Separate Telangana state movement

History of the movement

After the formation of Andhra Pradesh state, the people of Telangana expressed dissatisfaction over the implementation of the agreements and guarantees.

In December 1968 OU students organised a rally to protest against discrimination in government jobs against Telangana people. Keshav Rao Jadhav and Sudershan Singh both teachers supported the students.

Discontent intensified when some of the guarantees agreed upon were supposed to lapse in January, 1969. Student agitation for the proper implementation of the guarantees began at Osmania University in Hyderabad and spread to other parts of the region. This agitation came to an end in September 1972 with the merger of Telangana Praja Samithi with Congress and people realised that the Prime Minister was not inclined towards a separate state of Telangana.

Due to Jai Andhra agitation in the Seema-Andra region in 1973, protesting against the protections (mulki rules) given for Telangana region, the Government of India diluted the protections in Gentlemen's agreement by initiating the Six point formula.

Various political parties were formed on a platform of pursuing for separate statehood for Telangana region, including the Telangana Praja Samithi party in 1969, which won 11 out of 13 Parliamentory seats in 1971.

In the 1990s, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised a separate Telangana state if they came to power.

A new party called Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), led by Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao (KCR), was formed in 2001 with the single-point agenda of creating a separate Telangana State with Hyderabad as its capital.

In the 2004 Assembly and Parliament elections, the Congress party promised a separate Telangana State and the TRS had an electoral alliance in the Telangana region. Congress came to power in the state and formed a coalition government at the centre. TRS joined the coalition government in 2004 and was successful in making a separate Telangana state a part of the common minimum programme of the coalition government.

In September 2006, TRS withdrew support from the Congress-led coalition government because of the failure of fulfilling the promise to create a separate Telangana state.

In July 2008, Devender Goud and E. Peddi Reddy resigned from Telugu Desam Party(TDP) and formed a new party called Nava Telangana Praja Party (NTPP) with Telangana formation as its main goal.

After extensive internal discussions, the TDP, the main opposition party in the state, announced its support for the creation of separate Telangana state on 9 October 2008. The Telugu Desam Party promised to work towards creation of separate Telangana state.

The Praja Rajyam Party (PRP), founded by Telugu Matinee cinema actor Chiranjeevi supported Telangana statehood. The Nava Telangana Praja Party announced that it would merge with PRP after it concluded that there was not enough political space for two sub-regional Telangana parties that had Telananga statehood as their main agenda.

On 29 November 2009, TRS president K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) started a fast-unto-death, demanding that the Congress party introduce a Telangana bill in Parliament. He was arrested by the government of Andhra Pradesh. Student organizations, employee unions, and various organizations joined the movement. General strikes shut down Telangana on 6 and 7 December. Student organizations planned a massive rally at the state Assembly on 10 December. The government warned that the rally did not have permission and deployed police troops throughout Telangana. All opposition parties in the state favoured creation of Telangana state at an all-party meet held on 7 December.

On 9 December 2009, Union Minister of Home Affairs P. Chidambaram announced that the Indian government would start the process of forming a separate Telangana state, pending the introduction and passage of a separation resolution in the Andhra Pradesh assembly. KCR ended his 11-day fast, saying from his hospital bed that this was a "true victory of the people of Telangana."

Pro-Telangana supporters celebrated the central government decision, while those from the Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions (Andhra region) protested. Due to protests in the Seema-Andhra region, On 23 December, the Government of India announced that no action on Telangana would be taken until a consensus was reached by all parties. Rallies, hunger strikes, and suicides continued throughout Telangana to protest against the delay in bifurcating the State. The all-party Telangana Joint Action Committee (JAC) started relay hunger strikes and threatened the resignations of all legislators on 28 January, demanding that the Centre spell out its intentions and create a timetable for change. On 3 February the government announced the five-member Srikrishna committee on Telangana that would look into the issue, with a deadline of 31 December 2010.

History of Telangana

Satavahana dynasty (230 BCE to 220 CE) originated from the lands between the Godavari and Krishna River. Kotilingala in Karimnagar was their first capital, before moving to Dharanikota. Excavations at Kotilingala revealed coinage of Simukha, the first Satavahana emperor. The Satavahana Empire was important in repelling foreign empires from India, such as the Indo-Greeks, and preserving Indian culture.

The region experienced its golden age during the reign of the Kakatiya dynasty, a Telugu dynasty that ruled most parts of what is now Andhra Pradesh from 1083 to 1323. Ganapatideva was known as the greatest of the Kakatiyas, and the first after the Satavahanas to bring the entire Telugu area under one rule. He put an end to the rule of the Cholas, who accepted his suzerainty in the year 1210. He established order in his vast dominion that stretched from the Godavari delta in the east to Raichur (in modern day Karnataka) in the west and from Karimnagar and Bastar (in modern day Chattisgarh) in the north to Srisailam and Tripurantakam, near Ongole, in the south. It was during his reign that the Golkonda fort was constructed. Rudrama Devi and Prataparudra were prominent rulers from the Kakatiya dynasty.

Telangana came under the Muslim rule of the Delhi Sultanate in the 14th century, followed by Bahmanis, Qutb Shahis, and the Mughals. As the Mughal Empire began to disintegrate in the early 18th century, the Muslim Asafjahi dynasty established a separate state known as Hyderabad. Later, Hyderabad entered into a treaty of subsidiary alliance with the British Empire, and was the largest and most populous princely state in India. Telangana was never under direct British rule, unlike the Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions of Andhra Pradesh, which were part of British India's Madras Presidency.