Indian students shout slogans during a protest
demanding the creation of a new state of
Telangana, at Osmania University in
Hyderabad, India, Monday, July 11, 2011.
Andhra Bank has become Telangana Bank, the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (APTDC) has been rewritten as Telangana Tourism Development Corporation (TGTDC). Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) is now Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TGSRTC). Andhra Bhavan hotel has become Telangana Bhavan hotel. From eateries to government offices, even number-plates on vehicles are proudly showing off the 'AP' cut-out and replacing it with a TG.
Call it wishful thinking or daring the powers-that-be. In many parts of Telangana, it is renaming with a vengeance that is being carried out by pro-Telangana groups, as though throwing a challenge to the government that if you are not going to give us a legal identity of our choice, we are going to embrace it, and if not force it, anyways.
The government doesn't look in a mood right now to take action to curb this kind of insolence. There are more urgent worries that need its attention, After all, its own ministers and MLAs in Telangana are on a warpath, defying the leadership at the state and even the Centre.
So even if rewriting history may not be so easy, this is perhaps an attempt to write out the road to a dream destination.
It is as part of the same renaming spree that there is now a demand to rechristen Warangal as Prof. K. Jayashankar district, in honour of the Kakatiya University vice-chancellor who is considered the ideological father of the Telangana movement and passed away in June this year.
Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader KCR has said that if it is not done by the present government, that will be the first thing to be done when a Telangana state comes into existence.
Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy virtually created a record, naming projects, stadia, airport and roads after someone in the Gandhi-Nehru family. His home district Cuddapah became Kadapa, not for political reasons but so that those unfamiliar with the tongue-twister spelling could spare the district's name an unceremonious and unwarranted distortion. After Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy passed away, the Congress government promptly decided to honour its late leader by renaming the district after YSR. So for a renaming spree, you don't need to look far away for inspiration.