Lessons from the Telangana Movement

The Telangana movement, that is going on for the last few months, is an expression of the people’s democratic yearnings. It is a silent but people’s revolution for a separate Telangana State. The people’s protests are taking place in the forms of dhoom-dhams (songs and dances), garjanas (hullabaloos), and padayatras (marches). Sometimes it is celebrating vijayayatras (victory marches) in anticipation of the Telangana state, and at times it is taking out shava yatras (processions carrying the dead) too. These protest campaigns gathered momentum in the course of the Telangana discourse in the region. They protested in typical Telangana bonalu-style (offering to deities), drawing rangoli, and vanta-varpu (cooking and eating in public places) and of course in the tears of (about) 250 mothers whose sons and daughters had died in the last two months. The Telangana service castes expressed their solidarity with the Telangana movement through remonstative forms of shaving, washing clothes, and in vanta-varpu, in public places. Not in the form of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s agenda, nor by staging theatrics and resorting to political manoeuvres.