ECONOMICS AND HYDERABAD DOMINION

Capt. Lingala Pandu Ranga Reddy

Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland
Member of Royal Historical Society, London

History, according to Karl Marx, is economics inaction the contest, among

individuals, groups, classes, and castes, for food, fuel, land, material, and economic
power. Political forms, religious institutions, cultural creations are all rooted in economic
relations so the Industrial Revolution brought with it democracy, feminism, socialism,
the decline of religion, the loosening of morals, the liberation of literature from
dependence upon aristocratic patronage, the replacement of Romanticism by real fiction
and the economic interpretation of history.
The outstanding personalities in these movements were effects not causes; Ravi
Narayan

Reddy,

Arutla

Ramachandra

Reddy,

B.N.

Reddy,

Nalla

Narsimlu,

Krishnamurthy, Chakala Aillamma and others.

Andhra Communists would never have been heard of, had not the Nizam
developed irrigation facilities in the Hyderabad State. As there was pressure of land in
the Coastal Andhra they looked towards Telangana where irrigation facilities just had
improved. Thats why many coastal Andhras settled around Nizamabad, Khammam and
Nagarjuna Sagar ayicut area. It was during this time many educational facilities such as
the establishment of Osmania University in 1918 and high schools in each districts and
commercialization of agriculture gave rise to a middle class in the State. Unfortunately
the Nizams administration was oblivious to this new rising class. The French Revolution
came not because Voltaire wrote brilliant satires and Rousseaus sentimental romances,
but because the middle classes had risen to economic leadership, needed legislative
freedom for their enterprise and trade, and itched for social acceptance and political
power.

Every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit
motive to stir individual and groups to productivity. Normally, and generally men are
judged by their ability to produce except in war, where they are ranked according to
their ability to destroy. Since practical ability differs from person to person, the majority
of such abilities, in nearly all societies, are gathered in a minority of men. The
concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability and regularly
recurs in history. In progressive societies the concentration of wealth is regulated by
legislation redistributing wealth lest a revolution should distributing poverty.
In the Hyderabad State the disparity of fortune between the rich and the poor had
reached it height, so that the State seemed to be in dangerous condition and no other
means of freeing it from disturbances. The Government had failed in subduing it. The
poor finding their status worsened with each year. The Government was in the hands of
corrupt officials and began to amass wealth. Naturally people talked about violent revolt.
The rich landed gentry of both Muslim and Hindu Jagirdars and Zamindars were angry
at the change and prepared to defend themselves by force it gave birth to Hindu and
Muslim Razakars. Having understood the gravity of the situation, the Nizam announced
many gratis to poor, devalued the Osmania Sikka currency to the British Indian
Currency to tide over the economic crisis. The Government also waved arrears for taxes
and mortgage interest, he had established a graduated income tax that made the rich
pay at a six times that required of the poor. However, owing to the disturbed conditions,
these reforms could not be implemented.
History is replete with the distribution of wealth. The Reformation which took
place in the 16th century in Europe was in one aspect a redistribution of the wealth. The
French Revolution attempted a violent redistribution of wealth in the country side and
massacres in the cities, but the chief result was a transfer of property and privilege from
aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Similarly, the major beneficiaries of Telangana struggle
from 1944 to 1951 were Reddys, Andhra Kammas and other upper castes.
We conclude that concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is
periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view
Operation Caterpillar (Operation Polo) is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a

vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation. Here
there is no victor and no vanquished but economics as usual asserted. After the
formation of Andhra Pradesh, Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema people with their
political clout amassed wealth at the cost of locals. In the Nizam Dominions disparities
reached apogee, it took 224 years (1724 1948), and resulted in military action.
However, in Andhra Pradesh it took only 57 years, 7 months and 1 day to reach flash
point that resulted in the division of Andhra Pradesh on 2 nd June 2014. The economic
heartbeat of Telangana, systole and diastole operated and resulted in the formation of
Telangana State. This is another attempt of redistribution of wealth.