The organisation in question is the Maza Maharashtra Telugu Manch, founded by five middle-class Telugu professionals from Mumbai two years ago.
As Chandrababu Naidu, the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, made desperate attempts near the Babhli dam site in Nanded to provoke another water conflict, a small NGO run by Telugus in Mumbai registered a silent note of dissent with the following words:
“We request you (Chandrababu Naidu) and your supporters to go back from Maharashtra, and avoid any disturbance and inconvenience to the lakhs of Telugu people living in and around Nanded and in the border districts of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh states.” The organisation further explained its stand saying that it feared a backlash against the Telugu-speaking workers near the border areas and stressed that since the issue was sub-judice, the politician should approach the supreme court.
The organisation in question is the Maza Maharashtra Telugu Manch, founded by five middle-class Telugu professionals from Mumbai two years ago.
The aim of the organisation was to create a platform for like-minded Telugu-speaking people across the city and the state and to help each other in any way possible. It today boasts of a membership of about 25,000 Telugu people.
Ganji Jagan Babu, its founder-president, recalls, “We were always inclined towards social work, and wanted to do our bit by setting up a platform. Then, we came across this book — Mumbaichya Ubharnit Telugu Samajache Yogdan (The contribution of the Telugu society to the growth of Mumbai) — written by Manohar Kadam, and realised that our community has contributed immensely to this city and the state.”
He explains that the Telugus first arrived in the city in 1695, during the Maratha rule. They also played a significant role in the construction of many famous buildings in Mumbai during the British era.
The British brought a lot of Telugu-speaking construction workers from Telangana and settled them in Kamathipura. It was these Telugu workers who helped out in the construction of the CST station, Rajabai Towers and many other architectural marvels of Mumbai. “Sayaji Silam, a Telugu, was the first speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for the year 1960-61. Even today, there are lakhs of Telugus living in the state, but scattered, and we thought a common platform was the need of the hour. That’s why we started this NGO,” he adds.
In two years, the NGO has organised many initiatives for the Telugus. An annual matrimony event, initiated to facilitate marriages between Telugu men and women, a medium for communication between employers and job-seekers, website and SMS’s to reach out to the thousands in its database, raising the political and civic awareness of the Telugus, a tri-lingual (Telugu-Marathi-English) magazine Maarpur (the change), are just some of the initiatives by this organisation. In the near future, the NGO also plans to start an old-age home near Karjat and is raising funds for the same.
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