Chandrababu Naidu comes to Delhi in search of a cause

There are limited political options for the leader, who is anxious to gain a foothold in both AP and the centre

Telugu Desam Party leader Chandrababu Naidu is going to be in Delhi today. He will go to Raj Ghat in the morning and will hold a press conference in the afternoon, presumably to carry the message from Hyderabad that Andhra Pradesh is burning – as if we didn't know. The question is, what is the centre going to do about it?

This is exactly what Naidu – known in AP as 'Babu' and 'Alludugaru' (son in law – as he was NT Rama Rao's son in law) wants to know too. For a man who's close to losing it all, his concern is quite understandable.
 

Enough is known about the history and background of the demand for Telangana: It was the political response to a simmering 'feeling' of separateness between those who were ruled by the Nizam (the Mulkis) vis-a-vis those who belonged to the coastal areas of Andhra Pradesh and the arid plains of Rayalaseema. The feeling of separateness was highlighted by a package of measures including reservation in jobs that the people of Telangana were promised when the state merged into India and later into Andhra Pradesh.

One of AP's best known Chief Ministers, Marri Channa Reddy exploited this when he was disqualified in an election in 1969, forming the Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS). He launched an agitation mainly to get his own back on his party rival, Kasu Brahmanand Reddy, also a rival caste leader. It was a bloody agitation: identity politics always is. On 4 June 1969, police shot and killed 30 people. Rumours gained ground that 300 had been killed. Mayhem reigned and in 1971 the TPS swept the elections. Later, recognising that the root cause of the people's anger was Channa Reddy's ambition, he was asked to come back into the Congress fold. Simultaneously, Indira Gandhi who was opposed to the bifurcation of AP, replaced Brahmananda Reddy who was Chief Minister with PV Narasimha Rao, seen as an inoffensive Brahmin, doing the balancing act between aggressive Reddy and politically ambitious Kamma castes.

For some time, the agitation went away.

The rise of NT Rama Rao in the 1980s was based largely on this issue – Indira Gandhi's game of musical chairs of Chief Ministers in AP and 'telugu atma gauravam' (self respect). This subsumed the Telangana feeling and Telugus got a new identity. Bereft of an plan for development and a socio-economic manifesto, the TDP threatened to dwindle away – until Chandrababu Naidu wrested control of the leadership, ousted his father in law and step-mother in law (NTR married again at the age of 69) and gave Telugus a new identity – of being able to belong to cyberworld.

Naidu is an evolved politician. He has little time for identity politics, and in his time was as well known all over India as Narendra Modi is today. But he is now on the horns of a dilemma: He has not clearly said anywhere that he supports Telangana, so he does not have unequivocal support in his region, coastal Andhra; at the same time, he can see the groundswell for Narendra Modi. He cannot do a deal with the Congress. So there are limited political options for him.

The Congress is a spent force in Seemandhra – that is AP minus Telangana. Naidu is anxious to consolidate his hold on at least one part of the state. But simultaneously he is looking for a foothold in the centre as well. He is canny, and Delhi's chattering classes just love him. But do the people of Andhra Pradesh?