Dec. 14 – The Indian government’s decision to form a new state of Telangana is causing confusion in Andhra Pradesh as the proclamation is seen as an agreement to divide a new area from the state.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram issued a statement last week confirming that the mechanism for forming the new state was being put in place by the government. This followed several days of strikes in Hyderabad, the state capital, and the threat of the death of a local politician, K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who underwent a much publicized hunger strike to call for the creation of the new state.
Telangana was previously part of Hyderabad, which was under princely control until 1949. The state was merged with Andhra State and became Andhra Pradesh shortly afterwards. Hyderabad, then a mostly Muslim city, has changed over the decades since to become more secular, and has also developed into a world center for IT and software development.
The movement for the creation of a separate state of Telangana is also several decades old and organized mainly by the political party the Telangana Rashtra Samiti which has long lobbied for the rights of the Telangana people who claim that they feel dispossessed in their own land, as migrant workers and businessmen have flooded into Hyderabad in recent years due to its production boom.
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