Yerukalas in Colonial India
Nomadic communities have been a target of the fears and suspicions of sedentary communities. The Yerukulas of Madras presidency were thus ‘criminalised’ in the early 20th century. This gave the Salvation Army the job of ‘reforming’ them, and incidentally provided cheap labour to a tobacco factory. This project was so successful that today Yerukulas believe their ancestors to have been dangerous criminals.
In the early periods of the British Rule, the Yerukalas were chiefly traders in grain and salt, operating between the coastal areas and the interior districts. But because of the road and railway networks introduction by the 1850s, this community’s trade - carried out largely on pack bullocks or donkeys - was largely affected. Further, the famine of 1877 was devastating for them. Large number of their cattle died, which used to be crucial for carrying their merchandise and as they were traders in cattle as well. Their grain and salt trade too suffered drastically during this period, because of the policies of the British Rulers, favoring the bigger merchants. Forest laws of the 1880s prevented them from collecting forest produce; which they used for making mats, baskets and brooms, etc. Common pasture land and grazing areas were cordoned off, and not available any more to their cattle.
The British Ruler’s economic policies, aimed at raising revenue, had made this itinerant community redundant and anachronistic.
As they become marginalized to the main system, prejudices and myths which already exist about nomads are renewed, or come to the surface more explicitly.
In 1911, the itinerant trading community of Yerukulas in South India was declared a criminal tribe was under Criminal Tribes Act. Under one of its provisions; special settlements could be established where the criminal tribe communities could be confined in order to watch and reform them. Missionary organizations - the Salvation Army was the main one - were put in charge of these settlements and were given more or less complete autonomy as far as administration of these settlements was concerned.
In the annual crime figures of Madras presidency, their proportion in the criminal population was always lower than their proportion in the total population. (In fact, sometimes a high caste category would account for a much higher proportion of total crime in relation to their proportion in the total population in the region).
------------- Read more in Colonial Construction of a ‘Criminal’ Tribe by Meena Radhakrishna.