Origin+and+Historical+Evolution+of+the+Identity+of+Modern+Telugus

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Origin and Historical Evolution of the

Identity of Modern TelugusBy: Yamada Keiko

Vol XLV No.34 August 21, 2010

The linguistic principle following the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 was framed as

a cultural bond and administrative facilitator for socio-economic prosperity. It has notonly been challenged intermittently but also contested as a unifying concept. From the

historical point of view, the emergence of the current separate Telangana movement of

Andhra Pradesh is testimony to the failure or even death of regional historiography or

history consciousness, out of which the Telugu peoples identity once sought to evolve.The historical understanding of a small group of Telugu intellectuals under colonialism

finally developed into an imagined common historiography of the Telugus as Andhras.

Giving the name Andhra to the Telugu region in the 20th century was arbitrary andwas due to the intervention of a new historical consciousness emerging among Telugu

intellectuals. From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century,

describing the Telugu people as Andhras and the Telugu region as the Andhra regionwas not a simple matter of naming. It was an example of a particular historical

interpretation that was rooted in colonialism and modernisation. The history of a

separate Telangana movement, in a sense, follows a process to bid farewell to the

colonial legacy of a modern intellectual tradition formed around regional language and

history.

The significance of a common language as a major attribute defining a nation or an ethnic

group has come under scrutiny in India. The linguistic principle following the StatesReorganisation Act of 1956 was framed as a cultural bond and administrative facilitator

for socio-economic prosperity. It has been challenged intermittently and contested as a

unifying concept.

Andhra Pradesh was formed by combining Telangana, the eastern part of the former

Hyderabad princely state, with the Andhra state, after the Andhra movement to integrateTelugus into a single political unit. The former Andhra state, the first linguistic state of

post-independence India, was carved out of the Madras Presidency in 1953, following anemotional upheaval triggered by the fast-unto-death of Potti Sriramulu. The violence

following Sriramulus death was responsible for Jawaharlal Nehrus reluctant adoption of

the linguistic principle in the federal system, and for his consent to the formation of thefirst state for Telugu-speaking people of the region. Indeed, it is ironic that Andhra

Pradesh, a larger state combining the regions of Telugu-speaking people from the Madras


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Presidency and the Hyderabad princely state is now facing a demand for a bifurcation and

the creation of a sub-regional state Telangana irrespective of the language.

However, the demand for a separate Telangana was not new and has a long history,beginning with the arguments and disturbances against the initial merger of the

Telangana region with the Andhra state before the Reorganisation Act came into force.Except when violence swept across the Telangana region during 1968 and 1969 for a

separate state, it remained a forgotten issue. In 1972, another movement for a separateAndhra state (The Jai Andhra Movement) erupted but ended when presidents rule was

imposed in 1973.

In all the debates on Telangana, the main focus is on socio-economic issues like thebackwardness of the region, the coastal peoples dominance in employment, and overall

indifference towards development on the part of politicians and administrators ever since

the birth of the state. All these would have been solved, it was assumed, if the safeguards

spelt out under the Mulki agreement had been implemented. However, that did not

happen. The key reason behind the emergence of the current separate Telanganamovement cannot be solely attributed to the failure of the linguistic principle to unite

people. From the historical point of view, it is a crucial testimony to the failure or evendeath of a regional historiography or history consciousness, out of which the Telugu

peoples identity once sought to evolve. In this paper, we will see how the historical

understanding of a small group of Telugu intellectuals under colonialism finallydeveloped into an imagined common historiography of the Telugus as Andhras. We will

also refer to the potential that the terminology Telangana once had but is now lost and

forgotten. The history of a separate Telangana movement is, in a sense, following the

process to bid farewell to the colonial legacy of a modern intellectual tradition formedaround a regional language and history.

Language Domains and Linguistic States 1A name is not just a noun. It appropriates the past and the future to the extent that its

connotation allows it to. Therefore, the act of naming, as well as its selection from among

options, is a political element worthy of historical debate. Andhra in contemporaryusage is first of all a place name, such as Andhra Pradesh in a broad sense, or in a narrow

sense the Krishna-Godavari basin that is commonly regarded as the heartland of Telugu

culture. So when one says he is a Andhra he is considered to be from the coastal areabut not from Telangana. Applying the word Andhra to Telugu people at large is an

unusual practice, but was not unusual in history. A dynastic tract did not have to care for

the geographical distribution of languages, and so from the time of the ancientSatavahanas to the British period, the Telugu-speaking area was either ruled by bigger

dynasties or divided into smaller kingdoms. Even the medieval Kakatiyas, who covered

relatively the territory closest to Andhra Pradesh, ruled not more than two-thirds of

Andhra Pradesh.1 In that sense, todays Andhra Pradesh is a rare political unit demarcatedoverall by language boundaries, and the origin of such an idea cannot be traced back to

the pre-British period. Moreover, it seems to be almost the consensus among scholars that


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the coincidence between language and political domains as well as peoples aspiration is

a modern phenomenon in general.2

Thus, the viewpoint that the linguistic states are, after all, fictitious apparatus lacking anyhistorically substantial socio-economic foundation is often expressed by scholars.3

However, in the writers view such seemingly resolute opinions may enclose questionsabout the important issue of language in history that are still left unanswered. In fact,

even though major political boundaries could be drawn irrespective of languagedistribution, the reverse does not always seem to be so. To what extent the geography of

actual languages is cut from or coincides with any dimensions of political, economic

and social reality is an issue that has not yet been probed in depth. We need to cite M NSrinivas here to remember that the geographical distribution of dominant castes

corresponds, though roughly, to that of local languages.4 Not only dominant castes but

many castes are so aligned with their languages that they are often recognised elsewhereby the names of these languages. For example, Kamma or Reddi are recognised as

Telugu castes in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka even hundreds of years after migration, and

they often speak Telugu at home. This is more so in the case of the brahmins and the rich,since probably they tend to maintain old marriage networks that would easily help them

to preserve their mother tongue. So, since the caste, language and marriage networks

are related to one another, it is natural to presume that the language domain is an

indicator of certain socio-economic dimensions of peoples lives.

Language, after all, is not a self-contained autistic culture but a social system.

Interestingly, Bh Krishnamurti, in his linguistic study of Telugu agricultural words and

their isoglosses, found the correlation between the formation of dialects and the dynastic

tracts of the past.5 This may be applied to individual languages also. In spite of that, thereason why linguistic states appear to be an ineffective institution is that the political

economy within a states boundary is different from its language domain. Moreover, it isnot as if the language has nothing to do with the states socio-economy or politics (in factit does) but that it only represents a dimension, like religion or jati, among the many

which compose the multilayered structure of peoples lives. Even the states boundary is

one of these whether or not it is linguistic in nature.

The Relation between Andhra and Telugu 2It would be worth reviewing at this point of time the historical formation of the Telugusand also what has been said so far. All students learn that Dravidians migrated from

north-west India upon the precedent Austro-Asian inhabitants. These proto-Dravidians

are said to have been ramified between pre-Telugu and the rest around the 11th centuryBC somewhere in the Deccan.6 Next is the Ashoka edict of Erragudi village of the third

century BC, the first written evidence. Since there are regional variations of the Ashokan

Prakrit, some elements of the local language must have been reflected in the Erragudi

Prakrit, too. However, the distinct local characteristics which developed into Teluguappeared much later than Ashoka, and some peculiar names of places and persons are

found in Prakrit inscriptions since the second century AD. Besides, according to the

phonological analysis of the regional variations of the past tense of Telugu, it is


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concluded that two out of the three regional dialects today were the later developments

out of the other one.7 We do not know much about this period, but this may suggest that

the earliest group of Telugu people was small and linguistically homogeneous and itsinfluence spread over todays Telugu region much later. Or that there were some

unknown and lost Telugu groups out of which only one survived for some reason and its

linguistic culture began to spread from a certain point of time.

The oldest evidence directly referring to the existence of a distinct local language is theBrihat Katha, written down from the oral tradition sometime between the third and

seventh century AD. Unfortunately, the original version was lost for good, and what we

have now are its Sanskrit renderings of a much later period which have undergone manyeditions and revisions, called the Katha Sarit Sagara. The stories in Katha Sarit Sagara

may not be the same as those in theBrihat Katha,but how the legendary Satavahana king

became the first editor of the book was explained in Katha Sarit Sagara. The importantreference here is the names of four local languages at the time of the Satavahana king.

These are Sanskrit, Prakrit, Paishachi and Desi. The original Brihat Katha was said to

have been written in Paishachi, a kind of Prakrit.

8

So, since the former three have beenIndo-European languages, only the last one, Desi, indicates an indigenous Dravidian

language, a kind of ancient Telugu. Except the Katha Sarit Sagara, the first reference

seems to be by Hsuan-tsang in the seventh century, which says that the language as well

as its sound is different from those of central India but the script rule is almost the same.9

After going through the period of fragmental inscription evidences, we come across the

first Telugu classic in the 11th century, Nannayas Andhra Mahabharatam. Interestingly,

Nannayas Telugu was archaic even when it was being written, and the literal language of

the upper class is supposed to have diverged from the spoken language five or sixcenturies before Nannaya,10 that is, the fifth to sixth century. Andhra during this period, i

e, from the fall of the Satavahanas and the emergence of the eastern Chalukyas, wasgenerally considered to be in a political jumble, and in economic decline and the castehierarchy with the dominance of the brahmins in villages was taking form.11 So, the

development of the literary tradition of the upper class out of the rest must have related

to such social stratification. But not only that, this bifurcation is important when we traceback the relation between the two words, Andhra and Telugu.

The first one to appear in the sources is Andhra, not Telugu. The oldest evidence is

in theAitareya Brahmana of Rg Veda, which says that Visvamitra cursed his 50 sons to

live on the borders of the Aryan settlements, one of which was inhabited by the Andhratribe. Such references to tribal Andhra appear in epics and the Puranas also. However, if

we remember the aforesaid opinion that the distinct features of local language started

appearing only after the second century AD, no one can be sure of the concrete relationbetween the Andhra tribe and the Telugu language. In the first century AD, Pliny, citing

from Megasthenes of the fourth century BC, wrote that the Andhras were independent

and militarily very powerful. The Andhras in Plinys reference are legendary, but it is

well known that the Andhrabritiya in the Puranas was found to be the same as theSatavahana in the inscriptions. Hanumantha Rao opined that the Andhras, on the

analogy of Aryavarta, lent their originally tribal name to the land in which they had


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settled.12 G N Reddi also wrote that Andhra was the tribal name that turned out to have

been applied to the name of its region.13 It is noteworthy that Hsuan-tsang also described

the eastern Chalukyas under the name of the Andhra country, and so Andhra asdesignating a region, or dynasty, seems to have prevailed in the seventh century.14

As far as the ancient usage of Andhra was concerned, except for some Greek andChinese sources mentioned earlier, it was always found in Sanskrit sources either in the

form of literature or inscriptions. One may argue that this is because it is genuinely aSanskrit word used by orthodox brahmins. Both the pioneers of modern Telugu studies, C

P Brown and K Viresalingam also classified it as such.15 However, more importantly, the

proper noun of this particular local language before Nannaya is not known, except forDesi inKatha Sarit Sagara, and thus the language was nameless in the records. But, as

a result, the meaning of Andhra changed and it was finally used to signify the

indigenous language. According to R Caldwell, the first evidence of Andhra being usedfor the local Dravidian language was by Kumarila-bhatta in the seventh century who

referred to Andhra-Dravida Bhasha.16 Then in the 11th century, Nannaya wrote in the

Andhra Mahabharatam, the name of the local language for the first time in nativeterminology in two spellings, Tenungu and Tenugu. However, he also wrote Andhra

Bhasha in inscriptions.17 And from the 11th century onwards Andhra appeared as the

language name also. So, summing up, Andhra was a Sanskrit word for a tribe in the

beginning, next applied to its region or dynasty, and then to the local language after the11th century.

Compared to Andhra, Telugu made an appearance much later. Although Nannaya

wrote Tenungu and Tenugu, the honour of being the first user of the exact spelling of

todays Telugu goes to the second author of Andhra Mahabharatam, Tikkana, in the13th century. He, in fact used three nouns, Telugu, Tenungu, and Telungu.

According to two Telugu phonological rules, (i) n drops, and (ii) n and l areinterchangeable, Tenungu and Telungu are supposed to be the oldest forms andchanged into Telugu and Tenugu later. If we consider the previous argument that

Nannayas language was already archaic, these words must have been used colloquially

much before. And all these four varieties: Tenungu, Tenugu, Telungu andTelugu always meant the language, unlike Andhra that underwent semantic changes.

So, now we can conclude that at least by the 11th century there were two vocabulary

groups for the local language name. One is the Sanskrit Andhra group, and the other isthe non-Sanskrit group with Tenungu, Telugu and so on. The former was used by

brahmins and the latter by others, mostly non-brahmins. C Talbot maintains that

Telugu and Andhra came to be used interchangeably after the 11th century.18 Her

observation is explained by the fact that the semantic gap between them must havebecome narrower as Andhra came to be used more and more for the Telugu language.

The question now is, ever since Andhra came to mean the Telugu language, did its

previous meaning of tribe or region survive or not. In other words, did people continue to

indicate or find in the word Andhra any meanings of tribe and region. In my opinion, itis doubtful that such ancient usage survived for long after the 11th century.


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Andhra, Telugu and Telingana in the 19th Century 3As far as the authors study goes, Orientalists recognised Andhra simply as a Sanskrit

name of the Telugu language and nothing else. For example, C P Brown wrote that

Andhram is the Sanskrit name for Telugu,19 and A D Campbell also explained

Gentoo (the European name for Telugu) thus:

(Gentoo) is the Andhra of Sanskrit authors, and, in the country where it is spoken, is

known by the name of the Trilinga, Telinga, Teloogoo, or Tenoogoo.20

In fact, Orientalists knew well that in ancient times Andhra meant region too. However,Campbell wrote that the ancient Telugu region was composed of two subdivisions, the

northern Kalinga and the southern Andhra.21 The view that Andhra was only a part of the

Telugu region was accepted by R Caldwell also, and he explained how a regional name

changed into the language name later. He said that the people in Andhra had progressedmore than their counterparts in Kalinga and therefore Sanskrit writers gave the name to

the language commonly spoken in both areas.

22

Though different from these, anotherinstance is that in the Godavari region Telugu brahmins were called Andhras so as todistinguish them from other brahmins.23 From these descriptions, we learn that Andhra

was not the name of a region or a people. It is also worth recollecting that the first

collected works of Telugu literature written by K Viresalingam was the History ofAndhra Poets (aandhra kavula caritram), and in that Andhra meant only the Telugu

language.

However, this Sanskrit name was neglected by Oriental linguists. They recognised only

Telugu as the language name, and also gathered other variations of it that were not seenin Nannaya and Tikkana. For example, Campbell mentioned Telinga and Trilinga as

cited above, and Caldwell wrote Telinga and Tailinga adding to Telungu,Tenugu and Tenungu.24 Brown maintained that Tailinga and Telinga were usedby Muslims and those of unknown origin.25 Caldwell also said that the name has been

corrupted still further by Muslims and foreigners.26 As for the spelling, a French

missionary in the 18th century wrote Telougou, Talenga, etc.27 Campbell spelled it as

Teloogoo. Sometime later, Brown, Caldwell and others used the same spelling currenttoday, i e, Telugu. Why they chose only Telugu and discarded other options is not

known. The problem here is not that they dismissed Telinga or Tenugu, but that they

did not select Andhra. One may guess that this was so because Telugu is a Teluguword, not Sanskrit, and majority of the people were Telugu speakers, not Sanskrit users.

This may be correct, but such a selection was presumed by some to impose the Dravida

label not only on the language but also on the racial origin of the people which theyfound distressing.

As for the name of regions, colonial rulers definitely never considered that language was

relevant to regional categorisation. Regions were basically revenue units, their boundaries

drawn according to the time of the annexation. Thus, in the Madras Presidency, suchdivisions like Tamil, Kannada and so on were not enforced, and the zamindari and

ryotwari distinctions came first. In the Telugu area also, after zamindari and ryotwari


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divisions, ryotwari was subdivided into Circar and Ceded districts, and then the district

and taluk followed. Circar is the coastal deltaic region given to the British by the Nizam

of Hyderabad, and its name, meaning the land of the Nizam, was originally used by theFrench who ruled the area earlier and was adopted by the British later. The Ceded

districts, known as Ralayaseema today, is southern dry inland area literally ceded by

the Nizam after Circar. However, though the British rulers did not think that the languagedomain was administratively useful, Telugus themselves seem to have had their own

vocabularies to denote their linguistic region at large. For example, Campbell wrote that

the Telugu country was known by the name of Modogalingum or Trilingam.28 Caldwellalso explained that the overall Telugu-speaking region was called Telingana:

Telugu is spoken all along the eastern coast of the Peninsula, from the neighbourhood of

Pulicat, where it supersedes Tamil, to Chicacole, where it begins to yield to the Oriya,

and inland it prevails as far as the eastern boundary of the Maratha country and Mysore,including within its range the Ceded districts and Karnul, a considerable part of the

territories of the Nizam, or the Hyderabad country, and a portion of the Nagpur country

and Gondvana. The district thus described was called Telingana by the Muhammedans.

29

The word Telingana seems to be widely recognised as the name of the Telugu region,and so simple descriptions such as Telinganaa, that is Telugu region are seen in the

administrative records also.30 Since Telingana and Telinga, Trilinga, Telinga,

Tailinga and Telugu sound similar, naturally the controversy over their etymologiesarose. Caldwell wrote at length to show that Telugu came from Trilinga, but it was

not tri-linga (three lingas) as was insisted by the Telugu pundits and denied by Brown.

It was tri-kalinga (three regions of Kalinga).31

The focus of this paper is not to argue about the derivation of these words. However,

there are two key points to be examined. First, even before the British reign began, somevocabularies of the locals meaning Telugu-speaking region at large were already in

existence, and Telingana was one of them. Second, whatever the relation may bebetween Telingana and Telugu, or Telugu and Trilinga, and whatever the

sources may say about the ancient origin of these words, throughout the 19th century,

peoples practice of uttering Telingana was considered to be associated with Muslims

as cited in the above instances. The latter point in fact needs further verification. Myinference is that although it is commonly agreed that after the Circar and Ceded districts

were given away to the British the remaining region left in the hands of the Nizam was

Telangana, the semantic possibility of this word was actually much wider, and as amatter of choice the more adequate and satisfactory proper noun for the overall Telugu

region must have been Telingana or even Telangana, rather than Andhra. So giving

the name Andhra overall to the Telugu region in the 20th century was arbitrary and wasdue to the intervention of a new historical consciousness emerging among the Telugu

intellectuals.

Andhra and Andhras 4


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The critical cause for the modern revival of the word Andhra was the rediscovery of

ancient history that many educated Telugus encountered through Orientalists narratives,

and that uncovered information that was unknown till then. The first one is the existenceof the ancient Andhra tribe. The individual episodes in Aitareya Brahmana in Rg Veda

were obviously not known before the Orientalists made them public. The second one is

the existence of the Andhra dynasty written in the Puranas and particularly itsimpressive description by the Greeks as a strong and independent kingdom comparable

with the Maurya dynasty to G the extent that prominent foreigners wrote about it.Studies by R Bhandarkar and others on the Satavahanas found that the Andhras ruled

widely from Coromandel to Arabian Sea and traded with the Roman Empire at its zenith.The third one is the Buddhist culture. The series of discoveries in Amaravati on the bank

of lower Krishna by Mackenzie from the end of the 18th century was described by G

Fergusson as the biggest discovery next only to Princeps deciphering of the Ashokascripts.32 Extensive archaeological excavations revealed that the coastal region was once

the centre of Buddhism and produced the unique tradition of art, namely the Andhra

school before the Gandhara school. The neighbouring Nagarjunakonda was perceived as

the place where Nagarjuna, the giant of Madhyamika Mahayana of Buddhism, wasactive. These discoveries in history reflect the values of Orientalists in those days. They

had a strong interest in big dynasties or empires, their links with Europe (Greece and

Roma), and high appreciation for Buddhism.

By the time this history prevailed among the educated, the word Andhra came to be

seen as a historical domain of much gravity, not just a simple Sanskrit alternation of

Telugu language. Thus, Bhandarkar wrote in his Early History of the Dekkan:

The Andhras, who in these days are identified with the Telugu people, lived about themouth of the Godavari or perhaps farther to the north.33

This sentence shows that two new historical interpretations had emerged by his time.

First, the Telugus were not merely Telugu speakers but were the Andhras who

descended from glorious Andhra ancestors. And second, such Andhras originallyinhabited the coastal region and then spread all over. Such definition of the Telugus as

the Andhras was seen in other authentic Indian history at the beginning of the 20th

century, too. For example, V A Smith gave a much clearer picture of the Andhras in his

Ancient History of India in 1904:

In the days of Chandragupta Maurya and Megasthenes, the Andhra nation, a Dravidian

people, now represented by the large population speaking the Telugu language, occupied

the deltas of the Godavari and Krishna (Kistna) rivers on the eastern side of India, wasreputed to possess a military force second only that at the command of the king of the

Prasii, Chandragupta Maurya.34

Descriptions such as these were quickly adopted by the Telugus, and cited with much

appreciation in their historiographies. The most notable examples were two pioneeringworks, theHindu Desa Katha Samgraha (The Brief History of India) by Kommaraju

Venkata Lakshmana Rao, the first historiography of India written in Telugu, and the


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other, Andhrula Charitram (The History of the Andhras) by Chilukuri Virabhadra Rao,

the monumental first historiography of the Telugu region in the Telugu language by a T-

elugu historian.35 K V Lakshmana Rao is known as the father of modern education inTelugu, since he propagated the need for modern science and history education in

Telugu. He started the publishing enterprise Vignana Chandrika Mandali, and became its

chief editor. Its first publication was the first volume of his book in 1907. C VirabhadraRao was his assistant and published the first volume of his Andhrula Charitram from

Vignana Chandrika Mandali in 1910. Lakshmana Rao contributed the preface which

says:

Andhrulu (the Andhra people) in ancient times enjoyed glory. But those who dont havehistory knowledge mistook thatAndhrulu did not have glorious past, and created the

theory that Andhrulu came from Maharashtra thinking that the glory would increase by

mixing Maharashtra connection! However, this book clarifies that we do not need suchweak state of mind as making effort to borrow others name, that Andhrulu were not born

from the Maharashtrians but actually Maharashtrians might have been born from

Andhrulu, that once in ancient times country flourished with high civilisation andintellectual prosperity, and thatAndhrulu were not inferior people to others.36

Needless to say, the Andhrulu (the Andhra people) in this context were not just the

Telugu speakers, but a people who had a glorious history as Andhras. C Virabhadra Rao

in his introductory remarks mentioned his great gratitude to the Orientalist historians andacknowledged as follows:

Our literatures have many difficulties to know the true history. Our ancestor rajas did not

leave us the methods necessary to understand the accurate history. In their times, though

they wrote inscription to announce their laws, conducts, religions, powers and conquest

and erected stone pillars or held metal inscriptions, all of them ruined as time goes by,and were just left surrounded by fire without anybody seeing. To Gods mercy, recently

we came under the British rule, and our rulers spend all money and pain for useful worksto find out our Indian ancient history and discovered. Therefore to our rulers and truth-

pursuer western scholars, we, asAndhrulu, have to express our special gratitude. Only by

their unrelenting hard works the excellence of our ancientAndhrulu was revealed.37

So, it is clear that the concept of a linguistic nation, the Telugus who are the realdescendents of ancient Andhras and who spread from their homeland Godavari-Krishna

basin, built a glorious past and became the present Telugus, is the result of colonial

learning of modern scholarship. In fact, there was no need to believe that the Telugus had

spread from the coastal region, since in those days linguists estimated that the Dravidianspossibly came from the north.38 Lakshmana Rao and Virabhadra Rao were familiar with

these works but they were obsessed with the idea that the coastal region was the citadel of

the Telugus since the history was based there. Their learning was not totally passive but itwas selective. From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century,

describing the Telugu people as Andhras and the Telugu region as the Andhra region was

not a simple matter of naming. It was an example of a particular historical interpretationthat was rooted in colonialism and modernisation.


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Social Change and Nationalism 5In writing popular regional history, Telugu intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th

century were responsible for inducing people to pay special attention to two theories. The

first one is, as already explained, was that the coastal region is the homeland of the

Telugus. The Orientalists vision that the coastal region is the centre was very muchwelcome since, from the end of the 19th century, the Niyogis, whose population was

concentrated in the Krishna-Godavari delta, emerged as modern local leaders backed byEnglish education and socio-economic development of the deltaic region. Niyogi is a

major sub-caste of brahmins whose traditional occupation was the village secretary, but

they ranked below the Vaidikis who were eligible to learn Sanskrit. As they stayed away

from Sanskrit learning and orthodox Hindu rituals, they turned to modern educationfaster and led and participated in modern literature movements and socio-religious reform

movements, as typically seen in K Viresalingams case. Some of them also started

wearing the sacred thread, performing pujas instead of inviting the Vaidikis, and learningSanskrit and the Vedas. The Niyogi caste association is the first such association in the

Telugu region, and was organised in 1903 to demand Hindu religious rights.

39

The rise of the Niyogis had much to do with that of other groups. Kaleswara Rao wroteOne of them was a merchant group. For example, A about the Komatis who adopted

Hindu rituals, but when the Vaidikis refused to perform these rituals for them, theNiyogis performed them instead.40 The Pyda, a rich Komati, was also known as one of K

Viresalingams patrons. Another group was that of the zamindars. They were major

providers of higher education since the modern education in Telugu region was backward

compared to other parts of Madras Presidency, and the colleges founded by theVizianagaram, Pithapuram and Bobbili rajas were very reputed. They were also active in

running literal and cultural salons and publishing, like the Andhra Sahitya Parishad and

Vignana Chandrika Mandali. The Niyogis were the most active in such activities. Thethird group, the rich peasants, was the most important. The construction of anicut and

irrigation facilities on both sides of the Godavari and Krishna rivers and also

infrastructure like roads and railways brought rapid agricultural and commercialdevelopment in the delta since the 1880s, and as a Washbrooks A consequence, asubstantial middle peasantry, in D words, emerged.41 They started conducting

conferences and meetings to discuss agricultural problems like irrigation or increase of

revenue from the 1890s, and when they inaugurated the first district conference, KrishnaMandala Sabha, in 1892, a Niyogi and also a member of the Indian National Congress,

presided over it.42 Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, new communication

networks centred upon the Niyogis began to take shape. It is symbolic that K

Viresalingam said: Why are there languages? Languages are there for the people tocommunicate!43

The second theory is that the Telugu language is the determinant of peoples

characteristics and therefore its speakers should be under the same political andadministrative unit. In fact, it sounds contradictory to the first one since Niyogis were,

after all, a minority and they would become so all the more if a larger territory was taken

into account. They could have advocated another framework wherein their power would


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function more effectively. Therefore, the fundamental question here is why they had to,

or needed to, imagine the particular linguistic geographical domain, far beyond Circar

and including Ceded districts and Telangana. One may answer this by Viresalingamwhose literal works brought the modern referring to K identity and awakening of theTelugus. However, the problem is that he does not actually seem to have ever appealed

for the Telugu peoples unification or their common identity. He regarded DeshaBhasha just as a convenient medium or tool to take up reformist ideas like widowremarriage. He was in fact not only indifferent to Andhra history, unlike K V

Lakshmana Rao or C Virabhadra Rao, but even antagonistic to the Indian National

Congress and the nationalist movement, which the Andhra movement started in 1913 wasa part of. In my opinion, his legacy to the Telugu peoples identity is richer by way of his

language than through his reform movements or literal activities. That is, in practice he

made the coastal Niyogi dialect the modern standard Telugu. Another possible answer tothe question is the rivalry between the Telugus and the Tamils. Telugus were minorities

in the Madras Presidency and the Tamils benefited more in the fields of education,

transportation, job opportunities and economic development. It is worth remembering

that when the Andhra movement started there were many Telugus who did not agree withthe idea of the united Telugus merely on grounds of the same language.44

That the Telugus were ranked third after Hindi and Bengali speakers and were larger than

Marathi or Tamil speakers was not known till the beginning of the 20th century. The thirdrank was unexpectedly big. In 1911, Andhra Patrika said that Telugus were not so

advanced as Bengalis, Maharashtrians, Gujaratis and the Tamils in spite of their

population.45 The Hindu ran a series of discussions titled Are Telugus (a) Backward

Race?, and in that, the small numbers of Telugu civil officers and the low level ofeducation disproportionate to their population size was lamented.46 All this made it

difficult for them to imagine any categories other than language. Thus, the combination

of population theory and that of history became essential for the identity of the newlyemerging Telugu elites. An example is given below on the issue of employment in the

army. A letter from the Godavari district Conference to the government, demanding the

enlistment of the Telugus for military service said:

The Telugus who inhabited the tract (a) along the east coast of the peninsula from theshores of Chilka Lake to Madras; (b) inland as for as Mysore, the eastern boundaries of

the Maharatta country including the Ceded districts and the Hyderabad dominions; and

(c) a considerable portion of the Central Provinces, are descendents of an ancient peoplewith a glorious past. Their ancestors were the founders and rulers of the famous Andhra

Empire, which, immediately after the extinction of the Mauryan dynasty, held undisputed

sway over the greater portion of India. They were an enterprising people, havingestablished colonies in several islands of the Eastern Archipelago. They had thus

established a reputation and left traces of their civilisation both within and without the

boundaries of India.47

To this problem, Konda Venkatappayya appealed in the third Andhra Maha Sabhasession in 1915 as below:


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Look at the ancient Andhra Kingdom, the Kakatiya state, Chalukya dynasty, the never-to-

be-forgotten empire of Vizayanagar and the principalities of the Velamas, Naiks and

Reddis, established by boundless Andhra valour, and we that are the descendants of suchAndhras, are, forsooth, unfit for the armyWhat could be more humiliating to us than

this? If you are victorious, you will enjoy happiness here. Bear in mind that word of

Lord Krishna. Remember to the valour of the ancient Andhras, Maintain yourself respect.Wash away the unmerited slur on the honour of the Andhra country.48

Such theorisation as above has to be taken in the context of nationalism. Contrary to the

imagined unification of the Telugus, from the end of the 19th century the sharp socio--

economic divides in the regions were becoming apparent. Not only that the Circarbecame affluent, but in the Ceded districts, for example, transportation led to Madras

rather than Circar, so that peoples life in the Ceded districts was linked more with the

Tamils. Telangana was under a different government, the Nizam, and modernisationlagged behind. Since people were aware of it, the idea of united Telugus could be easily

intertwined with the national movement and reinterpreted in its context. The presidency

boundaries were drawn from colonial considerations and were thus to be rejected by thecolonised. Thus Konda Venkatappayya, the father of the Andhra movement, said:

The Andhra country, which was comparatively a single unit, with common history and

tradition, with common customs and usages, common language and literature and under

the supremacy of one common king was, after the advent of Mahomedan rule, spilt upinto divisions and forcibly placed under different Muslim governments. And when the

British established their power in the South, they gradually extended their territories by

compelling the Navabs to surrender one territory after another, till the whole of the

Madras Presidency came under their control. Thus, new acquisitions, one after another,were added on to old possessions and placed under one single administration without any

regard to ethnological, linguistic, historical, or geographical considerations. Thus theterritory under Madras government is a conglomerate of races and languages, of customsand traditions, and a combination prejudicial to the development of people living in it.49

Here, along with the British rule the Muslim government was also referred to as

responsible for dividing the Telugus. This connotation became significant later in the

Telangana armed struggle and the Vishalandhra movement from the end of the 1940swhen the annexation of the Hyderabad princely state turned into reality.

Conclusions

The memory of the Andhra movement and the existence of the state crowned with the

name Andhra leads many to presume that linguistic identity is self-evident beyond anydoubt. But such an idea not only has a long history with much politics and social change

behind it, but it has also been challenged and contested. In the 1920s, even among those

from the Krishna-Godavari delta, some zamindars remained members of the Justice Partyand did not welcome the idea of a separate Andhra state. In the Ceded districts, the

Rayalaseema Maha Sabha was formed in 1933-34 by those who were against joining the

Andhra province. They advocated their own regional history different from Andhra and


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took up Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagar as a symbol. The reconciliation of their interests

continued till the Sri Bagh Pact was inked in 1936. In case of Telangana, it was even

more difficult since the discourse of common historical heritage was not at allconvincing.

The claim for a united Telugu state in the beginning of the 20th century was reasonable,for the Niyogis assumed hegemony over other surrounding regions socio-politically and

intellectually through a common language and history. However, the people whosubstantially benefited from the geographical framework of linguistic regions were in fact

not the Niyogis, but the Kammas who later came up as the most powerful community in

the state politics and economy, and challenged the Niyogis leadership from the 1920s. 50

Since the knowledge of history and the attachment to region and language is not acquired

but needs to be learnt, the spread of mass education, preferably in regional languages,

was very much required. Second and more crucially, people had to benefit from such

learning not only intellectually but socio-economically as well. The growing separate

Telangana movement proves that both these needs were not fulfilled. The history ofAndhra Pradesh is the history of a united Telugus, but at the same time it is also the

process of disuniting them, something that the once hopeful historiography had nevermeant to do.

Notes

1 C Talbot, Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval

Andhra, Oxford University Press, 2001, p 26.

2 For example, B Anderson,Imagined Community: Reflections on the Origin and Spread

of Nationalism, London, 1983.

3 For example, see D Ludden, Spectres of Agrarian Territory in Southern India, The

Indian Economic and Social History Review, 233-57. 39, (2 and 3), 2002, pp4 M N Srinivas, Caste in Modern India and Other Essays (Bombay: Asia Publishing

House), 1962.

5 Bh Krishnamurti, Language, Education and Society 86-105. (New Delhi: SagePublications), 1998, pp

6 Bh Krishnamurti, The Dravidian Languages, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp501-02.i, Language, p 111.

7 Bh Krishnamurti, Language, p 111.

8 R Caldwell,A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of

Languages, 1856, rept (New Delhi: Oriental Books), 1974, p 5.


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9 Hsuan-tsang, Ta Tang Hsiy Chi (translated into Japanese and annotation by Mizutani

Shinjo), 3 (Tokyo: Heibonsha), 1999, p 248.

10 Bh Krishnamurti, Language, pp 202-04.

11 B S L Hanumantha Rao, Socio-Cultural History of Ancient and Medieval Andhra,Telugu University, Hyderabad, 1995, pp 45-50.

12 Ibid, p 58.

13 G N Reddi, Aandhra, Tenugu, Telugu in Bh Krishnamurti, Telugu Bhaasha Caritra

(in Telugu) (Hyderabad: Telugu Academy), 1995, pp 3-4.

14 Hsuan-tsang, op cit.

15 C P Brown, Dictionary of Telugu English, 2nd (ed.), New Edition Thoroughly

Revised and Brought upto Date by M Venkata Ratnam, W H Campbell and Rao BahadurK Veerasalingam, 1903, rept (New Delhi: Asian 106. Educational Services), 1983, p16 R Caldwell, op cit, p 27.

17 G N Reddi, op cit, p 4.

18 C Talbot, op cit, p 36.

19 C P Brown, op cit, p 106.

20 A D Campbell, A Grammar of the Teloogoo Language Commonly Termed theGentooi. , 1849, rept (New Delhi: Asian Educational Service), 1991, p21 Ibid, p vii.

22 R Caldwell, op cit, p 27.

23 F R Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers: Godavari, 1915, rept (New Delhi:

Asian Educational Service), 2000, p 51.

24 R Caldwell, Op cit, p 27.

25 C P Brown, Essays on the Language and Literature of the Telugus, Madras, 1840, rept(New Delhi: Asian Educational Service), 1991, p 1.


27 For example, Grammaire Pour Apprendre La Langue Talenga, by French Jesuit

Missionary, written about 1720-30.


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28 A D Campbell, op cit, p vii.


30 For example, see A C John Boswell, Manual of the Nellore District in the Presidency

of Madras, Madras, 1873, p 436.

31 R Caldwell, op cit, pp 27-29.

32 G Furgusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, 2nd (ed.), London, 1873, Introduction.

33 R G Bhandarkar, Early History of the Dekkan, Down to the Mahomedan Conquest,

2nd (ed.), 1895, rept (New Delhi: Asian Educational Service), 1981, p 6.

34 V A Smith, The Early History of India, from 600 BC to the Muhammadan Conquest,Oxford University Press, 1904, p 206.

35 K V Lakshmana Rao, Hindu Desa Katha Samgraha (Brief History of India), (in

Telugu), Madras: Vignana Chandrika Mandali, 1(1907), 2(1908). C Virabhadra Rao,

Aandhrula Caritram, (in Telugu), Madras: Vignana Chandrika Mandali, 1(1910),2(1912), 3(1916), 5(1936).

36 C Virabhadra Rao, op cit, pp 3-4.

37 Ibid, pp 9-10.

38 R Caldwell, op cit, pp 106-09.

39 Krishna Patrika (in Telugu), 17 June, 1916.

40 A Kaleswara Rao, Naa Jiivita Katha 24-25. (in Telugu) (Vijayawada: Andhra GrandaMandali), 1959, pp

41 D A Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics, The Madras Presidency,1870-1920 (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House), 1976, pp 90-96.

42 K V Narayana Rao, The Emergence of Andhra Pradesh 10-11. (Bombay: PopularPrakashan), 1973, pp

43 K Viresalingam, Sweeya Caritra Madas, 1915, rept (Vijayawada: Vishalandhra),

1990, p 125. (in Telugu), 2,44 For example, B P Sitaramayya (ed.), For and Against the Andhra Province,

Machilipatnam, 1913.

45 Andhra Patrika, Ugadi Sanchika (in Telugu), 1910, pp 37-41.


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46 The Hindu, 15 April 1911 in Narayana (1973), pp 22-23.

47 Letter from the Godavari District Conference to the Government of India, 3 June

1912 in G V Subbha Rao, compiled by, History of Andhra Movement (Andhra Region),Vol 1, The Committee of History of Andhra Movement, Hyderabad, 1982, pp 119-20.

48 K Venkatappayya (ed.), Report of the Third Andhra Conference, Guntur, 1915, p 19.

49 K Venkatappayya, The Andhra Movement, Guntur: The Andhra Maha Sabha, 1938, p

12.

50 Yamada Keiko, Politics and Representation of Caste Identity in RegionalHistoriography: A Case Study of Kammas in Andhra in The Indian Economic and

Social History Review, 353-80. 45, 3, 2008, ppYamada Keiko ([email protected]) is with the Faculty of

Humanities, Ibaraki University, Japan.

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