By: Vijayshree Kurumilla
The war on social media, going on, over the demerger of Telangana, has underlined one aspect and that is, the Samaikyandra side is throwing at us, something that they are asking us, to accept as the history, which they say, we are naive enough, to be, unaware of.
Their version of history is bordering around hilarious and at times, atrocious lies. Thanks to Mission Telangana and Namasthe Telangana, we are getting, to see, some very well researched articles with adequate proofs, to back them up. Now, you would expect anyone to accept the same, but they are not, instead, they continue to stick to their side of the story, sorry, history.
Sample, few of the things that have been unravelled –
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Fact – Potti Sreeramulu was sacrificed in a vain bid to get Madras.
Their history – He sacrificed his life for a separate state of Andhra.
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Fact – Tanguturi Prakasham or Andhra Kesari never asked the British Army soldiers, to shoot him in his heart, at the time of protests against Simon Commission; in fact it was a poor Muslim bystander who did that.
Their History – He asked the British soldiers to point the gun at his heart and shoot him.
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Fact – The decision of merger of Andhra with Telangana , was supposed to be taken after the elections, were held and the duly elected assembly, approved the merger. But the merger took place before the elections were held and hence the due process was not followed.
Their History – That we had begged them, to come and merge with us and the merger was approved, with different figures, coming out from, each person and all of them showing that, the majority of Telangana legislative members, were in favour, of the merger.
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These are just a few examples of fact and what is surely fiction, if it is not fact.
What clearly seems to have been done, is that once they had got the power, to write the history which, we were or are unfortunate, enough to have read, in our school and had believed it to be true until now, when truth is unfolding on a daily basis; They used that power to their selfish motives, to give, some kind of a legitimacy and respect, to the back door methods, through which they had come, to usurp Hyderabad.
They never had many valiant figures in their history, so they decided to invent some and cleverly used, here say and spiced them up, and lo and behold, they had their own heroes. They not just created heroes, out of nothing but also attributed what they never did, to them and elevated them, to an iconic status.
After getting to know the truth, I feel like, making a bonfire, of those history books which told us only, jazzed up version, of gossip and lies, and made us, feel as if, we are some kind of flies, not fit enough, to have a history of our own, excepting for the one, which, had been written, and kept readymade, by them, for ignorant us, to carry it, in our heads, for a major part of our lives.
I am so glad our education system concentrates, only on mugging, and reproducing stuff, in exams, without really, understanding anything. It did have an advantage in the end, for us. We only mugged up their history, without understanding anything and wrote our exams and forgot about it.
As far as I knew, the people I read about were alien figures, foisted, upon us and now that we know the truth, I must say that I pity them, that their plight was so pathetic, that they had to invent parts, of their history, out of nothing; they never had many heroes, so they had to create some, with heroic deeds, scripted, for them.
I feel proud, our history might have been erased, from our books but it is so full, of true life heroes, that it is so eventful, and lastly, that they were common people and never, laid a claim, for greatness. That we don’t have to read any books, we only need to touch upon the elders, in our family and they will come out, with many incidents, which can easily inspire, generations of Telangana, with their lives of struggle, against injustice.
That is our real history and only undiluted truth and not something which is heavily made up, like the pancake makeup on the aging heroes of the 1970’s Telugu movies or the touched up roads during COP 11, Bio-diversity meet, where one Arab guest had to break his leg, to know what lies beneath, the surface of the Hi-Tech city roads.
We will rewrite our history once Telangana is formed and then, their version of history can be consigned to where it always belonged-Oblivion.
Jai Telangana!