Badagas

Badaga community of Nilgiri Hills, from Castes and Tribes of Southern India (1909)

The Badagas are an indigenous people inhabiting the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu, southern India. Their language is Badaga. They are the largest indigenous group in Nilgiris.

History

The Badagas are by far the largest indigenous group of this district. They live in nearly 440 villages, called hattis, spread throughout the Nilgiri Plateau. Badaga people speak a Dravidian language called Badagu, which has no script. Many today are also literate in Tamil and English. Their population has recently stabilized at around 135,000.

Although during the past half-century a few Badagas have begun to claim a great antiquity for the Badaga presence on the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu, there is actually no historical evidence whatever of their being there much before an Italian Jesuit, Giacomo Fenicio, encountered a few of them in 1603. The recent unsubstantiated claims of great antiquity have been advanced for contemporary political reasons only, to bolster claims for land and status, and no professional historian or anthropologist has found any support for such claims. All the evidence, which is still not much, indicates that small family groups of migrants from southern Mysore villages began to arrive on the Nilgiri Plateau from the late 16th century onwards, following the breakup of the Vijayanagara Empire (1565), as the population slowly expanded and the number of villages increased. They were and still are organized under a paramount chief, and have lived peaceably with the tribal groups already there, the Todas and Kotas.

A complex exchange system developed between Badagas, Todas, Kotas and the Kurumba tribes, involving both goods, foods and ritual services, This was essential because the Badagas were traditionally all farmers, and had no specialists doing carpentery, pottery, leatherwork, ironsmithy, even playing ceremonial music; Kotas on the other hand could provide all of these services to others. In return the Badagas could and did provide members of the other groups with fixed amounts of grain from each harvest. Hardly any money circulated on the Nilgiri Plateau. Badagu was the contact language between them and other tribal people. During the period of Muslim paramountcy in Mysore the hills were only peripherally under the suzerainty of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, but for long Badaga villages were expected to bring tribute down to government authorities on the plains. This ended after the death of Tipu in 1799; but twenty years later British officials began to settle on the hills, and initiated a period of quite peaceful modernization. This involved the introduction for the first time of roads, money transactions, a marketplace, shops, churches and cemeteries, coach service to the plains, prisons and hospitals, and the first schools. A very mixed population of Europeans and Indians began to settle in four totally new towns, and the whole area was rapidly incorporated into the East India Company's Madras Presidency.

Even before the introduction of British administration the plateau was divided into four simé or divisions. each of which was divided into a few communes which in turn contained several dozen hamlets. At each of these indigenous administrative levels there were headmen, who were supported by a small council of respected men. The four divisions were called Porangadu, Todanadu, Merkunadu and Kunda, and had over 400 villages (with a couple of dozen more in the adjoining Wainad Plateau).

They are agricultural people, but in recent times, with advanced educational institutions available, Badagas have branched out into a wide range of professions, including law, medicine, teaching, government service, engineering and IT. Although recent national censuses have tended to avoid enumerating Badagas as a separate social entity, the census of 2001 indicated there were then 134,514 speakers of Badagu (a language not spoken by anyone else). These would have included about 4,500 Christian Badagas, a separate community in many respects since the first conversion of a Badaga in 1858 by Swiss missionaries.

Culture

The culture of the Badagas may be said to be based on that of their ancestral villages near Nanjangud, in the Mysore area, but modified in response to two local aspects on the Nilgiris: the high elevation, in some places over 6000 ft. above sea level, and the consequent cool climate; and secondly, the continuing interaction of the early Badagas with the Kota craftsmen, the Toda herdsmen, and the forest-dwelling Kurumbas and Irulas. Thus traditional Badaga clothing is distinct form that of Mysore villages, and some of their minor deities are unknown beyond the Nilgiris. Thus, instead of the sari, the "tundu", a piece of white cloth, forms an integral part of the women's attire; it is sometimes presented to dignitaries visiting the villages as a gesture of goodwill. Badaga headmen and other elders used to wear the Toda cloak (putkuli) rathher than the typical dhoti of Southern India.

Badagas are totally endogamous—i.e. they marry only within their community—and there are strict rules about which clan may intermarry with which others. They celebrate several festivals every year, such as Mari Habba, Uppu Attuva Habba, etc., and the most important festival is Hette Habba.

Notable Badagas

In the 1930s, H. B. Ari Gowder founded the Nilgiris Cooperative Marketing Society (NCMS) to help raise prices for Badagas farm products. The NCMS was an answer to lowland middlemen who would reduce prices by playing off one farmer against another. Ari Gowder was the first Badaga to be elected to the Madras Legislative Council. and one of the first Badagas to graduate from Madras University.

Religion

Badagas are Shaivite Hindus, who worship numerous Hindu deities, including pre-eminently Shiva and their main goddess Hette, along with her consort, Hiriodeya or Ayya. There are about a dozen festivals throughout the year, although the roster of them varies somewhat from village to village. In about 18 villages fire-walking is practised. They celebrate the Hette Festival in a grand fashion spread over a month during December–January every year, and the Great Festival is another one celebrated all over the district. As with other HIndus, personal worship at a small shrine near the home, or before images kept in the home, is a very widespread practice. Every village and hamlet has at least one temple, even if it is just a modest shrine, and larger villages usually have several of these. The larger temples are usually built of cut stone, the work of the Boyar caste who come from the plains to do this work.

Further reading

• Breeks, J.W. (1873), An Account of the Primitive Tribes and Monuments of the Nilagiris. London: India Museum.
• Francis, W. (1908), "The Nilgiris." Madras District Gazetteers. Vol. 1. pp. 218–228. Madras: Government Press.
• Hockings, P., and C. Pilot-Raichoor (1992), A Badaga-English Dictionary. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 311012677X

External links

• Badagas of the Blue Mountains, their unique history, origin, culture, customs, rituals, language and lifestyle
• www.badugaa.com, Badugas of Nilgiris