HISTORICAL EVIDENCE Cold political calculations might have been the immediate cause for the creation of the new state of Telangana, but the seeds for a geographical division of Telugu-speaking areas were sown 693 years ago, way back in 1321. That was the year when the forces of the Delhi Sultanate defeated the Kakatiyas of Warangal, the then dominant Hindu dynasty, which ruled over large parts of what till now constitutes Andhra Pradesh.
Historians might actually point to a period eighteen years earlier, when the first Islamic invasion took place. In 1303, Allaudin Khilji sent his army to Warangal. Prataparudra Kakatiya (1295-1321) successfully held them at bay. But he had to meet a greater adversary in 1310, in Malik Kafur, who not only defeated him, but also forced him to pay a heavy tribute. What followed in 1321 was worse.
The Khiljis had been replaced by the Tughlaks, and Prataparudra reasserted his independence. Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlak then sent his son, Ulugh Khan, better known as Muhammad bin Tughlak. The attack was repulsed, but he returned a month later with a larger and more determined army. Warangal was taken, along with a huge booty of gold, ivory, horses and elephants. Part of the loot was the celebrated Kohinoor diamond.
The plunder and destruction lasted for months. Prataparudra was captured. The monarch committed suicide by jumping into the Narmada, while being taken to Delhi as a prisoner. He was the last significant Hindu king to rule over this region.
The ancient Andhra region was known as Trilinga Desam, a reference to the three premier Shaiva shrines in Draksharamam (East Godavari district), Kaleswaram (Karimnagar district) and Srisailam (Kurnool district). Call it by design or by accident, the three shrines are located in the three regions of the state: Coastal Andhra (Draksharamam), Telangana (Kaleswaram) and Rayalaseema (Srisailam). Trilinga is said to be the origin of the word, Telugu. The Tughlak-annexation of Warangal placed the entire Andhra country under an alien ruler, alien to everything that this land stood for.
However, the rule from distant Delhi ended shortly afterwards, as Zafar Khan, Muhammad bin Tughlak’s appointee as governor, revolted and asserted his independence. He ascended the throne as Allaudin Bahman Shah. He was the first of the Bahmani Sultans, who ruled from Gulbarga, in present-day Karnataka. Hindu resistance to Muslim rule led to the establishment of the Vijayanagar Empire in 1336.
The Rayas of Vijayanagar and the Bahmani Sultans battled constantly, which ultimately led to the dissolution of the Bahmani dynasty in the early part of the 16th century. Five Muslims chieftains of Turkish origin then picked up the threads left by the Bahmanis and established five different kingdoms based in Ahmednagar, Berar, Bidar, Bijapur and Golconda.
The last named, Golconda, you could say, was the earliest precursor to the present Telangana region. The Qutb Shahi dynasty, founded by Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk (1518–1543), ruled from Golconda Fort, eleven kilometres from Hyderabad. The reign of its last ruler, Abul Hasan Qutb Shah (1672–1687), is the subject of folklore, as it is associated with the life and times of the legendary saint-composer, Kancherla Gopanna, better known as Sri Ramadasu.
Sri Ramadasu was imprisoned in Golconda Fort for using state funds to build the famous Sri SitaRamaswamy vari temple in Bhadrachalam, about 190 kms from Vijayawada. The story goes that Lord Rama appeared before the Qutb Shah and secured the release of Sri Ramadasu, after paying the ruler the equivalent, in gold coins, of the Rs. Six lakhs that the composer had allegedly misappropriated.
The Qutb Shahis ruled for 171 years, till 1687, when Aurangzeb conquered the Deccan. Delhi’s distant rule was again short-lived, as Aurangzeb’s viceroy, Mir Qamar-ud-Din Siddiqi, declared himself independent in 1724, calling himself Asaf Jah I. The Asaf Jahis later came to be known as Nizams, the shortened form of Nizam-ul-Mulk, the Administrator of the Realm.
They ruled from Hyderabad and, like the Golconda Nawabs, were of Turkish origin. Mir Osman Ali Khan, or Asaf Jah VII, was the last Nizam. In 1947, after independence, he preferred not to merge with India. He unleashed the Razakars, a private militia, against rebellious Hindu peasants, which led to a massacre. The killings ended when the Indian army marched into Hyderabad and subdued the Razakars in September 1948. The Nizam was deposed and his territories were absorbed into the Indian union. In 1956, they were attached to other Telugu-speaking areas to form a unified Andhra Pradesh.
At one time, the Nizam’s territories included parts of present Karnataka and Maharashtra, but, towards its end, it was confined to the region now known as Telangana. There have been intermittent upheavals in the region since independence for a separate Telangana state. The most important one was in the 1970s, when the late Dr. M. Channa Reddy led the movement for a separate state.
The agitation lasted for months, but the central government, under Indira Gandhi, deftly handled it. The result: there was no Telangana and Dr. Channa Reddy became a prominent member of the Congress party. The problem resurfaced in the early part of the 21st century, when K. Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR) founded the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and started an agitation for a separate state.
The movement received a major fillip, when the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, desperate to unseat the Telugu Desam government of N. Chandrababu Naidu, joined hands with the TRS. He promised a separate Telangana. But, after being voted to power in 2004, the wily YSR quickly established himself as a powerful ruler and it was goodbye to Telangana again. KCR’s credibility suffered as he could not deliver on his promise, and, in the 2009 elections, his party was routed.
YSR’s death, a few months later, turned out to be the opportunity he was waiting for. KCR unleashed a series of popular agitations which crystallized opinion in the region towards a separate state. Interestingly, the Telangana region is poised to become a separate state, as a result of the weak dynasty that now rules Delhi, much like when the Bahmanis/Golconda Nawabs and the Nizams emerged—due to the weak dynastic Delhi rule in the 14th and 18th centuries.
I have been a regular visitor to Hyderabad from the 1960s. Those were the days, when the locals hardly spoke Telugu. It was mostly Urdu, the result of centuries-old Muslim rule. I had a difficult time communicating, while travelling by government buses or autos in Hyderabad. The bus conductors and auto-drivers were of Telugu origin.
They sported the Hindu tilak on their foreheads, but spoke only Urdu. All that changed in course of time, as settlers from Coastal Andhra swarmed the region, making Hyderabad what it is now. The region was further Teluguised after the late N.T. Rama Rao became chief minister of AP in 1982. He made Telugu the administrative language and transformed the region into a Telugu-speaking area.
The region could soon become the separate state of Telangana, but its Telugu character has been firmly re-established after nearly 700 years.
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