Suneetha: Telugu identity is foregrounded as an ahistorical, essential or emotive category in the anthropology and historiography of the Deccan and southern India. This can be seen in either positive or negative terms depending on its ideological orientation. Positively, the Telugu identity can be seen as enabling the formation of a representative administrative unit. Negatively, it can appear as a cloak for Telugu elites to dominate subaltern groups. How does your book reorient this debate?
Professor Rama Mantena Source: uic.ed
Rama: I have always approached the question of Telugu identity as historically contingent. In my earlier work, I looked at how our idea of language transformed in the nineteenth century. This happened through colonial philological engagement and different processes of standardization that took place with the spoken/regional languages of India.
Recently, I have gone back to thinking about what Sudipta Kaviraj has written so eloquently on the two trajectories of language in modern India. One is the trajectory of standardization which changes language use. The second trajectory relates to affective investments in language—passion of the tongue/identity. Both processes are important to understand debates on language and identity during the nationalist period and, more importantly, in the immediate post-independence period.
My reorientation of the language question in the book was not to show how language politics in Hyderabad did or did not mirror what was taking place in British India (Madras Presidency). Instead, I sought to trace how language was a way of talking about democracy and the demand to build of democratic institutions in Hyderabad state.
Suneetha: We rarely see discussions on linguistic politics and regionalism that brings together the debates of both Hyderabad State and the Madras Presidency. This is especially the case after the bifurcation of united Andhra Pradesh. Why did you think it was necessary to bring these different political contexts together?
Southern India from Hyderabad State’s View (Government Press Hyderabad, Deccan)
Rama: My aim was to see if the same kind of questions that were being asked in the Madras Presidency were also being asked in Hyderabad. In the historiography, Hyderabad had been talked about in terms of patrimonialism – using a cultural explanation for why things were different in this enclosed world of the princely state of Hyderabad. As if to suggest that the political and historical processes that were taking place in British India were not happening in Hyderabad or at least interacting with them.
As we know, Hyderabad State was not a space of stagnation and cultural timelessness. Scholars have often pointed to its political class and how they dragged their feet around making changes to the administration in the early 20th century.
I wanted to recast this history by revisiting and documenting the political landscape and reconsidering the constitutional debates that took place about the future of Hyderabad in the broader South Asian region.
What the research revealed was a complex set of actors that do not easily map onto the politics of British India. It is especially necessary, as you point out, to go back and understand this period in order to understand the way in which debates around bifurcation unfolded more recently.
Suneetha: In much of the historiography of the Telugu region, the discourses, organizations, and debates that took place in Hyderabad State are figured as “lacking” or “backward” in comparison to the Madras Presidency. Therefore, they are often dismissed as uninteresting or not impactful. They do not fit mainstream narratives of Telugu modernity and nationalism. As a historian, how do you deal with this bias?
Rama: I think that line of questioning is meaningless for historical scholarship. It relies on an idea that there are better responses to historical events than what we find through archival research. In historical research we are first taught to not look for already formed ideas, events and theories in the past to confirm what we already formulated in our heads.
When we explore what it means to say the discourse or debates in the Hyderabad state were “backward”–what does that reveal? It presumes some kind of standard. Is it Maharashtra or Bengal that is the standard for the history of the nationalist period? Do we need a Rammohun Roy or a Ranade or a Gokhale in Telugu or in Hyderabad? Are they essential for us to understand that Hyderabad was also part of the larger histories of anti-colonial nationalism and the radical democratic transformations taking place in Indian society? For political discourse, institutions, etc.? Obviously not.
The Telugu speaking region of the Hyderabad state had a very specific history during this period. This is apparent throughout the nineteenth century, when the state was being increasingly overseen by British colonial administrators, to the twentieth when social and political movements emerged that linked individuals and communities to broader global histories.
The history of princely Hyderabad would only be “lacking” if you were not interested in what actually emerged there. And, if you are not asking an even more important question: why and how did events unfold in the manner in which they did?
Suneetha: The “Telugu public” is an idea that you argue grounded discussions around democracy, self-government, and civil liberties in the Madras Presidency as well as Hyderabad state. How did this Telugu public transcend the boundaries of these regions that had such different political systems?
Rama: In my book, I look specifically at the formation of the Andhra Mahasabha (AMS) in the Madras Presidency and Hyderabad State. I also consider the Indian National Congress and pay some attention to the activities of the Communist Party. All three organizations crossed territorial boundaries to establish ties with individuals and reach out to communities.
Of course, one can also look at the Telugu public in terms of print – we can see that newspapers, pamphlets, and books also circulated across territorial boundaries and carried debates across the Telugu-speaking regions. I reviewed the publications of these groups, primarily the AMS and its communications with the Hyderabad administration.
Report of the First Andhra Mahasabha (AMS) Meeting, 1929
I was especially interested in reading the AMS materials in relation to government censorship in Hyderabad. I tried to bring out the larger discussions and implications on questions of democracy, self-government and civil liberties they represented. It became clear to me that these conversations were as important – if not more so – than identitarian questions surrounding language.
Suneetha: In what ways did the Telugu public imagine India as a nation of federated units? In what ways did this influence (or not) the national debates on India as a federation in the Constituent Assembly? Or shape the reconstitution of India on linguistic lines?
Rama: The federation debates were what drew me to this period. I began by delving into the Andhra movement, which we usually associate with British India, Madras Presidency and the rise of linguistic nationalism. However, it became clear to me that the AMS was the site of more complex political debates, not just cultural issues.
The AMS was not simply about cultivation of a love of language and allegiance to that language. There were, in fact, other institutions that were devoted to the Telugu language in that sense. What I came to realize by working with the AMS archives is that the Andhra movement that arose in British India and in princely Hyderabad was inspired by a discourse of self-determination that was prevalent in the interwar period. That discourse is important to tease out as it shows that linguistic nationalism was not only about affective relations but also about democracy. And underlying an idea of democracy was self-determination.
What I argued in my book was that the early Andhra activists may have hoped for a federalism that gave more autonomy and power to the region than the Andhra activists of the 1940s. By that period, the INC was strongly pushing for a federated union of states with greater centralization of powers. And, of course, we know what happened with regards to the princely states at the moment of independence.
The newly independent India, as a centralized federation, took on the monumental task of integrating the provinces of British India along with the more than 500 princely states. The idea of integration eclipsed these dynamic internal debates about how to best make that transition from a princely state and how best to retain the state’s identity as well as a degree of autonomy.
Suneetha: Lastly, can you tell us about your interest in the term “provincial?” The term is often treated as a narrow or inferior category of analysis. You have put it front and center in the title of your new book – what did the concept open up for you?
Rama: I chose to engage with the term “provincial” as a way to talk about region and regionalism in colonial and modern India. I wanted to move away from the nation state frame to understand the rise of democratic institutions. In other national contexts such as European or Chinese, the province has been used as a way to talk about differences from the national and also it allows us to think about political autonomy.
In the decades leading to independence, discussions centered around India as a federated state. It seemed important to revisit the dynamism of those debates. I wanted to see what political imaginaries they enabled.
The province invokes a commitment to the nation state (anti-colonial nationalism) while still being able to debate what that relationship between the nation and the province ought to be.
Editor’s Note: In the following discussion, A. Suneetha interviews Rama Mantena about her recent publication, Provincial Democracy: Political Imaginaries at the End of Empire in Twentieth-Century South India (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
A. Suneetha is an independent scholar based in Hyderabad. She has recently published Faith in Democracy: Muslim Political Discourse in the Telugu Region with M.A. Moid. Rama Mantena is Professor of History at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Suneetha: Telugu identity is foregrounded as an ahistorical, essential or emotive category in the anthropology and historiography of the Deccan and southern India. This can be seen in either positive or negative terms depending on its ideological orientation. Positively, the Telugu identity can be seen as enabling the formation of a representative administrative unit. Negatively, it can appear as a cloak for Telugu elites to dominate subaltern groups. How does your book reorient this debate?
Source: uic.ed
Rama: I have always approached the question of Telugu identity as historically contingent. In my earlier work, I looked at how our idea of language transformed in the nineteenth century. This happened through colonial philological engagement and different processes of standardization that took place with the spoken/regional languages of India.
Recently, I have gone back to thinking about what Sudipta Kaviraj has written so eloquently on the two trajectories of language in modern India. One is the trajectory of standardization which changes language use. The second trajectory relates to affective investments in language—passion of the tongue/identity. Both processes are important to understand debates on language and identity during the nationalist period and, more importantly, in the immediate post-independence period.
My reorientation of the language question in the book was not to show how language politics in Hyderabad did or did not mirror what was taking place in British India (Madras Presidency). Instead, I sought to trace how language was a way of talking about democracy and the demand to build of democratic institutions in Hyderabad state.
Suneetha: We rarely see discussions on linguistic politics and regionalism that brings together the debates of both Hyderabad State and the Madras Presidency. This is especially the case after the bifurcation of united Andhra Pradesh. Why did you think it was necessary to bring these different political contexts together?
(Government Press Hyderabad, Deccan)
Rama: My aim was to see if the same kind of questions that were being asked in the Madras Presidency were also being asked in Hyderabad. In the historiography, Hyderabad had been talked about in terms of patrimonialism – using a cultural explanation for why things were different in this enclosed world of the princely state of Hyderabad. As if to suggest that the political and historical processes that were taking place in British India were not happening in Hyderabad or at least interacting with them.
As we know, Hyderabad State was not a space of stagnation and cultural timelessness. Scholars have often pointed to its political class and how they dragged their feet around making changes to the administration in the early 20th century.
I wanted to recast this history by revisiting and documenting the political landscape and reconsidering the constitutional debates that took place about the future of Hyderabad in the broader South Asian region.
What the research revealed was a complex set of actors that do not easily map onto the politics of British India. It is especially necessary, as you point out, to go back and understand this period in order to understand the way in which debates around bifurcation unfolded more recently.
Suneetha: In much of the historiography of the Telugu region, the discourses, organizations, and debates that took place in Hyderabad State are figured as “lacking” or “backward” in comparison to the Madras Presidency. Therefore, they are often dismissed as uninteresting or not impactful. They do not fit mainstream narratives of Telugu modernity and nationalism. As a historian, how do you deal with this bias?
Rama: I think that line of questioning is meaningless for historical scholarship. It relies on an idea that there are better responses to historical events than what we find through archival research. In historical research we are first taught to not look for already formed ideas, events and theories in the past to confirm what we already formulated in our heads.
When we explore what it means to say the discourse or debates in the Hyderabad state were “backward”–what does that reveal? It presumes some kind of standard. Is it Maharashtra or Bengal that is the standard for the history of the nationalist period? Do we need a Rammohun Roy or a Ranade or a Gokhale in Telugu or in Hyderabad? Are they essential for us to understand that Hyderabad was also part of the larger histories of anti-colonial nationalism and the radical democratic transformations taking place in Indian society? For political discourse, institutions, etc.? Obviously not.
The Telugu speaking region of the Hyderabad state had a very specific history during this period. This is apparent throughout the nineteenth century, when the state was being increasingly overseen by British colonial administrators, to the twentieth when social and political movements emerged that linked individuals and communities to broader global histories.
The history of princely Hyderabad would only be “lacking” if you were not interested in what actually emerged there. And, if you are not asking an even more important question: why and how did events unfold in the manner in which they did?
Suneetha: The “Telugu public” is an idea that you argue grounded discussions around democracy, self-government, and civil liberties in the Madras Presidency as well as Hyderabad state. How did this Telugu public transcend the boundaries of these regions that had such different political systems?
Rama: In my book, I look specifically at the formation of the Andhra Mahasabha (AMS) in the Madras Presidency and Hyderabad State. I also consider the Indian National Congress and pay some attention to the activities of the Communist Party. All three organizations crossed territorial boundaries to establish ties with individuals and reach out to communities.
Of course, one can also look at the Telugu public in terms of print – we can see that newspapers, pamphlets, and books also circulated across territorial boundaries and carried debates across the Telugu-speaking regions. I reviewed the publications of these groups, primarily the AMS and its communications with the Hyderabad administration.
I was especially interested in reading the AMS materials in relation to government censorship in Hyderabad. I tried to bring out the larger discussions and implications on questions of democracy, self-government and civil liberties they represented. It became clear to me that these conversations were as important – if not more so – than identitarian questions surrounding language.
Suneetha: In what ways did the Telugu public imagine India as a nation of federated units? In what ways did this influence (or not) the national debates on India as a federation in the Constituent Assembly? Or shape the reconstitution of India on linguistic lines?
Rama: The federation debates were what drew me to this period. I began by delving into the Andhra movement, which we usually associate with British India, Madras Presidency and the rise of linguistic nationalism. However, it became clear to me that the AMS was the site of more complex political debates, not just cultural issues.
The AMS was not simply about cultivation of a love of language and allegiance to that language. There were, in fact, other institutions that were devoted to the Telugu language in that sense. What I came to realize by working with the AMS archives is that the Andhra movement that arose in British India and in princely Hyderabad was inspired by a discourse of self-determination that was prevalent in the interwar period. That discourse is important to tease out as it shows that linguistic nationalism was not only about affective relations but also about democracy. And underlying an idea of democracy was self-determination.
What I argued in my book was that the early Andhra activists may have hoped for a federalism that gave more autonomy and power to the region than the Andhra activists of the 1940s. By that period, the INC was strongly pushing for a federated union of states with greater centralization of powers. And, of course, we know what happened with regards to the princely states at the moment of independence.
The newly independent India, as a centralized federation, took on the monumental task of integrating the provinces of British India along with the more than 500 princely states. The idea of integration eclipsed these dynamic internal debates about how to best make that transition from a princely state and how best to retain the state’s identity as well as a degree of autonomy.
Suneetha: Lastly, can you tell us about your interest in the term “provincial?” The term is often treated as a narrow or inferior category of analysis. You have put it front and center in the title of your new book – what did the concept open up for you?
Rama: I chose to engage with the term “provincial” as a way to talk about region and regionalism in colonial and modern India. I wanted to move away from the nation state frame to understand the rise of democratic institutions. In other national contexts such as European or Chinese, the province has been used as a way to talk about differences from the national and also it allows us to think about political autonomy.
In the decades leading to independence, discussions centered around India as a federated state. It seemed important to revisit the dynamism of those debates. I wanted to see what political imaginaries they enabled.
The province invokes a commitment to the nation state (anti-colonial nationalism) while still being able to debate what that relationship between the nation and the province ought to be.
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