CM KCR and his great nijam

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has come a full circle from demanding 17th September to be celebrated as a remarkable day in the history of Telangana, to proclaiming Nizam as a great ruler on the floor of Telangana legislative assembly. It’s a rare feat. One doesn’t get to see the magnum opus of this size of a swing & spin, by a mass leader of a separate statehood movement, which actually rose with the inspiration it drew from the armed struggle by the peasants of Telangana against Nizam and his militia ‘razakars’.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This statement suits CM KCR perfectly. After assuming power as the Chief Minister, KCR seems to be nursing an ambition to retain power eternally in Telangana State. In the process, he has visibly transformed from a politician with ‘people agenda,’ to a politician with ‘personal and family agenda.’ In deeper analysis, he is emulating Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu, Samajwadi family, Lalu family and Mamata Banerjee as role models for living his day dream of eternal power.

KCR was accessible to everyone as a separate statehood movement leader; he was open to meeting anyone. However, after he applied Amma Jayalalithaa model as a Chief Minister, no one except his family members can claim to have access to even see him. This applies to his Council of Ministers, Members of Parliament, and Members of Legislature and key party leaders. He has elevated himself as larger-than-life ‘super human’ who cannot be accessed by mere mortals. He is fully disconnected from the real world and operates only from his newly built, palatial new age palace fit for a modern Nizam.

Samajwadi family & Lalu Prasad family model ensures that he divide the people of Telangana on the basis of religion, caste and sub-caste and drive all government’s welfare delivery only through these caste equations to ensure a guaranteed electoral vote bank deposits. Almost every state government scheme in the State of Telangana has a religion or a caste tag brazenly attached to it, implicitly or explicitly.

Finally, the most dangerous of all is the ‘Mamata Banerjee model,’ which has transformed KCR into a rank opportunist and a devious political player. This is the model which has led him to stoop to new lows, to practically deceive people through ‘divisive religious bait politics.’ It’s not just an unethical, incredible, uncouth political game but also a suicidal one.

This model calls for open deception of Muslim electorate by making unconstitutional, undeliverable, impossible promises of reservation increase, jobs, freebies, easy cash, overseas travel, easy loans, and even a piece of the sky.

Being very smart, CM KCR is actually trying to improvise over his role models’ performance by openly praising a foreign oppressive ruler like Nizam and iconising him in Telangana State to ensure full ownership of Muslim electorate.

Gullible Muslims in Telangana have fallen too many times to parties like Congress and AIMIM. However, they seem to realise KCR’s brazen appeasement to be too good to materialise into reality. His ‘swinging both sides strategy’ to appease both Muslims and Hindus might not yield great results in the next elections for sure, when people actually measure, how many promises he has delivered.

CM KCR is on a massive trip of misadventurism to mislead the people of the state by twisting history. He is doing injustice to an entire generation by promoting his personal and politically convenient interpretation of history as factual.

This degree of manipulation purely for petty political expediency is quite unsettling and shocking. His statement that Nizam deserved better treatment and that people did not understand the greatness of Nizam are downright anti-people, bordering anti-nationalism.

These constant rants of praising Nizam by KCR, his family and a few of his party leaders actually raise serious doubts on their personal integrity and nationalism. How can a constitutional head of a state call a foreign oppressor, who through his militia killed thousands of Indians, be termed ‘Great’? How will CM KCR explain his ‘Great Nizam’s one full year of reluctance to join the Indian Union and his subsequent surrender to Indian Army under duress? How will KCR explain ‘Great Nizam’ wanting to give erstwhile Hyderabad State accession to Pakistan instead of India? If Nizam is Great for CM KCR, who are Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi – traitors of Nizam? Who are the thousands of freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives for independence of this region and accession to India – traitors of ‘Great Nizam’?
These manipulative and mean remarks over well-recorded history of India will only destroy CM KCR’s personal reputation and political standing. He must understand in a democracy, power is never permanent. What is permanent is legacy. I challenge CM KCR to seriously reflect on what legacy is he leaving behind in the State of Telangana under his stewardship as Chief Minister. There will be a day very soon in the future that he has to step down as Chief Minister of this state and hand it over to another elected leader. These historic blunders and deviant statements will bear heavy on his personal and party legacy forever.

Nizam are his era are dead and gone. Telangana State is now the 29th state of Indian Union, the largest democracy in the world. It’s about time CM KCR realises that he is an elected representative and not the heir of Nizam dynasty. Instead of trying to desperately appease Muslims by twisting the past, he should try delivering on the long list of promises he has made to all people who voted for him in the last elections. He should know that the next elections are not too far and he cannot fool the same people twice. (Writer is BJP Spokesperson/Organisational Strategist & Author)

By Krishna Saagar Rao