Ramachandra Guha responds:

February 04, 2013 12:22 am | Updated December 04, 2021 11:40 pm IST

Mr. Prabhakar puts the case for ‘Visalandhra’ spiritedly and passionately. My response, like my original essay, may be dispassionate in comparison, since I have, as it were, no dog in this fight. Whether Andhra stays as it is or is divided into two or three states will not affect the way I live or work.

That said, there are a number of logical and historical fallacies in Mr. Prabhakar’s case. Here is the central one. If, as he claims, the “Telugu people” were “together” for “two-and-a-half millenia,” why were the best Telugu musicians in the Tamil country, so many great Tamil and Kannada writers in chiefdoms run by Telugus? The fact is that language as a constitutive feature of political identity is a very modern phenomenon. It originates in the late 18th century in Europe — where it led to the creation of nation-states based on a single language. In mid-20th century India we saw a further innovation — the creation of linguistic provinces.

Mr. Prabhakar could also consider the implications of his claim. If people who speak one language must necessarily be consolidated in a single political unit, as he suggests, why don’t we think then of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh merging now into Uttar Pradesh, so that the Hindi-speakers can feel together and secure?

Need for a second commission

I do, however, agree with Mr. Prabhakar that in every Indian state present and future, there must be effective transferrence of financial and administrative power to city, town, mandal , and village authorities. I also think we need a second States Reorganization Commission to provide enduring solutions.

The first SRC had a jurist, a historian, and a social worker. A second SRC must likewise exclude politicians (retired or serving), and could dispense with a historian too. A jurist like Fali Nariman, a social worker like Ela Bhatt, an economist like Jean Dreze — Indians of all political persuasions might, I think, trust an SRC composed of such qualified and entirely non-partisan experts.

(Ramachandra Guha’s books include India after Gandhi. E-mail:>ramachandraguha@yahoo.in)

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.