I might have erred on 1 to 2% extra on each of the Forward castes. My extrapolation is based on personal experiences from few villages in Khammam, and Krishna districts and hence might be erroneous. No one is doing caste based census to get accuracy from open sources. Laloo did one in Bihar <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
1921 census doesn't look accurate to me for the following reasons. The error is not marginal and could be substantial.
1)
The caste names are mostly from coastal Andhra region. The names does not include any of the Telangana region (may be because of British did not do any census for Nizam) and also the ones from north AP (Vizag, srikakulam and Vijayanagaram). Velamas of 1921 are actually costal folks and later they moved to Telangana region and hence they are in the list.
2)
Kapus are kapus and Reddys are Reddys. I don't think they are same. Kapus have different names. In coastal region they are called as kapus or naidus( if there is naidu viz. CBN and venkayya naidu from south/Rayalaseema they are kammas and not kapus). In Guntur and prakasam they are called as Balija and Telaga. In some other regions they are called ontari. In north AP they are called as toorpu
kapu. There are sub sects as well.
Reddys from Telangana which is substantial are completely missing in that number.
3) The list completely misses the tribal population which is now a major factor in politics.
Due to the above reasons I believe the BCs population of 46% may be high in terms of overall population while other sections are right.
Here is the entire list of BC in AP( no %ages) http://ncbc.nic.in/backward-classes/ap.html
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The numbers are not really the important factor of my post above. Even from your numbers my theory still holds. The simple summary of the long post above is:
Prior to 1983, Congress used to get its 46 to 53% of winning vote share from mostly Muslims + a large chunk of Forward castes, few BCs, all SCs and all STs. Reddys dominate the overall political structure in Congress.
From 1983 TDP broke this formula with 30% forward castes + a very large segment of BCs + Miscl. votes. In doing this they did not really break the Congress vote bank significantly. They got rid of all the other parties from the political landscape of AP by giving politcal power to BCs while keeping the Kammas domination in the overall political structure.
Some of the forward castes like velamas and BCs like kapus are swinging between Congress and TDP.
The talk of third front was always there and Chiranjeevi for the first time seems to be articulating its constituents. His idea is about the ones that are swinging between Congress and TDP should form a block of their own even if they are just 20 to 25% so that they can have more negotiating power and make other segments swing between three sections. This section is in the corridors of power but waiting there for the last 25 years and this is trying to find a way. TRS is also one of the reason for that purpose.
My view is having another regional front is not good for AP in the long run and BJP should have invested for this section so that people can take it seriously. It could create a block of the 25% and another 8% of ideological voters could bring to power.
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<!--QuoteBegin-Muppalla+Dec 5 2007, 06:49 PM-->QUOTE(Muppalla @ Dec 5 2007, 06:49 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->2)
Kapus are kapus and Reddys are Reddys. I don't think they are same. Kapus have different names. In coastal region they are called as kapus or naidus( if there is naidu viz. CBN and venkayya naidu from south/Rayalaseema they are kammas and not kapus). In Guntur and prakasam they are called as Balija and Telaga. In some other regions they are called ontari. In north AP they are called as toorpu
kapu. There are sub sects as well.
Reddys from Telangana which is substantial are completely missing in that number.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Reddy and Naidu are titles than castes but over time Kapu Reddys appropriate that title to the their caste. In Rayalaseema/South coastal districts, term Kapu generally means Reddy and Naidu generally means Kamma. In Guntur dist and upwards, Naidu means Kapu Naidu. In Chittoor dist. Balija and Velama also go by Naidu title. Vanne Reddy (BC category) also goes by Reddy title. In Guntur/Krishna Kammas don't use Naidu title as in old times but use Choudary to exclusively mean Kamma.
So 1921 census done from Madras presidency used Kapu to mean Reddy.
Here is rough breakdown based on surveys and censuses of AP population:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The talk of third front was always there and Chiranjeevi for the first time seems to be articulating its constituents. His idea is about the ones that are swinging between Congress and TDP should form a block of their own even if they are just 20 to 25% so that they can have more negotiating power and make other segments swing between three sections. This section is in the corridors of power but waiting there for the last 25 years and this is trying to find a way. TRS is also one of the reason for that purpose.
My view is having another regional front is not good for AP in the long run and BJP should have invested for this section so that people can take it seriously. It could create a block of the 25% and another 8% of ideological voters could bring to power.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> Problem is there is no political space or ideology for Chiru (His position is like Rajanikant in Tamilnadu or Mohan Babu in AP). If he doesn't join TDP, Congress, or BJP, his only chance is to bring up Kapu caste factor. Question is if he wants to polarize and bring caste politics and lose general appeal people have towards him. He has been quite away from Kapunadu politics so far.
TDP positioned as party of average Srinivas. Congress still relies on Reddy and SC votebanks. Between those two parties and Commie with their 5% and recent TRS with their 5%, the political space is full. BJP by supporting Telangana brought its own demise in AP and may get stuck with their 5%. So if third front comes they will only get their 5% by carving a few % from each of other parties.
PS: I used 5% rhetorically to mean low voting % not 5% exactly.
PPS: Shouldn't this topic be under state elections instead of History thread?
We need admin help. The posts from Jafri article onwards doesn't really belong here and I am feeling guilty of spoiling a very educational thread with current politics and configurations. This kind of analysis is good to see where AP might go.
My request is please let these stay as they give snapshot on how Andhra shaped up in the past and present. I will not post anymore Jaffiri type articles.
I never knew the demographics was like that. It explains a lot of what I dindt understand growing up. One of my ancestors was given a title Reddi by the Vizianagaram Maharaja in early 1800s for being an excellent vaidya. We modernized folks didn't understand why that title was given! <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I was just wondering about the geo-demographies of Andhra across the ages. Dont ask me what geo-demography means, just manufactured a term for how the demography of Andhra changes across its geographical divisions viz Telangana, Rayalsima, Coastal over the ages. Or any other grographical divisions
If I can remember correctly, Vishnukundins were truly the first Andhra origin, andhra ruling dynasty. Though Satavahanas were called Andhra-Bhrityas, they ruled over Maharashtra, Andhra and even Karnataka. Vishnukundins ruled Vengi area and I think it was during their time that Telugu first recieved royal patronage, which continued under the Eastern Chalukyas.
In Burton Stein's "Vijayanagara", he mentions that during 9-12th centuries, the Andhra people moved from Vengi and coastal areas inland into Telangana and Rayalsima areas and adapted their agriculture to tank irrigation. We find a lot of tanks getting constructed in upland Andhra during this time. The Kakatiya dynasty economy was built around this.
These are just some thoughts that I wished to share, looking forward to get a deeper understanding from you all, specifically how the economy and hence the polity of Andhra was shaped with the changing "geo-demographies"
Kartiksri and Muppalla, There is a tar file called "Andhra between the Empires". I have only Winzip program. The author goes to a lot of trouble to answer our questions. If one of us can untar it and put the text file together it will be useful.
<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Feb 9 2008, 09:46 PM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Feb 9 2008, 09:46 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Kartiksri and Muppalla, There is a tar file called "Andhra between the Empires". I have only Winzip program. The author goes to a lot of trouble to answer our questions. If one of us can untar it and put the text file together it will be useful.
Did you post it in any of the threads. I am trying to find it and download it. If you did not attach it here or on BR please send me to muppi at indiatimes
I have extracted to txt files and rtf files as well. Every page is a seperate file. Total of 200 pages. I will combine into one text file and attach to the post. If I could not attach, I will send it by email. You will have it tomorrow.
I have extracted to txt files and rtf files as well. Every page is a seperate file. Total of 200 pages. I will combine into one text file and attach to the post. If I could not attach, I will send it by email. You will have it tomorrow.
[right][snapback]78571[/snapback][/right]
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From Shyam's link above download the tif file. For reading purpose it is the best bet as it is like reading the book itself. The disadvantage is you will not be able to copy and paste here or in any other document.
If you want to convert it to MS Word document, here is what you have to do:
1) Open the tif file using Microsoft Office Document Imaging
2) Depending on the version you are using, either from Tools or File menu use "Send Text To Word..." option. It will take some time and uses the inbuilt OCR to convert the tif to doc file. The main disadvantage with the OCR tools is they never convert accurately. There will be a lot number of spelling mistakes or words getting cutoff etc.
All the formats that they hosted are the ones converted using OCR from the TIF format. I have extracted the text files from tar and I also converted the TIF to doc file. There are too many spelling mistakes and jumbled words in the text.
If you think this is too much work for you drop an email at muppi at indiatimes dot com. I will send the doc and combined text files.
Why do they do this the cumbersome way. It implies they want them to be read online only. What a waste. I would like ot read them on alpatop at my pace.
Anyway here are a couple of links I think are useful:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Hyderabad is before Christ
Â
Hyderabad, Sept. 9: <b>Hyderabad</b> is not 400 years old as claimed by historians but <b>was populated even 2,500 years ago, say archaeologists.</b> Excavations by the State Department of Archaeology and Museums have unearthed implements of the New Stone Age as well as Iron Age burials in Hyderabad. âThe history of Hyderabad goes back to the Neolithic Period,â said Prof. P. Chenna Reddy, director of archaeology.
The department has discovered an Iron Age site studded with Cairn Circles, also called megalithic burials, close to the entrance of Ramoji Film City on the Hyderabad-Vijayawada National Highway. Similarly, New Stone Age implements were recovered from Kethepalli village. The burials, according to Prof Chenna Reddy, are spread over five acres and date back to 500 BC.
âWe need systematic archaeological excavations to evaluate the details of these burial sites,â he said. Hyderabad, Secunderabad and surrounding areas harbour a good number of Iron Age sites and similar burials were discovered at Moulali, Hashmathpet, Kothaguda Botanical Gardens and Lingampalli in earlier decades. The burials at Moulali were excavated in 1935 and the ones at Hashmathpet were opened by Birla Archaeological and Cultural Research Institute during 1978. Both the places yielded Iron Age implements and pottery.
The department reopened the burials at Hashmathpet and recovered artefacts, including iron implements, human bones and pottery. Buoyed by the success, it took up excavation at Hayatnagar on the Vijayawada highway and discovered the megalithic burials. âWe will continue excavations at the new site as it has great potential,â said Prof. Chenna Reddy. âWe need to protect these sites before the real estate boom eats into them, erasing all their history.â Apart from him, Mr Aleem, conservation assistant and Mr A. Janardhan Reddy, assistant stapathi, took part in the excavation.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Reconstructing a cultural ecology
History possesses no fixed genre. More than questions of genre, it is the texture of the narrative that is revealing in historiography. Textures of Time recovers texts previously considered non-historical and establishes that history is not an alien import brought in by the British, says R. CHAMPAKALAKSHMI.Â
THIS book is about historiography. Authored by a rare combination of a historian, a social anthropologist and a literary scholar, it is refreshingly different, like their earlier work Symbols of Substance, in its enlivening way of turning the serious world of (south) Indian historiography into an enjoyable exercise of critical appraisal, through its choice of a less understood period of south Indian history, i.e., the post-Vijayanagara -Nayaka or the pre-Colonial period and its recovery, as history, a whole corpus of literary texts of the late medieval and early modern periods (16th to the18th Centuries), marginalised in the histories of this period as non-historical (folk tales). <b>Its main aim of refuting the notion that historical consciousness did not exist in south India before the British conquest and that history is an alien import brought in by colonial rule, is achieved through a highly sophisticated approach and nuanced analysis, notwithstanding its conscious use of abstruse vocabulary, difficult to follow without some familiarity with the historical background. It covers a wide spectrum of historiographical traditions, Indian and non- Indian, to drive home the point that there is no single genre or mode for historiographical purpose and that history is written more often in the dominant literary genre of a particular community, varying with space and time. This understanding opens up an amazing richness of dynamic and internally differentiated range of perspectives.</b> It is texture and not genre that is the central criterion for such analysis â texture, which one has to feel and listen to while reading a text i.e., listening for the logic and sensibility that have shaped an entire conceptual system. A cultural ecology needs to be reconstructed and a new way of reading introduced.
<b>The lament that India produced no Thucydides, Herodotus or Tabari has long since been questioned and disproved by works on the Itihasa-Purana tradition of the early period and on the ethno-historical texts of pre-colonial south India. Factually oriented history and the aitihya (tradition) mode of narrating the past can and did co-exist. </b>The authors are positioned directly opposite the post-modernist attempt to deny any distinction whatsoever between history and literature, i.e. all is discourse, internal to the language itself. <b>They identify and define the modes of history writing in pre-colonial south India as expressed in a wide range of clearly differentiated texts on paper and palm leaf and not as lithic records (usually considered most authentic), which were meant not merely for recording or preserving but also for communication. This corpus belongs to the newly crystallising Karanam culture, of a service gentry represented by the village record keeper and accountant (amil or qanungo, munshi, kulkarni), graphically literate communities. </b>
The battle of Bobbili (1757) between two Velama ruling houses of Bobbili and Vijayanagaram in the 'manne' or forest region forms the theme of three works representing a complete historiographical sequence with three different understandings of the events in Bobbili, although they converge on crucial matters of detail with great accuracy.<b> The theme of an early oral epic is reworked in three different texts, using alternative modes of historiography, while narrating the heroic fight between two local chiefs (polegars) of the northern shatter zone of Andhra, in the periphery of trans-regional state structures like the Nizamat state of Hyderabad and the Mughal. Into this narrative are built the complex relations among the chiefs, their European allies, the French and the English, as also the Marathas, suggesting an ambiguous political map, in which the expansion of the Mughal and of the Nizamat states depended upon local chiefs and their incorporation as revenue farmers. It is precisely in these peripheral shatter zones that the bardic epic is the predominant mode of expressing the historical processes of change, and inspire repeated reworkings of the event in different ways, from one genre to another as it moves from one social milieu to another.</b> The authors offer a synoptic comparison on linguistic textures and the notions of historical causality and the relative importance of individual actors. Mallesam's Bobbili Yuddha Katha is the most economical, straightforward narrative, the Ranga Raya Caritramu of Dittakavi Narayana Kavi, a drama of character, diplomacy, rational strategy and diplomacy, while the Pedda Bobbili Raju Katha uses highly emotive structures in kavya style. <b>All three are cast in the heroic epic mould, a feature present even in the 18th-century French and English accounts of the battle.</b> The Padmanabha Yuddhamu of early 19th Century, a counter history to the Bobbili battle, glorifies the past history of the Velama warriors from the Kakatiya times, their valour and bravery. <b>This work, however, marks the end of an epoch and conveys a sense of despair as their world is changing with the coming of new actors and new institutions in the political arena, culminating in the complete breakdown of the late medieval moral order, with the coming of the British and the revenue settlement of Munro, a process that began decades earlier when an irreversible fission among the native ruling families set in, as described in the Dupati Kaifiyatu. </b>
<b>A similar historiography exists for the story of Desingu Raja (Tej Singh, a Bundela Rajput) of Senji, first in a French letter, then the Marathi Jayasingha Raja kaiphiyata of the Mackenzie collection, the Desingu Raja Katai in Tamil, the Arcot Puranams, where the story of Teivika Rajan is told in a long narrative of regional history or local purana.</b> A simple story of bravery and tragic death in a battle against the Arcot Nawab, moved the imagination and inspired multiple retellings, marking a cultural continuity, recycling vital images and themes in an oral milieu. Arcot and Senji are also in the unsettled periphery of state systems (warrior king of the pastoral and hunting zone) with Left Hand, mobile non-ascriptive warriors at heart. Here the Brahmins are less visible, while the Rajput and Muslim are twined in friendship and the Hindu gods accept a dead Muslim hero into their heaven. <b>A Persian dynastic history the Sa'id nama on Sa'adatullah Khan of Arcot, Desingu's enemy, written by a Brahmin from Ghazni, Jaswant Rai, well versed in Persian, gives the other side of the picture, an interesting interplay with the Karanam text and together with the Kongu Rakjakkal savistara Caritram commissioned by a British collector and written by a Senji Narayanan in early 19th Century, it treats Desingu as a rebel, not so much a hero but as a foolhardy obstinate and immature young man and Sa'adatullah Khan as a patient, prudent ruler.</b> All these texts are situated in a huge archive (the Mackenzie Collection) still waiting for the historians (Col. Mackenzie employed the same Karanam group to collect histories and make other kinds of surveys).
<b>Thus a distinct historiographical mode developed in the 18th Century, which the authors label as the Karanam historiography, within a cultural ecology which distinguishes the historical from the non-historical text. Written in prose by a new middle level elite literati, they focus retrospectively on the great Telengana state of the Kakatiyas and the trans-regional state of Vijayanagar, marking a continuous collective historical memory reworked in the Karanam vision of the past.</b> Starting from the Prataparudra caritramu of Ekamranatha (16th Century) it progresses through the bardic Kumara Ramuni Katha on the Kampili rulers, culminating in the more sophisticated texts of the Vijayanagara-Nayaka courtly style, like the Rayavacakamu (17th Century) and the Krsna Raya Vijayamu (a poem of the 18th Century) reaching its final phase in the Kaifiyats of the early 19th Century Mackenzie Collection, including the more full fledged history, Tanjavuri Andhra Rajula Caritra... Some of these texts also use the Kalajnana mode, "knowledge of time", a notion of temporality different from the sequential linear narrative of typical historical texts i.e., a double movement and recursive loops of time.
Karanam texts reflect the shift in historical awareness. They organise historical memory, its place at the centre of the emerging Nayaka system... They introduce increasing sophistication in their elaborate and reflective narratives, not committed to any mono-generic model. <b>Karanam historiography has striking contrasts with the Perso-Arabic tradition in Arabia, Central Asia and Egypt, in its autonomy, pragmatism and strategic thinking, critical irony, distance from the court (although a part of the administration) not being court chronicles or institutional production of history by official appointees. Even European history of the period was an official or semi-official biography of the state.</b> Historiography had established a significant place for itself in the South Asian ecology of genres. The authors have provided an interesting overview of the development of the Arabic and Persian historiographies and the broad modes or epistemic canopies under which they can be classified. The rich Indo-Persian historiography down to Jaswant Rai's Said nama, belongs to a different milieu related to the Karanam historiography. The Karanam historians borrowed freely from the lexicon of the Indo-Persian administration. <b>Yet, the rise of historiography in south India is independent of either the Indo-Persian tradition or the Western Positivist influence with its "objective" history . </b>
<b>Comparing the Caritra (Telugu, Tamil and Sanskrit), Tarikh (Persian) and Bakhar (Marathi), and giving examples of all of them, the authors uphold the 18th Century as the richest of all centuries in terms of historiographic diversity and depth.</b> It is the sphere of circulation (a public sphere) through paper and palm leaf manuscripts and copies of them, as found in many collections, and the interpenetrating cultures and languages, i.e. Persian and all other vernaculars, that led to this richness of historical writing, in which literati of different ethnicities, religions and stances participated, in order to discuss issues ranging from statecraft to astronomy. History possesses no fixed genre. <b>It is the problem of genre that leads to the confusion between historical and non-historical texts. Central to the authors' judgment, therefore, is texture â framing, intention (who is remembering and why he/she is reconstructing the past), mode of narration, the language and in short, texture which takes us into the warp and weft of a text and demands attention to each of its threads. Thus Kalhana, we are told, was writing a poem ("Rajatarangini"), although he is often hailed as the only historian of early India. Ganga Devi was not "the first historian of South India" and was not writing history but a pseudo-history called historical kavya, a hollow category , as her Madhura Vijayam (of the 1350s) is aimed at eulogising Kampana, not in war but in the harem, for, his conquest of the south for the nascent Vijayanagara state turns out to be analogous to a vigorous raid on the boudoir.</b>
To the historian this work is revealing and insightful in its historiographical reach. More important, it sounds a note of caution to the non-historian who meddles with history.
<b>Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600-1800, Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Permanent Black, Rs. 550.</b>
R. Champakalakshmi is a noted historian who has specialised in South Indian History. She is the author of Tradition, Dissent and Ideology.
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