A Tribute to PV Narasimha Rao: The Brahmin and Telanganite in Him Need to be Acknowledged!
On the 100th birthday of PV Narasimha Rao, multiple tributes have been poured in about him. Many recounting his intellect that solved the economic crisis in the 1990s, his firm decisions that made India what it is today. India became the world’s fifth-largest economy in 2019, and one cannot deny that it is only due to PV Narasimha Rao. He is the man who made the economy.
But amongst the multiple tributes written today, most covered his economic and political achievements. Which changed our nation forever. But I wish to recount a pathbreaking social achievement of Narasimha Rao. An achievement that deserves its due.
PV Narasimha Rao was born in a humble, Niyogi Brahmin family in Warangal District. He wasn’t born into a wealthy powerful land baron’s family, his origins were humble. I acknowledge that he was born in a Brahmin family, because his knowledge-driven lifestyle, and his intellect of rationale, and the ultimate desire to do good for the people all stem from being brought up in a Brahmin household, that valued books over gold coins, knowledge over land, and intellect over ego. In 1992, shortly before the fall of the Babri Masjid, when PV Narasimha Rao was holding back-channel talks with Hindutvawadis and intelligence bureau officials, a senior intelligence bureau said: “Sir these are men of straw.” To which PV Narasimha Rao said “I’m a Brahmin! I know how to deal with these people.”
The reason I bring this point up is simply that, PV Narasimha Rao like, unlike the countless secular politicians who loathed their own Brahmin or upper-caste identity often and dropped it. PV was firm, on his identity. He wore it on his sleeve, he was proud and acknowledged it. He acknowledged it in a world where Brahmins are blamed for every evil that ensures, in a world where the hunger of a Brahmin is a cause for celebration, in a world where a pig is made to wear the sacred thread, in a world where Dravidian activists beat up Brahmins simply because they’re Brahmin, in a world where elements have been trying eternally to wipe out even the existence of a Brahmin.
If Barack Obama was celebrated as a president who hailed from a minority group if John F Kennedy was celebrated as the first Roman Catholic president of the United States (this was written in a school textbook, I grew up reading). Then why do you have to shy away from recognizing PV Narasimha Rao as a leader hailing from a minority group who sailed against the tide, to become the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, and eventually Prime Minister?
PV was a mixture of minority groups, a staple example of hailing from all extremely socially minor groups. Firstly, and primarily. PV Narasimha Rao was born into a Brahmin family, he was a practicing Brahmin, who acknowledged his identity with pride, and never ran away from it.
We must all recount when PV Narasimha Rao ventured into United Andhra Pradesh’s politics and was appointed as a minister. The State Cabinet and the State’s politics were entirely dominated by leaders from the Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra, in PV’s career in the state, he worked with various chief ministers, ranging from Neelam Sanjiva Reddy to Kasu Brahmananda Reddy, to Kotla Vijay Bhaskar Reddy, all leaders from the Rayalaseema and Andhra region, with most of the political power being held by landlords of the Reddy caste. By the late fifties, itself the State Congress had a caste divide, that leads to two factions (a completely different fictional fight during the Independence struggle, the factions were ideologically divided between Bhogaraju Pattabhi and Tangturi Praskam Panthulu). This time, the divide was more caste-based, with an Anti-Brahmin faction, and a Brahmin faction lead by Burgulla Ramakrishna Rao. Ultimately, the fight could be interpreted as a factional fight between the intellectual class who had nothing but ideology and knowledge as their political weapons, and another class that had land wealth, and muscle as their political weapons. We all know it is always the former class that has succeeded in Indian politics. This can be reflected when we see that out of the total sixteen chief ministers of United Andhra Pradesh, eleven were from the Reddy caste group, and ten were entirely from the Andhra region. PV Narasimha Rao hailed from the Telangana region, which significantly lacked any political representation in the entirely Andhra dominated cabinet, PV hailed from the Brahmin caste (we must understand, caste mattered more back in those days in politics than now). Brahmins formed less than three percent of the population in the United Andhra Pradesh state. Out of which only one subcaste, the Niyogis had any substantial land holdings to speak of (only in select regions, where the subcaste themselves were quickly going urban and deserting agriculture for more intellectual pursuits of life). Most Brahmins were in dire poverty, but their needs went acknowledged for it was un-secular to acknowledge a fact. The wounds of anti-Brahmin riots in Pune or the systematic exclusion of the group from the state’s politics were still afresh but went unacknowledged it.
PV Narasimha Rao, served as a minister in the State Cabinet continuously from the sixties till 72 when he became the Chief Minister of United Andhra Pradesh. He was the only non-Reddy Chief Minister, the only Chief Minister hailing from the Telangana region, till then. And he remains the only Brahmin Chief Minister till date of the state. Why do I mention this fact so often? Well in Nadella Bhaskar Rao’s own words, in his recent interview to the YouTube channel SumanTv, Bhaskar said these exact words about PV Narasimha Rao in a sarcastic tone “That Panthulu Garu! Is a Pappu Bappanodu, Bhaskar Reddy used to insult and criticize PV as the useless Pappu Bappanadu.” Nadella Bhaskar Rao termed PV as “Pappu Bappanadu” ( a term frequently used to insult the vegetarian habits of Brahmins, and portraying them as useless, cowardly, freeloaders of society). In this context, Pappu Bappanadu is nothing but a racial slur akin to the Greedy Jew or Nigger. These racial slurs, that pull down a group unfairly. And it seems that Nadella being a contemporary of PV, who worked with him in the state cabinet’s words were true in those circumstances. The political circumstances of Andhra Pradesh back then, where anyone from the minority groups like the Brahmins, like the Telanganites, like the Dalits, were mocked and pulled down by major agrarian upper landlord caste groups. PV with his exquisite, bad-ass Telangana accent, wore both his minority Telangana identity and his even more minority Brahmin identity on his sleeve. In a world, where he was hated, mocked, and pulled down for his origins hailed from a minority regional group, and a minority caste group.
In a political landscape largely built upon caste (clearly before PVNR, the two other Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh were all from the Andhra region, and were of Reddy landlord background, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy even had a second term.) In fact, according to the book Rise of the Plebeians?: The Changing Face of the Indian Legislative Assemblies by Christophe Jaffrelot, in the 1960s, Reddys formed 25% of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, non-Brahmin, landlord upper caste groups formed a staggering 55% of the Legislative Assembly, and Reddys were the single largest group to form the major chunk of political power in Andhra Pradesh even till the late eighties. In such a highly discriminatory climate, PV Narasimha Rao hailing from an economically backward minority group, rose to become a minister in the state cabinet and survived the onslaught of brutal and bloody hatred for his both caste and regional identity, ushered in the land reforms whilst working with land barons who were his colleagues in the Ministerial cabinet.
PV had to deal with another regional crisis, where his Telangana identity caused him multiple problems during the heat of the 1972 Jai Andhra movement. The hypocrisy of the Jai Andhra movement was so deep that prominent leaders from the Andhra region, who were all signatories of the Gentlemen Agreement (like Gotha Lachanna) that promised rights to the Telangana region when Telangana and Andhra were being merged, later on protested against the imposition of the very rights for Telangana they signed up to. And created the Jai Andhra movement, in which BV Subba Reddy and all the Ministers from the Seemandhra region serving under PV Narasimha Rao who was Chief Minister defected, left the capital Hyderabad, went to Vijaywada and themselves elected BV Subba Reddy as their Chief Minister and ran a parallel unelected Government for the Andhra region, defying an elected Chief Minister only because he was from the Telangana region. No elected Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh ever faced such a devastating dastardly rebellion. But PV was like a lion, against a pack of disorganized brainless pack of wolves. He lived through that and continued ruling before resigning in 1973, before the imposition of President rule in the state.
An institutionalized hatred for Brahmins and Telangana, in both political and media and even spheres of the film industry, were a fact of life during the time PV rose. And yet despite being loathed for both his identities he rose. That is a heroic tale of an underdog raising.
It is akin to the tale of Chatrapathi Shivaji’s rise of power in a foreign ruled and dominated Maharastra, it is akin to the rise of Barack Obama as a black leader who rose to become the President in a white-dominated nation, or the raise of the Jewish people in American politics, or even the rise of the Italians who took the reigns of New York State and Federal Politics in the United States.
