The Hunger Strike That Shook Delhi
The Double Standard: December 2009
- Congress and TDP leaders from Andhra region who had publicly committed to supporting Telangana statehood at the official All Party Meeting went back on their word within days of the 9 December announcement.
- Some of these leaders, described in the TRS submission as having "vested interests in the real estate business and investments in the corporate sector," openly instigated students and youth of Andhra and Rayalaseema to oppose statehood.
- Large-scale violence and massive destruction of property took place in Andhra and Rayalaseema regions following these instigation. The state government dealt with this leniently.
- During the same period there was total peace and tranquility in the Telangana region, which had celebrated the announcement rather than agitated.
- Cases registered against Telangana activists from 29 November onwards had been promised to be withdrawn by the Home Minister. This commitment by the central government remained unhonoure by the state government.
- The TRS submission noted explicitly: "In dealing with identical situations of unrest in two different regions of the State, the State Government and the law and order machinery behaved differently. It was very lenient and considerate in dealing with situation in the Andhra and Rayalaseema areas, while it has been, and continues to be, ruthless and repressive in dealing with an identical situation in the Telangana region."
The Significance of November to December 2009
The events of November and December 2009 compressed into six weeks the entire history of Telangana's relationship with the Government of India since 1956. A legitimate demand was made through democratic means. The government responded with an announcement. The announcement was walked back under pressure from the dominant regional interest. The double standard in dealing with the two regions' agitations was on full display. And Telangana's people were asked, once again, to wait for a process of consultation that might or might not produce results.
What was different in 2009 was that the political arithmetic had fundamentally changed. The Sri Krishna Committee that was constituted to study the question was itself a sign that the government could no longer simply ignore the demand. The TRS document that was submitted to that committee, the document on which Telangana Library is primarily based, was KCR's comprehensive case for why the formation of Telangana state was not merely desirable but historically necessary, economically documented and constitutionally justified.
The hunger strike of 2009, and the events that followed it, set the stage for the final act. Parliament would vote. Statehood would come. Not in 2009, not in 2010, but in 2014. The five years between Chidambaram's announcement and the actual formation of the state were five more years of waiting for what had already been promised. But the promise of 9 December 2009, even walked back on 23 December, had established something that could not be unestablished: the Government of India had acknowledged, formally and publicly, that the process of forming Telangana state would be initiated. From that day forward, the question was no longer whether. It was when.