Relay camp misses lunch for Telangana

Raga49

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posted on 13 years ago — updated on 1 second ago

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NARSAMPET: Everyday at 10 am, a new batch of fasters arrive at the Telangana hunger strike camp on the main street of this town in..

NARSAMPET: Everyday at 10 am, a new batch of fasters arrive at the Telangana hunger strike camp on the main street of this town in Warangal district. They leave their chappals outside the tent, greet each other with 'Jai Telangana' handshakes, wear rose garlands and sit down in the padmasana pose for the day's fast.
In the first two hour, town gossip is exchanged and the front pages of the newspapers are read. At lunch time, the nonfasters saunter over to the cafe opposite for a quick dosa and hot tea. In the afternoon languor, the fasters recline on the red carpeting and read the inside pages of the the day's crumpled newspapers. At sundown, attendance at the camp thins; one by one, the fasters slip on their chappals and go home. They've done their bit.OK, it's a relay hunger strike a fast between meals you might call it. Camps such as this had sprung up in every town and village in Telangana in the first upsurge of separatist sentiment in December 2009. Most of them wound up in the succeeding months, the point having been made. But this one in Narsampet goes on. It started on Dec 7, 2009, when the town's Telangana supporters came together aacross party lines and pitched tent for a fast in support of K Chandrasekar Rao who was laid up in the Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad, performing a hunger strike that produced the alarming concession of 'steps towards Telangana' by P Chidambaram on the midnight of Dec. 9.

Despite the ups and downs of the Telangana movement since that night of fever, the Narsampet campers have not thought it time to go home. The camp continues, with new groups coming forward each day tailors, blacksmiths, bus drivers, busybodies, pairavikars.

The camp is steered by the local Joint Action Committee which has branches in all the villages in the revenue division. It is not part of the political JAC and allows political workers to sit on fast only if they come without their party flags.

Every day representatives from all the constituents of the JAC take part in the hunger strike. When the camp completed one year, 365 women took part in the hunger strike.

Narasampet native S Sriramulu has gone to the camp every day since it was set up. "The Pakala tank and irrigation tanks in and around Narsampet division have filled up. The agriculture season has picked up. But people still find the time to come to the camp and express their support," he says.