Colonialism and the Making of Koya Identity: Rebellion, Land, and Anthropology in the Eastern Ghats, 1839–1924

The Koyas, an Adivasi community inhabiting the forested and mountainous tracts of the Eastern Ghats, encountered profound transformations with the expansion of colonial authority into the region. British intervention sought not only to bring these relatively autonomous territories within the colonial administrative framework but also to regulate their land, forests, labour, and natural resources. Koya resistance to these interventions generated a substantial body of colonial administrative and ethnographic writing. These writings did more than record rebellion: they participated in the production of knowledge through which the Koyas were classified, represented, and governed.
This article examines the construction of Koya identity in colonial discourse between 1839 and 1924, with particular attention to the Agency tracts of the Godavari and Khammam regions of present-day Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. It argues that colonial representations of the Koyas developed through interconnected processes of administrative intervention, regulation of podu cultivation, transformation of the muttadari system, interpretation of rebellion, and the emergence of colonial anthropology. Practices that were integral to Koya social and economic life were increasingly represented as primitive, irrational, or destructive. Similarly, political resistance was frequently interpreted as disorder or criminality rather than as a defence of autonomy, land, and customary rights. Colonial ethnographic descriptions further reinforced these representations by locating the Koyas within categories such as “aboriginal,” “tribal,” “primitive,” and “junglemen.” The article therefore argues that colonial knowledge was not simply descriptive; it was constitutive of the political identity through which the Koyas came to be governed.

Polavaram, Yellavaram, Rampa, Bhadrachalam, and Rekapalle supplied a range of forest products, including tamarind

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