Telugus abroad and beyond the Telugu lands

Telugu people have long lived beyond the Telugu country. From the 16th century, farmers, soldiers and weavers went south and settled in the Tamil lands.¹ In the 19th and 20th centuries, labourers from the Telugu coast crossed the sea to Burma, Malaya, Mauritius, Natal (in South Africa) and Fiji.²³ Many others went to the tea gardens of Assam.⁴ This page tells where they went, why, and what the records say about them.

About the sources. The emigration records rarely say which language an emigrant spoke. Officials counted “Madrasis”, people of the Madras Presidency, by the port or depot where they took ship, so the district figures are rough.⁵ For the Tamil country this page uses a study by B. Rama Chandra Reddy and R. Natarajan (2010), with the language figures of the 1921 census.⁶⁷

Telugu settlers in the Tamil country

The largest early movement came with the Vijayanagara empire. According to Rama Chandra Reddy and Natarajan, its rulers divided the Tamil country among Telugu nayakas (military chiefs).¹ Telugu farming families followed them, serving as soldiers and then settling on the land.¹ See The Nayaka kingdoms.

They name several groups who came south:¹

Reddis, called Reddiars in the Tamil country, and Kamma and Balija Naidus, who came as warriors and farmers
the Tottiyans, another Telugu farming community
Telugu Brahmins, who served as priests in Vaishnava temples
Komati traders, and weavers such as the Salis
Dalit labourers, who made and mended the leather buckets used to lift water for irrigation¹

The weavers had their own story. The authors write that the Nayaka kings of Madurai, unhappy with the cloth of the local weavers, invited weavers from the Telugu country. In time their descendants outnumbered the Tamil weavers.⁸ Many of the Telugu farmers lived in the upland areas, farming with well water and the monsoon rains.⁸

These families kept Telugu as their home language for about four hundred years.⁹ They kept their family gotras (clan names) and Telugu wedding customs, and most were Vaishnavas who made pilgrimages to Tirupati.⁹¹⁰ After the Telugu and Tamil states were separated in the 1950s, Tamil became the language of government in Tamil Nadu. Many younger people then lost their Telugu.¹⁰¹¹

Telugu beyond its borders in 1921

The census of 1921 showed how far Telugu had spread. It found a considerable number of Telugu speakers in every Tamil district, and even on the west coast. But there were very few Tamil speakers in the Telugu districts.⁷ In every 10,000 people, Telugu was spoken by:⁷

2,227 in Coimbatore, a Tamil district
3,151 in Bellary, where most people spoke Kannada
4,548 in Ganjam, where most spoke Odia, and where Telugu was slowly gaining ground⁷

Across the Bay to Burma

In the 19th century Burma became the main destination for Telugu labourers. In 1881 the census reported that some 40,000 to 50,000 Telugu labourers went to Burma every year from Kakinada (then Cocanada) and other northern ports.² Most came back at the end of the shipping season.² In 1883–84, all the emigrants to Burma from the Madras Presidency came from Ganjam (7,554) and Visakhapatnam (5,105).¹²

The movement kept growing. In 1911 the census found about a quarter of a million Madras emigrants in Burma, and over 200,000 of them were men.⁴ Most came from Ganjam, Visakhapatnam and Godavari.⁴ The rice mills of Burma were said to be run almost entirely by Madras workmen. Burma had also sent nearly a million of them back home.³

By 1931 about 300,000 people of the Madras Presidency lived in Burma.¹³ The census said that Burma had a “profound influence” on the Telugu coastal districts.¹³ It estimated where they came from:¹³

District	People in Burma (estimate, 1931)
Ganjam	85,000
Visakhapatnam (then Vizagapatam)	63,000
Godavari	44,000
Krishna (then Kistna)	15,000

This was about 5 in every 100 people of Ganjam, and 3 in every 100 of Visakhapatnam and Godavari.¹³¹⁴ In Burma they farmed rice fields, worked on the railways, loaded cargo at Rangoon, and worked as servants and clerks.¹³ Few women went: there were only 233 women for every 1,000 men.¹⁴ After anti-Indian riots in 1931, many came home. In May of that year, 3,000 more Indians returned from Rangoon than in May 1930.¹³

Indenture: Mauritius, Natal and beyond

Other emigrants went much farther, as indentured labourers (workers bound by a contract for a fixed term). Under the Indian Emigration Act of 1871, emigration was lawful to many colonies, among them Mauritius, Natal, British Guiana, Trinidad, Jamaica and Fiji.¹⁵ Each colony kept an agent and a depot at Madras. Recruiters brought labourers before a magistrate, who registered their contracts, and then sent them to the depot to wait for a ship.¹⁵¹⁶

Of the British colonies, only Mauritius and Natal actually recruited in the Madras Presidency in 1885.¹⁶ The contract usually ran for five years. A labourer in Mauritius was paid 5 to 7 rupees a month, and those going to Mauritius were given no free passage home.¹⁶ Mauritius already had 141,309 Indian labourers in 1877, more than a third of its people.¹⁷ Natal had 24,459 Indian emigrants at the end of 1882.¹⁷

Many came back. Between 1901 and 1910, 17,250 people returned from Natal, bringing Rs. 24,20,164 with them.³ In the same years 2,659 people came back from Mauritius, and 35 people in Fiji sent money home.³ From 1923 a new Emigration Act controlled all assisted emigration. It allowed it only from certain ports, under officers called Protectors of Emigrants.¹⁸

The tea gardens of Assam

Some labourers went north instead. In 1911 the census counted 36,000 Madras people in Eastern Bengal and Assam. Nearly all came from Ganjam and Visakhapatnam, where the recruiters for the Assam tea gardens looked for workers.⁴ By 1931 there were 57,448 people from Madras in Assam.¹⁴

Here whole families went together.¹⁴ Many were Savaras (Saoras) from the hills of Ganjam and Visakhapatnam.¹⁴ The census explains why their numbers rose in the mid-1920s. The Madras government had enforced forest reservation in the Savara country, and Assam gave them a way out.¹⁴ When the forest laws were eased, fewer Savaras left.¹⁴ See Tribal peoples of the Telugu lands.

What emigration meant at home

Emigration changed life in the villages. The 1911 census noted the large savings brought home from Natal.³ Its writer had heard of labourers from the “depressed classes” who came back with money earned abroad and became substantial farmers.³ Movement within the Presidency mattered too. The Godavari gazetteer of 1907 says that much of the district’s growth in the 1890s came from the large number of people who moved there from Visakhapatnam.¹⁹

Where the sources disagree

How hard was the voyage? The 1911 census quotes a travel writer, S. P. Hyatt, who described labourers bound for Penang packed “like sardines in a tin”, seasick and wretched.³ But the census superintendent wrote that the returned emigrants he had questioned did not speak of the voyage as a hardship.³

Rama Chandra Reddy and Natarajan, “Telugu Migrants of Tamil Region”, KJHS V (2010), p. 96 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Imperial Census of 1881: Operations and Results in the Presidency of Madras, Vol. I (1883), p. 131 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Census of India, 1911, Vol. XII: Madras, Part I (1912), p. 26 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Census of India, 1911, Vol. XII: Madras, Part I (1912), p. 27 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Census of India, 1911, Vol. XII: Madras, Part I, Report (1912), p. 25 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
B. Rama Chandra Reddy and R. Natarajan, “Telugu Migrants of Tamil Region: An Overview”, Kakatiya Journal of Historical Studies, Vol. V (2010), p. 95 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩
Census of India, 1921, Vol. XIII: Madras, Part I, Report (1922), p. 135, distribution of languages by districts (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Rama Chandra Reddy and Natarajan, “Telugu Migrants of Tamil Region”, KJHS V (2010), p. 97 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²
Rama Chandra Reddy and Natarajan, “Telugu Migrants of Tamil Region”, KJHS V (2010), p. 98 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²
Rama Chandra Reddy and Natarajan, “Telugu Migrants of Tamil Region”, KJHS V (2010), p. 99 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²
Rama Chandra Reddy and Natarajan, “Telugu Migrants of Tamil Region”, KJHS V (2010), p. 100 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩
Maclean (ed.), Manual of the Administration, Vol. I (1885), p. 506 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Census of India, 1931, Vol. XIV: Madras, Part I (1932), p. 82 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Census of India, 1931, Vol. XIV: Madras, Part I (1932), p. 83 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
C. D. Maclean (ed.), Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, Vol. I (1885), p. 503, emigration (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Maclean (ed.), Manual of the Administration, Vol. I (1885), p. 505 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Maclean (ed.), Manual of the Administration, Vol. I (1885), p. 504, note on the colonies (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Census of India, 1931, Vol. XIV: Madras, Part I, Report (1932), p. 80 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
F. R. Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers: Godavari, Vol. I (1907), p. 38 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩