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About Lies and Liars – Part 1

By Konatham Dileep

Due to the publicity given by Seemandhra media, at least some people from AP know about the so called “book” released by Visha(la)ndhra Mahasabha guys on 22nd Jan in New Delhi.

For those who are curious as to why did VMS guys go all the way to Delhi to release this book, the ‘Introduction’ of the book has the answer. The authors feel bad that “in Delhi and elsewhere in the country many columnists, political commentators, and several prominent persons in the media and NGO sectors” were lending support to Telangana movement. And so, our VMS guys thought Delhi is the right place to counter the agitation.

Hmm, not a bad idea isn’t it?

But by releasing the ‘book’ in Delhi, the VMS guys have only shot themselves in the foot. Earlier, not many people understood why some leaders in Andhra Pradesh did not support Telangana. After reading this ‘book’, we are sure the support for Telangana statehood movement only increases. The pathetic attempt by VMS to bad mouth the Telangana movement, once again highlights the ethical, legal, constitutional, intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the business-industrial lobby that is opposing the genuine aspirations of Telangana people.

A point by point rebuttal to the VMS book would be released soon. But, let me give you a glimpse of the true colors of the two liars – Nalamotu Chakravarthy and Parakala Prabhakar, who are running the VMS show.

Parakala Prabhakar was boasting in his introductory chapter that none of the Telangana folks could counter the ‘My Telugu Roots’ book. The fact is, none of the Telangana folks had even bothered about this illogical book by an NRI, who wants us to believe that the very existence of Telugu Jaathi (tribe, race etc etc) is threatened by demerger of Telangana! Feeling bad about Telugu language, culture and jaathi in an English book, speaks volumes about the sincerity of the people behind this.

No one heard about Nalamotu Chaktravarthy until Jan 2010. That is when this gentleman came up with a book named My Telugu Roots. He claimed that he hails  from ‘Nizam Telangana’. The anti-Telangana lobby was ecstatic. They said ‘look, here is a guy from Telangana, who is telling why you guys should be in a united AP’.

We were not amused. We knew that no Telangana person would ever come up with that kind of an argument. And then, as we all suspected, it turned out that Nalamotu was the son of a Seemandhra settler.

People like Nalamotu, who are born and brought up on Telangana soil, and yet are still loyal to their Seemandhra roots, are a puzzle to us. Because Telangana has seen migrants from as far as Iran. But, all of them have considered themselves the sons of Telangana soil. They have understood the justification behind the statehood aspirations of Telangana people. And that is why you will see several non-Telugu speaking leaders too in Telangana agitation. This is because they understood the aspirations of the land to which they migrated to. But, people like Nalamotu only prove that some migrants from Seemandhra, are still not able to understand or appreciate the Telangana aspirations.

Ok. Enough of his personal biography. Let’s look at the quality of his research and arguments.

Along with releasing his book, Nalamotu Chakravathy also started a blog named ‘My Telugu Roots’, to market his book and his thoughts. And in one of the blog posts, he gave us a glimpse of his research capabilities and also his interpretation of ‘facts’.

In his blog, Nalamotu Chakravathy wrote one highly enlightening piece, in which he vented out his anger on our Tamil Tambi (the then Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram) for ‘unilaterally announcing Telangana’.

Read on…

“Instead of diffusing the crisis in A.P., what did our esteemed Home Minister do? He found an opportune moment when two senior most leaders Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee, known for their prudence and wisdom, were out of the country. On December 9th he pressured Sonia Gandhi, despite her reservations about a hasty decision being forced on her in the middle of the night, that unless she agrees to split the State, Andhra Pradesh will go up in flames. The intelligence report allegedly sent by the State authorities sympathetic to separatists came in handy to impress upon her.”

To a person not familiar with Telangana issue, the above lines look very believable. But not to us.

In a blogpost, I exposed this blatant lie and wrote:

I would like to draw your attention to the “fact” that both Prime Minister Sri Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranabh Mukherjee were very much in the country when the decision on Telangana was taken. Not only that, both of them participated in the discussions and deliberations that happened in the Prime Minister’s residence itself. While the Prime Minister returned from Moscow on 8th December 2009, the Finance Minister came back from Jharkhand on 9th December and participated in the Congress Core Group meeting.”

And now lets look at what happened on that eventful day according to The Hindu newspaper:

“After the meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters that “I have called the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K. Rosaiah for a meeting. We will decide after that.”

The meeting, which was held in Parliament House, was also attended by Congress President Sonia Gandhi and senior ministers A.K. Antony, Mr. Chidambaram, Law Minister Veerappa Moily and Congress leader Ahmed Patel.

From the second meeting of the Core Group, Mr. Antony, Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Moily drove straight to Ms. Gandhi’s residence where Mr. Rosaiah was scheduled to meet her.

Mr. Rosaiah told reporters that the decision on the issue whether amalgamation or bifurcation has to be taken by the Centre by factoring all issues.

“I am going to meet the Congress President and I will apprise her of the situation in Andhra Pradesh,” he said.

Meanwhile, 16 Congress MPs belonging to both the Houses of Parliament met the Prime Minister and demanded Constitution of a separate Telangana State.”

Here is what Times of India had to say about the late-night announcement on December 9th 2009

“Emerging after a late-night meeting at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s residence, Union home minister P Chidambaram made the announcement, adding that the Centre had requested Andhra Pradesh chief minister K Rosaiah to withdraw cases against leaders, students and those associated with the separate Telangana agitation. He also appealed to KCR to call off his fast.”

And when a reader pointed out about this glaring discrepancy, Mr Nalamotu’s response is this:

“I was told that Manmohan Singh was in Russia when December 9th decision was being orchestrated. I will gladly correct myself if that is not the case.”

What does Mr Nalamotu mean when he says “I was told…”. Doesn’t that tell us about how casual Mr Nalamotu is about important facts?

A simple Google search reveals that both Manmohan and Pranabh Mukherjee were very much in India and participated in the Telangana decision-making process. The guy, who claims that Telangana proponents are not telling the facts, can’t get his facts right about a current event.

We can easily imagine what kind of history Nalamotu tells us if the standard of his current affairs is this…

Caught Lying:

As soon as I highlighted this blatant lie, Nalamotu has committed the ultimate sin. He has quietly deleted those lines from his blog, that I had highlighted in my earlier post.

The paragraph, which I had highlighted, was modified to read:

“Instead of diffusing the crisis in A.P., what did our esteemed Home Minister do? On December 9th he pressured Sonia Gandhi, despite her reservations about a hasty decision being forced on her in the middle of the night, that unless she agrees to split the State, Andhra Pradesh will go up in flames. The intelligence report allegedly sent by the State authorities sympathetic to separatists came in handy to impress upon her.”

But, Nalamotu did not expect that we Telanganites are very meticulous when it comes to research and facts. I had already taken a screenshot of his earlier blogpost, which looked like this:

 

And when my blog again exposed how Nalamotu had clandestinely deleted those damning lines from his blog, Nalamotu had emailed me and informed that it was not him, but his blog moderator, who had removed those lines from his blogpost.

He reinstated those lines and put this notice atop his post.

And from the above lines, we come to know how Nalamotu gathers information and distills ‘facts’ out of them. Apparently he wrote this piece based ‘on several different conversation he had with leaders of Andhra Pradesh’.

Hmm! reminds me of that committee headed by retired Supreme Court Justice, who was asked to find out if Telangana was discriminated in judicial appointments.  And this is what that learned gentleman write in his report:

“The Committee informally discussed the matter with two former Chief Justices of the Hon‟ble High Court of Andhra Pradesh and it was learnt that there appears no be no basis for bias or prejudice and that all appointments have been made as per rules and procedures and in accordance with law.”

Not surprisingly, the report of that committee was hailed by the anti-Telangana forces.

So, how do you collect facts about an important issue? Simple! You just ask around!

And when someone corners, you can escape by saying ‘someone told me that’

Picture abhi bhi baaqi hai mere dosth.

Don’t go away. We will return soon with some more damning lies of the VMS duo.

(To be continued)

 

 

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