US anthropologist gives voice to Badagas’ Nilgiris origin claim

Ever since the

Badaga tribe

of the Nilgiris was removed from the scheduled tribe list in the 1950s, questions have been raised about its origin and nativity to the Nilgiris. While the tribe was listed a backward class community in the state, the 1873 book ‘An Account of the Primitive Tribes and Monuments of the Nilgiris’, by J W Breeks, the first commissioner of Nilgiris excluded Badagas from the list of primitive tribes while classifying Todas, Kotas and Kurumbas under it. Later, publications termed the tribe ‘immigrants from Mysore’, while NGOs excluded them from welfare programmes. Of late, social media has also been spinning stories about their origin. The most circulated one says the Badagas were natives of Mysore who took refuge in the Nilgiri hills to escape Tipu Sultan.

At a time when the tribe is virtually secluded from its peer tribes, a clarification from American anthropologist

Paul Hockings

, who has researched on the Badagas for nearly six decades, comes as a relief for the community. In a recent communication to the Nilgiri Documentation Centre (NDC), Hockings said, "the tribe despite its sketchy history is as indigenous to the Nilgiris as the English are to Britain".

"The length of time in their abode has no particular bearing on their indigeneity. The Badagas today have no cultural roots outside the district, which is also true of the Kotas and Todas, and it is in this sense that all three communities are indeed indigenous," he says.

In fact, it was Hockings’ statement in the 1960s about the possibility of the Badagas hailing from Mysore that added fuel to the debate on the tribe’s ethnicity.

Hockings says the concept of nativity may vary from culture to culture. "British settlers have been living in Madras for about four centuries, but nobody considers them indigenous to Madras. A small community of Saurashtrians has been living in Madurai for about four centuries, but they still follow Saurashtrian customs and speak their native tongue and thus do not figure as an indigenous Tamil Nadu group. Everybody will, I am sure, agree that they are Indians today, yet whether they should be considered indigenes can still raise some debate," he says.

Contrary to the three communities, the English, despite their Anglo-Saxon roots are considered indigenous to Britain. "Even though no one recognises the English as being indigenous to Madras, are they truly indigenous to Britain? Their Anglo-Saxon ancestors came to southern Britain from Schleswig-Holstein, about 15 centuries ago. In fact, the English have not been in Britain for much longer than the Parsis have been in India. But while Britain has absorbed millions of people from dozens of alien ethnic groups, you won’t find anyone in that country who claims the English are not British indigenes. People don’t know about this, and certainly don’t care".

Hockings says claiming indigeneity instead has a lot to do with whether a community is known to have cultural links with somewhere else. He stresses that public discourse in the early 19th century segregating Badagas as natives of southern Mysore created a ‘migrant’ identity for them, even though it was not backed by research. "Research by Dr Rivers and other scholars revealed that the Todas may have migrated from Kerala several thousand years ago, and may have later hired the Kotas from the plains for artisanal services. Although the information wasn’t well substantiated, it never reached the general public who has known the Todas and Kotas as local aborigines," he says. Also, the history of the Badagas is undocumented which makes it difficult to trace their real origin.

NDC director Dharmalingam Venugopal says the district administration has added to the debate by terming badagas as immigrants in a recent publication of erstwhile Hill Area Development Programme. "There is no evidence to support that the Badagas are not a part of the Nilgiris," Venugopal says.