From Tribal Community to Working Class Consciousness-Case of Yerukula Women

Accounts in nationalist literature of the militant struggles of women tobacco workers in Guntur in 1938 led the writer to enquire into the social origins of these women. The trail led to a dramatic story of pre-colonial trade patterns, of a tribal community engaged in long-distance transport, of the destruction of this means of livelihood' by economic changes consequent upon the establishment of British rule, of the stigmatisation of the group as a criminal tribe, of the confinement of families in a penal settlement, of the recruitment of the women for work in a tobacco factory, of their organisation in a trade union under communist auspices and of the final success of the employer in splitting the men from the women on a hierarchical basis.