United States of Andhra Pradesh

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

If we have three people from Andhra Pradesh, we might have several factions and groups, which might be aligned with everything under the sun.  One has to wonder how we can be called Telugu people with so much uncommon in our attitudes towards each other, and so much animosity to each other, even if we don’t belong to different districts of the state.  We can be neighbors and still don’t like each other.  Our differences are with everything from language, slang, caste, religion, and even street to street, from the regional differences.  Even our language has its own nuances and there is nothing that holds us together as one people and one state, and it is hard to imagine how the Telugu language survived such animosity between people that speak the language.

The late and beloved NTR fought for pride of the Telugu People until his death and his success as a politician was primarily based on the self determination and upholding the pride of Telugu people.  We Telugu people somehow were in one state of Andhra Pradesh for more than five decades and most of it strife ridden and un-cohesive as a unit of one language speaking people.  If there was a group of people who really lived together in indifference to each other, there is no better example than people of Andhra Pradesh.  Within their native places in India and when they migrate to other states or countries, we are so divisive in projecting ourselves as one unit.

The current situation with declaring the division of Andhra Pradesh into two separate states by the central government should come as no surprise to the people of Andhra Pradesh.  It does not behold the wishes of the common man, but is true to the politics of congress (divide and rule) and a few politicians in the state that keep driving the wedge of hatred on the regional basis of the current state.  We the people really believe in the constant badgering of hatemongering through every media outlet, and some innocents have given their life to the cause of separate statehood.  No amount of blood and destruction and hatred has been instrumental in declaration of separate statehood for the regions in Andhra Pradesh, but a political decision by a party that clearly doesn’t care about the socio-economic issues of any state, but only self-interest of its survival at the center.

We have destroyed enough infrastructures and killed enough innocents and spoke badly of everyone and anything in the world, and then come this unilateral declaration by the center without consultations and relevance to the state.  No one seems happy about the division once it was announced and the pro-division leaders and parties will no longer have any relevance to existence, and the anti-division leaders have no plans for a divided state.  The people are so polarized amongst themselves they have no idea of the impact or relevance of the division of the state and how and what needs to be done to make anything better in their environment.  The pro-division forces have already made comments on sending people to their original regions and the reactions from opposition have been swift and with some more violence.

There is no place for anyone to look from ten thousand miles away and make a recommendation on the separation or unification of any state or people.  The well being of a language and its race is more important than politics or people’s agendas.  The current state of the Telugu people is really up in limbo as their best interests or their economic considerations have not been fully thought out, and the leadership that might lead the divided state is not really showing any inclination to a partition that bears fruits to the people.  All this looks staged and political and has not put Telugu people first.