Tag: Ram Manohar Lohia

In a context characterised by a marked rise of narrow sectarianism, conscious attempts at polarisation and a conspicuous narrowing of the middle ground, Jadhav was one person who stood up to bring together the conscientious civil society elements in an attempt to regain, protect and expand this space that could hold out the hope of dialogue across divergent groups and points of view without compromising on the respective basic convictions and respecting their identities. Jadhav belonged to the politico-ideological persuasion in Indian intellectual and political life that is identified with Ram Manohar Lohia’s socialism. Jadhav belonging this tradition played a critical role in the student movement by forming Hyderabad Students' Union and later as a faculty member in Osmania University, he was active and in fact influential in the teachers’ movement, through Citizens for Democracy in the civil rights and Telangana state demand movement in the late 1960s and since the late 1990s. Voice of the Subaltern Jadhav’s life, in fact, is a reflection of the 20th and early 21st century public life in Hyderabad and Telangana. With the formation of the Telugu state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) in 1956 following the merger of Telangana with Andhra region had only further intensified the discontent resulting in the year-long movement for the separate state of Telangana in the late 1960s. This was evident in the disproportionately high share accrued to them in education, employment and promotions. Obviously being the premier university in the region, the students and teachers of Osmania University were leading the movement. Jadhav’s role as an individual and as rights activist was immense and he was present whenever and wherever there was a crisis and civil society intervention was needed. This is the basis of his opposition to the dominant political and party culture that nurtured the cult of the individual and almost entirely made politics election-centric. The post-Telangana state formation developments do not proximate even remotely with the democratic, social and pluralist political vision and the centrality of civic activism that was integral to the popular Telangana movement and symbolised by individuals such as Jadhav.