Know background of armed struggle

Hyderabad: This article is in continuation to the last article focusing on Telangana armed struggle, which is one of the important topics in preparation for the State government recruitment examinations.Most of the Jagirdars were Muslims and they were seen as an expression of their loyalty, required to pay Nazarana or Peshkash. These Jagirdars enjoyed autonomy […]

Hyderabad: This article is in continuation to the last article focusing on Telangana armed struggle, which is one of the important topics in preparation for the State government recruitment examinations.Most of the Jagirdars were Muslims and they were seen as an expression of their loyalty, required to pay Nazarana or Peshkash. These Jagirdars enjoyed autonomy and overriding powers over the people in their estates. They had their own independent administrative system with full powers over civil, revenue and police matters. The judicial system was subordinate to police administration.

In practice, these Jagirdars functioned like “States within State”. The remaining ten per cent of the land consisted of the Sarf-e-Khas or crown lands meant for meeting Nizam’s households’ expenditure.

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In the non-Jagirdari areas, every village was under the control of landlords. They were locally called as Deshmukhs and Deshpandes. These landlords owned major portion of the lands in villages and mostly belonged to the upper caste.

The landlords/doras amassed huge estates. Visnuru Ramachandra Reddy, the notorious Deshmukh of Jangaon in Nalgonda district, owned 40,000 acres in 40 villages; Kalluru deshmukh owned 1,00,000 acres of Madhira in Khammam district; Janareddy Pratap Reddy owned nearly 150,000 acres in Suryapet taluka in the district of Nalgonda; Suryapet Deshmukh: 20,000 acres; Babasahebpet Deshmukh: 10,000 acres, Mandameri Madhava Rao: 10,000 acres; Pusukuri family: 10,000 to 20,000 acres; Narsapur Samsthanam: 50,000 to 100,000 acres. In Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar and Warangal districts, the landlords with more than 500 acres owned 60-70 per cent of cultivable land.

Monopolisation of land and other resources by the Doras was an important instrument of their domination. Thus, upper caste landlords, together with the village officers and substantial landowners, controlled most of the land in rural Telangana. Poor peasants belonging to the artisans and service castes as well as the untouchables and tribal communities were compelled to depend on agriculture more as tenants and labourers than as independent cultivators.

The organisation of village in Telangana was an expression of the structure of social relations and dominance. While division of the village into different localities name after different castes was decided by the preponderance of their number of people living in a particular area. For example, Madiga and Mala gudems and Chakaliwada, etc. At the core of the village, the Gadi and Chavadi as symbols of authority articulated the division of labour and their relationship between domination and subordination.

The Vetti or the practice of free and forced labour was prevalent in the State of Hyderabad in general and Telangana in particular. In rural areas, the Jagirdars, landlords and government officials exploited the people in a number of ways. Under the feudal system, in each village the service castes such as Kummari, Chakali and Mangali were granted partially rent-free lands and the families holding these lands were expected to serve the officials visiting the villages for some nominal payment. But in actual practice, they were paid nothing and were treated as mere slaves. The Madiga leather workers, the washermen, potters, barbers, carpenters and blacksmiths served the Deshmukhs and officials without any payment.

This system of free service was also extended to merchants and brahmins later on. The untouchable communities like the Madigas and Malas constituted the bulk of agricultural labourers and as attached labourers. The Vetti system utterly degraded the life of Telangana people and ruined their self-respect.

The worst of all these feudal exactions was the prevalence of keeping girls as ‘slaves’/Adabapas. When landlords gave their daughters in marriage, they presented these girls and sent them along with their married daughters, to serve them in their new homes. The Adabapa was the system of sexual exploitation of women from scheduled castes and backward castes.To be continued…
Prof. Adapa Satyanarayana

Retired Professor
Department of History, Osmania University
Ph. 9573405551