By the indications that we are getting from the media the state of Andhra Pradesh will be bifurcated, partitioned into two and this saddens me immensely. The parallel with India’s partition at the time of independence is all to evident a state is being carved up in two by the power hungry who will do all that is necessary to remain in power.
India’s partition was engineered by foreign forces as is Andhra Pradeshs’ the former british and the latter italian. It is very easy for a foreigner to divide another persons homeland for they can never understand what it means to those who call that place home, but it isn’t the foreigners who are responsible for both these self inflicted wounds it is us indians who are responsible in both occasions. In 1947 it was Nehru and Jinnah both of whom were power hungry and this time with history repeating itself only the actors are different.
Any partition is a painful ordeal for both parties, be it siblings dividing ancestral property or best friends not being friends anymore. It is never a solution and even after decades the scars of the grave wounds remain, reminders of the futility and foolishness of division.
I’m not from Andhra Pradesh so I can’t claim to be an expert on Telangana but I’ve stayed in Hyderabad and Secunderabad for some time, I have a few friends from the state none of them are radicals so it is possible that my analysis is wrong all together. But I can’t see a single reason for dividing the state except for those motivated by political considerations, the people of the state are mainly from the same linguistic community with no regional community dominating other communities.
The solution to the problem that people are protesting about does not lie in dividing the state into pieces but does so in better governance and empowerment of the people. I wonder how much longer will politics of appeasement drive the future of our country. It hardly matters now though, tonight is probably the last when Andhra Pradesh will be one state come tomorrow another partiton looms large.