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Telangana and the politics of State formation in India: Recognition and

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Telangana and the politics of State formation

in India: Recognition and accommodation in a
multinational federation

Kham Khan Suan Hausing

To cite this article: Kham Khan Suan Hausing (2018) Telangana and the politics of State formation
in India: Recognition and accommodation in a multinational federation, Regional & Federal Studies,
28:4, 447-468, DOI: 10.1080/13597566.2018.1473856

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REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES
2018, VOL. 28, NO. 4, 447–468
https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2018.1473856

Telangana and the politics of State formation in India:

Recognition and accommodation in a multinational
federation
Kham Khan Suan Hausing
Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, PO Central University, Hyderabad,
India

ABSTRACT
This article examines the politics of State formation in India by taking up the case
of Telangana. Drawing from the emerging literature on the politics of
recognition and territorial accommodation in multinational federations, I
argue that territorial accommodation of Telangana was made possible by the
convergence of strategic interests and role of multiple actors to recognize
Telangana’s distinctive territorial identity and accommodate its Statehood
demand when an opportune ‘political opportunity structure’ emerged in the
late 1990s till 2014. It extends the insights of ‘actor-centred’ institutionalism
and contributes to an emerging literature which emphasizes the ‘multi-
centred origins’ of border change and State formation in India in particular,
and in multinational federations in general. By underscoring State formation
as a complex process, this article cautions against a simplistic reading of the
politics of State formation in India as an act of one-upmanship whereby the
Centre can unilaterally make or break State borders.

KEYWORDS Indian federalism; politics of state formation; recognition and accommodation;

multinational federations; Telangana

Introduction
Multinational federations around the world have devised a range of territorial
and non-territorial solutions to accommodate their ethnic, linguistic, religious
and national diversities. Like most other multinational federations India has
not only envisioned non-territorial protection to territorially dispersed
groups ranging from affirmative action, the right to practice, profess and pro-
pagate one’s religion, and the right to practice personal and customary laws, it
has also redrawn its internal boundaries (or State boundaries) to accommo-
date its diverse ethnolinguistic and tribal groups (Adeney, 2017; Anderson
2013, 2016; Basta 2014; Basta, McGarry, and Simeon 2015; Bhattacharyya,
Hausing, and Mukherjee 2017; Chadda 2002; Hale 2004; Hausing 2014;

CONTACT Kham Khan Suan Hausing kksuanh@gmail.com Department of Political Science, Uni-
versity of Hyderabad, PO Central University, Gachibowli, Hyderabad 500 046, India
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
448 K. K. S. HAUSING

Mawdsley 2002; McGarry 2002; Stepan 1999; Swenden 2016, 2018; Swenden
and Toubeau 2013; Tillin 2013).
This article examines territorial accommodation or what is popularly known
as the politics of State1 formation in India by taking up the case of Telangana,
the twenty-ninth and the latest State formed on 2 June 2014 by separating 10
out of the 23 districts of Andhra Pradesh (AP). It extends the insights of ‘actor-
centred’ institutionalism (Broschek, Petersohn, and Toubeau 2018; Meguid
2005, 2008; Petersohn, Behnke, and Rhode 2015; Scharpf 1997; Swenden
2016, 2018; Swenden and Toubeau 2013; Toubeau 2018). It contributes to
an emerging literature which emphasizes the ‘multi-centred origins’2 of
border change and State formation in India in particular and in multinational
federations in general in two ways: (i) it underscores the necessary yet insuffi-
cient role that institutions play in determining territorial change or accommo-
dation and (ii) it foregrounds the strategic interest and role of multiple actors –
polity-wide parties (PWPs) and regionalist or State-based parties – in deter-
mining territorial change or accommodation. By underscoring State formation
as a complex process in which multiple actors negotiate and bargain under
the constraints imposed by extant institutional arrangements, this article cau-
tions against a simplistic reading of the politics of State reorganization in India
as an act of one-upmanship. This is so despite Article 3 of the Indian consti-
tution,3 on the basis of which the centre can unilaterally make or break
borders through consultation with the affected State(s) but without their
explicit consent.
Drawing from the emerging literature on the politics of recognition and
territorial accommodation in multinational federations, I argue that the terri-
torial accommodation of Telangana was made possible by the convergence of
strategic interests of multiple actors, namely PWP such as the Congress-I and
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and State-based and/or regionalist parties such as
the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). These
parties recognized the distinctive territorial identity of Telangana and the
need to sanction a Telangana Statehood demand in order to remain electo-
rally relevant when a ‘political opportunity structure’ (POS) – to borrow
Sartori (1976) – emerged in AP around the 1999 and 2004 State Assembly
elections. This window for change lasted until 2014 when Telangana was
eventually created (Bhattacharyya, Hausing, and Mukherjee 2017; Sarangi
and Pai 2011; Swenden 2016, 2018).
The PWP and regionalist parties harvested a favourable condition created
by a popular and sustained movement launched by various social movements
in the Telangana region from the late 1990s and by TRS since 2001 against a
perceived betrayal of trust, discrimination, and historical injustice from politi-
cally dominant groups located in a relatively more prosperous region of the
State (GoI 2010; Haragopal 2010; Pingle 2014; Ram 2007; Rao 2010; Srikanth
2013). The POS and the strategic interest of PWPs and regionalist parties to
 REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES 449

remain electorally relevant coincided with, and was reinforced by the trans-
formation of India’s federal polity from a system of two-level interaction
between the Centre and States to a system of multi-level interaction following
changes in the Indian political economy and party system (Arora 1995; Arora
et al. 2013; Jenkins 1996, 2003; Kothari 1989; Rudolph and Rudolph 2001;
Sinha 2005). In the one party dominant system, the hegemonic dominance
of the Congress until the early 1980s as a ‘catch all’ party both at the
Centre and the State of Andhra Pradesh foreclosed the territorial accommo-
dation of Telangana. This was so despite favourable opinions expressed
both by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and the State Reorgan-
ization Commission (SRC) in 1955.4 However, under the multi-level interactive
process in India’s pluralized party system since the late 1980s, political oppor-
tunities emerged which ultimately led the electoral-strategic interests of PWPs
such as the Congress-I and BJP and of regionalist parties like the TDP and TRS
to converge on a preference for a separate Telangana State (GoI 1955; Meguid
2008; Yadav and Palshikar 2003).
Given that the POS emerged at a time when a swing of 1–3% of votes in the
1999 and 2004 State Assembly elections ensured a seat differential of about
100 between the Congress and TDP, the ‘blackmail’ and ‘governing’ potential
of TRS profoundly increased as it captured respectively more than 6% and
16% of the electoral votes, respectively, in these elections (See Table 1,
Sartori 1976, 123–24). This apart, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) coalition government at the Centre was confronted not only by a
popular and powerful movement for Telangana but also by a political
vacuum created by the sudden death of Y.S. Rajshekhar Reddy, the Congress
Chief Minister (CM) of AP, in September 2009. Given that both the BJP and
TDP, with an end to soar up their electoral fortune, had extended their
support to the formation of Telangana, respectively, since 1997 and 2008,

Table 1. AP Assembly elections (1983–2009): seats won/contested and vote share in

percentage.
Year/Party 1983 1985 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009
BJP 3/80 8/10 5/12 3/280 12/24 2/27 2/271
2.8 1.6 1.8 3.9 3.7 2.7 2.8
Congress 60/294 50/292 181/287 26/294 91/293 185/234 156/294
33.6 37.5 47.1 33.9 40.6 38.5 38.6
TDP 198/289 202/250 74/242 216/251 180/269 47/267 92/225
46.3 46.2 36.6 44.1 43.9 37.5 28.1
Left 9/76 22/27 13/34 34/37 2/93 15/26 5/32
4.8 5.0 5.1 6.4 3.3 3.4 2.6
TRS – – – – – 26/– 18/–
6.8 16.22
Other parties 24/1077 12/1393 20/1133 15/2357 9/1425 19/— 39/—
12.5 9.7 9.4 11.7 8.5 11.1 11.7
Source: Computed from various data of Election Commission of India (ECI) available online at www.eci.-
gov.in and data from Suri (2013, 167).
450 K. K. S. HAUSING

the ‘behaviour’ and strategic interest of PWPs and regionalist parties had
become more amenable to the creation of Telangana (Bhattacharyya,
Hausing, and Mukherjee 2017; Meguid 2008; Rabushka and Shepsle 1972;
Swenden 2016, 2018; Zuber 2011). Once this happened, the Congress-led
UPA government made effective use of the flexible institutional provisions
laid down in Article 3 of India’s Constitution to sanction territorial change
and accommodate the demand for Telangana.
In the section that follows I examine the ideas and process which underpin
the politics of State formation in multinational federations in general and in
India in particular. Subsequently, I will examine the historical context in
which Telangana was formed by highlighting how an ineffective institutional
power-sharing arrangement prepared the ground for popular mobilization in
the Telangana region. The final section examines the POS and multi-level
interactive process which made the territorial accommodation of Telangana
possible and concludes.

State formation and the politics of recognition

The question of recognizing the rights of territorially concentrated groups to
define or redefine their identities and to have a State of their own has been
central to the politics of State formation in multinational federations in
general and in India in particular. At the heart of the politics of recognition
is the idea that identities are defined and redefined in a ‘dialogical’ relation-
ship with the ‘significant others’.5 Emphasizing the importance of recognition
in a different context, Taylor (1994, 25) contended that ‘nonrecognition or
misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning
someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being’. Indeed, the
fallout of nonrecognition or misrecognition in a multinational setting where
territorially concentrated groups do not have the requisite numbers, power
or resources to affect change in the ways norms, rules and procedures of inter-
subjective recognition are deliberated, formulated and implemented can be
oppressive.
The politics of recognition that underpins the politics of State formation in
multinational federations can as well be problematic. Singh (2001), for
example, has shown how mobilizations for recognition and separate State-
hood by peripheral communities in Punjab, Kashmir and the Northeast
were not only subsumed within New Delhi’s ‘hegemonic control’ to leverage
‘ethnic democracy’ but are also perpetually suspected to be destabilizing.
While Singh’s idea of India as an ‘ethnic democracy’ is considered problematic
given that the assumed ‘Hindu’ ethnic core is not homogenous (Hausing 2014;
O’Leary 2001), his insights on New Delhi’s treatment with its peripheral com-
munities resonate in other multinational federations such as Pakistan. In that
country, proponents of a Seraiki-speaking province have complained that the
 REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES 451

constitutional requirement that internal boundary changes require the expli-

cit consent of the affected provincial assembly entrenched Punjabi domina-
tion.6 Saraiki’s claims for the recognition of their historical language and
identity, and the creation of a State to give expression to the same is con-
tested and dismissed by dominant Punjabis as a ‘“lehja (accent), ung (part)”
or “variant of Punjabi”’ (Langah 2011, 5). This notwithstanding, there has
been a persistent movement to create ‘Seraikistan’ out of south Punjab
since the 1970s to address the cultural and economic deprivation of the
Seraiki-speaking people (Adeney 2012; Bhattacharyya 2010, 34).
Indeed, previous studies have shown that Indian state’s responses in particu-
lar and that of multinational states in general to territorial mobilizations are
broadly determined by two overlapping considerations: (i) the relationship
between federal design to accord territorial accommodation and concerns
about the territorial integrity of states (Adeney 2007; Bunce 2004, Cornell
2002; Gagnon 2010; McGarry and O’Leary 2007; Roeder 2009; Tillin 2015) and
(ii) the strategic interest and role of actors in determining territorial change,
especially since such change may have significant redistributional – economic,
political, and social – effects (Meguid 2005, 2008; Petersohn, Behnke, and Rhode
2015; Swenden 2016, 2018; Swenden and Toubeau 2013; Toubeau 2018). Given
these considerations, it is not surprising that India’s internal borders continue to
be ‘sticky’ and difficult to change despite incorporating very flexible provisions
under Article 3 of its Constitution (Tillin 2015).
Like most multinational federations, more than half of the existing 29
Indian States were created to recognize and accommodate their distinctive
ethnolinguistic and tribal identities.7 Not surprisingly, the politics of State for-
mation in India was driven by the concern that creating ethnolinguistic States
could unleash paradoxical ‘secession-inducing and secession-preventing’ out-
comes – to borrow Erk and Anderson (2009).8 Since Herbert H. Risely, then
Home Secretary of the colonial government in India proposed in 1903 to par-
tition Bengal based on the assumption that there was a strong correlation
between linguistic provinces and administrative efficiency, the imperative
to reorganize India’s States along ethnolinguistic lines to promote legitimacy,
efficiency, and stability was recognized.9 Although the Indian National Con-
gress (hereafter as the Congress) which spearheaded India’s freedom move-
ment formally accepted this at its Nagpur session in 1920 and continued to
lend its support to the idea until the late 1930s, it subsequently reneged on
this following the rise of Muslim communalism and violence accompanying
the partition of the subcontinent. The changed position resonated in the
reports of the Linguistic Provinces Commission (headed by S.K. Dar) and the
JVP Committee, constituted by the Congress, in 1948 when they underlined
that ‘primary consideration must be given to the security, unity and economic
prosperity of India’ before any reorganization could take place (GoI 1955, 16;
cf. GoI 1948).
452 K. K. S. HAUSING

The ideational commitment of Jawaharlal Nehru and other founding

fathers to development and nation-building in the decade following indepen-
dence was so paramount that they began to suspect language as a sign of
parochialism and as a centrifugal force which would impede national unity,
progress, and development (Bhattacharyya 2007; King 1997). However,
when the longstanding non-violent movement to form Andhra State turned
violent following the death of Potti Srirammulu, the popular Andhra Congress
leader, on 15 December 1952, Nehru reluctantly announced the formation of
Andhra, the first linguistic State in post-independent India. He subsequently
constituted a three-member SRC headed by Justice (retired) Fazal Ali.
Signalling a departure from the earlier official stand, the SRC made a case
for recognizing ethnolinguistic and cultural distinctiveness as a basis of States
reorganization as it considered that doing so would not undermine but
strengthen the unity, integrity, and security of India (GoI 1955; Mawdsley
2002; Sarangi and Pai 2011; Tillin 2013). Starting with Andhra in 1953, followed
by the formation of Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960, and Punjab and Haryana
in 1966, language became the cardinal norm or principle underpinning State
reorganization. The fact that the demand for a Punjabi-speaking State was
acceded to only after the Akali Dal under the leadership of Fateh Singh
delinked its Punjabi suba (State) demand from religious and secessionist over-
tones further consolidated three other principles and norms of State
formation in India, namely demand for a separate State must be popular,
non-violent, and non-secessionist. These, along with language, constituted
what Brass (1974, 17–18) calls the ‘four golden rules’ of State formation in
India in the first phase.
Contrary to the fears and anxieties raised by Nehru and scholars like Harri-
son (1960) that the formation of linguistic States would destabilize India, they
have acted as stabilizing agents by catering to the emotional need of regional
elites to have State(s) of their own, and by localizing and quarantining the out-
break of ethnic conflicts within State boundaries (Manor 1996).
After its initial reluctance, the Indian state in the second phase of State for-
mation decided to recognize and institutionally accommodate tribal nations
in the Northeast by way of forming the State of Nagaland and Mizoram
from Assam, respectively, in 1962 and 1986. Although the second phase
falls within the same temporal scope of the first phase, the geostrategic
location of these tribes (compounded by Chinese and Pakistani support)
ensured that India had to deviate from its initial norms and principles of
State formation, and create these tribal States without taking into account
their financial viability (Sachdeva 2000). Tribal ethnicity was also the basis
of the formation of other northeastern States such as Meghalaya in 1971
and Arunachal Pradesh in 1987. While the formation of tribal States and the
extension of a preferential financial regime largely succeeded in containing
ethnic conflicts, the perpetual financial dependency of these small States
 REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES 453

on the Centre and the continuing reliance of the Indian state on its coercive
apparatus to maintain peace is considered to have spawned a ‘cosmetic
federal regional order’ (Baruah 2003; Hausing 2014, 2015; Lacina 2009;
Stepan, Linz, and Yadav 2011; Swenden 2016).
The third phase of State formation in India happened in the winter of 2000
when Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand were formed out of the
‘Hindi heartland’. Long considered to be both ‘inviolable’ and the bulwark
of maintaining the integrity and unity of India, the formation of these
States brought to the fore ideational concerns for good governance and
development as the new basis of State formation (Kudaisya 2006; Mawdsley
2002; Tillin 2013). These concerns could have political purchase owing to
the complex alignment of the strategic interests and agendas of multiple
actors – PWPs and social movements – as a result of the changed political
economy and the rise of coalition politics (Tillin 2013). For one, the rise of
new social movements centred on the protection of forests and natural
resources like the Chipko Movement in the 1970s, and Narmada Bachao
Andolan in the 1980s, among others, was seen to have foregrounded the
popularity and legitimacy of tribal and hill State movements like Jharkhand
and Uttarakhand (Mawdsley 2002). Furthermore, the mobilization of the
lower castes in the ‘Hindi heartland’ States in the 1990s and the rise of
State-based parties largely supported by these castes challenged the hege-
mony of PWPs like the Congress as a ‘catch all’ party and opened up a new
POS (Tillin 2013; Yadav and Palshikar 2003). As political parties competed to
electorally harvest this POS, they became increasingly amenable to compro-
mise on the idea of small States.10
Seen against the three major phases of State formation, the formation of
Telangana in June 2014 marked a continuity and change in the politics of
State formation in India. Like the earlier phases, the formation of Telangana
underscores the importance of the territorial and ethnolinguistic identity of
a group and factors such as development and governance in the politics of
State formation. However, the formation of Telangana shows the distinctive
possibility to recognize and accommodate a territorially defined regional
and ethnolinguistic identity within an overarching ethnolinguistic State
when extant institutional arrangements of power-sharing remained weak
and the dominant groups are seen to betray the trust of their non-dominant
co-ethnolinguistic groups.
When such a situation arises, invocation of a common ethnolinguistic iden-
tity to provide the necessary glue to hold people together is found to be
awfully insufficient.11 In fact, the politics of recognition and accommodation
of territorially concentrated groups like the Telangana people took place
under two very different settings presented by the transformation of India’s
federal polity, affecting the POS in which State reorganization became feas-
ible. The first setting (in place until the 1980s) consisted of a two-level
454 K. K. S. HAUSING

interaction system between the Centre and States wherein the hegemony of
the Congress as a ‘catch all’ party both at the Centre and the AP State severely
constrained the negotiating power12 and prominence of a region (Telangana)
and regionalist party like the Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS).13 Secondly, a
multi-level interactive process in which India’s changed political economy
(from planned to market-led) and party system (from one party dominant
to pluralized) increased the negotiating power and prominence of regions,
regionalist parties such as TRS and different regional social movements. In
this changed context, several party entrepreneurs and social movements
leveraged their strategic interest in support of Telangana. In the following sec-
tions, I shall examine how these complex dynamics have played out in
practice.

Historical context of the formation of Telangana

Like most other modern identities, Telangana identity – primarily as a regional
or territorial identity which is marked out from their Telugu-speaking counter-
parts in coastal Andhra-Rayalseema regions – is framed as a struggle for and
attempt to redistribute what Tully (2000, 470) in a different context calls ‘sym-
bolic capital’ and ‘economic and political power’. It drew its sustenance from a
distinctive ‘societal culture’ – to borrow Kymlicka (2001, 25). Telangana’s
‘societal culture’ was territorially and historically rooted in a common regional
and linguistic experience under various kingdoms which began with the Sata-
vahanas (230 BC–220 AD) and reached its apogee during the Kakatiya Dynasty
(1083–1323 AD). The Kakatiyas, who used Warrangal in present-day Telangana
as their capital, patronized and consolidated Telangana’s societal culture
which encompassed present-day Telugu-speaking regions, namely coastal
Andhra and Rayalseema (Mitchell 2009). Not surprisingly, protagonists of a
separate Telangana appropriated these as powerful ethno-historical resources
to create unity and solidarity across the Telangana region.
A significant break in the ‘societal culture’ and political economy of Telan-
gana vis-à-vis their ethnolinguistic counterparts in coastal Andhra and Rayal-
seema happened when Muslim rulers under the guise of the Asaf Jahi Dynasty
(1724–1948 AD) began to rule Hyderabad. These rulers, who assumed the title
of ‘Nizam’, dominated and transformed the cultural and linguistic landscape
of the region by introducing Persian food, dress, culture, and Urdu language.
In cultural terms, the Telangana’s Telugus imbibed Islamic cultures like
‘salaam’ (gesture of greeting by putting one’s hand on the forehead). In
sharp contrast to the culture of Telugus in coastal Andhra and Rayalseema
which is considered to be ‘aggressive and coarse’, Telangana’s quintessential
‘feudal culture had its finer elements like social courtesies and human relation-
ships’ (Weiner 1978, 240–241). This marked out Telangana culturally, economi-
cally, and linguistically from the coastal Andhra and Rayalseema regions both
 REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES 455

of which came under the spell of western modernization and English edu-
cation since they were ceded by the Nizam of Hyderabad to the British,
respectively, in 1766 and 1800.
Economic backwardness apart, the people of the Telangana region were a
subject of jest by their counterparts from coastal Andhra because of their dis-
tinctive dialect of Telugu, which had a tinge of Urdu influence (Srikanth 2013;
Srinivasulu 2011).14 The relegation of the Telangana version of Telugu to
comical characters in ‘Tollywood films’ (i.e. films in the Telugu language)
reinforced the inferior status of Telugu dialect spoken in Telangana region
which affronted their pride and self-respect.15 Not surprisingly, the Telangana
Graduate Association of Osmania University which was very active in the 1969
movement for a separate Telangana State resolved that: ‘what the people
want is a state of their own which will establish their identity with a firm
emotional and psychological base’ (cited in Weiner 1978, 236; emphasis mine).
The attempt to construct a distinctive territorial identity and cultural
symbols for the people of Telangana, however, was a formidable challenge
because despite the difference in dialect they shared a language (Telugu), reli-
gion (Hindu), and culture with the Telugus in the coastal Andhra and Rayal-
seema regions. The distinctive memory and experience of being historically
and politically separate for over two centuries, gave the Telangana people a
deep, historically rooted and powerful ‘ethno-symbolism’16 to contest the
domination and ‘discursive control’ they suffered at the hands of their politi-
cally dominant and economically prosperous kin ethnolinguistic groups.
In 1954, the leaders of trade unions and small parties along with prominent
Congress leaders including K.V. Ranga Reddy and M. Channa Reddy raised
their demand for a separate State before the SRC when the latter visited
Hyderabad between June and July 1954. Although the SRC recognized this
and was favourable to this demand, the movement for a separate Telangana
had to contend with a powerful Vishalandhra (greater Andhra) movement
started by Andhra communists since the late 1940s. It was precisely
because of this that despite having the support of 73 out of the 105 Congress
delegates from the Telangana region in the erstwhile Hyderabad State Con-
gress, formidable opposition by 37 elected members of the Communist
Party who supported Vishalandhra ensured that the demand for Telangana
Statehood could not find sufficient support in the Hyderabad Assembly
when it was put to a vote in the winter of 1955 (Khan 1969, 27–29 cited in
Suri 2016, 8; Srinivasulu 2002, 7).
Left with little option but to merge with the coastal Andhra and Rayal-
seema regions along the lines suggested by the SRC, Telangana’s leaders
negotiated the terms and conditions of their merger and signed a ‘Gentle-
men’s Agreement’ on 20 February 1956. This Agreement envisioned a
power-sharing arrangement whereby two out of five cabinet portfolios of
Home, Finance, Revenue, Planning and Development, and Commerce and
456 K. K. S. HAUSING

Industry were earmarked for the Telangana region (Rao 1972, 81–84). It man-
dated that any surplus in Telangana’s income would be used for its develop-
mental expenditure and attempted to secure favourable and protective
service conditions by mandating 15 years of domiciliary requirements for
employment in subordinate civil services in Telangana. Moreover, the Agree-
ment also established a 20 member Regional Committee with limited power
and functions pertaining to planning and development, industrial develop-
ment, local services, and irrigation.17
In addition, the ‘surplus’ for Telangana was contested owing to divergent
calculations that came to light when two Commissions appointed in 1969,
arrived at differential ‘surplus’ amount of 223.1 million and 283.4 million,
respectively. Evidently, the surplus was diverted to fund development in the
coastal Andhra and Rayalseema regions without being exclusively spent on
Telangana’s development as mandated by the Agreement (GoI 2010, 407;
Pingle 2014, 131–132; Rao 2010, 96). By the late 1960s, it became apparent
that the power-sharing arrangement which underpinned the merger of Telan-
gana region with coastal Andhra and Rayalseema was more honoured in the
breach than the observance.
In 1969, the tensions increased further by rulings of the Andhra High Court
(HC) and Supreme Court which rendered the imposition of residential require-
ments of 15 years for subordinate civil services appointments unconstitu-
tional.18 The controversy surrounding these decisions was used by
protagonists of the Telangana movement as an affirmation of their longstand-
ing fear of the erosion of safeguards and preferential access to jobs and econ-
omic opportunities that locals in Telangana enjoyed under the Gentlemen’s
Agreement.
This movement rapidly spread to other parts of Telangana region and
received a major boost when a group of journalists, lawyers, and teachers
came together to form the TPS in 1969. Although the movement became
immensely popular in urban areas and convincingly won 10 out of the 14
Lok Sabha (LS) seats in the Telangana region in the 1971 general elections,
it was subsequently used as a convenient tool by Congress factional leaders
based in the Telangana region such as M. Channa Reddy to unseat Brahma-
nanda Reddy, the then CM of AP who also happened to hail from coastal
Andhra.19 Channa Reddy effectively exploited the vigorous Telangana senti-
ments to extend his personal ambition and subsequently became AP’s CM
in the late 1970s (Gray 1971).
While the erosion and non-observance of the provisions of the Gentle-
men’s Agreement was considered to be the major cause of the Telangana
movement in the late 1960s and to have irredeemably split Telugu’s ethnolin-
guistic identity, other studies have shown the role which other factors such as
‘uneven modernization’ (Forrester 1970; Suri 2016), ‘breakdown of clientalism’
(Elliott 1974; Reddy 1989), and economic and cultural deprivation (Keiko 2010;
 REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES 457

Pai 2013; Pingle 2014; Ram 2007; Rao 2010; Seshadri 1970) have played in sus-
taining the movement throughout.
As already discussed, Telangana inherited a feudal landownership system
as a political legacy of the Nizam’s rule which entrenched the domination
of a landed gentry drawn from Muslim jagirdars and Deshmukh doras
(revenue collectors turned landlords) drawn principally from the Reddy
caste (Forrester 1970; Pingle 2014; Srinivasulu 2002; Thirumali 2003). In con-
trast, the Kammas and Reddys – two dominant Telugu-speaking castes – of
coastal Andhra-Rayalseema regions made effective use of the British
modern land tenure system, irrigation facilities, and market networks to trans-
form themselves into economically dominant castes, a process which conso-
lidated after the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. These two castes
subsequently used their economic power to control political power after AP
was created. Accounting for about 13% of undivided AP’s population and con-
trolling an aggregate of about 39.5% of the seats in the AP Assembly during
1955–2004,20 their monopoly of economic and political power was largely
perceived to perpetuate a very exclusionary and discriminatory regime.
The popular perception that the Kammas and Reddys, who dominated the
State government, were perpetuating an exclusionary and discriminatory
regime was also largely made possible even as large segments of the edu-
cated middle class which emerged across castes and regions in the erstwhile
AP could no longer be accommodated under the hegemonic dominance of
the Congress as a ‘catch all’ party. The mismatch between the burgeoning
educated class and job/economic opportunities accentuated this problem.
For example, at the peak of the first wave21 of support for the Telangana
movement since the Gentleman’s Agreement, the number of employed
persons seeking clerical jobs increased from 10 400 in 1968 to 21 700 in
1970 (Weiner 1978, 230).
The fact that the first wave of support for the Telangana movement hap-
pened during a period of one party dominant rule at the Centre and the
State severely constrained the ability of a regionalist party like TPS to navigate
its demand for a separate Telangana. This movement exposed the regional
disagreements and caste divides with the State. They were used effectively
by Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India to weaken the Congress Syndi-
cate of which N. Sanjiva Reddy,22 was one of the formidable leaders and to
coopt the Telangana leaders. Exposing these divisions helped Mrs Gandhi in
containing the Telangana movement and enabled her to appoint four
pliable CMs of AP from the Telangana region, namely P.V Narasimha Rao,
J. Vengala Rao, M. Chenna Reddy, and T. Anjaiah between 1971 and 1980.
However, each of them conspicuously lacked popular support. Pitting these
leaders against popular Reddy leaders from the coastal Andhra and Rayal-
seema regions generated factional outbidding which overtime led to the
decline of the Congress as a ‘catch all party’. This decline was subsequently
458 K. K. S. HAUSING

exploited by the Kamma leader NT Rama Rao (NTR) who formed the TDP on 29
March 1982 and defeated Congress in the 1983 AP Assembly elections.
Indeed, the ‘catch all’ appeal and hegemony of the Congress had been elabo-
rately built up by popular Rayalseema-based Reddy caste leaders like Sanjiva
Reddy and Brahmananda Reddy between 1956 and 1973. They did so through
a two-pronged strategy of introducing land reforms and coopting other castes
by introducing the three-tier Panchayati raj system in 1957 (Srinivasulu 2002).
Although these strategies principally benefitted the Kamma and Reddy castes
from coastal Andhra and Rayalseema, they also worked to the benefit of the
Telangana based Reddy, Velama and the Other Backward Castes (BC).
Although this strategy, which not only facilitated transfer of land ownership
rights to the hitherto landless peasants castes of Telangana region drawn
largely from the Reddy, Velama and Other BC, but also leveraged their
access to political power and development resources (agricultural extension
services, co-operatives, and rural banks), helped sustain the Congress hege-
mony, it also paradoxically opened up regional and intra and inter-caste faul-
tlines as the newly empowered castes in Telangana region could no longer be
satisfactorily coopted into the Congress leadership (Srinivasulu 2002).
The Telangana movement, which stemmed from this and from the discon-
tentment over the erosion of the Gentleman’s Agreement, was, however, con-
fronted with an adversarial State and national leadership, respectively, under
Brahmananda Reddy and PM Indira Gandhi who staunchly opposed the div-
ision of AP. The movement dissipated in 1973 when most of the TPS leaders
were either arrested or strategically coopted into the Congress as elaborated
earlier. These incidents and the SC’s decision in 1972 to validate mulki rules,
nullified earlier by Andhra HC in 1970, and implemented by the PM’s Six-
Point Formula, 1973,23 partially catered to the demands of Telangana
people and paradoxically dissolved the first wave of the Telangana
movement.

The recognition and accommodation of the Telangana demand:

multi-level interactive process and the new POS
The establishment of a regionalist party, TDP, on 29 March 1982 under the lea-
dership of NTR, a popular cinestar, its dominance of Andhra politics, and the
conspicuous absence of an organized political party to espouse the cause of
Telangana ensured that the Telangana movement got relegated to the back-
ground for over two decades. The consolidation of the TDP also coincided
with changes in India’s political economy and the party system. Coalitions
at the centre become the order of the day and this context opened up new
POS and facilitated the alignment of interests and agendas of local leaders,
regionalist parties like the TRS and social movements such as the various
TJACs and Telangana Intellectual Forum (TIF). Under this rubric multiple
 REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES 459

actors negotiated and bargained their strategic interest and agenda within
the transformed multi-level interactive process of India’s federal polity
(Arora et al. 2013; Yadav and Palshikar 2008; Ziegfeld 2012).
To be sure, the TDP under NTR’s popular leadership catapulted the Kamma
caste to political dominance and completely dominated AP politics in the
1980s by invoking and reclaiming Telugu pride, self-respect, and dignity.
This was deemed to have been badly bruised by the prolonged phase of ‘cen-
tralization and powerlessness’ which Andhra leaders experienced under Indira
Gandhi’s autocratic rule (Suri 2013). Against this backdrop, the TDP decisively
won two-thirds of the seats in the 1983 AP Assembly elections, only 9 months
since its formation. It did so by galvanizing the intermediate and BC. The TDP
lead increased in subsequent Assembly elections in 1985 (see Table 1). After it
was defeated by the Congress in the 1989 Assembly elections, the TDP forged
a strategic alliance with the Kapus, a sizeable BC, by including the latter in the
State’s BC list just before the 1994 elections. This was seen to be a major
reason for its return to power when it won 216 seats (against only 26 seats
for Congress) in the 1994 elections (Vaugier-Chatterjee 2009, 300). In terms
of the number of seats won, the TDP was able to maintain its unassailable
lead over the Congress until the 1999 Assembly elections, which was an
impressive feat given that the party was confronted with a coup by Chandra-
babu Naidu, NTR’s very own son-in-law, in 1996.
The emergence of Naidu as the undisputed leader of TDP coincided with
the changed political economy and entrenchment of coalition politics at
the national level. Under conditions of unstable and incongruous coalitions
at the national level, regionalist parties like the TDP under the leadership of
Naidu began to wield influential political and economic power both at the
national and State levels, thanks to their proximity to the BJP-led NDA govern-
ment. When this was harnessed to develop infrastructural projects like air-
ports, highways, flyovers, malls, and residential complexes, the major
beneficiaries of these projects in AP were the Andhra capitalists drawn predo-
minantly from the Kamma and Reddy castes. This reinforced the overwhelm-
ing sense among the intermediate and BC in Telangana that their region was
being relegated to an internal colony (Samaddar 2011; Srinivasulu 2011).24
It is against this backdrop that the TDP’s version of regional pride, dignity,
and self-respect was seen to perpetuate an exclusionary and discriminatory
regime. The regionalism that TDP represented was vigorously contested as
somehow tantamount to the ‘Andhraization’ and concomitant ‘backwardiza-
tion’ of the Telangana region (Jadhav 2010; Keiko 2010). The Congress
returned to power in 2004 under the leadership of YS Rajsekhara Reddy
(YSR) despite winning barely over 1% vote more than TDP, a lead which the
Congress managed to increase to over 10% in the 2009 Assembly elections.25
The consolidation of the Congress under YSR indirectly helped the Telangana
movement as the TDP which had long stood for a united AP was compelled by
460 K. K. S. HAUSING

electoral compulsion to support the formation of Telangana by 2008. TDP’s

support was driven by its attempt to consolidate its electoral presence in
the Telangana region which became weak after the Kapus, a dominant
caste, deserted the party as a result of its neglect of Kapu leaders and the cen-
tralization of power during the latter half of NTR’s rule (Vaugier-Chatterjee
2009, 297).
The sudden death of YSR in a helicopter crash on 2 September 2009
created a political vacuum and a leadership crisis within the Congress. The
absence of a formidable successor who could electorally compete with Chan-
drababu Naidu, TDP’s influential leader, compelled the Congress to look out
for alternative vote banks where the TDP was not so popular. The Telangana
region with 119 Assembly seats thus became increasingly attractive which
prompted the Congress to support the formation of Telangana more vigor-
ously since December 2009.
The volatile electoral politics in AP wherein a swing of one to three per cent
in the vote could turn around the electoral fortunes of parties was one factor
incentivising parties like the Congress and TDP to change their ‘behaviour’
and strategic interest to be more favourable to the formation of Telangana.26
Another very critical factor which catapulted the Telangana movement onto
the State and national agenda of various political parties was the formation
of the TIF and various Joint Action Committees of lawyers, teachers, shop-
keepers, women, students, and so on in the mid-1990s. They organized festi-
vals (Bathukama, for example), protests, public talks, rallies, seminars, and
workshop to further the cause of Telangana. They consolidated the popular
base of the Telangana movement by distributing tracts, pamphlets, docu-
ments, and research work on Telangana history and by making effective
use of popular media and information technology to highlight what they
described as ‘the miserable plight’ of the Telangana people.
Another critical factor which incentivized political parties to change their
stand on Telangana was the formation of TRS in 2001. Formed by Kalvakuntla
Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), who himself was a factional leader, TRS was formed
at a critical juncture when civil society had already succeeded in galvanizing a
groundswell of support for a separate Telangana in both the rural and urban
areas. Unlike TPS which had to operate under the constraint of the one party
dominant system, TRS electorally harvested the new POS opened up by
coalition politics. The POS ensured a windfall of five LS seats to TRS in the
2004 elections despite winning just 0.6% of the electoral votes of the State.
However, this declined to two seats in the 2009 elections despite amassing
6.2% of the State vote, almost a 10-fold increase from 2004. In the same set
of elections, the ability of the Congress to secure 8% and 14% electoral
votes more than what the TDP won, respectively, in the 2004 and 2009
general elections ensured the Congress a lead of 24 and 27 LS seats over
the TDP (see Table 2). In this more fragmented party system, relatively small
 REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES 461

Table 2. AP LS elections (1983–2009): seats won/contested and vote share in percentage.

Year/Party 1984 1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009
BJP 1/2 0/2 1/41 0/39 4/38 7/8 0/9 0/41
2.2 2.0 9.6 5.7 18.3 9.9 8.4 3.8
Congress 6/42 39/42 25/42 22/42 22/42 5/42 29/34 33/42
41.8 51.0 45.6 39.7 38.5 42.8 41.5 39.0
TDP 30/34 2/33 13/35 16/36 12/35 29/34 5/33 6/31
44.8 34.5 32.3 32.6 32.0 39.9 33.1 24.9
Left 2/5 0/4 2/4 3/6 2/6 0/13 2/2 0/4
3.7 4.4 4.3 5.3 5.5 2.7 2.4 2.9
TRS – – – – – – 5/22 2/9
0.6 6.2
Other parties 3/216 1/183 1/487 1/1340 2/269 1/188 1/179 1/463
7.7 8.1 8.2 16.7 5.7 4.7 13.9 23.2
Source: Computed from various data of ECI and from Suri (2013, 172)

vote swings could generate large seat swings; the effect of which is exacer-
bated by India’s use of the first-past-the-post system. For instance, a swing
of about 3% electoral support in AP Assembly elections in 1999 and 2004
could fetch more than a hundred seats for either Congress or TDP (see
Table 1). This, and the political vacuum created by the death of Rajsekhara
Reddy (YSR) in 2009, the influential Congress leader and two-time CM of AP
greatly enhanced the TRS’s ‘governing’ and ‘blackmail’ potential (Sartori
1976, 123–124).
To realize the formation of Telangana, KCR entered into an electoral alli-
ance with the Congress-led UPA coalition at the Centre in 2004. Although
the UPA listed the formation of Telangana in its election manifesto in 2004,
it did not vigorously pursue the matter except prevailing upon the President
of India to formally announce that the formation of Telangana would be con-
sidered in appropriate time. KCR deserted the UPA as a result and entered into
an electoral alliance with the TDP and the Left in 2008. When these parties
were not supportive of the Telangana claim, he subsequently switched alli-
ance to the BJP-led NDA after the 2009 AP Assembly elections. Although
the electoral gamble did not pay off (the NDA did not return to power in
2009), the TRS, along with various social movements, succeeded in catapult-
ing Telangana to the limelight of federal electoral calculations which
exerted tremendous pressure on political parties to expedite the formation
of Telangana.

Conclusion
In sum, the formation of Telangana marks the culmination of a complex
process which brought to the fore the recognition and accommodation of a
sustained demand of Statehood by a territorially defined ethnolinguistic
group within an overarching ethnolinguistic State. This ethnolinguistic
group had longstanding grievances against their dominant co-ethnolinguistic
462 K. K. S. HAUSING

‘others’ located in the more economically prosperous regions of the State.

Given that there are a considerable number of Indian States that encompass
regions with very distinctive histories and identities, the question of recog-
nition and accommodation of regions and peoples within States who are at
the receiving end of majoritarian domination and control will continue to
be pertinent. The ongoing struggles for Bodoland in Assam and Gorkhaland
in North Bengal against dominant majoritarian groups, among others, under-
scores that the formation of States in India is far from simple but requires a
complex convergence of the strategic interest and role of PWPs, regionalist
and/or State-based parties and various social movements. The Telangana
case bears out the necessary, yet insufficient role of extant institutions – like
the flexible provisions envisaged under Article 3 and power-sharing arrange-
ments – in triggering territorial change and accommodation unless this is com-
plemented by the convergence of strategic interest among multiple actors at
different levels in the polity. Although it is not yet clear whether a one-domi-
nant party system, which emerged at the Centre following the unexpected
majority won by BJP in 2014 elections, will survive the 2019 general elections,
it is likely that regionalist and State-based parties will continue to play impor-
tant roles in India’s evolving multi-level federal interactions and processes
(Kailash 2014; Ziegfeld 2012). The jury is out if Bodoland, Gorkhaland, and
several other cases-in-waiting in India or elsewhere can harvest similar oppor-
tune POS like the one that obtained for Telangana.

Notes
1. Throughout this article I shall use ‘s’ in the upper case when referring to subunit
(s) of the federation and ‘s’ in the lower case to refer to sovereign state(s) in inter-
national system.
2. See Tillin (2013). Also see Chadda (2002); Majeed (2003); Mawdsley (2002);
Rudolph and Rudolph (2010); Singh (2007).
3. Under Article 3 of India’s Constitution, the Parliament can: (i) form a new State by
separation of territory from any State or by uniting two or more States or parts of
States or by uniting any territory to a part of any State; (ii) increase the area of
any State; (iii) diminish the area of any State; (iv) alter the boundaries of any
State; and (v) alter the name of any State. A bill in this regard requires the Parlia-
ment to get only the prior recommendation of the President of India and to
consult, without the need to obtain concurrence, of the State(s) being affected.
4. Headed by Fazl Ali, SRC was appointed by the Government of India to report on
ways of redrawing State boundaries. Both Nehru and SRC were concerned that
merging a backward Telangana with a more prosperous coastal Andhra would
unleash problems of incompatibilities.
5. The idea of ‘significant others’ is borrowed by Taylor (1994, 32) from the psychol-
ogist, George Herbert Mead.
6. Many thanks to Katharine Adeney for drawing my attention to this.
7. In a recent article, Adeney (2017, 131) considers that 16 of the 29 Indian States
were created along ethnofederal lines.
 REGIONAL AND FEDERAL STUDIES 463

8. Also see Cunningham (2011), Cunningham and Weidmann (2010), Keating

(2001), McGarry and O’Leary (2009), and Nordlinger (1972).
9. This was, however, a pretext to drive a religious wedge between Hindus and
Muslims.
10. Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mayawati were known for their initial hesitation to
concede separate States in their earlier stints as Chief Ministers of Bihar and
Uttar Pradesh, respectively.
11. Interview with Kodanda Ram, Chairman, Telangana Joint Action Committee
(TJAC), Hyderabad, 29 December 2015.
12. The ‘negotiating power’ of parties is understood in terms of their electoral vote
and seat share. See Petersohn, Behnke, and Rhode (2015, 4).
13. The limited electoral representation of Telangana region in the State Legislative
Assembly (119 out of the 294 elected members) pale into insignificance as
numbers matters in the first-past-the-post system. Again under conditions of
single dominant party, regionalist party like TPS hardly counts with their insig-
nificant polity-wide seat share.
14. For a clarity on ethnic identity, see Chandra (2006).
15. Interview with S.V. Srinivas, a film critic, 18 November 2014, University of Hyder-
abad, Hyderabad.
16. The term ‘ethno-symbolism’ is from Smith (2009, 110–114).
17. The size of RC was subsequently expanded from 20 to 100 (Rao 1972, 99).
18. This practice was put in place by the ‘mulki rule’. It was originally issued as a
firman (royal decree) in 1919 by the Nizam of Hyderabad to secure preferential
access to subordinate civil service jobs to mulki (local residents) who fulfilled the
residential requirement of staying in Telangana region for at least 15 years.
19. Interview with Ashok Tankashala, journalist, Hyderabad, 29 January 2016.
20. Computed from table 9.2 in Vaugier-Chatterjee (2009, 289).
21. The first wave of Telangana movement started in 1968–1969 and the second
wave started in 2001 with the formation of TRS and when liberalization of
India’s economy happened to coincide with the demise of one party system
both at the Centre and the States.
22. Chief Minister of AP from 1956 to 1960 and 1962–1964 who subsequently
became President of India from 1977 to 1982.
23. This Formula, among others, sought to accelerate development of the backward
areas and gave special consideration to the education and employment needs
of educated youths hailing from Telangana.
24. Interview with I. Thirumali, historian, Hyderabad, 27 May 2015.
25. The Congress had formed the Telangana Congress Legislative Forum in 2001 to
soar up its support base.
26. To understand why and how PWP change their ‘behaviour’ and ‘strategic’
choice/interest when confronted with a popular ‘niche party’ see Meguid, 2008.

Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges Wilfried Swenden, the co-ordinator of the Lever-
hulme International Network Project on ‘Continuity and Change in Indian Federalism’
for his kind invitation and support. He is also grateful to Lalithaambica, Officer on
Special Duty at the Andhra Pradesh Assembly Secretariat, and staffs of AP Assembly
library for their help and giving access to official documents. Earlier versions of this
article were presented at the University of Bristol, Edinburgh and Hyderabad. It has
464 K. K. S. HAUSING

benefitted from helpful comments of Harihar Bhattacharyya, Katharine Adeney, Louise

Tillin, and Wilfried Swenden, for which he was thankful. He is also grateful to his col-
leagues K.K. Kailash and K.C. Suri for their support throughout this project.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
The author gratefully acknowledges the Leverhulme Trust for funding this article [grant
number IN-2013-043] as a part of its International Network Grant on ‘Continuity and
Change in Indian Federalism.’

ORCID
Kham Khan Suan Hausing http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3673-6995

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