Who is Telangana’s grim reaper?

The two young men who killed themselves recently in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, and the subsequent and preceding incidents of youth immolating themselves or jumping in front of trains add up the tally of the so-called suicide deaths for the cause of achieving a separate Telangana. While an unbelievable number of people, about 750, have died like this for Telangana, no socio-psychological study has been conducted to understand the real cause and circumstances of these deaths. Most of those who died came from poor and lower-caste families, many of them the first educated member of their family. Some of them were children.
The leaders of the agitation for separate statehood (not a separate nationhood, mind it), which is nothing but a federal restructuring, say this is martyrdom for a great cause, and they use the rising tally of suicide to pressure the Centre.
People are driven to suicide all over the world. But most people who decide to kill themselves do so because they see just darkness at the end of the tunnel in their individual life. Most have very personal or emotional problems that push them to such an end.
Studies on human nature tell us that in a situation where the choice is between killing someone or sacrificing oneself, human beings chose to kill. So then, how does an issue like separate statehood generate such strong emotions among so many youth that they are driven to kill themselves? Does human nature allow this?
Several nations have fought pitched battles for centuries for liberation from foreign rule. For thousands of years human beings have lived as slaves under horrendous conditions, enduring torture. Yet they preferred life to death.
There are several world famous individuals who committed suicide, but not for reasons of nationalism. The only famous suicide for a public cause was that of Socrates. But he, too, was forced to take hemlock by the rulers of his time. Antony and Cleopatra killed themselves for personal attachment. The famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud committed suicide to escape the pain and torture of cancer that he was suffering from.
Nowhere in the world do hundreds of human beings commit suicide as a form of protest for the purpose of political liberation. The most exploited and oppressed Chinese fought against feudal war lords for centuries. They did not indulge in self-immolation nor did they commit suicide by any other means. Similarly, Africans, who suffered brutal exploitation and torture under colonial rule for centuries, fought against the white colonial rulers. They, too, did not commit suicide. We have our own experience of suffering brutal foreign rule and fighting against it for centuries.
Telangana has its own history of anti-feudal struggles. The people of this region suffered vetti (bonded labour) for centuries. Feudal lords exploited the parents and grandparents of those who are dying now. But people did not kill themselves, rather they were killed. For centuries these people fought against feudalism while suffering poverty and hunger. They did not choose death over struggle.
What is happening now in Telangana is unparalleled. Nationalism or regionalism cannot be a cause for so many people to die on their own. Which forces are causing such deaths remains a mystery. Telangana Rashtra Samiti’s K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who is leading the current phase of the Telangana movement, did not have any significant electoral success before the self-immolations and suicide began. For years, his party could not contest any major election on its own. In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, he fought nine seats and won two. Then, in desperation, he started a hungerstrike. It was during the hungerstrike that his nephew Harish Rao proposed self-immolation as an innovative method of achieving statehood. He pretended to immolate himself. Within a day or two, one young man, Srikantha Chary, was said to have immolated himself. Since then a series of so-called incidents of suicide — by hanging or consuming poison, immolations — are being reported. No investigating agency has looked into the circumstances and reasons for these deaths. Somehow the whole nation takes them for granted. Reason, it is accepted, has taken flight from the nation.
In a democratic country like India it is possible that all kinds of demands, like nationhood for Kashmir or a separate state of Telangana, will come up. The movement for independent Ireland has been there for more than a century. But people never committed suicide to achieve that goal. Human sentiment of nationalism or regionalism does not move in that direction at all. Therefore, we need to be suspicious and look for the invisible hand in these deaths. Over 750 deaths definitely call for very sophisticated investigation. The blind belief that they all are self-driven does not show any historical perspective. The Kashmiris have been fighting for decades for their nationalist cause and are ready to die for it. But they have not been killing themselves.
As a Telanganite, who has been associated with many movements that cropped up here, I know that suicide was never in its blood. The poorest of the poor in this region always fought and died. This happened in the anti-Razakar struggle, in the Telangana armed struggle, and in the Naxalite struggles. That was also the case in 1969 Telangana statehood struggles. The current Telangana movement, that began in 2009, goes against the ethics of all movements in the world and also against Telangana’s own history.
It betrays general human nature, the spirit of this very nation and of this region. Let us not forget that this is a Delhi-sponsored movement. In this unnatural movement the leaders at the helm are making huge amounts of money and the youth at the other end of the society are dying. Let New Delhi explain or investigate how and why this is happening. Let the nation know which ghost is driving these innocent youth to suicide.

The writer is director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana
Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad