Badagas
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The Badagas are an ethno-linguistic community living in the
Nilgiri district The Nilgiris district () is one of the 38 districts in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Nilgiri ( en, Blue Mountains) is the name given to a range of mountains spread across the borders among the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Ke ...
in
Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...
, India. Throughout the district the Badugas live in nearly 400 villages, called Hattis. The Badagas speak a language called Badaga.


History

The name Badaga, meaning 'northerner', comes from
Old Kannada Old Kannada or Halegannada ( kn, ಹಳೆಗನ್ನಡ, Haḷegannaḍa) is the Kannada language which transformed from ''Purvada halegannada'' or ''Pre-old Kannada'' during the reign of the Kadambas of Banavasi (ancient royal dynasty of Kar ...
''Badagana'', meaning 'north.'According to the Badaga oral tradition, their ancestors were presumed to be
Vokkaliga Vokkaliga (also transliterated as Vokkaligar, Vakkaliga, Wakkaliga, Okkaligar, Okkiliyan) is a community, or a group of closely-related castes, from the Indian state of Karnataka. They are also present in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu. As ...
s who migrated from the plains of Mysore to avoid Muslim persecution. According to American anthropologist Paul Hockings, whose research on the Badagas spans nearly six decades, "the (Badaga) tribe despite its sketchy history is as indigenous to the Nilgiris as the English are to Britain." They claim to come from seven siblings living in the Talamalai Hills. After they fled from a Muslim ruler who tried to rape their sister, they settled in different parts of the Nilgiris. The second brother, Hethappa, was working outside when two
Todas Toda people are a Dravidian ethnic group who live in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu. Before the 18th century and British colonisation, the Toda coexisted locally with other ethnic communities, including the Kota, Badaga and Kurumba, in a ...
raped his wife and took his goods. He sought the aid of two Bayaluru, who agreed to help him if they married his two daughters. They killed the Todas, and the inhabitants of the village at the time claimed descent from the Bayalurus and Badaga daughters.


Culture

Throughout the district the Badagas live in nearly 400 villages, called ''Hattis''. ''Thundu'' (a white piece of cloth) and ''Seeley'' forms an integral part of the attire of the Badugu women. Badugas marry within their community and follow their own marriage traditions. Their important festival is Devva Habba. Devva Habba provides significant insights into the origin of Badugas. They have certain rules and regulations to be followed in implementing their cultural rituals from the birth of a child and follows through functions like puberty, marriage, naming ceremony, seventh-month pregnancy, housewarming, and finally in death. They worship their seven founding ancestors under the name Hethappa or Hetha. During time of early 1900s they were known to swear very solemn oaths by the Sri Mariamman temple. For this they bathed, brought coconut and fruit, and killed an animal. The head they put on the step of the shrine, and from seven feet off they would walk to the temple step and put out the light that was shining in front of the idol. Even the Britisher judges, in court, would also abide by this practice and occasionally send witnesses to do this ritual along with a Court official to ensure they were telling the truth. Even today they place great reverence in Sri Mariamman: in April they celebrate a car festival at the Sri Mariamman temple in
Ooty Ooty (), officially known as Udhagamandalam (also known as Ootacamund (); abbreviated as Udhagai), is a city and a municipality in the Nilgiris district of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located north west of Coimbatore and so ...
when they pull the car with the image of Sri Mariamman to their music and dance.


Language

The
Badaga language Badaga is a southern Dravidian language spoken by the Badaga people of the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu. The language is closely related to the Tamil and Kannada languages. Of all the tribal languages spoken in Nilgiris (Badaga, Toda lang ...
is spoken by the Badaga community. The language is closely related to Kannada.
LACITO LACITO (''Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale'') is a multidisciplinary research organisation, principally devoted to the study of cultures and languages of oral tradition. LACITO is a branch of the Centre National de la Recherche Scie ...
in Paris houses numerous varieties of Badaga stories and songs collected over the past two decades.


Education

Several Badaga have become officials in various parts of the Indian Government. Former Lok Sabha MP, the late Smt. Akkamma Devi, was the first Badaga woman to graduate from college and represented the Nilgiris Lok Sabha constituency from 1962 to 1967. Belli Lakshmi Ramakrishnan M.A. was the first Badaga woman post graduate in social work, and went on to be the first woman gazetted officer to serve in the Tamil Nadu State Government Department of Health and Family Welfare.


Scheduled Tribe Status

There is a long-standing demand to restore the status of the Badagas in the list of
Scheduled Tribes The Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are officially designated groups of people and among the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups in India. The terms are recognized in the Constitution of India and the groups are designa ...
under the Indian Constitution. The Badagas were on the tribes list during the
British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...
, as per the 1931 census. After Independence, Badagas were on the Scheduled Tribe list during the 1951 census, but were later removed.


See also

*
Koderi Koderi is one among the Badaga Hattis, or hamlets of the Nilgiri hills, located in Tamil Nadu, India, at a distance of from Coonoor and 20 kilometers from Ooty. Koderi is a part of the ''mekku nadu seeme'', one of the four ''seemes'' of the Na ...


References

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General references

* Gazetteer of India by B.L.Rice, 1877. * Mysore, Canara and Malabar by Buchanan in 1807 * Madras District Gazateer (The Nilgiris) by W.Francis, 1908 * Mysore, Canara and Malabar by Buchanan in 1807 * Letters on the Climate, inhabitants, Production etc., South India by James Hough, 1826 * Breeks, J.W. (1873), An Account of the Primitive Tribes of the Nilgiris; Nilgiri Manual, vol. i. pp. 218–228; Madras Journ. of Sci. and Lit. vol. viii. pp. 103–105; Madras Museum Bulletin, vol. ii., no. i, pp. 1–7. *Hockings, P. (1988). Counsel from the ancients, a study of Badaga proverbs, prayers, omens and curses. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. *Hockings, P. (1989). "The cultural ecology of the Nilgiris District" In P. Hockings (Ed.), Blue Mountains: The ethnography and biogeography of a South *Indian region (pp. 360–376). New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press. *Hockings, P. (1999). Kindreds of the earth: Badaga household structure and demography. New Delhi and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. *Hockings, P. (2001). "Mortuary ritual of the Badagas of Southern India". (Fieldiana: Anthropology, n.s., 32.) Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History. Ethnic groups in India Tamil society Dravidian peoples Social groups of Tamil Nadu Nilgiris district