Editorial, 'Freedoms of Speech and Residence," in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 31 July 2014 issue, Vol. 10, Part 2, No. 14

FREEDOMS OF SPEECH AND RESIDENCE

both protected, or even ensured, by the Constitution of India, particularly by Articles 15, 19 & 21, are in grave danger due to the ruling regional chauvinism in Telangana. One of those has already been sadly, and so easily, suppressed by a mere cable operators’ federation, allegedly acting at the instance of an eccentrically sectarian Chief Minister, by blocking two reputed TV channels. And the same chief is seeking to extinguish the right to residence of a section of people by mooting the queer proposal of fixing the residential eligibility of student candidates per their parents’ or grandparents’ residential status pre-1956. Till now one is used to hear about the nativity or residential status of a candidate only, but perhaps it is for the first time in free India that proposals for linking the candidates’ statutory entitlements to the origins of their ancestors are being heard. To worse confound the confusion, the ignorant daughter of this notorious chauvinist, she a first time MP too, has gone awry talking about the sovereign status of the State of Hyderabad [hence of Telangana] pre-1948 and decrying its forcible annexation by the Indian Union and linking it to the ever-raging dispute of Jammu and Kashmir – all the while not knowing, or deliberately overlooking, or maliciously suppressing the burning truth of a vast majority of the people in Telangana, as also Hyderabad State, having had militantly agitated for freedom from the despotic rule of the Nizam and for merger with the Indian Union in a popular ‘Join the Indian Union Movement’. And another minister-servile of the psychic chief has hurled a near-racist remark against ‘Andhras’, placing them on a level much below other migrants to Telangana, targeting them for denial of any entitlements on par with others – all the time forgetting that their own revered veteran leaders of Telangana like Survaram Pratap Reddy, author of the award winning ‘Social History of Andhras’, Burgula, Madapati, P.V., Dasarathi et al, all integrationists, had taken so much pride in that denomination. Regrettably, our constitutional courts have also not acted readily and effectively to rein in such unruly horses and remedy the injustices; it seems nowhere else does the maxim ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ apply so aptly as in our country.  §§§