¹ Space has been theorized by Barbara Harriss-White as a ‘social structure of accumulation’, along with caste, class, gender, and religion (Harriss-White, B., 2003, India working: Essays on society and economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 200)Google Scholar. The regionalization of caste has also been studied, but in a rather descriptive way, by simply ‘mapping’ caste regions (Schwartzberg, J., 1968, ‘Caste regions of the North Indian plain’, in Singer, M., Cohn, B. (eds), Structure and change in Indian society, American Folklore Society, Philadelphia, pp. 81–113)Google Scholar.

² Di Méo, G., 1998, ‘De l'espace aux territoires: éléments pour une archéologie des concepts fondamentaux de la géographie’, L'information géographique, 3, 99–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 107.

³ Srinivas, M. N., 1967, Social change in modern India, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, p. 10Google Scholar.

⁴ The Shudras comprise mostly agricultural and service castes or jatis, working for the three superior ‘orders’ or varnas: the Brahmins (traditionally priests), the Kshatriyas (warriors), and the Vaishyas (merchants). Their status is however higher than that of the ‘Untouchables’, who were considered outcaste or avarna.

⁵ In rural areas: Godavarru village (Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh), Sriram Sagar dam command area (Nizamabad district of Telangana), Tungabhadra irrigated belt (Bellary and Raichur districts of Karnataka). In urban areas: Vijayawada and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana, Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.

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⁷ Guha, S., 2013, Beyond caste: Identity and power in South Asia, past and present, Brill, LeidenCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁹ Stein, B., 1980, Peasant state and society in medieval South India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, p. 104Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Srinivas, Social change in modern India, p. 11.

¹¹ Mayer, A., 1960, Caste and kinship in Central India: A village and its region, Routledge and Kegan Paul, LondonGoogle Scholar.

¹² Mendelsohn, O., 1993, ‘The transformation of authority in rural India’, Modern Asian Studies, 27 (4), 805–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Jeffrey, C., 2001, ‘“A fist is stronger than five fingers”: Caste and dominance in rural North India’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 26 (2), 217–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 219.

¹⁴ Mendelsohn, ‘The transformation of authority’, pp. 824–5.

¹⁵ Jeffrey, ‘“A fist is stronger than five fingers”’, p. 221.

¹⁶ Sack, R. D., 1986, Human territoriality: Its theory and history, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 1Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 3.

¹⁸ Elden, S., 2010, ‘Land, terrain, territory’, Progress in Human Geography, 34 (6), 799–817CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁰ Talbot, C., 2001, Precolonial India in practice: Society, region and identity in medieval Andhra, Oxford University Press, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²² Stein, Peasant state and society, p. 395.

²³ Fukazawa, H., 1998, The medieval Deccan: Peasants, social systems and states: Sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, Oxford University Press, DelhiGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Frykenberg, R. E., 1965, Guntur District 1788–1848: A history of local influence and central authority in South India, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 22Google Scholar.

²⁵ Satyanarayana, A., 1997, ‘A note on land, caste and the “settler” in Telangana’, in Simhadri, S., Rao, P. L. V. (eds), Telangana. Dimensions of underdevelopment, Centre for Telangana Studies, Hyderabad, 30–4Google Scholar, pp. 31–3.

²⁶ Vasireddy Venkatadri Naidu ‘kept a retinue of several thousand men, 300 horses, 80 elephants, 50 camels . . . . His palaces at Amaravati, Chebrolu, and Chintapalli, his town house in Guntur, and his other residences reflected his prosperity’ (Frykenberg, Guntur District 1788–1848, p. 43).

²⁷ Elliott, C., 1995, ‘Caste and faction among the dominant caste: The Reddis and Kammas of Andhra’, in Kothari, R. (ed.), Caste in Indian politics, Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 129–71Google Scholar, p. 137.

²⁸ Duvvury, N., 1986, ‘Commercial capital and agrarian relations: A study of Guntur tobacco economy’, Economic and Political Weekly, 21 (30), PE 46–57Google Scholar.

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³⁰ Rao, G. N., 1985, ‘Transition from subsistence to commercialised agriculture: A study of Krishna District of Andhra, 1850–1900’, Economic and Political Weekly, 20 (25/26), A 60–9Google Scholar, p. 66.

³¹ ‘Some ryots speculated in land, buying unirrigated land and waiting for it to receive water, a safe gamble since the irrigation could be obtained by bribing government officials’ (Ranga, Economic organisation of Indian villages, p. 37).

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³⁴ Census of India, Madras, 1921, XIII, part 1, p. 128.

³⁵ Chowdary, A brief history of the Kammas, p. 87.

³⁶ Baker, C. J., 1976, The politics of South India, 1920–1937, Vikas Publishing House, DelhiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴⁰ ‘This geographical separation of the two powerful castes had a tribal logic; in any one local area, only one or the other caste group with its patriarch could be dominant. When British tax-collectors came onto scene, they formalized the status quo, extending the sway of leading landholders in each caste over vast zamindari estates’ (Harrison, S., 1956, ‘Caste and the Andhra communists’, American Political Science Review, 50 (2), 378–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 383).

⁴¹ ibid., p. 381.

⁴² Elliott, ‘Caste and faction among the dominant caste’.

⁴³ Sundarayya, P., 1972, Telangana People's struggle and its lessons, CPI(M), CalcuttaGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ For the post-independence period, I use Dalit (a militant self-descriptive term that means ‘oppressed’) rather than ‘Untouchable’.

⁴⁵ Ambedkar, B. R., 1955, Thoughts on linguistic states, Ramkrishna Printing Press, Bombay, pp. 34–5Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Weiner, M., 1978, Sons of the soil. Migration and ethnic conflict in India, Oxford University Press, DelhiGoogle Scholar.

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⁵¹ Ibid., pp. 212–13.

⁵² Upadhya, C., 1988, ‘The farmer-capitalists of Coastal Andhra Pradesh’, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 (27), 1376–82Google Scholar, and 23(28), 1433–42.

⁵³ Balagopal, K., 1986, ‘Anti-reservation, yet once more’, Economic and Political Weekly, 21 (36), 1572–4Google Scholar, p. 1545.

⁵⁴ This is an estimation based on the last caste census under British rule and on later surveys done by Kamma associations. After independence, caste was not included anymore in the decennial censuses, but was reintroduced in 2011, after many debates on whether this would perpetuate caste identities or help the weakest castes who could be better targeted by government programmes (see Kumar, R., 2000, ‘Caste enumeration in census: Constitutional imperative’, Economic and Political Weekly, 35 (35/36), 3100–2)Google Scholar. The results of the 2011 caste census have not been released.

⁵⁵ Kohli, A., 1988, ‘The NTR phenomenon: Political change in a South Indian state’, Asian Survey, 28 (10), 991–1017CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 996.

⁵⁶ Srinivas, S. V., 2010, ‘Making of a peasant industry: Telugu cinema in the 1930s–1950s’, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 1 (2), 169–88Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Balagopal, K., 1988, Probings in the political economy of agrarian classes and conflicts, Perspectives, Hyderabad, p. 154Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ ‘Apart from a profit motive, these institutions also enhance the political power and prestige of the dominant peasant class. The private colleges with their phenomenal fees are a manifestation of the interface between caste, class and power which continue to treat education as an enterprise’ (Kaul, R., 1993, Caste, class and education: Politics of the capitation fee phenomenon in Karnataka, Sage, DelhiGoogle Scholar).

⁵⁹ Suri, K. C., 2002, Democratic process and electoral politics in Andhra Pradesh, India, Working Paper 180, Overseas Development Institute, LondonGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁰ The Kamma population of Kukatpally is estimated to 200,000 by their caste association (Kukatpally Kamma Sangham), which is half of the total population of Kukatpally.

⁶¹ Vivekanand colony is a posh area with luxurious individual houses, where only people with very high income live. The second surveyed area is a gated community for high-income people, located in Nizampet Road. Kukatpally Housing Board Colony (KPHB) is the third surveyed area, where most of the interviewed people belonged to the middle-income group.

⁶² Most tenancy contracts are oral to avoid the transfer of land to the tenants after many years of cultivation as per the law.

⁶³ One British pound sterling is approximately equal to Rs 100.

⁶⁴ ‘One member of the dominant caste is to split the village into two rival groups. But both the groups are led by members of the same caste. Whatever be the party, rival candidates are from the same caste, and one of them wins. Anyway, they take care that political leadership does not slip out of their hands into those of the lower castes’ (Padma Rao, K., 1995, Caste and alternative culture, Gurukul Lutheran Theological College, Madras, p. 17)Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ When I wanted to interview him, one dominant Kamma objected and said: ‘The sarpanch is illiterate and doesn't know anything. He's here just because of a reserved seat for Scheduled Caste. If you want to know about village affairs, you should talk to Kamma leaders.’

⁶⁶ Beck, B., 1972, Peasant society in Konku: A study of right and left subcastes in South India, University of British Columbia Press, VancouverGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁷ Ludden, Early capitalism.

⁶⁸ ‘The Kamma Naidus of Coimbatore are made of various groups, so there is a lot of emulation between them: when a big family starts a mill, other families also want to start their own. That is how the community developed in various fields’ (interview with G. K. Sundaram, CEO of the Laskhmi Mills).

⁶⁹ Parthasarathy, D., 1997, Collective violence in a provincial city, Oxford University Press, DelhiGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 24.

⁷¹ Interview with Vangaveeti Radha, the son of Ranga.

⁷² Prasad, R. J. R., 2004, Emergence of Telugu Desam, and an overview of political movements in Andhra, Master Minds Academic Press, Hyderabad, pp. 86–9Google Scholar.

⁷³ ‘A Congressman approached me and wanted me to head the party here. He wanted one member from the Kamma Naidu community and one from the Gounder community to hold top positions. He wanted me to be the President. I declined since I had my business to look after and also since I had no experience in party politics’ (interview with G. K. Sundaram).

⁷⁴ ‘I was offered a 20 crores dowry [Rs 200 million] by Andhra Kammas who wanted their daughter to marry my grandson, but their culture is different. So I chose a girl from Coimbatore who studied medicine, from a respectable family though not as rich as us’ (interview with Genguswamy Naidu, industrialist and president of the Tamil Nadu Kamma Naidu Mahajana Sangham).

⁷⁵ Interview with Jagadish Chandran, CEO of Premier Mills.

⁷⁶ The Telangana leader Kodandaram justifies the use of the term in the following way: ‘Telangana is an internal colony. It is economically exploited, socially and culturally suppressed and politically not represented.’

⁷⁷ Satyanarayana, ‘A note on land’, pp. 33–4.

⁷⁸ A similar analysis can be found in 1969 already in Economic and Political Weekly: ‘In a given caste structure the poorer castes do not seem to resent the traditionally rich castes becoming richer, particularly if their own conditions have also meanwhile improved. What has happened in Telengana is that to this situation a new factor was introduced of the migrant Andhra. The migrant Andhra very often certainly made spectacular progress in terms of agricultural prosperity. But he, being an alien to the local social structure, was not protected from the normal jealousies of the less well-to-do among the local people . . . . The general situation was further aggravated by the fact that, very often, the migrant Andhra belonged to the Kamma community which is not of any great significance in the caste configuration of the Telengana region. Had the migrant been a Reddi, the reaction would not have been so severe, and it is even possible that by this time he would have been assimilated into the local caste structure’ (EPW, 1969, ‘Telengana and caste’, Economic and Political Weekly, 4 (10), 455–6Google Scholar, p. 456).

⁷⁹ ‘The concept of modern cultivation hasn't caught up yet there. They are still stuck with the age old idea of millets and rotis. Not yet gone to modern methods of increasing the produce. Many lands are still lying as waste lands. At some places the land is limited to fodder. One feels an endless sense of loss looking at them’ (Chandralata, 1997, Regadi vittulu, Pravardhana Publications, Hyderabad. English translation provided by the author after an interview with her).

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⁸³ Chenchu Ramaiah, NTR's relative who premeditated the massacre and escaped from the court, was killed three years later by the People's War Group, a Maoist organization.

⁸⁴ Balagopal, K., 1988, ‘Rich peasant, poor peasant’, Seminar, 352, 19–23Google Scholar, p. 22.

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⁹⁴ Ibid., p. 368.

⁹⁵ ‘It is claimed that cultural domination by coastal Andhra has affected the development of distinctive Telangana culture . . . . The following grievances have been voiced: . . . “Coastal Andhra elites and the ruling classes show a negative attitude towards the folk art of Telangana . . . . The entertainment industry has been used as a means to ridicule Telangana culture. Films and television channels use Telangana dialect to portray criminal or comical characters”. They claim that although the film industry has been located in Hyderabad, the local people are discriminated against and not given any employment opportunities in the film industry’ (ibid., pp. 398–9).

⁹⁶ Ibid., p. 319.

⁹⁷ O'Hanlon, R., 1988, ‘Recovering the subject: Subaltern Studies and histories of resistance in colonial South Asia’, Modern Asian Studies, 22 (1), 189–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 191.