India After Independence: 1947-2000 (51 page)

But, above all, the separatist sentiment was based on the notion of injustice and discrimination in employment in state institutions. While the number of educated job-seekers had been growing as a result of sharp increase in education, employment, especially in the government services, was contracting all over the state as a result of the difficulties in the implementation of the Third Plan. But the political leaders and the unemployed middle-class youth put the blame for the growing unemployment in Telengana and Hyderabad city on the governmental bias in favour of Andhra region.

The major issue in this context became the implementation of what came to be known as Mulki Rules. The Nizam’s government in Hyderabad had accepted as early as 1918 that in all state services those who were born in the state or had lived there for fifteen years (i.e., Mulkis) would be given preference, while restrictions would be imposed on the employment of outsiders. At the time of the merger of Telengana with Andhra in 1956 the leaders of the two regions had evolved a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ providing for the retention of the Mulki Rules in a modified form, a fixed share of places in the ministry for Telengana leaders, and preference for students from Telengana in admission to educational institutions including to Osmania University in Hyderabad. The discontented in Telengana accused the government of deliberately violating the agreement while the government asserted that it was trying its best to implement it. The latter argued that sometimes properly qualified persons were not available from Telengana region because of educational backwardness in the old Hyderabad state. For example, expansion of education in Telengana made it necessary to bring in a large number of teachers from Andhra region.

Towards the end of 1968, the students of Osmania University went on a strike on the question of discrimination in employment and education. The strike soon spread to other parts of Telengana. Fat was added to the fire by a Supreme Court judgement in March 1969 declaring the reservation of posts under the 1956 agreement to be constitutionally invalid. A massive, often violent, agitation demanding separation of Telengana from Andhra Pradesh now spread all over Telengana where schools and colleges remained closed for nearly nine months. The agitation was soon joined by organizations of non-gazetted government employees, who went on an indefinite strike, and a large number of teachers, lawyers, businessmen and other sections of the middle classes.

To lead the movement for a separate Telengana state in an organized
manner, the Telengana Praja Samiti (TPS) was soon formed. A large number of disgruntled and dissident Congress leaders joined the TPS and occupied a dominant position in it. All the major national parties opposed the demand for a separate Telengana state; the two Communist parties looked upon it as an effort of the vested interests to misguide and misdirect popular anger against the landlord-bourgeois system. A large number of local leaders of Swatantra, Samyukta Socialist Party and Jan Sangh, however, supported the demand. Indira Gandhi and the central Congress leadership strongly resisted the demand though; trying to play a mediatory role, they urged the Andhra government to adopt a sympathetic attitude towards Telengana’s economic demands and to redress its grievances.

Because of the central government’s firm opposition to the break-up of the state, the failure of the movement to mobilize the peasantry, and the inevitable fatigue from which any mass movement suffers if it is not able to achieve success when it is at its height, the movement for separate Telengana began to lose steam and to peter out after the summer of 1969. In July, the economically hard-pressed non-gazetted employees called off their strike. The students too went back to their studies before the examinations to be held in December 1969. Still the TPS succeeded in winning 10 out of 14 Telengana seats in the 1971 elections to the Lok Sabha.

After the 1971 elections, a compromise was worked out under the aegis of the central government, under which the Mulki Rules were to continue and a Telengana regional committee with statutory powers was to be formed. The compromise satisfied the disgruntled middle-class youth. The TPS merged with Congress in September 1971 after Brahmanand Reddy, the chief minister, resigned and was replaced by P.V. Narasimha Rao from Telengana.

It was, however, now the turn of the middle classes of the Andhra region to express anger. They were convinced that the Mulki Rules, however, much amended, would adversely affect recruitment of Andhrans to state services. The political storm broke when the Supreme Court gave a judgement in October 1972 sanctioning the continuance of Mulki Rules. And, as in the case of Telengana, students and non-gazetted employees unions took the initiative in organizing meetings, strikes and demonstrations, which sometimes turned violent, and demanded the repeal of the Mulki Rules and other acts of alleged discrimination against Andhran government employees. Once again, doctors, who argued that medical funds were being diverted to Hydrabad city, lawyers, who wanted a High Court in the Andhra region, and businessmen, who opposed ceiling on urban wealth proposed by the state government joined the agitation. An important difference from Telengana agitation was that the big landowners and rich peasants, too, took an active part in the agitation because they were opposed to the land ceiling legislation passed by the state legislature in September 1972.

The prime minister announced a compromise formula on 27 November,
according to which the Mulki Rules would be further modified and would continue in Hyderabad city till the end of 1977 and the rest of Telengana till the end of 1980. The formula was seen as favourable to Telengana and the Andhran agitation now turned against both the central government and the concept of united Andhra Pradesh. On 7 December, the Andhra non-gazetted employees went on an indefinite strike. Encouraged by Swatantra, Jan Sangh and some independents, the agitators now demanded the creation of a separate state for Andhra region. Once again the demand for division of the state was firmly opposed by the Communists, with the result that most of the trade unions and Kisan Sabha organizations stayed away from the agitation. Many Congressmen, however, supported it. Nine members of the Narasimha Rao Cabinet resigned from it, though others remained integrationists. The movement turned violent in many places with attacks on the railways and other central government property and clashes with the police. The Central Reserve Police and the army had to be brought in at many places.

Once again Indira Gandhi took a firm stand in favour of a united Andhra Pradesh. On 21 December the Lok Sabha passed the Mulki Rules Bill. On 17 January 1973, she asked Narasimha Rao to resign and then imposed President’s Rule in the state. The situation was gradually brought under control. Faced with a determined central government and as ‘agitation fatigue’ set in, the separatist movement subsided, especially as it could not mobilize the mass of the peasantry and the working class. Moreover, the epicentre of the movement remained in the coastal districts. Though Rayalaseema region was opposed to Mulki Rules it did not feel strongly about the demand for a separate state. As in the case of the upsurge in Telengana, non-gazetted government employees called off their strike in March and the students too returned to their classes. Finally, in September, the central government put forward a six-point formula which did away with Mulki Rules but extended preference in employment and education to all districts and regions of the state over outsiders. The 32nd Constitutional Amendment was passed to enable the implementation of the formula. This satisfied most of the Congressmen of the two regions. In December, President’s Rule was lifted and J. Vengal Rao, who became the consensus chief minister was asked to implement the new formula. Thereafter, the demand for division of the state gradually petered out in both parts of Andhra Pradesh, though Jan Sangh and later BJP adopted it as a part of their programme.

In case of both Telengana and Andhra regions, the central government firmly and successfully opposed the demand for bifurcation of the state as it was apprehensive of similar demands being raised in other parts of the country. At the same time, what made it possible in the end to accommodate the two regional demands in Andhra was the fact that they were entirely economic and did not involve communal or cultural differences. Another lesson learnt from the two movements was that it is necessary not only to alleviate economic disparities between different states but also to promote integrated development within a state and that
mere linguistic and cultural unity was not enough to inculcate a feeling of oneness and solidarity among a state’s people.

In terms of population Assam is a small state. Political turmoil racked the state for years because its people feared the weakening or loss of their identity as Assamese. At no stage, however, did their politics take a secessionist turn. Several components constituted this fear, shaping the nature of demands made and movement launched.

(i) The Assamese had a strong and persistent grievance that the severe underdevelopment of Assam was due to unfair treatment being meted out to it by the central government, which had not only neglected its development but also discriminated against it in allocation of central funds and location of industrial and other economic enterprises. Much worse, the Centre was seen as having deprived Assam of its due share of revenues from its crude oil and tea and plywood industries. Assam’s revenues had been pumped out and utilized elsewhere in the country. Assam’s economic backwardness was also ascribed to control of its economy and resources, particularly the production and sale of its tea, plywood and other commodities by outsiders, mostly Marwaris and Bengalis. Moreover, the labour force in tea, plywood and other industries was also mostly non-Assamese.

Several times since independence, Assam witnessed protest movements. There were demands for a greater share for Assam in the revenues derived from tea and plywood industries, a higher royalty for its crude oil, larger central financial grants and plan allocation, location of oil refineries in Assam, construction of more bridges over the Brahmaputra river, upgrading of railway link between Assam and the rest of India, greater effort at industrialization of the state by both the state and the central governments, and greater employment of Assamese in central government services and public sector enterprises located in the state.

(ii) For historical reasons, which we do not have the space to discuss here, throughout the colonial period and for several years after independence, Bengalis settled in Assam occupied a dominant position in government services, in teaching and other modern professions and in higher posts in public and private sectors. Being more backward in education, the Assamese-speaking youth felt disadvantaged in competition with the Bengali-speaking middle classes for jobs. There was also a strong feeling among the Assamese speakers that Bengali predominance in education and middle-class jobs also posed a threat to the Assamese language and culture.

The lack of job opportunities, the ‘outsiders’ significant role in Assam’s industry and trade, and the fear of being culturally dominated produced a sense of deprivation in the minds of middle-class Assamese. They started a movement in the fifties demanding preference for Assamese
speakers in recruitment to state government services and making Assamese the sole official language and medium of instruction in schools and colleges. The Bengalis who formed a majority in Cachar district and had a large presence in the rest of Assam felt that the practice, initiated in 1871, of having both Assamese and Bengali as official languages should continue.

The movement for a change in the official language led to the gradual building up of hostility between the Bengali and Assamese speakers. In July 1960, it erupted in tragic language riots. Bengalis were attacked
en masse
in both urban and rural areas, their houses were looted and set on fire. A large number of Bengalis had to take shelter in Cachar and Bengal. This led to a counter-agitation in Cachar and an angry, sometimes chauvinist, reaction in West Bengal.

Very soon, in 1960 itself, the state assembly passed a law, against the wishes of Bengali speakers and many tribal groups, making Assamese the sole official language, though Bengali remained the additional official language in Cachar. In 1972, Assamese was made the sole medium of instruction also in colleges affiliated to Guwahati University.

This effort to impose the Assamese language became one of the factors which hampered the process of evolution of the Assamese identity, prevented it from encompassing the entire state and led to many of the hill tribes to demand separation from Assam.

(iii) Over the years, the demographic profile of Assam underwent a change as a result of migration from other parts of India and, above all, from East Bengal-Bangladesh. However, the main grievance that was to develop into a massive anti-foreigners movement in 1979, was the largescale illegal migration in a relatively short span of time from Bangladesh and to some extent from Nepal.

Migration of outsiders into Assam has a long history. The British administration had encouraged migration of thousands of Biharis to work on the tea-plantations and of hundreds of thousands of Bengali peasants to settle on the vast uncultivated tracts of Assam. Till recently, Assamese landlords had welcomed the hardworking Bengali tenants in the sparsely populated Assam. Between 1939 and 1947 Muslim communalists encouraged Bengali Muslim migration to create a better bargaining position in case of partition of India. Partition led to a large-scale refugee influx from Pakistani Bengal into Assam besides West Bengal and Tripura. In 1971, after the Pakistani crackdown in East Bengal, more than one million refugees sought shelter in Assam. Most of them went back after the creation of Bangladesh, but nearly 100,000 remained. After 1971, there occurred a fresh, continuous and large-scale influx of land-hungry Bangladeshi peasants into Assam. But land in Assam had by now become scarce, and Assamese peasants and tribals feared loss of their holdings. However, this demographic transformation generated the feeling of linguistic, cultural and political insecurity, that overwhelmed the Assamese and imparted a strong emotional content to their movement against illegal migrants in the eighties.