning separate statehood unravels a loosely knit consensus on thisquestion 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 longermore complex history. In historical scholarship on India, an almost exclusive attentionpaid to the formation of modern nation-states and the rise of political nationalisms hasimpoverished our understanding of the dynamics of a territorial region with respectto the depth of its investments in its social and cultural institutions, the relationshipsforged between classes and castes entrenched in the region, and the emergence of polit-ical ideologies concerning collective representation and rights attuned to the region’sinternal dynamics. An earlier historiography emphasized the nation as a point of refer-ence for understanding colonial technologies of enumeration in making culture centralto 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 broaderdiscourses of political modernity and languages of citizenship in circulation in theregion. 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 understandingthat the region was a replication of the nation and, hence, the circulation of the termsubnational. 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 subnationalidentities on the basis of religious and/or linguistic differences, as legitimate markersof (political) collectivities. Furthermore, there has been good work on the formation of regional linguistic identity attributing historical causation in the emergence of regionalpolitics 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 questionthe origin of the idea of the mother tongue lying in pre-colonial times by dismantlingdiscourses 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 religionand language (and other shared markers of community).2 While it was a necessary andan important task to unravel the discourses of various ethnic nationalisms and theirpositing of their mythical origins, there is an urgent need to re-engage with broaderdiscourses of citizenship and political modernity that defined the politics of the regionfrom 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 fromthe 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 community—specifically the political community in its

regional articulation. This article begins with a review of the particular ways in whichthe discourse of rights and political representation have emerged at the regional level inpost-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 andnational identity is derived. Specifically, the dynamics of a new discourse of politics isexamined in twentieth-century south India, primarily in the Telugu speaking districtsof 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 atthe 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 someanswers to the question: How did national and international discourses of responsiblegovernment and self-determination shape the region in early twentieth century India?

For south India, the focus in the historical and anthropological literature has beenon how language became a cultural marker of sorts at the expense of paying attentionto the political contestations to this assertion coming from disenfranchised caste groupsand regions. If we broaden our analytic vision, then we would be able to perceive thefissures of the projected cohesive linguistic identity on the eve of Indian independenceleading us to better understand that conceptions of region and territory were not solelyanchored 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 aspirationsfor smaller statehood. My research aims to rethink the emergence of regional publics,cultures of democratic participation in defining and negotiating not only multifariouscultural identities, but also their relationship to the past, confronting societal inequities,challenging traditional orthodoxies; in effect ushering in a new era of liberalism and theincreased use of the language of political rights and self-determination.

While clearly prior conceptions of self-rule articulated by Indian nationalists fromthe Swadeshi Movement and the Home Rule Movement were circulating in BritishIndia prior to World War I, it is worth noting the intensification of these concepts withinternationalist discourses of self-determination during this critical period. In 1918, the



Historical Origins of the Telangana Demand 339

Report on India’s Constitutional Reforms (The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms) pre-pared for the Government of India states that World War I had a profound effect onIndian nationalism. The language of liberty and self-determination used by Americanand 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 TheReport states:

The war has come to be regarded more and more clearly as a struggle betweenliberty 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 thatin Europe Britain is fighting on the side of liberty, and it is urged that Britain cannotdeny to the people of India that for which she is herself fighting in Europe, and inthe fight for which she has been helped by India’s blood and treasure.4

The Report acknowledges that the Government of India is on a path towards greaterresponsible government in which Indians would be gradually introduced into theadministration 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 Britain’sideological standing in the world of nations. Britain’s reformed-minded governmentintroduced changes in the government of India to foster the principle of “self-determination”—though considerably limited in colonial India. The language of libertyand self-determination used by the British government not only had a profound impacton 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 thosewho started the Andhra Movement (the principle actors who will be discussed inthe following section) in the Madras Presidency: one for provincial autonomy andthe other for the re-drawing of provincial boundaries based on a more rational basisthan the historical accident of imperial borders in British India. The impact of theMontagu-Chelmsford Reforms on provincial autonomy in south India has been dealtwith by numerous historians, especially the advantage it gave to the Justice Party in theMadras Presidency.5 The reforms also coincided with greater/stronger calls for redraw-ing provincial boundaries based on linguistic criteria, however, which was spearheadedby the Andhra activists.

The Andhra movement was not the first broad based movement to demand theredrawing of provinces according to linguistic criteria. Consider the Oriya languagemovement that began in the 1860s protesting the dominance of Bengali in the regionand demanding the use of Oriya in vernacular schools.6 This movement shifted to thecall for a separate province for Oriya speakers in the early decades of the twentiethcentury. The Telugu intellectuals who spearheaded the Andhra Movement made con-stant references to the other movements to legitimize their grievances and set their goalsfor not only institutionalizing Telugu as a language of education but more importantlyto 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 aloneand not on others, say, the Malayalis or Kannadigas? The condition of the Andhrasin Madras Presidency resembled that of Biharis in the Bengal Presidency. They werethe second largest group in the Presidency. They were the second largest group inthe Presidency with similar grievances in matters of education and public service.Neither Malayalis nor the Kannadigas were numerous in the Madras Presidencycomprising less than 10 percent and about 4 per cent respectively. The Kannadigaswere more numerous in Bombay but still only about 10 percent. Further in theMadras Presidency, the literacy even in vernaculars of Malayalis and Kannadigaswas high. . . . Consequently the well educated Malayali or Kannadiga in MadrasPresidency had better chances for public service compared to their numbers and sowere 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 inthe 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 theearly twentieth century when new political technologies were being introduced at theregional level. We see the impact of the expansion of representative institutions as aresult of constitutional reforms leading to the formation of different constituencies insouth India: the Justice Party, the regional units of the Indian National Congress, theSelf-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 andBaker link the reforms to the expansion and success of Non-Brahminism in the MadrasPresidency.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 providegreater powers and autonomy to significant regional/territorial communities within thePresidency. During the height of Non-Brahminism, the Andhra movement faced some

competition. Telugu speakers were prominent in the Justice Party in Madras and theyposed a political challenge for the Andhra activists who were primarily Congress sup-porters. Konda Venkatappayya, who was one of the leaders of the movement, initiatedthe 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? Civilsocietal 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 shapedby 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 whynew provinces must be rethought along linguistic lines: “If the people living in thoseprovinces are to have an organic growth and development, they must be constitutedinto separate, handy, compact and homogenous entities, so that the natural bindingforces 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 othernoble qualities characterizing a race or community entitled to self-government.”11 Thedevolution schemes of the colonial government provided greater levels of autonomy tolocal and regional governments leading to the cultivation of what could be argued werenovel ideas of citizenship and public life. Intellectuals and activists hailing from regionallocations began to think of ways to foster community bonds and loyalty throughthe cultivation of civic mindedness. Local and regional literary societies took the leadin providing space for public discussion and debate over literary, social and politicalissues, to cultivate public life, at the turn of the twentieth century. Associations such

as Young Men’s Literary Association of Guntur, Viziagaram Literary Association, andthe 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 becamemember of the Viceroy’s Executive Council.12 It was momentous in that it broughttogether representatives from different districts of British India and from the princelystate of Hyderabad. At the venue for the conference, twenty-two gates were con-structed each adorned with the names of poets, heroes, and heroines commemoratingAndhra history. The proceedings began with the song “Vande Mataram” expressingallegiance 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 languagesin public speaking cannot be underestimated.14 B.N. Sharma told the audience at theAMS conference that they were Indians first and sons of “Mother Andhra” secondbalancing their regional affiliations with the compulsions of nationalism.15 This wasa common refrain of the Andhra activists lest they be mistaken as working againstthe 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 politicsof anti-colonialism as such. Rather, regionalism was shaped by discourses of politicalmodernity and the introduction of representative government in the first two decadesof the twentieth century.

While clearly the Andhra activists began to promote language as the natural bondthat 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 thenation as outlined by the Indian National Congress was to take precedence over region-alisms. However, the Andhra activists recognized that they could do both: cultivatetheir regional political community while simultaneously working for the nationalistmovement. 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 firstAMS conference, two resolutions were reached: (a) “to ensure efficient administra-tion and the promotion of the best interests of the people of India, the Governmentwill 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 IndianNational Congress and the provincial autonomy approved of by the Government of India, may develop on healthy and natural lines, this Conference Committee, nowappointed, ascertain public opinion, on the question whether the government shouldbe asked to constitute the Telugu districts into a separate province.”17 The argumentbased of administrative convenience especially because a common language would easecommunication is part and parcel of the broader projects of political modernization.Furthermore, the Andhra activists believed it was not only in their interests to pushfor linguistically defined provinces. Writing a “Memorandum on Andhra Province” in1938, Ramadas Pantulu quoted the standing committee of the Andhra Maha Sabha onthe 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 justicethrough its vernacular language and dealing with its villages and their rural prob-lems through the vernaculars of the heart, the very moment we visualize Indiaas a nation whose nationalism is not the steam-road-rolled product exhibiting adull uniformity, but as a harmonious combination of diverse cultures exhibiting afundamental unity.18

Even before the founding of the AMS, J. Gurunatham a member of the YoungMen’s Literary Association (1903–04) 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 youngmovement. At the time, he was a teacher at the Christian College of Guntur and thensecretary 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. Gurunathamalso wrote a fascinating biography of Kandukuri Veeresalingam, a prominent nine-teenth century Telugu writer and social reformer, in 1911 that offers us an insightinto 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 Gurunathamsaw significant changes taking place at the turn of twentieth century. His book on

Veeresalingam argued that social reformism was well intentioned but it did absolutelynothing in developing the regions politically. Gurunatham argues that in order forTelugu people to take part in the march toward self-government, there needs to be anorientation towards the fostering of a political community at the regional level to aidthe political development of the region. Political development encompassed a great dealfrom fostering civil societal institutions centered on the development and appreciationof developments in the field of language and literature to conducting public debates onwhat 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)? Indeedthe 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 andreworked conceptions of egalitarianism. What these movements have in common firstand foremost is a civilizational defense of the region and language as worthy as anyother, which falls under cultural pride. Importantly, another commonality is the callfor adequate political representational institutions for the region. The region is con-ceptualized and articulated as a territorial linguistic community claiming that languagewould act to bind the community together and would inspire its speakers to worktowards the political unit of the region. Therefore, it is both a source of cultural pridebut most importantly a site for political modernity. B. N. Sarma at the first AndhraConference 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 towardsuplifting 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 greaterdemocratizing of politics. However, cultural cohesion was not a given; it had to becultivated. In 1913, Konda Venkatappaayya went to the ceded districts of the MadrasPresidency 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 knewthat there was no inherent natural community based on language that would lead to apolitical community. It had to be cultivated and constructed and made politically viablethrough producing consent amongst the various parties. Consent would come about bycarefully 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 bemore divisive.

As for the liberal aspiration for developing civil societal institutions, the regionbecame 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 anattempt to open their [i.e. the Telugu people’s] minds to their present backwardnessand induce individual exertion as well as corporate action on their part to improve theircondition.”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 potentialin 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 modernculture and enlightenment to the masses.”23 Again, the clearly stated goals of the earlyAndhra activists display the conscious effort that was put into the making of a dynamiccivil society.

Since the founding of Andhra Maha Sabha two decades later, there was a steadydiscussion 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 anew 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 ImperialLegislative Council for the creation of a separate province for Andhra. This was struckdown at the time because of the more pressing issue of Gandhi’s impending non-cooperation movement. It took them a series of compromises from first convincingRayalseema 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, theRayalseema districts were reticent to join the coastal districts in the agitation for anAndhra Province. This led to the demand to make Madras a joint capital for both theTamils and Telugus. The twentieth session of the Andhra Maha Sabha was preoccupiedwith the question of Madras as the capital of an Andhra Province. First, the coastalTelugus had to be convinced that this was beneficial for their province to have Madrasas its capital. Ramadas Pantulu writes that Andhra public opinion has come around tothe idea that fixing Madras as the capital for Andhra would aid industry, commerceand 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 VavillaVenkateswara Sastrulu and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan to provide arguments for whyMadras 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 publiclife such as Kavali Borayya the famed assistant of Colin Mackenzie, the First Surveyor-General of India. For these reasons, Vavilla Venkateswara Sastrulu argues that Madrashas 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 anAndhra 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 allshould be taken into account. Beyond that the most important criteria/principle is “thelargest possible measure of general agreement on the changes proposed, both on the sideof which is gaining, and on the side, that is the area that is losing advantage.”25 In otherwords, a consensus had to be reached (as far as possible) through public discussion anddebate, 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 laidaside.

Hyderabad: The Disintegration of a Princely StateThe 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 alliancesystem 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 Hyderabad’s 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 wasHindu.

The decades leading up to Indian independence saw in Hyderabad a surge of civilsocietal activism despite many constraints placed by the state’s administration. Oneoverriding concern for this section is why and how did socio-political conditions inHyderabad compel the state’s subjects to organize along linguistic lines? What werethe institutional mechanism that enabled organizing along linguistic lines and how didthat shape political aspirations/futures harbored by the people. There was clearly muchcross-border interaction through civil societal associations. My concern however will

be primarily the Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad or the region of Telangana as itforged links with their cross-border counterparts in the Madras Presidency. Telanganaeventually was integrated to Andhra Pradesh in 1956. The arguments made towardsthe making of linguistic provinces by the Andhra activists took on a different politicaldynamic in the context of Hyderabad where civil societal associations imagined dif-ferent political futures. The most prominent challenge facing the people of Hyderabadwas that civil society institutions were severely restricted at the height of the nationalistmovement in British India. The Nizam, the nominal head of the princely state, pushedfor constitutional reforms to develop representative government institutions only whenfeeling 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 inBritish India. In an early study of the political conditions in the Hyderabad state, onereason that Carolyn Elliot put forward was that civil societal institutions were “under-developed” within Hyderabad and representative government was not expanded as wastaking 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 approvedby the state, there was nevertheless a proliferation of political interests, civil societalgroups, 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, Leonardtraces the development of a modern bureaucracy to the period of the successful DiwanSalar Jang (1853–83). 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 andcontinued with their modernization schemes. Most interestingly, Leonard argues thatnew cultural-political ideologies emerged in the decades leading up to the Hyderabadmerger: 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 inBritish India: the Andhra Mahasabha and the Karnatak and Maharashtra Parishads.Despite this lack, Leonard nevertheless offers us rich glimpses of how Deccani culturewas invoked by Mulki nationalism in these decades. Similar to what we witness in theTelugu districts in the Madras Presidency, there was a proliferation of Urdu literarysocieties investigating Deccani Urdu that fed into Deccani nationalism. Societies suchas the Osmania Graduates Association, the Hyderabad Political Reform Association of 1919, the Society of Union and Progress of 1926, and the Nizam’s Subjects’ League of 1935 are a product of these “Deccani” nationalisms that garnered/articulated politicalloyalities to the Hyderabad state.28 The Nizam’s Subjects’ League in particular broughttogether 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 demisebecause it threatened the balance of power of Muslim elites who were more cautiousin 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 groupssuch as the Andhra Mahasabha, Maratha Parishad, and the Karnatak Parishad. JohnRoosa’s work suggests that the regional “cultural” organizations were popular becausethey claimed not to be political.29 Members of these associations while claiming mem-bership in the regional groups within Hyderabad cultivated ties with their counterpartsin 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 latenineteenth century onward endeavoring to build horizontal allegiances and workablealliances between diverse communities.”31 This observation would extend to BritishIndia as well in particular the Madras Presidency. While Hyderabad was not a hot bedof 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 1920sand 1930s attempted to have conversations on constitutional reforms and the politicalfuture 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 thepolitical future of Hyderabad, the Nizam and his supporters attempted to thwart thesediscussions.

If one were to look at the enduring set of historical forces that shaped these decadesbefore independence, Hyderabad went through some pertinent changes that preparedthe way for discussions of constitutional reforms by the state as well as shaping thepolitical aspirations of its people. Roosa argues that the reforms begun by Salar Janghad given a clear advantage to Muslim recruitment.32 This became more apparent withthe introduction of the census in 1881. Salar Jang, conceived Hyderabad to be a Muslimstate 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 encouragethe conversion of the Hindu populace. However, it did mean that Muslims whethermulki or non-mulki (outsider) would be recruited to man the civil administration togive the state its character as Muslim (acknowledging its history, etc.). The modern-ization schemes implemented by Salar Jang along with calls for constitutional reformsstarting in the second decade of the twentieth century nurtured the conditions for theemergence of a thriving public sphere in Hyderabad, a public that would eventually notonly pose a challenge to the monarchical power of the Nizam, but also the dominanceof Muslims in the bureaucracy.34

This is precisely what happens in Hyderabad in the early decades of the twentiethcentury when we begin to see the proliferation of civil societal associations speakingto the different political/cultural needs of the educated populace. A primary politicaland cultural association for Telugu speakers was the Andhra Jana Sangham conceived in1921–22, established in 1923–24 and eventually renamed Andhra Maha Sabha in 1930.

However, it remained distinct from the AMS in the Madras Presidency. While the AMSin the Madras Presidency was meeting annually to articulate their political interests aswell as increasing its membership, the Jana Sangham in the 1920s in Hyderabad wasa 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 State’sSocial Reform Conference did not allow the use of Telugu at their meeting. 35 We heara similar story of the origins of the Andhra Movement in Madras Presidency attributedto when Telugu speakers felt neglected in a Tamil dominated Congress. This inspiredthem to organize to form a separate association in which Telugu speakers would have apublic 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, theGolconda Patrika (1927) was established by Suravaram Pratapa Reddy who presidedover the First Andhra Mahasabha Conference held at Jogipet in 1930. Ravi NarayanaReddy, in his memoirs of this period, recalls that they chose to call the newspaperGolconda 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 harborthreatening political ideologies.36

The Hindu Mahasabha was also founded around the same time in Hyderabad in1923. It brought together Maharashtrians, Telugus, Dalits, and Arya Samajists under

one group. The Majlis-e Itthehad al-Muslimin responded with the founding of a groupto unite all sects of Muslims in 1928 giving voice to what Leonard had called the defenseof Muslim sovereignty. Finally, when the Indian National Congress authorized polit-ical activity in the princely states in 1938, the Provincial Committee of HyderabadState Congress was formed in 1938.37 This lead to a surge in political activity inHyderabad including student protests on the campus of Osmania University over thesinging of “Vande Mataram.” The Hyderabad government banned the formation of the Hyderabad State Congress because it deemed it a communal organization and itobjected to its affiliation to the Indian National Congress. The Congress attempted toprotest this by calling for a satyagraha in Hyderabad. The Arya Samaj and the HinduMahasabha 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 fromBritish India. Between October 1938 and June 1939 around 7,989 satyagrahis werearrested according to the British Resident in Hyderabad.38 The same report claims thatonly 20 percent of those arrested were Hyderabad state subjects. The majority, in otherwords, 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 Europereturned to Hyderabad after finishing a degree at Oxford in 1927. He had taken part inthe International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in Brusselsearlier that year in 1927. Other notable Hyderabadis attended the meeting such asVirendranath Chattopadhyaya and his nephew Jaisoorya Naidu.39 Mirza helped tobegin a new organization, Anjuman-e Taraqqi Hyderabad (the Society for the Progressof 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 Anjuman’s print organ was Ra‘iyat (1927).40

Mandumula NarsingRao (1897–1976) as editor of Ra’iyat and member of the Anjuman attempted to stakeout the paper’s anti-sectarian identity. He wrote an editorial in 1935 expressing thesesentiments, “if a few people were injured in religious squabbles; it matters little in asociety where thousands are perishing every day because of disease.” 41 Rao in anothereditorial wrote, “These communal organizations ( farqavarana tahrikat) may have theirorigins in British India but their poisonous winds reach here too. As soon as peoplestarted adopting ideas from British India, an era of evil mindedness and distrust beganin the state.”42 It is interesting to note the perception that communalism was a diseasefrom 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 andautonomy of Hyderabad as a political unit.

What these associations and their discussions reveal is a very different politicalclimate in Hyderabad—a political climate that was putting forward critiques of themonarchical power of the Nizam, demanding constitutional reforms and the expan-sion of representative institutions. The political ideologies as they developed underthe 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 NationalCongress, the goal of greater representational institutions moving toward a populardemocracy. However, even the Congress groups, liberals and socialists, had to workunder conditions of a monarchical power that did not openly engage in dialogue towardgreater constitutional reforms.

From the 1920s and throughout the 1940s, Hyderabad became a battleground of sorts between the Nizam’s administration and the burgeoning public sphere that theycould 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 JanakiNair has referred to as “monarchical modern,” which upheld monarchical power and




simultaneously modernized the administration. This created the conditions for theemergence of new publics that would eventually contest the monarchical power of theNizam. Furthermore, the Nizam had been steadily lobbying in the early years of thetwentieth 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 toadhere to the earlier treaties that the British would come to its defense when Indiabecame independent and Hyderabad would be engulfed by a larger potentially hostilestate. The Nizam believed that Dominion status was a possibility for Hyderabad. Thiswould have appealed to the Hyderabad civil societal associations if there was indeedopen dialogue between these groups and the administration over the political futureof Hyderabad. Because constitutional reforms posed a threat to the traditional powerdynamics of the Hyderabad state, this stalled any innovative thinking through of thepossibilities for political autonomy for Hyderabad. On the eve of Indian independencewhen 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 whichmy state is being abandoned by its old ally, the British Government, and the ties whichhave bound me in loyal devotion to the King Emperor are being severed.”43 This lead totortuous negotiations between the Nizam’s Executive Council and the Government of India and the Standstill Agreement that allowed for Hyderabad to exist autonomouslyfor a year during which time they would have to decide on either instituting responsiblegovernment 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 Hyderabadwith civil societal associations, the various political interests were in disagreement

with one another. This led to two developments in Hyderabad: The Majlis’ politicalpower and position along with the formation of the Razakars and the equally dramaticemergence of the Telangana peoples’ movement. The former, in resisting Congress’strategy to advance into Hyderabad, formulated the position of the defense of “Muslimsovereignty” or to keep safeguards in place that would not completely undermine thepolitical status of Muslims in Hyderabad. However it is important to keep in mindthe dynamism of the Majlis and its leader Bahadur Yar Jung who espoused differentpolitical positions on constitutional reforms over the course of his political career. TheTelangana 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 whatthey 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 thedissolution of the Nizam’s authority. The Majlis’s 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. Congressunits were making raids into Hyderabad territory and attacking government offices.On the Madras Presidency border, the communists were inspiring a people’s revolu-tion in the villages of Telangana. The radicalism of the Telangana people’s movementprovides 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 Andhraactivists in British India and soon within the Indian Union had only to contend withCongress and its leadership in Madras over dividing up the province. In Hyderabad,civil societal institutions had more contentious proposals to extend constitutionalreforms in the state and challenge the monarchical power of the Nizam. While inMadras Presidency the kind of national government that would come into place waslargely agreed upon—or at least Andhra activists took part in national discussions aspart of the INC—by 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 caseof linguistically demarcated states as suited for better governance. In Hyderabad, thecivil societal associations were split in the articulation of their political interests. The

civil societal institutions such as the linguistically demarcated ones within Hyderabadeventually aligned themselves with their counterparts in British India. The Majlis-eItthehad al-Muslimin, Anjuman-e Taraqqi Hyderabad, the Nizam’s Subject’s League,and the Comrade’s 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 towork with the various civil societal associations to produce consensus toward an agreedupon set of constitutional reforms, the groups were contending with one another forpolitical power. The Majlis earned the favor of the Nizam because it purportedly stoodto 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 fewand far between.

Visalandhra, Nationalist Communists, and the Breakup of HyderabadIn examining and comparing the emergence of civil societal activism in Hyderabad andin Madras Presidency—specifically the Andhra Mahasabha—it is clear that they hadvery different histories and political trajectories. While the AMS provided an meet-ing point for Telugu intellectuals and activists from Coastal Andhra to congregate andexplore 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 MadrasPresidency achieved the goal of convincing Congress that Telugu-speaking districtsdeserved their own Congress unit and thereby provided legitimate arguments in favorof linguistic reorganization of states after the departure of the British. The AMS inHyderabad while sharing with their counterpart in British India the goal of cultural andliterary 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 futureof 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 Hyderabadintroduced a new element to the mix: the political aspirations of the communists.




In 1946, Ravi Narayana Reddy, the then President of the Andhra Conference wroteto the President of the Hyderabad State Congress (HSC), Swami Ramananda Tirtha onthe misguided policies of the All India States Peoples Conference (AISPC) to excludethe Andhra Conference as a representative body because it harbored communists.44

He wrote: “This means that the major section of the Leadership and local membersof the Andhra Conference who have made it what it is today will be excluded fromthe State Congress. Any person confersant [sic] with political situation in Hyderabadcan understand the disastrous effects of such exclusion of the people’s movement inthe state.”45 He goes on to write that it is not possible to have the members vote onthe potential merger of the Andhra Conference with the HSC because of the volatilepolitical conditions of the Telugu speaking districts:

Regarding the other letters I have received concerning the merger of the AndhraConference into State Congress, you have asked for a reply before 7 August. But

the latest decision of AISPC has created an unprecedented situation for AndhraConference, when it is asked to be merged minus the leaders who have built itup. Such a decision cannot easily be taken by the Working Committee. Also inthe conditions of repression in which we are working and the big battles we arefighting against Feudal Tyrants and police Zulum, it has not become possible to calla meeting of Delegates who alone can decide the issue.46

Just a year before, Reddy wrote to the AISPC’s general secretary Jai Narayanji Vyasstating that the HSC was not representative. Rather, the three linguistically oriented

conferences, the Andhra, the Maharashtra, and the Karnatak Conferences were trulyrepresentative. In fact the efforts made by the INC to make a single association thesole representative is undemocratic Reddy writes. A report was sent to the AISPCon repressive measures in Telangana states, “The struggle that Andhra Conferencehas lead in Jangaon Taluqa Nalgonda District, against the notorious Deshmukh,Vishnoor Ramachandra Reddy, and the famous watandar, Kathar Ramchander Rao; thefights Andhra Conference has conducted against the Jagirdars and other feudalism inWarangal District and other places; and the campaign it has carried against the corruptofficials, 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, thecommunists 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 withthe increased use of vernacular languages in public/political life: they reached abroader public and cut across the urban/rural divide. The use of regional languagesin Hyderabad became a powerful device in increasing politicization and ultimately

cultivating political life and the democratic virtue of civic mindedness. As mentionedearlier 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 contributedto 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 Madraswith those that were part of Hyderabad. The Visalandhra Mahasabha was formed in1949. 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 tonote that in the 1940s, within the Nizam’s Andhra Maha Sabha, the communists cameto dominate the association. Also important to note is the fact that P. Sundarayya andRavi Narayana Reddy, two pivotal figures in the Telangana movement of the 1940s,were politicized through their immersion in Congress politics before they graduallyturned to communism. When the ban on the CPI was lifted in 1942, the CPI CentralCommittee began to endorse the idea of the Indian union or federation consisting

of distinct nationalities: “Every section of the Indian people which has a contiguousterritory 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 IndianUnion 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 forstates reorganization. The recognition of the self-determination of nations within Indiagave support to Andhra communists in their calls for the linguistic reorganization of states. P. Sundarayya wrote a pivotal pamphlet calling for a united Andhra. Sundarayyawrote, “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 existenceonly by the sovereign nationalities freely and voluntarily coming together and not bydenying to them the just and sacred right of self-determination.”51 Regionalism wasendorsed by both the CPI and Congress leaders in Hyderabad and this ultimately ledto calls for the severance of the state along linguistic lines as the best political solutionto a monarchical modernity that reached its limits and ultimate demise.

In addition to the fostering of linguistic regionalism by the CPI and Congress, otherBritish 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 attainmentof representative government for the people of the princely states. In its inaugura-tion meeting of 1927, it declared its objective as: “’the attainment of ResponsibleGovernment for the people in the Indian States through representative institutionsunder the aegis of their rulers.’”52 In reference to the 600 states and their standing inthe way of a composite Indian identity, Sitaramayya declares: “They are the vestigesof 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 betweenthe 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 princelystates to move toward not only representative government but also compelling themto join the Indian union. Alongside these forces for compelling the princes to join theIndian 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 in1929 on the issue:

When we come to consider the constituent elements out of which the federationof British India is to be built we are met with an initial difficulty. Federationschemes usually start with a number of clearly defined States each already pos-sessed individuality and consciousness, whereas in India there are only a numberof 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 governingunit within a federated whole. Most of them are populous and extensive, havingregard to the cultural level and economic conditions of their inhabitants, to allow of the easy working of the machinery of representative Government on a reasonablyextensive 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 werecreated in 1938: Sindh, NWF Province, and Orissa. Then, Congress resigned fromministries before WWII, which deferred the question of Andhra becoming a separate

province. Then, in 1945–46 in the election manifestos the idea of linguistic provinceswas mentioned: “It [Congress] has stood for full opportunities for the people as a wholeto grow and develop according to their own wishes and genius: It has also stood for thefreedom 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 territorialarea or provinces should be reconstituted, as far as possible, on a linguistic and culturalbasis.”55 While Congress was clearly on a path toward linguistic reorganization fromthe 1920s, it began to change its course in the immediate post-independence period.After newly independent India’s forcible takeover of Hyderabad from the Nizam’sadministration 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 violencethat erupted in Hyderabad between 1947–48, Nehru was careful to move gradually onthe issue. The communist uprising in Telangana also presented a clear challenge to thenewly independent Indian state. At this time, the question of unity and the economicand 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 reporton 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



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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 withthe recent partitioning of British India, the ongoing war with Pakistan, and the refugeecrisis. Furthermore, complicating the plan to reorganize states on the basis of languagewas the novel and precarious experiment the new government was embarking undera 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 madeit a difficult moment to carve up the states. And, finally the commission also points outthe necessary time and work involved in building consensus for the reorganizationsplans. However, the impending critical situation that Hyderabad found itself in mayhave been a catalyst to the hasty breakup of Hyderabad and that, consequently, led tothe 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, aGandhian, 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). PottiSriramulu, another Gandhian, succumbed to a fast that took his life in December of 1952. Afterward, a violent reaction from the Telugu speaking population in Madrasforced Nehru’s government to concede to the creation of Andhra. However, Madraswas not to be included. This was always the sticking point for the Andhra activistsfrom 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 beena steady movement within Hyderabad as the breakup of Hyderabad was inevitable,a movement towards Telangana statehood. There were clearly strong reservationsagainst joining Andhra. In Telangana, a mulki agitation erupted between 1948–52 inresponse to the incoming coastal Telugu speakers who began to take up posts in theadministration of Hyderabad in the aftermath of the police action of 1948. While in1955, the Andhra assembly passed a resolution to form a single state merging withTelangana.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 Telanganain 1955.58

The States Reorganization Commission (SRC) formed in December of 1953 after theformation 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. Whilemaking statements and acknowledging how there are real differences in Andhra andTelangana, the SRC initially rejected that Hyderabad should be retained as a unit. Withthat premise, it stated the argument for linguistic reorganization for ease of communica-tion within a given state. Language became primary in the commission’s analysis of howto 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 Andhraeven with the growing opposition to the proposal. In order to satisfy the critics of themerger, regional committees were to be formed to deal with the inequalities betweenTelangana and Andhra.

Both 1953 and 1956 show fissures between regions: Rayalseema, Telangana, andCoastal Andhra. Public life through civil societal activism in Madras Presidency and inHyderabad led to not only cultural revivalism of language and literature but also pos-sibilities for political community and citizenship. When tensions were rising within theAMS in the late 1940s, Mandumula Narsing Rao wrote an editorial in Raiyat against thecommunist takeover of the association. He explains that the AMS “is neither a studentsassociation nor a textile mill workers’ union; it is not even a peasant’s association (kisansabha).” 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 Thisis the clearest statement on the novel dynamics of public life and political aspiration

that characterize early twentieth-century India: the undercurrents of the anti-colonialnationalist 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 tothe post-World War I impact of the language of self-determination, political ideologieserupted 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, itseeped into regional discourses of governance and the path toward popular sovereignty.P. Sundarayya’s, a leading figure in the Telangana people’s 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 nurturedby the different political parties anticipated the dissolution of British India into a morerationally ordered group of provinces linguistically organized. Moreover, political aspi-rations as they erupted in the AMS in Hyderabad anticipated the dissolution of theNizam’s monarchical authority as part of the global movement towards representa-tive democracy and popular sovereignty. The Telangana demand is the product of thisdynamic 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 againstTelangana’s 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 silencethe opposition on the path toward linguistic reorganization. With the creation of theRegional committees to assure the equitable distribution of resources in the new state,Telangana’s merger with Andhra began on an unsure footing. A plebiscite was neverconducted and the glimmers of protest never completely died out.

AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Benjamin Cohen (University of Utah) and Sumit Ganguly

(Indiana University) for organizing a stimulating AIIS workshop on “Regionalism inIndia” 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 providedme forums for presenting arguments contained in this article allowing me to revisemy initial formulations. For this, I thank Marina Mogilner (University of Illinois atChicago), 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, 1891–1970 (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1997) and Lisa Mitchell, Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: TheMaking 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. 1326–51.4. Report on India’s Constitutional Reforms (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, India, 1918), p. 14.

5. See Christopher Baker, The Politics of South India 1920–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1976); and Eugene F. Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India, 1916-1929 (Berkeley and LosAngeles: University of California Press, 1969).

6. See Pritipuspa Amarnath Mishra, “Divided Loyalties: Citizenship, Regional Identity and Nationalism inEastern India (1866–1931)” (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: PrincetonUniversity 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 Mitchell’s 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 Telugudistricts of the Madras Presidency, as well as from Nagpur in the Central Provinces and from Warangal andHyderabad in the Nizam’s territories.

13. “Vande Mataram” is a nationalist song/slogan, which can be translated as “hail to the motherland” has itsorigins 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,1905–1919,” Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 55, No. 1 (2013), pp. 142–66.

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 SeparateProvince (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. 9–10.23. Ibid., p. 10.24. See Pantulu, Memorandum on Andhra Province.25. Ibid., p. 3726. See Carolyn Elliot, “Decline of a Patrinomial Regime:The Telengana Rebellion in India 1946–1951,” The

Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 34, No. 4 (November 1974), pp. 27–47. Carolyn Elliot argues that with thelack of political parties within the Nizam’s territories, Hyderabad witnessed more communal and divisivepolitics rather than an encouragement of coalitions across religious and language affiliation/lines. In otherwords, Elliot attempts to understand why Hyderabad appears politically backward and resistant to politicalmodernization. If we take Elliot’s 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 Elliot’s




developmental model of political modernization in her analysis of Hyderabad politics, there clearly was afailure 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. 205–18.

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 between1894–1931, Roosa writes that the ratio of Hindus and Muslims ranged from about 1:4 to 1:5. In the mid-partof 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, “TheQuandary of the Quam,” p. 134.

33. Roosa, “The Quandary of the Quam,” p. 147.34. Ibid.35. Lucien Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration: Political Developments in Hyderabad State (1938–1948)

(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.39. Roosa, “The Quandary of the Quam,” p. 406.40 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 Rao’s Editorial in Ra’iyat, April 22, 1935.42. Roosa, “The Quandary of the Quam,” quoted on p. 411, from M. Narsing Rao’s Editorial in Ra’iyat,

November 20, 1928.43. VP Menon, The Integration of the Indian States (Madras: Orient Longman, 1997). First published in 1956,

p. 31744. 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), FileNo. 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: People’s 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: People’s Pub. House, 1943), pp. 24–25.50. P. Sundarayya, Vishala Andhra (Bombay: People’s Publishing House, 1945), p. 72.51. Sundarayya, Vishala Andhra, p. 73.52. B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, The Indian States’ People’s Conference. Presidential address of Dr. B. Pattabhi

Sitaramayya. Fifths Session, July 18–19, 1936, Karachi, p. 2.53. Sitaramayya, The Indian States’ People’s 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, 1949–1956,” 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.

rama mantena on the history of the telangana issue

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