Osmania University

For the past five decades, OU has been the nerve centre for every agitation, strike, meeting, or debate for separate Telangana. The widespread notion that ‘movement is the business of Osmania’ is explained in the chapter by highlighting Osmania’s role throughout the various phases of the movement. The university has produced a number of activists who later became part of mainstream politics and other arenas of society. This chapter illustrates how a culture of resistance was created by intellectuals (students, alumni, and teachers) and how their activism made the campus the epicentre of a mass movement. Focusing primarily on out-of-the-classroom ethnographic material, this chapter discusses the influence of campus education and (un)learning, how its spaces and interpersonal relations make individuals more cognizant of their regional identity, and how this identity assertion translated into a mass movement.

Learning from the Past, Imagining the Future

The strength of Osmania student activism lies in their strong networks between students and alumni. This chapter explores the linkages between 1969 and 2009 generation of activists. It compares the agitational and mobilization strategies of both the agitational phases, and discusses the strategies and nature of mobilization. The changing composition of the university and a legacy of activism are the key factors. It may be noted that the 2009 phase is distinct from the earlier phase of 1969–72 in that it is rooted in this kind of ‘network culture’, which was instrumental in the making of Osmania as the epicentre of the movement. The chapter ends with a conceptual debate on identity movements and emphasize the importance of regional culture in guiding the Telangana movement.

Campus Networks and Agitations

With ethnographic data, this chapter demonstrates the everyday life of a movement activist. It highlights how different spaces of the university contribute in changing students’ way of thinking and discusses how a student is inducted, trained, and made part of the movement bandwagon. The university has been evolving over the past five decades of struggle of inside and outside the campus through its students’ activism. This chapter focuses on the inside mechanism of this activism and demonstrates what motives a student to choose the path of activism and how their networks are rooted around Telangana cultural ethos.

Introduction

The introduction begins with an elaborate discussion on two rather recent students agitations: in the aftermath of Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the JNU ‘Azadi’ campaign; and in the wake of the arrest of JNU student president Kanhaiya Kumar. The chapter discusses the nature of changing campus activism in India the past decade amidst the backdrop of neo-liberal policies on education. It highlights how public universities aspire towards social justice by creating an intellectually vibrant space in the present competitive age of the market. By establishing a link between democracy and university, the introduction argues that public universities in India provide a critical space to unlearn the undemocratic. As a space of creative imagination and critical thought, universities and institutions of higher learning become sites of resistance.

New State, Old Narratives

Over half a century, the efforts of Osmania University intellectual to address the Telangana problem—writing and publishing literature, forming organizations and mobilizing masses—finally led to a the formation of a separate statehood. The formation of a new state does not guarantee the welfare and representation of historically marginalized and primordial identities. It demands a deeper struggle involved for such identities to assert themselves. The post-Telangana phase has not delivered any concrete program to its youth who sacrificed for its statehood. As a result, students have started their struggle to make Samajik or ‘socially inclusive’ Telangana. The chapter highlights the contemporary ongoing student agitation in post-Telangana phase. It concludes that the history of Telangana would be remembered as the history of students’ resistance.

Telangana Movement

The available literature on the Telangana movement offers historical, political, and economic perspectives that define Telangana as a ‘backward’ region and the movement as an offshoot to this backwardness. The backwardness generally discussed pertains to the economic standing of the people of Telangana. From the vantage point of a fresh perspective, this chapter uses regional culture as a vantage point to understand the emergence of the mass movement. It explores the context in which the idea of separate statehood for Telangana took shape and discusses how the movement can be understood as a new social movement. The chapter also attempts to understand the contours of the movement’s history in terms of how the culture of Telangana was marginalized and how Telangana activists, especially employees and students, mobilized against the dominant Andhra culture, leading ultimately to widespread, robust cultural assertion.