Balladeer Gaddar goes down memory lane

Hyderabad: Walking down the memory lane Balladeer Gaddar has shared his experiences and the problems being faced by him in Osmania University.

Talking to The Hans India, Gaddar said he was associated with Osmania University during 1968-69 when he did his PUC and later during 1969-70 as student of Engineering. Gaddar said he was wedded to the ideology of Dr Bheem Rao Ambedkar. “I came from a village and from a poor family to Osmania University. Here I got to know about Separate Telangana agitation and secret
Naxalbari agitation,” he said.

The biggest problem Gaddar encountered during his early days in Osmania University was with English language. “I could not understand the language. I used to walk down all the way from hostel at Mozamjahi market to the University.

Later, in the evening I used to work in ‘Delhi Darbar’ hotel. “During these difficult times, I got to know that the only way to come out of this was to take to agitation and then I got attracted to Naxalbari agitation and my focus changed from Ambedkar philosophy to the path of Naxalbari,” said Gaddar.

Gaddar said he was enthralled with the beauty of Arts College building, but felt sad that there was no mention of the workers, who contributed their sweat and blood for construction of such a beautiful building and it only had the name of a badshah. He recalled that he was associated with many good friends including George, Champala Prasad and others during his college days.

Gaddar said it was a great experience for him after 1977 when emergency was lifted. He said many students were impressed with his Naxalbari ballads and later became leaders. During this time, I wrote songs like Lal Salam and Holi holi re ranga Holi…. these two songs became very popular, he said.

The Baladeer said during his days in Osmania he had the opportunity to work with different people from Universities like Osmania, Kakatiya and Andhra. “Many, who had suffered exploitation by the landlords, joined me,” said Gaddar.

Sharing his experience, the balladeer said, Room No. 57 had special memory in his life. He said “Room No. 57 was also called ‘Room of Agitation’ (udyamala roomu). I took up many programmes and wrote many songs in this room. This gave me encouragement. Afterwards, Dalit agitation, Bahujana agitation were also nurtured in this room,” said Gaddar.

He spoke about the second phase of separate Telangana agitation. He said there were two versions- on one hand students believed Telangana can be achieved only through agitation and on the other political leaders thought it can be achieved only through votes. “I was with students as I too believed Telangana statehood can be achieved through agitation only.

I wrote songs on the sacrifices made by the students. ‘Podustunna Poddumeda Nadustunna Kalama…’ was very popular and was an inspirational song for agitation,” said Gaddar. He said that Osmania University has become an education centre, which was a forum for fighting against feudalistic, capitalistic ideology.

“I bow down my head for such a great institution where I got the opportunity to study, write poems on the dreams of martyrs,” said Gaddar. “I want to see that the students from this university become policymakers instead of focussing on merely becoming employees,” he added.