The sting of Stuartpuram stigma Premium

Sambasiva Rao M. reports on why, despite producing bureaucrats, a Union Minister, and academicians, people still give the Yerukula tribe a questioning glance

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.

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.

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,” 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.

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.