Tag Archives: telangana

Education, Everyday Life, Excavation, Government, Language, Law

Save the AP State Archives: Coalition of Concerned Citizens and Academics

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This petition is being circulated by a coalition of concerned citizens, local and international academics and scholars

The historical collections at two major archives in Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh Government Oriental Manuscripts Library (APGOML) and the Andhra Pradesh State Archives and Research Institute (APSARI), are under threat in the bifurcation of Telangana and residuary Andhra Pradesh. The institutions’ collections are slated for division between the two new states. These collections have long suffered from neglect, and now face the likelihood of irreparable damage from arbitrary division, handling, and transfer.

Local and international scholars and activists have organized a petition to preserve these historical documents. Our primary concern is for the integrity of the collections and we seek to avoid entanglement in the Telangana/Andhra debates. The petition is aimed, in part, at demonstrating that there is a concerned audience of international scholars and interested parties who care about and use these collections. This wider expression of concern will help support the efforts of local citizens who plan to submit the petition to the Governor before the end of the month.

Please take a moment to add your voice:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/protect-the-andhra-pradesh-state-archives-and Continue reading Save the AP State Archives: Coalition of Concerned Citizens and Academics →

Countryside, Culture, Ecologies, Government, Identities

Adivasi-yagna, The Great Sacrifice – Tribal Communities for ‘Greater’ Hyderabad? R Uma Maheshwari

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This is a guest post by R UMA MAHESHWARI

The Andhra Pradesh ministers are fighting like the hooligans they show in Telugu films (one is reminded, in particular, of an old Telugu film aptly named Assembly Rowdy). The fight is all over, and about, investments in Hyderabad and elsewhere. As it is about money. The Parliament fight is with pepper sprays and knives. Back there, on the ground, in tribal villages in AP (yet to be declared as either Seemandhra or Telangana), absolutely unarmed Koyas, Kondareddis, and a few other tribal communities are opposing the construction of the Polavaram dam. And have been marking their protests with dharnas, rasta rooks and burning of effigies of leaders of all political parties. The former have some plum real estate and business interests to protect; the latter have their everything to fight for – homes, land and histories. Not for a while, in the entire debate and fighting over the state of either unification or creation of Telangana have any of these picketers in the Parliament have sought the opinions of the tribal people whose land is today a battleground for investment. One has no qualms of using the peculiar Sanskritic terminology, in the Vedic sense of sacrificial rituals, conducted by the wealthy and upper castes for their benefits, in the name of the ‘common good’. A Former Chief Minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, YSR, too, used the same Sanskritic term (in spite of his being a Christian) for the irrigation projects (or contractor businesses) he initiated (86 nos.) under jalayagam.  Today the sacrificial ritual continues, and it is a human sacrifice, of more than three hundred thousand tribal people (as it is the sacrifice of animals and birds and every visible or invisible organism), in return for the illusory real-estate-driven world called ‘Greater’ Hyderabad; what if it is going to be a “joint capital for ten years” (and who has seen what the world will look like after ten years, any way? Or what shape it will assume? But these are matters of philosophy and metaphysics, I guess, talking of who knows where we will be, what will be…). Continue reading Adivasi-yagna, The Great Sacrifice – Tribal Communities for ‘Greater’ Hyderabad? R Uma Maheshwari →

Everyday Life, Identities, Images, Media politics, Violence-Conflict

Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome: Anant Maringanti

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Or, when suicide threat becomes political strategy

Guest post by ANANT MARINGANTI

I am witnessing a bizarre phenomenon in Andhra Pradesh which I can at the moment only call ‘Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome‘. That this is pathological, and that this has to do with the media I am certain. But it is difficult to pin down what the pathogen is.

First, in the days and weeks following the then chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy’s (YSR) death on September 2nd, 2009; over 450 people were reported to have died either of heart attacks or suicides. Newspapers kept a daily tally and the numbers kept mounting. Being in Singapore at the time, several thousands of miles away from Hyderabad during those weeks, I had no first hand experience of the mood in Hyderabad. I dismissed the reportage as a silly political gimmick. It was easy to surmise that vested interests had simply been collecting daily death reports from various government hospitals in different towns and attributing them to grief over YSR’s death. The largest number of these deaths – 227 occurred on the day of the funeral and the following day. Continue reading Media Induced Morbidity Syndrome: Anant Maringanti →