badaga community

Indigenous languages in Tamil Nadu, like Toda and Kota, face extinction due to migration and language shift. The University of Madras's IELLAB is working to document and preserve these critically endangered languages, recognizing their invaluable cultural and environmental knowledge before they disappear forever.

Indigenous Badagar Alliance (IBA) has written to chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami requesting him to reconsider and recommend inclusion of badaga community under the scheduled tribes.

To mark the 25th 'Badaga Day', the community members launched on Tuesday the 'Academy for Badaga Culture' (ABC), a trust which will focus on many things including setting up of a museum for the community's archives.

Badaga leaders, irrespective of political affiliations, on Thursday condemned forest minister K Ramachandran's statement at a public meeting that their efforts to regain Scheduled Tribes (ST) status would not materialize.

Demanding reconsideration of the Coonoor constituency seat candidate, a rally was organized in Kotagiri town in the Nilgiris by the supporters of DMK ex-minister and sitting MLA of Coonoor constituency K Ramachandran in association with Young Badaga Association (YBA).

"The Badaga language, widely believed to be a dialect of Kannada, was the language of communication of ancient South Dravidians and shares similarities with the local Alu Kurumba tongue," said Christiane Pilot-Raichoor, a linguistic French scholar from LACITO, a scientific research centre in Paris.

They’ve been fighting to regain their lost status as tribals from the 1970s, and on Tuesday the Badagas, an indigenous community in the Nilgiris, filed a petition in the Madras High court to demand that they be included in the list of scheduled tribes.

Tension prevailed in Ooty on Thursday as police arrested Ooty AIADMK MLA M Bhuddhichandran and 25 of his supporters.

Twenty five years after remaining locked over a dispute on who should perform poojas at a Siva temple at nearby Nanjandu, officials on Wednesday acted on a Supreme Court order and allowed one group to enter and perform rituals, but arrested 170 persons who tried to obstruct them.

Tension prevailed in the 'Young Badaga Association' (YBA) building in Ooty as a scuffle between two groups erupted when one group broke open the lock of the building and relocked it with their own lock.

The Madras high court has ordered elections for the Young Badaga Association in the Nilgiris on January 15, and has appointed two election officers – a retired district judge and a former civil servant – for the purpose.

In a letter addressed to chief minister J Jayalalithaa, the Nakkubetta Badaga Welfare Association (NBWA) on Wednesday sought to provide a minister berth to the badaga MLA from Coonoor constituency, Shanthi A Ramu, to represent their community in the Nilgiris district.