P SUMDARAYTA Telangana Peoples Armed Struggle^ 79^6-57 PART ONE HISTORICAL SETTING IT is now 20 years since the Telangana peasants5 armed struggle was withdrawn on October 21, 1951. There is no authentic narration, even in outline, of how this struggle developed in that Nizam-governed feudal State of Hyderabad into a peasants5 and people's armed revolt; of the intervention by the Indian Army on September 13, 1948 ; and of the heroic armed resistance put up by the peasant masses for three years to defend the lands they gained earlier from seizure by the landlords backed by the armed forces of the Nehru Government. Avowed enemies and hostile critics of this great movement have produced tons of literature denouncing the struggle as communist Violence, banditry and anarchy5. The Right Communists are vociferous in depicting it, particularly the stage of the partisan resistance during the years 1949-51, as sectarian, dogmatic and individual terrorism in the main. The Naxalite leaders are busy carrying on the smear campaign that the leadership of the Telangana struggle betrayed it in calling it off in October 1951. To present, in brief, an overall balance-sheet of this heroic peasant uprising: it exacted tremendous sacrifices from the fighting peasantry of Telangana and the Visalandhra