No one is self-made: Evolving iterations of giving and shaping of transnational Kamma caste subjectivities

Abstract

This article focuses on the transnational giving practices of Kammas (a dominant caste in Coastal Andhra, South India) by examining their records, standing myths and evolving iterations around the practice. While Kammas date their giving practices to the 1700s, written records trace community giving to the late colonial period, where a few elites instituted and patronized caste associations. The practice was reconstituted in the late 1990s, with many affluent Kamma professionals in the US embracing the role of community welfare organizers. In its transnational moment, expressed through the idiom of donations, horizontal giving has become one of the key embodied markers of Kamma selfhood, recursively produced as a group trait of a globally dispersed community of professionals. Despite the evolving iterations and modernizing impulses, the article argues that historically, giving for the Kammas has engendered an interiority and exteriority and is intimately tied to their collective quest for upward social mobility.