Dominant caste and territory in South India:

The case of the Kammas of Andhra Pradesh

Dalel Benbabaali
In the existing literature on caste, the concept of territory, which can be defined as social,
economic and political appropriation of space, is very often absent. My argument is that one
cannot understand caste dominance without taking into account territorial control. This
argument is all the more relevant in the case of Andhra Pradesh, where the demand for a
separate Telangana State is partly related to questions of caste domination. Traditionally, the
Kammas are dominant in Coastal Andhra, whereas the Reddis are dominant in the interior
regions of Telangana and Rayalaseema. These two castes have been controlling the politics of
Andhra Pradesh since the formation of the State in 1956, and even before, since they were at
the forefront of the movement for a linguistic Telugu State.
Both these castes are originally farming communities - in varna terms, Shudras -, which
means that their ritual status is relatively low. However, they claim that they are Kshatriyas
(the traditional warrior varna), because some of their ancestors were local kings or army
commanders under the Vijayanagar empire. They are not commonly perceived as Shudras
because of their upward social mobility in the last century, which explains that today they are
not entitled to backward caste or OBC reservations, unlike other agrarian castes of North
India like the Kurmis.
Both Kammas and Reddis are landowning communities. The main difference is that Kamma
property is concentrated in the agriculturally rich Krishna and Godavari deltas, where land is
fertile and irrigated, whereas Reddis own land in the arid Deccan plateau, where irrigation is
rare. In terms of assets, Kammas are therefore more prosperous, but in terms of political
power, Reddis have been dominating the State through their control of the Congress Party
since Independence. Its only in the 1980s, with the creation of a regional party called the
Telugu Desam Party (the TDP), that the ex-movie star N.T. Rama Rao (NTR) became the first
Kamma Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, followed by his son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu.
Kammas have a very high propensity to migrate, wherever they see investment opportunities,
whether in new irrigation projects, or business and real estate in the cities, especially in
Hyderabad. They also migrated to other South Indian States like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu,
and abroad, mostly to the United States. Since we are in Princeton, I should mention that New
Jersey has the highest concentration of Kammas in America, along with California. In the US,
they are mostly entrepreneurs or work in the IT industry, and they are dominant among the
Telugu diaspora. They control the Telugu Association of North America (TANA). The Reddis
resented this domination and created their own organization, called American Telugu
Association (ATA). This shows that the rivalry between these two dominant castes of Andhra
Pradesh exists even in the US.

What Id like to talk about today is the link between migration and upward social mobility,
but also the power mechanisms that prevent the mobility of the castes dominated by Kammas
in the territories they control. The aim of my research was to re-define the concept of
dominant caste, which was first studied in 1950s by M.N. Srinivas at the village level, to
make it relevant in contemporary India by taking into account the rapid urbanization and
increased social and spatial mobility of the elites. According to Srinivas, For a caste to be
dominant, it should own a sizable amount of the arable land locally available, have strength
of numbers and occupy a high place in the local hierarchy.
Kammas form only 5% of the population of Andhra Pradesh, but more than 20% in the
Krishna delta where they own 80% of the agricultural land. Despite their relatively small
numbers at the State level, they occupy key positions in the politics and economy of Andhra
Pradesh, and to a lesser extent of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Taking territory into account is
essential to understand the change in the scale and nature of caste dominance and to study its
regional variations. When the Telugu Desam Party won the elections in Andhra Pradesh, the
Kamma control over State power helped them consolidate their influence. They also dominate
the Telugu media and cinema, which gives them sociocultural preeminence. These new
attributes of dominance, which are ideological and not only material, have a hegemonic
character. However, this hegemony is challenged by the growing resistance of Dalits to caste
and class oppression. Kamma cultural domination has also been contested by the supporters
of a separate Telangana State. Now that the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh has been
announced, Kammas interests are likely to be harmed, at least in Telangana. Before trying to
examine whether the creation of Telangana will lead to a decline of Kamma dominance, Id
like to go back to the history of this community to trace both their spatial and social
trajectories.
Kammas early history is associated with buddhism, which was very influential in the Krishna
valley in the 3rd century. According to epigraphical records, the Krishna delta area at that
time was known as Kammanadu, and the main farming community living there was called
Kamma. But it is only after the 10th century that the name Kamma started referring to a
specific Hindu agrarian caste. Most Kammas were small farmers, but some of them worked as
soldiers for the Kakatiya kings of Warangal. The Kamma historian K.B. Chowdary tries to
prove the martial origin of his caste based on matrimonial alliances between Kammas and
members of the Kakatiya dynasty. It is based on his book that Kammas continue to claim
Kshatriya status, although traditionally their main occupation is agriculture. During the
Vijayanagar empire, more and more Kamma farmers were employed as soldiers, and even as
army commanders, to participate in the conquest of the Tamil country. At that time, war was
the main migration factor, and this explains the presence today of a large Kamma community
in Tamil Nadu, which is the consequence of military migrations from the 15th century
onwards. In times of peace, the Kamma settlers engaged in agricultural activities on the
conquered territories of South India. Since they needed manpower to clear the forest lands,
and service castes to take care of so-called polluting tasks, they brought with them Telugu
speaking untouchable communities, known today in Tamil Nadu as Sakkiliars.
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Along with this process of military conquest in the South, Kammas also acquired land in the
interior regions of the Deccan Plateau. Agricultural colonisation was another major factor of
migration for the dominant castes, and it led to the dispossession of tribals and smalls farmers
from their lands. The Telangana region at that time was under the control of Muslim rulers
who collected taxes through members of the dominant castes that were given the title of
chowdharis. Muslim princes thus played a role in reinforcing caste hierarchy because they
saw it as a guarantee of social order among their Hindu subjects. Kamma chowdaris used
their title to consolidate their holdings in Telangana, while a few became zamindars or big
landlords in Coastal Andhra. The Nizams of Hyderabad even called Kamma farmers from
Andhra to develop agriculture in Telangana, generously granting them titles to land, since
they were considered expert rice cultivators due to their experience of irrigation in the deltas.
In the mid-19th century, the Britishers had built two big dams in Coastal Andhra on the
Krishna and Godavari rivers. Kamma farmers benefitted tremendously from the agrarian
development that followed the introduction of canal irrigation in British-ruled Andhra. Even
the middle peasantry that was paying taxes directly under the ryotwari system became richer
thanks to irrigation and the introduction of cash crops like sugarcane, tobacco and cotton. In a
context of generalised commodification of land, the value of their properties increased so
much that by selling one acre of land in the Krishna delta, they could buy 10 acres in the dry
areas of Telangana. The main crop grown in the fertile deltaic lands was paddy or rice, which
soon became a commercial crop thanks to the surpluses produced. The commercialisation of
agriculture in Coastal Andhra led to the development of transportation infrastructures, urban
growth and industrialisation. The small town of Vijayawada became a thriving commercial
market and an important railway junction. Kamma farmers diversified their activities by
migrating to urban areas while keeping land in their villages. They used their agricultural
surplus to invest in bus companies or in food processing industries like rice mills and sugar
factories. They also started commercialising their own agricultural production and became
moneylenders, thus bypassing the traditional merchant castes and business communities.
This process of capital accumulation by the rich Kamma farmers led to an increased
polarisation of the agrarian social structure, with the emergence of a class of Kulaks within
the Andhra peasantry. In spite of this class differenciation, the Kammas made conscious
efforts to remain united by using caste as a social capital. They created their first caste
association in the beginning of the 20th century and used the funds to provide scholarships to
children from poor Kamma families and to build Kamma hostels in the cities. Education was
seen as a key to social mobility and even small farmers were eager to send their children to
study in English-medium schools outside the villages. Thats what M.N. Srinivas calls
westernization, as opposed to sanskritization, which is another way of improving ones
status by adopting the Brahminical rituals. There was a brief attempt at sanskritization by
Kammas when some caste members became priests to celebrate weddings within the
community, but the rationalist anti-Brahmin movement also had a strong influence on
Kammas.

Some joined the non-Brahmin Justice Party which was supported by the middle castes asking
for reservations in the Madras Presidency. The Britishers accepted those demands in order to
break the hegemony of Brahmins in the administration, because they suspected them of being
nationalist. In the 1930s, with the economic depression, and rise in taxes which was harming
farmers interests, many Kammas shifted from their pro-British position to a nationalist one.
The Andhra Communist Party was supported mostly by the Kamma peasantry, who saw in
this new party a vehicle for political power, since the Congress Party in Andhra was
controlled by the Reddis. Some Kammas took part in the Telangana rebellion against feudal
landlords in the 1940s.
One year after India got Independence, Nehru sent the army to forcibly annex the princely
State of Hyderabad to the Indian Union. This led to a massacre, affecting mostly Muslim
villagers. Telangana was later merged with the Andhra province, and Hyderabad became the
capital of Andhra Pradesh, the first Indian State to be formed on a linguistic basis. The
demand for a Telugu State, separated from the Tamil province, was an old demand by the
Telugu-speaking dominant castes. Kammas support of the Communist Party can also be
explained by the fact that the Andhra communists were in favor of Telugu regionalism,
against the domination of Tamils in the multilingual Madras State. But the formation of
linguistic States mostly served the interests of dominant castes, as the Dalit leader Ambedkar
noted: In our country, linguism is only another name for communalism. Take Andhra. There
are two major communities spread over the linguistic area. They are either the Reddis or the
Kammas. They hold all the land, all the offices, all the business. The untouchables live in
subordinate dependence on them. In a linguistic state, what would remain for the smaller
communities to look to?
After the formation of Andhra Pradesh, the Andhra Communist Party lost one of its main
electoral argument and started declining. The Congress won the State elections and remained
in power for almost three decades, mostly in the hands of the Reddis, even though some
Kamma Congressmen were also present in the State Legislative Assembly, where the
dominant castes continue to be overrepresented till today. These territorial recompositions
encouraged the migration of Kammas from Andhra to Telangana, especially to Hyderabad.
Kamma settlers were educationally more advanced and wealthier than Telangana people who
had lived under the Nizam rule, so migration from Andhra was perceived as a threat by the
locals. In fact, the States Reorganization Commission was not in favor of the formation of
Andhra Pradesh because of the lack of homogeneity between Telangana and Andhra due to
their distinct history and geography. Coastal Andhra is naturally endowed with rich plains of
fertile and irrigated lands, whereas agriculture in the arid Deccan plateau is not as developed.
Under the Nizams, Telangana was characterized by feudal relations in agriculture and a very
restricted access to modern education. Even the landlords of Telangana were lagging behind
the capitalist Kamma farmers who benefitted from the British rule.
This uneven development continued after Independence, since most of the new irrigation
projects took place in Coastal Andhra, where the Green Revolution was introduced in the
1960s. Kammas were the main beneficiaries of the Green revolution, since they had enough
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capital to invest in the new techniques of production and they were generally entrepreneurial.
Their wealth tremendously increased. They resented the Land Ceiling Act which they
perceived as a direct attack against their economic power by the Brahmin Chief Minister
Narasimha Rao. However, the land reforms didnt radically change the agrarian structure. The
big landlords may have lost some of their property, but the middle peasantry was not really
affected because they could manage to divide their lands among family members. The
landless farmers, who mostly belonged to the Dalit castes, didnt benefit from the reforms.
The Green Revolution accelerated the process of economic diversification in the rural areas of
Coastal Andhra. The rich Kamma farmers were no longer dependent on agriculture. They
invested in agro-industries, transportation business, and they were able to send their children
to Hyderabad for higher education. They became more and more urban-oriented, in search of
new avenues of employment. When they migrated to rural areas, it was mostly to new
irrigation projects, because they knew they could buy cheap lands in Telangana or in the
neighbouring State of Karnataka, and then improve their plots once irrigation was available
and thus benefit from land appreciation. Even in cities like Hyderabad, when they bought
land, it was often speculative as they were very active in the real estate business.
This flow of capital from Andhra to Telangana was not perceived by the locals as a positive
sign of economic development for their region, but as exploitation of their poorer conditions.
Kamma settlers in Telangana claim that they turned the desert green , which is a typical
colonist narrative. In fact, they were looking for cheaper land and cheaper manpower. When
land was not available for sale, Kammas used to practice reverse tenancy , by taking land
on lease from poor farmers and lending them money. When the local farmers became too
indebted to their rich Kamma tenants, they ultimately had to yield their lands. In Hyderabad,
people coming from Andhra had an advantage to access higher education and employment
because they had benefitted from English schooling in their region, which was long controlled
by the Britishers. This harsh competition from Andhra migrants led to the first Telangana
separatist movement in 1969.
It is only in the 1980s that the number of Kamma settlers in Hyderabad increased
significantly. According to some Kamma informants, they felt encouraged to migrate to the
capital-city after the Telugu Desam Party came to power in 1983. For the first time a Kamma
Chief Minister, N.T. Rama Rao (NTR), was leading the State, and many of his caste fellows
felt that this would open new opportunities to them in the capital-city. The victory of the
Telugu Desam Party, just a few months after its creation, can be explained by the interference
of the central government from Delhi in choosing the Congress Chief Ministers of Andhra
Pradesh. NTR won the elections after a campaign on the regionalist theme of telugu pride ,
which was supported by the media, especially by the Telugu newspaper Eanadu, owned by
the Kamma billionaire Ramoji Rao, who also owns ETV. The control of the regional media
by Kamma businessmen helped NTR to capture State power. His charisma as an ex-movie
star and his populist promises like welfare schemes and food subsidies are also important
factors behind his victory. On top of his personal fortune, he benefitted from the financial
support of big Kamma industrialists who wanted a Chief Minister from their caste to serve
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their interests. Before NTRs election as the head of the State, there was a discrepancy
between Kammas economic wealth and their lack of decisive political power, since they
were sidelined by the Reddis dominating the Congress.
NTRs trajectory from an agricultural family to cinema and then politics is typical of Kammas
pattern of upward social mobility. The Telugu film industry, which is the second in India after
Bollywood, in terms of number of movies released every year, is dominated by Kamma
directors, producers and actors, with some exceptions like Chiranjivi, the Kapu superstarturned-politician. Corporate health and education are also major sectors in which Kammas
have invested their money. The first generation of Kamma doctors, who migrated to the
United States in the 1960s, accumulated capital abroad and came back to Hyderabad in the
1980s, encouraged by NTR, to invest in private hospitals. Apart from medicine, engineering is
one of the most common career option among the young Kamma generation, but since they
are not entitled to reservations, they generally study in private colleges, generally owned by
Kamma businessmen. The cost of these educational institutions is so high that other
communities can hardly afford to study there. This corporatisation of health and education in
Andhra Pradesh was started by Kammas in the 1980s, even before the liberalisation process
that took place at the national level after 1991.
From 1995 to 2004, under the regime of the Chandrababu Naidu, NTRs son-in-law,
economic reforms and the disengagement of the State accelerated this phenomenon. TDP
Chief Minister Naidu became the darling of the corporate media and of the World Bank which
granted him a loan for the development of his. It was the first time that an international
institution like the World Bank gave a loan to a subnational entity. Naidu made Hyderabad a
showcase for his neoliberal policies. He focused on urban infrastructure and global growth
sectors like Information Technology. He decided to develop HITEC City in the western
periphery of Hyderabad, near the residential areas of Jubilee Hills and Kukatpally, were most
of the Kamma settlers live. This led to a tremendous appreciation of their properties. Kamma
businessmen who benefitted from political patronage and privileged access to information for
real estate speculation could make a lot of profit by investing in those areas. Chandrababu
Naidu was accused of corruption, nepotism and casteism since his development choices
clearly benefitted to his own Kamma community. In 1999, a post-electoral survey showed that
87% of Kamma voters re-elected him for a second mandate.
It is under Naidus regime of almost one decade that the Kamma caste really became
hegemonic in Andhra Pradesh. I borrow here Gramscis concept of hegemony, which refers to
a kind of domination that is not only material, but also ideological. By migrating to urban
areas, Kammas started enjoying new attributes of dominance, not based on landownership
alone, but on control over the media, culture and politics. After seizing State power, they were
able to impose on the rest of society the neoliberal ideology which served their capitalist
interests best. This led to a lopsided type of development which increased social and spatial
inequalities, by affecting poor farmers and rural areas most. Between 1997 and 2004, more
than 3000 farmers committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh, especially in the less developed
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regions of Telangana and Rayalaseema. The liberalisation of agriculture led to an increase in

production costs, so even in Coastal Andhra, agriculture is not very profitable anymore.
However, Kammas generally dont sell their lands when they migrate to the cities. For them
land is an important symbol of prestige and power, therefore they prefer to give it on lease to
tenants because they know that the value of land is not going to decrease, and agricultural
incomes are not taxed anyway. The land around Vijayawada in the Krishna delta has
appreciated tremendously since the formation of the Telangana State because of the
speculation on the future status of Vijayawada as a possible capital-city for Andhra. Even
Kammas living abroad are sending remittances back to India for their families to buy more
land in the Krishna delta, as a purely speculative investment. Land is also used as dowry.
Kammas are known in Andhra Pradesh for having the most conspicuous weddings and for
giving the highest dowries to their daughters, especially in the form of land and gold.
Though Kammas have retained their economic power, they have lost some of their political
influence after the Congress party came back to power in the 2004 State elections. The
formation of Telangana might harm their economic interests in Hyderabad, but if Vijayawada
becomes the new capital of Andhra, they might very well repatriate their investments and
make them thrive there as well. Kammas may also capture State power in the new Andhra
State. The decline of Kamma dominance therefore is not so much economic or even political,
but mostly social and cultural, because of the increasing resistance to their cultural hegemony
in Telangana, and the social contestation of their caste domination by the Dalits, whom they
have used as agricultural labour and oppressed for centuries.
The Dalit movement in Andhra Pradesh started organizing after a massacre perpetrated by
Kamma landlords in 1985 in a village called Karamchedu, one of the richest and most
developed village of coastal Andhra. This goes against the argument that caste atrocities
happen only in backward regions. The two main Dalit communities of Karamchedu, the
Malas and Madigas, benefitted quite early from the Christian missionaries activities, and then
from the reservation policy. They started sending their children to school, getting employment
outside agriculture, and becoming politically aware. This is precisely what the dominant caste
had a problem with. Dalit assertion meant that Kammas could no longer control their votes
and transform their economic dependence into political loyalty. After the creation of the
Telugu Desam Party, the Dalits of Karamchedu continued to vote for the Congress, against
their Kamma employers who supported the TDP. This Dalit resistance was perceived by the
Kammas as a dangerous sign of rebellion and contestation of their traditional dominance, so
they decided to attack them to teach them a lesson (which is the expression they use). The
pretext for retaliation was an incident that opposed a Kamma boy to a Madiga woman who
scolded him for washing his buffalo in the pond used by Dalits for drinking water. This was
seen by the Kamma landlords as a sufficient provocation to plan a punitive expedition to the
Madiga hamlet, burn down their huts, rape three women, beat up men with axes, leaving
many terribly injured and six murdered.

As a response to this event of extraordinary violence, a strong mobilisation led to the creation
of the Dalit Mahasabha that soon spread across the entire State. This organization fought for
the culprits to be punished, but NTR, who was then the Chief Minister, had Kamma relatives
in Karamchedu, one of them directly involved in the massacre, and whose name was not even
included in the list of the 92 accused. 23 years after the killings, only one accused was
condemned to life emprisonment, and 30 others to 3 years in jail. The victims consider that
this judgement didnt bring them justice. NTRs relative, who premeditated the massacre and
escaped from the court, was later killed by Naxalites. The Peoples War Group was the main
naxalite organization in Andhra Pradesh at that time. They were very active in Telangana,
where the struggle took shape along class lines rather than caste. The Maoists consider
Kammas and Reddis as class enemies more than dominant castes. There is a very strong
correlation between caste and class and it is often difficult to disentangle both. The big
landlords and the ruling class of Andhra Pradesh mostly belong to the dominant castes and
they used State power to crush the Naxalite movement which was threatening their interests.
Let me quote here the human rights activist Balagopal: After the Telugu Desam party came
to power, the ruthlessness of the repression on Maoists has increased manifold, and its class
content is clearly revealed in the exchanges in the State Legislative Assembly, which is
populated by the cream of the absentee landlords, contractors, financiers, businessmen and
brokers. Suppression of the rural poor is an important requirement for the strengthening of
the hegemony of this class. It is not just that payment of higher wages would affect its
accumulation, or that the demand for land redistribution would affect its property; it is a
political requirement, too. Both under NTR and Chandrababu Naidus regimes, the
paramilitary forces killed hundreds of Naxalite guerillas as well as un-armed tribal
sympathisers in fake encounters. This is why the Maoists have moved from Andhra Pradesh
to the neighbouring State of Chhattisgarh.
It clearly appears that caste dominance has to do with territorial control, and that access to
State power is essential to promote specific caste and class interests. This is why the Kammas
of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are not as hegemonic as the Kammas of Andhra Pradesh,
because outside their State of origin, they are considered a Telugu linguistic minority and they
dont have so much political power. However, they are locally dominant in some pockets of
north Karnataka, where they have become very rich after migrating to buy lands in the new
irrigated belt of the Tungabhadra river. They are also dominant in cities of Tamil Nadu like
Coimbatore, where they own most of the textile factories and other industries.
I have conducted fieldwork in all these places, to compare the nature and level of Kamma
dominance depending on the territory they live in and how much control they have over it.
My methodology was mostly qualitative, based on interviews and ethnographic studies, but I
have also used a questionnaire to do a survey among a sample of 200 Kamma households, one
hundred in a village of the Krishna delta, called Godavarru, and another hundred in a suburb
of Hyderabad, known as Kukatpally, so that I could make a quantitative analysis and compare
the socio-economic profile of Kammas both in rural and urban areas.
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The questionnaire was about their migration patterns, educational levels, family structures,
professional mobility, economic position, social and political participation. Migration was
found to be an important aspect of Kammas social mobility. Even in rural areas, 20% of
Kamma households had a family member abroad sending remittances that improved their
economic status. The educational level of Kammas in Hyderabad was obviously higher than
in the surveyed village, but in rural areas too, Kammas invest a lot in their children education
so that they can move out of agriculture to enter urban professions. Most live in nuclear
families and have no more than two children to avoid the division of property. Endogamy is
strictly respected with a very few exceptions. Subcaste doesnt matter anymore: Kammas
belonging to different subcastes dont mind intermarriage. Though the socio-economic status
of Kammas in Hyderabad is far higher in terms of incomes and assets, the Kamma rural elites
enjoy a stronger dominance over the backward and dalit castes.
Kamma dominance in urban areas is of a different nature. To understand what caste
dominance means in the cities, I did a comparative study of two regional towns, Vijayawada
in Andhra Pradesh and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. In Vijayawada, Kammas form a class of
bourgeois neo-rich who acquired their wealth in a short time by doing all kinds of businesses,
including illegal activities. In Coimbatore, Kammas have built their wealth in the textile
industry over a long period of time, since they first migrated there as cotton farmers. Some
belong to old aristocratic families who settled in Tamil Nadu a few centuries ago as army
commanders or big landlords. Their culture is totally different from Andhra Kammas and they
rarely intermarry. They speak a Telugu which is mixed with Tamil words, and they are much
more cultured and well-read. That doesnt make them any less exploitative of their manpower
in the textile factories, where they generally employ lower caste girls who migrate to the
mills, sign a 3 year contract, at the end of which they get married with the little savings they
could gather for their dowry. The short contracts are favored by the Kamma bosses to avoid
the unionisation of their workers who keep changing and have no time to organize. Thats
how they have put an end to the strikes that were common in Coimbatore textile industry.
This extremely wealthy capitalist class tries to improve its image through philanthropy. They
fund hospitals and educational institutions through their trusts, whereas in Vijaywada, both
health and education are a business only aimed at making profits, owned by very aggressive
Kamma entrepreneurs. In Coimbatore, Kamma dominance is less political than in
Vijayawada, where business, caste and politics are very much intertwined. A violent rivalry
opposes Kapu and Kamma politicians in Vijayawada, which led to political murders and riots
between the two communities.
Apart from these two cities, I also conducted fieldwork in rural areas of Telangana and
Karnataka where Kammas have migrated in search of greener pastures . In Telangana, they
were attracted by the Sriram Sagar project in Nizamabad district, and in Karnataka, they went
for the Tungabhadra project in Raichur and Bellary districts. Kamma farmers claim that they
brought development to those areas by teaching rice cultivation to the locals, but their
arrival was perceived as a form of internal colonisation, especially in Telangana, where the
best lands were acquired by the settlers.
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Recently, there was a controversy over a Telugu novel by a Kamma writer, Chandralata,
whom I interviewed in Hyderabad and who told me that her book was partly autobiographical
since she tells the story of her father who migrated from Coastal Andhra to Telangana in the
1960s to buy land in black cotton soil areas. That explains the title of her novel, Regadi
vittulu, in Telugu, which means Seeds of black soil . Kammas claim to be experts in the
cultivation of this type of soil that can give good yields if water is available. This book was
awarded the best Telugu novel prize by the Telugu Association of North America
(TANA). This prize was contested in Telangana. TANA was accused of caste favoritism since
the association is dominated by Kammas living in the US, and the novel was criticized for
portraying Telangana people as unable to develop their own lands, and for presenting
Telangana culture in a negative light, as backward. This controversy over the book shows that
the regionalist sentiment which led to the creation of a separate Telangana is not only about
economic domination by Andhras, but also about cultural domination. For example, many
people resent the fact that the Telugu film industry, which is controlled by Kammas, makes
fun of the Telangana dialects, which are generally spoken in the movies by the villain, underclass or criminals characters.
To conclude, caste dominance can take many different forms: its nature and degree vary
according to the territory observed, whether it is a rural or urban area, whether it is a small
town or a big city, whether the dominant caste is originally from the place or migrated there.
If the concept of dominant caste is still relevant in todays India, one has to take into account
new attributes of dominance which are not related only to landownership, but also to culture
and ideology via the control of the media, the entertainment industry and State power. This is
why I found the concept of hegemony very useful for my study of the Kamma caste, but it is
important to bear in mind that No hegemony can be so pervasive as to eliminate all ground
for contestation or resistance .

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