On the Old Grand Trunk Road that connects Guntur to Chirala via Bapatla, an approximately 80 km drive down what is now State Highway 48 in Andhra Pradesh, is Stuartpuram. At the entrance to the village is an arch that welcomes people in the name of Hemalatha Lavanam.
Its name, quaintly inconsistent with its context, is a throwback to Harold Stuart, a British civil servant who served as Home Minister in the early 1900s. The arch is an ode to the social activist and rationalist who helped bring change to the people from the Yerukula tribe who live here.
Appeal to moviemakers
To catch the attention of the traveller or commuter through the Bapatla district where the village is located, people here have erected a green board in Telugu that appeals to moviemakers to stop showing the tribal people of the village in a bad light. It refers specifically to two Telugu films slated for release this year: Stuartpuram Donga (translates to ‘Stuartpuram thief’) and Tiger Nageshwar Rao, both inspired by the real-life story of Garike Nageshwar Rao, a man who got away from the police every time until the police shot him down. The Yerukulas consider him a hero because he was the local Robin Hood, distributing a part of the loot among them.
Tiger Nageshwar Rao stars popular Telugu hero Ravi Teja. This is not the first movie to be made on the village. Three Telugu films: Stuartpuram Police Station (1991), Stuartpuram Dongalu (1991), and Stuartpuram (2019), were all based on the theme of the place being wrought with gangs and criminals. Tollywood’s K. Chiranjeevi, who has now risen to iconic status, acted in a lead role in Stuartpuram Police Station.
Severe impact of negative projection
People here feel that the constant negative projection of their village has taken a toll on their lives and livelihoods. It also adds another layer to their damning colonial ‘inheritance’ of being ‘notified’ criminals through the Criminal Tribes Act (CT Act), 1871. While this changed in independent India in 1952, with tribes being ‘denotified’, the stigma stuck, and a whole village and the Yerukulas, a formerly nomadic tribe, are still branded criminal.
“They tell us to have great pride in our country, but how can we, when we cannot even have pride in our own land”Angadi Ratna KumarLecturer from Stuartpuram
“They tell us to have great pride in our country, but how can we, when we cannot even have pride in our own land,” says Angadi Ratna Kumar, a lecturer in Chirala’s Degree College in the Commerce department. He grew up in Stuartpuram and talks about how people from the State hold their motherland in the highest regard and their love for the land is only next to that they have for their mothers.
Colonial prejudice prevails
The green poster by the highway features Tiger Nageswara Rao aiming with bow and arrow, but also the picture of B.R. Ambedkar, seemingly striding ahead championing the Dalit cause, holding the Constitution of India in one hand.
A stone’s throw away from here is a statue of ‘Ekalavya’, painted in gold. He is a symbol of people who live on the margins, the boy from the forest who excelled at archery and gave the thumb of his right hand as ‘guru dakshina’ to Dronacharya, in a subplot from the Mahabharata. Last year, the Central government pushed for Ekalavya Model Residential Schools for people of tribal descent.
For the Yerukulas of Stuartpuram, the three Rs of learning — reading, writing, and arithmetic — are no longer a challenge. They are well connected via the highway and also have the Howrah-Chennai railway line running through since the time of settlement. Most are engaged in agriculture and use traditional means of ploughing and harvesting as well. The soil is sandy and yields paddy and a few vegetables. It’s common to see bullock carts bump alongside the highway, though the people are not economically bereft.
“If we ask the conductor for a ticket to Stuartpuram, co-passengers steer clear of us, believing we are thieves”Ragala RamuFarmer, Stuartpuram,
Ragala Ramu, a farmer living in Stuartpuram, says when he and his family travel in a State transport bus, they buy a ticket to the stop after their village and walk back. “If we ask the conductor for a ticket to Stuartpuram, co-passengers steer clear of us, believing we are thieves,” he says. It’s the same with an auto, especially because many drivers will simply refuse to come here.
What the 3,800-plus population of the Yerukula tribe still needs are basic human considerations of respect, reputation, and true rehabilitation. What they have got instead is the idea that they need to be reformed.
Ratna Kumar explains that sometimes people change their addresses to other villages and towns, only to avoid discrimination. “Things often go well until people discover our identity. Then, even those who we develop close friendships with, distance themselves.”
There have been people who have used education and government jobs to rise through the difficult social hierarchies, but many would rather not reveal themselves to be from Stuartpuram. People here are politically active, with both the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) having a presence.
The start of Stuartpuram
The stigma that people experience comes from four or five generations of being branded criminals. The village, just about 10 km from the Bay of Bengal and spread across about a kilometre, began as the second ‘criminal reformation’ settlement colony called Bethapudi, later renamed Stuartpuram. The other colony was Sitanagaram on the west bank of the Krishna river, near Vijayawada. Both were formed in 1913 by the then British government.
In tandem with the settlement being set up, the Salvation Army was brought in to look after education and health and as a means of ‘reformation’. The organisation is still important in the lives of most of the people here who are Christians and qualify for various government schemes as Scheduled Tribes.
Even in the settlement’s early years, ITC Ltd, which had a tobacco factory in Chirala, provided work opportunities. H.N. Rama Prasad, Chief Executive of ITC Ltd (Agri. Business Division), said that the company provided direct employment to many people at that time, and that was one reason for early economic stability.
For the past many generations, ITC Ltd, Chirala, has provided employment opportunities to more than six thousand people of the Stuartpuram region alone. Over the past 100 years, employees have prospered along with the Industry, which resulted in uplifting their economic conditions.
Children of the employees their families got the opportunity to secure qualitative education which opened doors for them to migrate to metropolitan cities with much better job opportunities across the world. Still a significant number of people of the fifth generation from Stuartpuram are leading a high standard of life through the employment opportunities provided by ITC Ltd, Chirala.
Crime and punishment
Today, Stuartpuram has clusters of pucca homes, most single-storey, though they do not appear prosperously painted or adorned. Some of the roads are laid, but some are still kuchha. Police say that there are areas within the village dominated by seven inter-State gangs operating out of them, but there is never any law and order problem pertaining to them inside Stuartpuram.
Paul Chukka, who gave up crime about 25 years ago, and has taken to farming since then in the village, says, “Some of the villagers committed crimes until about two decades ago because of poverty, but this generation does not have any criminal history. Yet, we are being portrayed as thieves. That is unfortunate.”
“Every house has educated their children, and this opens up many opportunities. At the same time, the police maintain surveillance on those who have suspect sheets, opened on those who have committed more than five crimes in the past”Vakul JindalSuperintendent of Police, Bapatla district
He and Devara Vasanta Rao, Polisetti Srinivasa Rao and a few others have taken a case to the High Court, with the plea that it is unethical to label the entire village and a particular tribe as thieves.
Vakul Jindal, Bapatla district Superintendent of Police says, “Every house has educated their children, and this opens up many opportunities. At the same time, the police maintain surveillance on those who have suspect sheets, opened on those who have committed more than five crimes in the past.”
“Yerukula is also a reference to the Dravidian language spoken by Yerukula people in parts of Andhra Pradesh. The language is also known as Kurrubasha or Kulavatha and is closely related to Ravula and Irula, and more distantly related to Tamil. The Yerukula people call themselves Kurru”Prof. Sathupati Prasanna SreeDepartment of English, Andhra University
Police records in 2013 found that there were 1,987 women to 1,832 men. In fact, “The name Yerukula is derived from the women’s traditional profession of fortune telling (yerukacheputa),” says Prof. Sathupati Prasanna Sree, Department of English, Andhra University. “Yerukula is also a reference to the Dravidian language spoken by Yerukula people in parts of Andhra Pradesh. The language is also known as Kurrubasha or Kulavatha and is closely related to Ravula and Irula, and more distantly related to Tamil. The Yerukula people call themselves Kurru.”
Lifetimes of condemnation
In 1999 a socio-economic status survey report titled ‘Action Plan to Wean the Yerukalas of Stuartpuram Away from Criminal Activity’ was published by Tribal Cultural Research and Training Institute, Tribal Welfare Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh. This was following 11 Yerukalas surrendering to crimes committed and expressing their willingness to give it up.
The report observed that pre-settlement, this nomadic tribal community were tradesmen in salt, grain, turmeric, and curry leaves. Many who settled in villages were engaged in basket making, mat weaving, and pig rearing. It also found that some eked out their living by stealing, highway robbery, and housebreaking, among other crimes. The Yerukula women were engaged in soothsaying and, while doing so, gathered information for the crimes of the men.
“The then British government enacted the Criminal Tribes Act (CT Act), 1871, which provided for registering all the members or any member of such tribes declared as Criminal Tribes. It was assumed that unless the entire tribe was kept under certain restrictions, it would be difficult to detect the professional criminals in it. Therefore, both social and legal stigma was attached to the criminals as well as non-criminals within a group,” the report revealed.
The CT Act was amended in 1897, under which a provision permitted the separation of the children of criminal tribes between the ages of 4 and 18 years from their parents. They were placed in ‘reformatory settlements’, a practice that is now being condemned world over.
When the Criminal Tribes Settlement Act, 1908, was enacted, tribes suspected of living by crime were registered. They were put under police supervision, and ‘criminal tribes’ moved into settlements. The Act was hoped to provide for a complete ‘reformation’ of criminals.
