What is Telagana ? Which area of Andhra pradesh are called Telagana ?

Question

What is Telagana ? Which area of Andhra pradesh are called Telagana ?

Answer 1

For that we need to go into a li'l bit of recent history.

Telugu speaking people were distributed into presidency of Madras (the largest state then) and princely state of Hyderabad (the largest of the 500+ princely states that were vassals to the British Crown) at the time of independence (1947). They started civil struggle to have a state for Telugu speaking people (now numbering nearly 90 millions). A Gandhian, Potti Sri Ramulu started a fast unto death for a Telugu speaking state. 58 days without food he died on December 17, 1952. Central government immediately declared the creation of 'Andhra' state out of Madras presidency that came into being on October 1, 1953 with Kurnool as capital. The state had 11 districts and a little over half the area of Madras presidency. It was the first linguistic state in Independent India. Andhra is the Sanskrit name for the same language, area and people. In the bargain, Bellary district got detached from the mother presidency and being not Telugu majority area was not included in Andhra. Being Kannada speaking, it was merged with Mysore state (another princely state) minus the 3 Telugu majority Tehsils - Alur, Adoni & Rayadurga merged in Andhra.

Then there was a clamour for including the Telugu speaking half of Hyderabad area in Andhra to be called 'Vishal`andhra' (extended Andhra). This spurred the central government into thinking of dividing the whole country into states on language basis.

Till then, were many states in a 3 tier heirarchy. First is the state/presidency/provinces of British India. Then there was the second tier in which maximum number of princely states were organised. They are Rajasthan, Hyderabad, Kashmir, Mysore, Madhya Bharat (Gwalior-Indore), Travencore-Cochin & PEPSU (Patiala & East Punjab States Union). Some minor princely states - Cutch, Bhopal, Bilaspur (in HP) along with such third category territories already in existence, were accorded the status of Union territories (under Chief Commissioners). Some say there is a fourth category of Centrally administered states - Andamans/Nicobars & Sikkim.

Central government seized of the problem, created a 'States Reorganisation Commission' (SRC) under the chairmanship of Fazl Ali and HN Kunzru and KM Panikkar as members. SRC worked efficiently and submitted its report after lot of work and extensive touring of the country, in 1955. Perhaps in Indian history, that was the only major report the government has accepted in full and implemented. On November 1, 1956 several new states were formed (UP, Kashmir were unaltered and Rajasthan only suffered the merger of tiny Ajmer district).

15 states & 8 Union territories came into being.

Hyderabad state being the largest as big as UK or Germany with largest revenue for a state suffered the most. It had 17 districts. 5 (Aurangabad, Parbhani, Nander, Bir, osmanabad) were Marathwada and were merged in Bombay state that split later into Maharashtra & Gujarat. 3 (Gulbarga, Raichur & Bidar and parts of Bidar merged in other 2 regions) were Kannada speaking and were merged in Mysore (later Karnataka). 9 (Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Hyderabad, Madak, Nalgonda, Warangal, Khammam & Mahbubnagar) called Telangana, being Telugu speaking were merged with Andhra to form AP. Now several more districts were created from amongst them.

What surprises me is that this piece of contemporary (post Independence) Indian history is not known to or ignored by many Indians.

Answer 2

Telangana or Telingana (Telugu:తెలంగాణ) is a region in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The region lies on the Deccan plateau to the west of the Eastern Ghats range, and includes the northwestern interior districts of Warangal, Adilabad, Khammam, Mahabubnagar, Nalgonda, Rangareddy, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Medak, and the state capital, Hyderabad. The Krishna and Godavari rivers flow through the region from west to east.