How many members are Telugu people?

 In India:

1.Telugu is the fourth most spoken language after Hindi, Bengali and Marathi in India.

2.Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are the Principal resident states for Telugu people with over 7.5 Crore Speakers.

3.Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Karnataka are the Secondary resident states for Telugu people with 37 lakh Speakers. This is due to their presence in erstwhile Madras State and after formation of linguistic states, they are invisible of not learning their mother tongue in Schools. Now it is difficult to assess the exact numbers. See a case study of Telugu Presence in Madras Presidency at the end.

4. In TN Northern Districts and Pondicherry, the presence of Telugu people dates back to 2nd Century and constitute the majority of the population in Chennai city with around 49% of the people identifying their Telugu speaking connections directly. Telugu people who migrated during the Vijayanagara period have spread across several southern and kongu districts in addition to Northern districts. In Karnataka, Telugu people are predominantly found in the border districts with majority in Bangalore city.

5.In Maharashtra, the Telugu population is over 14 lakh, followed by 7 Lakh in Odisha. Other states with significant populations include West Bengal and Chhattisgarh with 200,000 and 150,000 respectively.

In Overseas:

6.The overseas Telugu diaspora numbers more than 800,000 in the United States, with the highest concentration in Central New Jersey, Texas, and California.

7.Other than US, Indian diaspora of Telugu origin are found widespread, especially in the Malaysia, Myanmer, South Africa, Australia and Canada.

8.Telugu language is the 4th most spoken in the India and the 15th most spoken language in the world.

A case study: Telugu Presence in Madras Presidency From 1901 - 2001 and further

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 of Telugu, later generations in many districts have to logically wrote Tamil as their mother tongue, become experts and love Tamil literature, arts and culture. 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 anywhere between 5.7 to 12.9%

But the twist is

According to Deomographic enumeration in 2013 by an NGO, in assessing invisibilty, Telu(n)gu origin 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 Kammavar Naidus are most affluent and progressive community with lot of industrialists and philanthropists. (Same is told about Reddiars in Pondicherry).

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.