'Fast' a potential weapon against the state

HYDERABAD: This seems to be a season of fasts. One look at the `fast facts' shows that they always get the desired affect the government is put on the mat literally while the demands put forward are achieved.
Both Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N Chandrababu Naidu, who is continuing his fast in hospital and Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who undertook a 48-hour fast have an agenda to rattle the government.
However, if there has ever been a real fast-unto-death, it was that of Potti Sreeramulu. The Gandhian launched his fast demanding creation of separate Andhra Pradesh state out of the Madras Presidency. With the intervention of the then prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, he broke his fast.
But when the Centre ignored his demand, Potti Sreeramulu once again undertook a fast, this time, without much fanfare in Madras on October 19, 1952. Sreeramulu breathed his last on December 16, 1952 after fasting for 57 days as he did not live to see the fruits of his fast. It was only on October 1, 1953 that the Andhra state was carved out.
However, it was the fast-unto-death undertaken by TDP founder N T Rama Rao that made big news in 1991. In the aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, Congress workers went berserk attacking properties of NTR. To protest this, NTR, who was in the opposition then, made a dramatic appearance on Tank Bund. Clad in saffron in the likeness of a sadhu with a copper vessel in hand, NTR observed a `mouna vrath' communicating only through writing. However, in the dead of the night, in an even more dramatic manner, the police swooped down on his camp and shifted the former chief minister to hospital forcibly.
What had the state in a tizzy was the fast-unto-death of Vangaveeti Mohana Ranga, a Kapu leader and party Congress legislator from Vijayawada when the TDP's N T Rama Rao was chief minister. On December 26, 1988, Ranga was murdered by a rival faction while on fast in Vijayawada. Ironically, Ranga had undertaken the fast demanding protection to his life. The assassins who came early morning to the hunger strike camp hurled bombs at Ranga and four others who died. In the violence that followed, 42 people were killed elsewhere in the state.
The fast undertaken by Y S Rajasekhara Reddy at the Old MLA Quarters when he was the opposition leader was meant to embarrass N Chandrababu Naidu, the then chief minister on the issue of power supply in 2000. YSR, who undertook the fast along with Congress legislators and some other opposition parties, however, abruptly called off the fast after a few days.
More recently, TRS president K Chandrasekhara Rao's fast for separate Telangana state in December last year aroused the passions of the people, and as a result Union home minister P Chidambaram made a statement, saying that steps would be initiated for creation of separate T state.
But the way KCR went about his fast was interesting. Even before he launched his fast, the police arrested him and took him to a government hospital in Khammam. KCR undertook the fast in the hospital but called it off in a day. When there were protests against this, he continued with the fast after he was shifted to Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (Nims) in Hyderabad. It was only after Chidambaram's statement on Telangana on December 9, 2010 he gave up his 11-day fast.
Both Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who is yet to launch his new political party, and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu are now using the same weapon called `fast' to force the state government come to the rescue of the farmers, who have suffered massive losses because of untimely rains. In the long run, will the fast help their political careers? They trust it will.