‘BJP has selective amnesia on Telangana’s past’

Telagana’s ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) party accused the BJP of suffering from selective amnesia and said the right-wing party’s strategy to expand its presence in the state would not work.

The attack came against the backdrop of BJP celebrating ‘Telangana Liberation Day’ on Saturday. “BJP has the habit of raising communal issue whenever they feel that there is an opportune time. Even during the time of agitation (for separate statehood for Telangana), we had always said this is a merger day, not a liberation day,” TRS Lok Sabha member Kalvakuntla Kavitha said.

BJP has been demanding that the Telangana government officially celebrate the occasion as “liberation day” as Hyderabad State was “liberated” through “police action” on September 17, 1948, more than a year after India got independence.

BJP considers the Nizam’s rule in erstwhile Hyderabad state as “tyrannical”, “oppressive” and “autocratic” and claims that the Telugu language was discouraged as the medium of instruction in educational institutions during the period.

Kavitha noted that when Goa merged with India, the central government called it liberation while the Telangana (erstwhile Hyderabad State) operation in 1948 was termed a “police action, and they never said liberation of Telangana”.

“You only want to recall the 1948 incident, what about 1969 incidents of Telangana agitation, what about 2001?...many, kids were killed… BJP-TDP government was in power. Nobody wanted to talk about liberation day (then), why speak about it now? You can’t have selective amnesia. When you speak about historical incidents, certainly BJP has a habit of selective amnesia… they pick and choose the facts. We only say it’s a merger day. We always observed it as a merger day, we will continue to do so,” she said.