Hyderabad: Students and faculty of the Suravaram Pratapa Reddy Telugu University in Nampally have been protesting for 10 days now against the Telangana government’s plans to allot the entire ground floor of the university’s four-decades-old building to the Adi Dhwani Trust, which seeks to set up a tribal art museum and research centre there. The agitation entered its 10th day on Friday, July 10.
At the heart of the dispute is a simple, uncomfortable fact. As many as 650 students currently attend classes on that very ground floor. The protesters say displacing them to make room for a private trust’s museum, however worthy its cultural aims, amounts to the state shrinking a public university to serve private ends.
It is not the first time the Adi Dhwani Trust has faced this kind of opposition. In May last year, a similar attempt to house its tribal art collection, Aadhya Kala, inside two professors’ quarters at Osmania University, renovated at the state government’s expense, met fierce resistance from right-wing students and professors, and was stalled just as the work neared completion.
This time, the objections are rooted less in ideology than in institutional survival.
Can’t shrink university for museum: Faculty
“Our contest is that Telugu University is non-negotiable, and higher education is non-negotiable. You can’t shrink the university and give it to some private persons. We are not against any trust or an individual who wants to save tribal culture or art. What we are trying to say is that we have classes here, with 650 students attending them in the very ground floor, from where the government wants to displace them to give to some Aadhya Kala museum,” MA Srinivasan, Assistant Professor in History at the university, told Siasat.com.
Srinivasan was also quick to clarify that the protest was not about pitting the museum against the university. He recalled that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy had himself named the university after Suravaram Pratapa Reddy on the floor of the Assembly, and asked how such an institution could then be diminished.
A university built from many institutions
The Telugu University was established as Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University when NT Rama Rao was chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, by integrating the functions of several Telugu academies and cultural bodies. It has since served as the premier institution for the promotion, preservation and dissemination of the Telugu language, literature, culture, fine arts and performing arts. The university continued under that name even after Telangana’s formation, until 2025.
Though a new campus was inaugurated at Bachupally in 2023, the Nampally campus remains an active, working institution – not a relic. Among its current activities are specialised academic programmes, including design courses, padya natakam, light music and other evening courses; seminars and cultural programmes using the existing auditorium and audio-video recording facilities, the “Telugus Through the Ages” museum; publication activities, including a publication godown and book sales division, and extension services and award selection processes.
Several colleges affiliated to the university that offer music and dance programmes also use the Nampally campus as their hub.
The Bachupally campus, meanwhile, is still being developed and presently lacks an auditorium, seminar halls and audio-video recording facilities, making it impossible, at this stage, to shift all academic and cultural activity there.
Already short of space
The ground floor the government proposes to hand over is far from empty or underutilised. It already houses the Taratarala Telugu Jyati museum, the Vice-Chancellor’s chambers, the Chitravani studio where dubbing and recording work is carried out and an auditorium, among other facilities.
The numbers make the squeeze tangible. The university’s distance education programme, run from the Nampally campus, has 1,680 students enrolled and the campus remains the go-to centre even for those pursuing programmes in distance mode. Across all programmes, 19 courses are currently offered. The Bachelor of Design programme alone requires 16 classrooms, more than the ground floor can provide even now.
“There are 16 classes in the building for B.Design. But there are not even 16 classrooms on the ground floor. So how can the government say that you just have to move out of the campus?” Srinivasan asked.
Students say there is already no room for them to attend classes at Nampally, and that handing over a floor to the museum is a direct injustice to their studies.
There is also a legal dimension to the dispute. Satyanarayana, a Class 4 employee at the university, pointed to the findings of the Justice O Chinnappa Reddy Commission, constituted to inquire into Osmania University’s land. “It had categorically stated that once land is given by the government to an institution, it cannot be taken back,” he told Siasat.com.
The trust and its founder
The Adi Dhwani Trust is run by retired professor Jayadheer Tirumala Rao, who was himself a faculty member at Telugu University. For the past couple of years, the tribal artefacts he has spent decades collecting have been stored in five rooms inside the Nampally campus, under a temporary arrangement with the university. Some of those artefacts are currently lying outside, exposed to rain, even as others remain locked away inside.
Tirumala Rao’s argument has been that establishing a tribal museum within a university would actually enrich students’ understanding of tribal art and culture, which has been steadily disappearing. That reasoning had also led him, initially, to choose Osmania University’s then-dilapidated professors’ quarters for the museum project. The state government spent tens of lakhs renovating two of those quarters, but the project was blocked by student opposition just as the work neared completion.
Students and faculty at Telugu University fear that yielding the ground floor to the trust may only be the first step, and that the university’s own future on the Nampally premises could be at stake.
Where else could it go?
Faculty members have offered concrete alternatives. Several floors in Burugula Rama Krishna Rao (BRK) Bhavan, opposite the Secretariat, have been lying vacant since assets were divided between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana following the state’s bifurcation. The Lalitha Kala Thoranam inside the Public Gardens has also been suggested as a fitting home for a tribal art museum.
“There are many buildings which were previously under the control of Andhra Pradesh, which have been vacated after the assets were distributed between AP and Telangana. There are several floors lying empty in BRK Bhavan. The tribal museum can be housed inside the Lalitha Kala Thoranam located inside the Public Gardens. But why set eyes on universities?” Srinivasan said.
Opposed at Osmania University last year and at Telugu University now, the fate of the Aadhya Kala museum hangs in the balance.
| Edited by Osama Salman | 
