HISTORICALLY, THE Telugus have had no strong cultural identity and this fact is once again demonstrated amply by their anxiety to split the state for no good reason into two for now and may be three or four units before long.
They are different from Tamils or Malayalees or Kannadigas in the South or Bengalis in the East in this respect.
Most major dynasties which ruled the Telugu country in ancient and mediaeval times were not locals but naturalised non-Telugus -- be it the Chalukyas of Vengi, the Kakatiyas of Warangal or the Rayas of Vijayanagar or the Pallavas or Cholas of the Tamil country.
The Muslim dynasties, the Qutbshahis and the Asafjahis, were rank outsiders; the latter ruled as the representatives of the Mughals and had no roots here.
While the former made some effort to build on the local culture and develop local languages, the latter brazenly imposed a non-native culture and an alien language to the extent of suppressing the local language and culture.
The locals initially felt lost in their own land and later started meekly adopting the culture of the rulers at the cost of their own and deluded themselves into believing that they were evolving a new cultural idiom called the Hyderabadi culture.
Hyderabad became cosmopolitan to the point that locals became strangers in their own land. This is not a cynical observation; all those with dispassionate interest in regional history know it.
With the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956, for the first time in their history most of the Telugu people, if not all of them, were brought together in their homeland, with an opportunity to foster their cultural identity.
We now seem to be throwing away the hard-earned opportunity. The self-destructive process began when we named our unified state as Andhra Pradesh, after the Andhras, who were outcasts living on the fringes of the Aryan society and with whom all the social intercourse was forbidden by that notorious lawgiver, Manu.
We should have called the new Telugu state by the old name, Telangana or Telugunadu or Teluguseema; this itself would have reminded us of our common heritage -- the ancient Telugu language! Even after coming together for the first time in history some 53 years ago, Telugus have failed to discover their roots and foster a cultural identity, which was the intention in creating languagebased states.
Their language, which derived from the Dravidian core and was much influenced by Paisachi prakritam, was known as Desi for over 2,000 years and found its place even on the coins of the pre-Satavahana times. Its origins and early history never interested our scholars who were brought up on the false notions of a Sanskrit ancestry for our non-Sanskritic language.
Nor do modern day Telugus connect to the great Prakrit literature produced in their homeland, like Gunadhya's Brihatkatha and Hala's Gatha Saptashati, as Tamils would think of Silappadikkaram or Manimekhalai.
The fact that the two Prakrit works are set in what is now the Telugu country and that they illustrate our ancient folklore and contain many desi words is lost even on the literati.
Though the Telugu University has been there for 25 years, it has yet to evolve a standard Telugu usage. Instead, we have been making fun of regional variations and unintentionally hurting each other's sensitivities and foolishly taking pride in one's own lingo. The semi-literate Telugu cinema dialogue peddlers and directors are the prime culprits in this regard.
Telugu grammar remains unknown even to Telugu people; it is difficult, almost impossible, for others to learn the basic structure of the language with the help of a book of grammar.
No one has attempted to present a basic grammar text after Chinnaya Suri of the 19th century who, limited by his time and circumstance, didn't think of Telugu as a Dravidian language and tried to subject it to Sanskrit grammar, creating in the process an enduring confusion in the minds of both scholars and students.
Still worse, there is no modern lexicon and other tools for children to learn the language and the standard usage; in the present scheme of things, it would take a good five minutes to locate a word in the available dictionaries and when you finally do it, you are not much wiser! Our children in cities and towns prefer to converse in English; whenever they speak Telugu, more than half the words employed are English. The joke about Telugu journalism is that we cannot read a Telugu newspaper unless you are conversant with English usage and idiom as what passes for Telugu is transliterated English.
A stage has now come where many Telugu language enthusiasts agonise that at this rate idiomatic Telugu will soon be a thing of the past.
The story of the development of fine arts, particularly the performing arts is also one of unpardonable neglect. The malevolent impact of Telugu cinema and want of scholarly attention are responsible for their decline. We haven't had a Vallathol or Shivarama Karanth or Rukmini Arujndale.
The only comparable resource person, Nataraja Ramakrishna, has been languishing and left to fend for himself.
Of the three broad categories of dances -- the Temple dances, the Court dances and the Yakshaganams and Kalapams, only Kuchipudi which belongs to the third genre could establish itself and has found some patronage.
Temple and Court dances, originally known as the Devadasi and Rajadasi traditions, have fused into what is now called Bharatanatyam in Tamil Nadu.
By sheer indifference, the Telugus have now disinherited themselves of these glorious traditions and lost them to Tamil Nadu, which is now considered their homeland.
Yakshaganam has been owned, developed and modernised in Karnataka, though it belongs as much to the Telugu country.
The political leadership has lost their long-term vision and neglected the language and culture, which alone can anchor a people in their tradition.
Through the best part of the last half-century, we have had a political leadership which paid scant attention to these aspects.
While one chief minister has abolished the various academies fostering the fine arts, another decried the study of history and drove our boys and girls to call centres and sweat shops of Information Technology.
In the absence of a core culture that anchors all of us together, it is no wonder we, the Telugus, have arrived at this cultural impasse.
We have a lesson to learn from our Tamil cousins who through sheer will and hard work regained for Tamil its due place while we have lost whatever cultural advantages we had.
Let us understand at least now that we have a historic role to fulfil and if we fail our people now, future generations will not forgive us. Should we fall apart, we shall become two or three insignificant patches in the great mosaic of Indian culture. The sooner we realise it, the better for the future of Telugu identity..
