Telugus in TN Series1: How did the Telugu population drop in Tamil Nadu from 47% to 7%?

 In which year it was 47%?

You may be referring Madras Presidency (before demerger of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) of British regime and over and above added fully or partially population of elsewhere Hyderabad Princely State which was not part of British India.

I will put the different statistics for proper understanding:

According to 1901 census of Madras Presidency,

Tamils: 50.9%

Telugus:41.3%

Others:7.8%

Obviously, this excludes Telugus in Hyderabad Princely State.

According to 2001 census of Tamil Nadu,

Tamil is spoken as the first language by 88.43% of the population.This may be including some Telugus in some districts who are not able to read or write Telugu and chosen Tamil as the first language.

Telugu by 5.65 percent,

Kannada by 2.68 percent

Malayalam by 0.89 percent,

Marathi by 0.1 percent

Sourashtra by 0.1 percent.

Tamil Imposition:

The Telugu Kings who ruled, Tamil Country for 3 to 4 centuries, never imposed Telugu. They used to continue Tamil inscriptions and Tamil as one of the court language. In Tirupati, one can find Tamil inscription till Vijayanagara Rule upto 1638 and Telugu Grammiya scripts found place after Maraththa invasion in 1671.

But after independence, successive Governments in Tamil Nadu imposed Tamil in schools, because of this Telugus in Tamil Nadu are not able to Read or Write Telugu. Without utility, later generations in many districts have to logically wrote Tamil as their mother tongue. Invisibilty is the major factor in drop in percentage.

How much the drop is?

If we consider 1935 census of those districts of Madras State, which now under Tamil Nadu, then the Percentage would be 12.9%. The concentration is in Coimbatore, Salem, Madurai, Chengalput, North Arcot, Trichy, Ramnad, South Arcot,Tirunelveli, Chennai, Tanjore, Pudukkottai.

Based on these, We can infer the percentage of Telugu people in TN would be 5.7 to 12.9%

But the twist is

According to Deomographic enumeration in 2013 by an NGO, in assessing invisibilty, Telungu Speaking people are about 27%, that is 1.95 crores out of 7.2 crore population.

If we consider 27%, still it is a considerable figure to change the fortunes of Tamil Nadu in the forth coming elections. That is the reason, all parties try to impress Telugu people for their votes.

Over and above, Telugus, especially Kammas are most affluent and progressive community with lot of industrialists and philanthropists.

More so in following districts:

Be it Chennai /Thiruvallur/ Kanchipuram

Or Coimbatore

Or Madurai/ Theni/ Tiruchi

Or Krishnagiri/ Vellore/ Dharmapuri

Or Virudhunagar/ Thooththukkudi

District names mentioned should be read with reference to the year mentioned in the write up.