So, welcome Telangana.
UPA Government is expected to officially declare the formation of the state very soon, it is learnt.
Andhra Kesari Tankuturi Prakasam and Potti Sriramulu during the formative years of independent India (late 1940s) were in the forefront to demand the partition of the erstwhile Madras presidency into the linguistic states of the Telugu speaking Andhra Pradesh and the Tamil speaking Madras. After much hesitation on the part of the rulers and a sustained struggle with linguistic sentiments getting whipped up, the demand for partition was finally acceded to. And the concept of linguistic states was to be applied again and again in the case of other regions also.
With the carving out of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh now, I think the time has come to revisit the time old concept of linguistic states. Will language still be the binding factor or do we have to go for administrative convenience and take into account regional imbalances too while encountering similar demands in the near and far off future?
Whatever it is, one thing is deplorable – the ‘one-up-manship’ shown by the UPA Government in this (mostly sordid) episode. As the Hindu reports today, ‘in the event of a BJP-led NDA coming to power and it announcing that it will divide Andhra Pradesh, the Congress would have to support it: it makes more sense, therefore, to carve out a new State and take the credit for something that it had announced it would do in 2009”.
Wonder what Nehru, Patel and Prakasam would have done if they were alive today.
Well, will we have Tamil Nadu divided into two as PMK wants, or 3 as the Kongu folks want a Kongu Nadu in the middle? Time is not far off when even Kerala might be split to Malappuram, Malabar and Travancore ..who knows when this balkanization will end..now that it has started…