ABSTRACT
Mudiganti Sujata Reddy is a well-known writer, critic and intellectual, has remarkably contributed to the rediscovering of Telangana language and literature, which played an instrumental role in the movement for the separate state of Telangana. Her anthologies, particularly, are crucial in filling the gaps in history as well as literary history. Her forewords and introductions revisit the history for renewed interpretations and for acknowledging the unacknowledged. Mudiganti Sujata Reddy has not only looked at the intersections of gender, region and language but also contributed extensively to the Telangana movement with her writings and participation. In this essay, which is an introduction to the context of first-generation Telangana short story, Sujata Reddy observes that the modern literature in Telangana emerged against the social and historical backdrop of oppression by the Nizam’s rule and the British rule and from the people’s resistance against them. She says, for instance, that the word Andhra was used extensively in the Nizam state, such as Andhra Mahasabha, Andhrodyamam, Andhra Yuvathi Mandali, etc. Nizam was scared that Andhras under the British rule and the Nizam rule might come together and dethrone him by using the word Andhra. His government ordered that the word Telugu should be used in the place of Andhra. That’s why, according to her, literature in Telangana took a leap from the trends of ancient literature to movement literature and progressive literature in the modern period. It is written in different forms and in different variants of Telugu in Telangana region to generate consciousness among people and to reiterate the uniqueness of Telangana experience and expression.
