Adivasis of the Nilgiri Upper Plateau
ADIVASIS OF THE NILGIRIS UPPER PLATEAU
Pranjali Bandhu
This note takes up for analysis the situation of the original inhabitants—the Adivasis—in the Upper Plateau of the Nilgiri district, part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a sub region lying at the junction of the Western and Eastern Ghats and falling within the administrative ambits of the three States of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Throughout its history up to the medieval period it formed a relatively isolated, autonomous and self-sufficient habitat of a number of ethnic groups, so-called primitive tribal groups, who had symbiotic relationships with one another. For a long period their way of life was sustainable and in tune with Nature. The destabilization of their habitat in cultural, economic and environmental terms happened first with the advent of the British as colonial rulers and the changes they wrought in the land use patterns turning the entire region into a raw material resource for the industrial advancement of their home country. Grasslands and forests passed out of the hands of the original inhabitants into those of the colonizers and other outsiders from the plains causing ecosystems losses and creating ugliness where there was much beauty.
This process did not stop after ‘independence’; rather, it got accentuated with the development of the region as a tourism destination in addition to being a cash crop cultivation area. The fate of the region continues to be largely in the hands of outsiders who control and utilize the resource base and since the last few decades it is more than ever at the mercy of global economic forces. The Adivasis have become completely outnumbered and marginalized in their own territory. So far they have escaped extinction, although the same cannot be said for many endemic flora and fauna of the region that are either already extinct or are highly endangered.
Land Use Patterns in the Region—Pre-colonial and Colonial Periods
In the early 1800s the slopes of the Upper Plateau were bought over by the colonizers, chief among them being John Sullivan, from the Todas at one rupee an acre.1 The Nilgiri Upper Plateau was the habitation zone of the Toda tribe, who were a semi-nomadic pastoral people. They had herds of semi-wild hill buffalos with different pastures during the dry season from January to June. Their settlements in the midst of shola forests with good surrounding pasture land and running water nearby are called munds (actually mod, which means a herd of cattle). The main source of Toda livelihood was the buffaloes that they bred with great love and care, and indeed worshipped. The buffalo milk was processed into butter, ghee and buttermilk, the surplus of which they bartered with neighbouring tribal groups and visiting merchants from the plains for other necessities. The sholas provided medicinal plants, fruits, and other edibles.
Millets were grown by agriculturalist Badaga people who had migrated in waves from Karnataka to this region centuries back. Badagas also served as traders for goods from the plains together with incoming Chetties. Clothes, grains, jaggery, salt and other commodities including opium derived from poppies grown by the Badagas were obtained from them by the Todas, who also provided them with churning sticks of rattan and cane products like beds and baskets in addition to milk and milk products and their beautifully embroidered shawls for ceremonial occasions. It was a custom for Badaga corpses to be covered with Toda shawls. Sometimes a Badaga would entrust his buffaloes to the care of his Toda partner, who would take the animals along with his own to the pastures. Todas often approached Badagas for medical help.
The Kota people were the blacksmiths and smiths in gold and silver, artisans and musicians. They live scattered in seven settlements in the Nilgiri district and there is one settlement in Wayanad. Each Kota family serviced a certain number of Toda and Badaga families living at not more than a day’s walking distance. They provided them with pots for the household, metal tools, axes, knives, jewellery, oil lamps, clay smoking pipes and other metal works. In return they got ghee, male buffalo calves and buffalo carcasses for leather work from the Todas. When there was a death in the Toda family the Kota had to provide many of the necessities like arrows, knives, sieves etc., and also play music at the funeral. At a Kota funeral, which the Toda attended, they provided a buffalo to be sacrificed as well as ghee to be poured on the pyre. During the Kota annual ceremony in honour of their god Kambataraya, the Toda supplied ghee made from milk processed at their sacred dairy temples. The Kota also supplied leather goods and did carpentry work for the Badagas. They also helped to thatch the houses and provided ceremonial music. In return the Badagas supplied cloth, grain, jaggery and salt to the Kotas. For the hunting ceremony of ‘bedasami,’ performed by both Badagas and Kotas, the Todas used to bring clarified butter to smear on the weapons.
The Kurumbas were the forest based tribes and they provided forest produce to the others, such as honey, bees wax, herbal plants and therapy, baskets, winnows and large grain storage baskets. From his Alu Kurumba partner who lived in the Upper Plateau, the Toda got forest produce, particularly honey, bamboo and rattan for house building and baskets for a variety of purposes. The short wooden post to which buffaloes were tied for sacrifice and the long wooden pole set up in front of the funeral temple at the second funeral of the Todas were also supplied by the Alu Kurumbas. In return the Toda gave buffalo calves, some ghee and clothes. The Kurumbas because of their deep knowledge of the forests were also feared as sorcerers, particularly by the Badagas. At the same time, their services were solicited for warding off magical attacks and for protecting their crops and animals from diseases.
The Irulas in the Nilgiris are a forest-based community like the Kurumbas and live mostly on the lower eastern slopes in uni-ethnic settlements or together with Kurumbas, with whom they have economic exchanges and maintain friendly relations. The Irulas also grew millets and fruit trees like lime, jack, orange and bananas in gardens around their settlements. The two ethnic groups helped each other in growing their crops in shifting cultivation. The Irula priest offered priestly services to the Kurumbas in their ceremonies. The Kotas received brooms, bamboo artefacts, honey, resin incense and other forest produce from Irulas. In return, the latter got field and garden implements from the Kotas. As the Kurumbas, the Irulas also supplied baskets, winnowers and winnowing fans of split bamboo to the other neighbouring communities. Some Todas used to receive bamboo flutes from the Irulas of some villages. They went down to the plains for bartering forest produce for salt, tobacco, clothes and other such items.
The social symbiotic relationship among the indigenous groups involved economic, cultural and ritual interactions. While each of the tribal groups had their specialization, they also carried out multiple livelihood activities. The Kotas, for example, also herded animals and grew some millets, cereals, garlic, mustard etc. for self-consumption through shifting cultivation. The Kurumbas and Irulas were food gatherers and hunters but they also carried out slash and burn agriculture and domesticated animals such as chickens, goats and sheep. They depended on each other for several necessities of life. This relationship involving not just economic exchange of goods, but with ritual and social dimensions was mostly on a hereditary basis between families of each community.
The Badagas were Hindu (Shaivite) peasant refugees. When Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan established their kingdom in the Deccan, large numbers of peasants came to the Nilgiris as refugees. They were mainly from the Mysore part of Karnataka, and they are known as Badagas (Northerners). By and large they settled in the Tamil Nadu side of the Nilgiri Hills where some of their compatriots had wandered in and settled down in earlier times after the Veerashaiva anti-caste Hindu reformist movement faced severe repression in Karnataka during the 12th and 13th centuries. They continued to come at the time of the fall of the Vijaynagar Empire also around the mid-16th century due to the consequent political instability. At around this time the Mysore State rulers converted to Vaishnavism and made the worship of Vishnu a state cult, which began to be enforced upon the people. This created some conflict between the Shaivites and Vaishnavites and this could be one of the reasons for the flight of Shaivites to the Nilgiri Hills.2 They are there in Kodagu and Wayanad also where they are known as Gounders. They were granted land by a council of men from the indigenous Toda, Kota and Kurumba tribes. In part, they cleared virgin tropical montane forest. In many ways they adapted to the lifestyle and culture of the pre-existing tribes for the sake of their own survival.
These groups were endogamous and their interrelationship resembled that of the Hindu jajmani system, but without its extremes of hierarchy and complete subjugation of some groups by others. Untouchability was unknown. If reciprocity was not adhered to there was a withdrawal from the cooperative arrangement and no other family from the withdrawing group would replace the one who had withdrawn. The need for the other would necessitate the required adjustments and mutual cooperation. In their search for land suitable to millet cultivation the Badagas probably pushed Kurumbas lower down the hills and the Todas further upwards, but this does not appear to have been done through using any violent means. Rather the methods used earlier were consensual. By and large it was a peaceful and autonomous existence in the hills. Each community had its own priests and council of elders with no overlord. The councils came together for consultations in cases which concerned some or all the groups. Kotas, for e.g., interceded to find solutions to intra-Badaga conflicts and vice versa.
This peaceful and autonomous existence came to an end in the early 17th century when the kings of Mysore became rulers of Wayanad and titular possessors of the Nilgiri Hills. The latter were under the immediate rule of dependents of theirs called Udaiyars or the Rajas of Ummattur. The Plateau became involved in a military struggle between the kings of Mysore and Madurai for the control of tribute primarily from the Badagas. A number of fortresses were erected in various parts of the hills. But the general way of life of the tribal people was not disturbed as a result of this tussle for overlordship of the region.
It was the British interventions in the region which started the process of massive changes, whereby the hill peoples and the environment, the flora and fauna, came to be at the receiving end. The land revenue farming system of the British and their transformation of the area into a cash crop cultivation one had repercussions on the indigenous peoples’ livelihoods and interrelationships. The land legislation promulgated by them in the 1860s and ‘70s forbade shifting cultivation and made the forests into state property. Some land had already been bought at throwaway rates from the Todas and vast tracts of grazing land and forests were seized for tea and coffee plantations and exotic tree species without any compensation at all to the concerned Adivasi groups. In place of the native species many water guzzling exotic trees were planted to be used as fuel wood for domestic fires, for use in tea factories that were established, and for industrial use, to some extent in the hills but mostly in the plains (this was the manufacture of quinine, paper and medicinal oils like eucalyptus). The consequent deforestation affected the livelihoods of the indigenous peoples, who lost hunting areas and sources of forest produce.
Different communities reacted differently to the British encroachment. The Badagas as agriculturists followed and adapted; the Kurumbas retreated further down the hills. The Toda and Kota adapted slowly and reluctantly under the force of circumstances. The colonial interventions in the economy of the region also disrupted the mutuality between the indigenous groups. It was during this time that conflict between Badagas and Kurumbas over land ownership and control became acute. Periodic massacres of the Kurumbas took place by the Badagas in the 19th century under the charge of witchcraft.
By the time of the first British census in the region in 1812 the Badagas had become the numerically dominant community due to increased migration of peasants from the Mysore plains, and soon they became the local economically dominant one as well. An internal differentiation took place within the community. Even earlier there had been some caste-class based differentiation but now it grew apace. Those who could not pay the land tax became tenant small holders, landless labourers and plantation workers. Indebtedness grew and much Badaga land was sold to British planters. The invasion of the place by new settlers and a new economy made the 19th century into a traumatic one of droughts, famines, starvation and epidemics (plague, smallpox, cholera) for the indigenous people and their livestock. Having lost the sources of their earlier livelihoods and culture they had perforce to adapt themselves to the new times.
Only some villages near the new towns of Ooty and Coonoor achieved a measure of prosperity. Jakkatala village sold much of its land to the government for the Wellington Barracks and then profited further from contracts for gangs of labourers to build the barracks, the railway line and some other public structures. By the beginning of the 20th century some Badaga families had become very wealthy as contractors. The value of modern education was also realized by many in this community. Literacy in English and Tamil enabled them to take over high positions in the British administration as karnams (accountants) and managers. Farmers took to commercial farming in imitation of the British and started using fertilizers and pesticides. Money lenders and other middle men made their appearance.
Toda lifestyle was rudely disrupted by the colonial interventions in the region. They were no longer able to pursue their pastoral nomadic way of life as earlier. A large chunk of grassland was now occupied by plantations or exotic tree species. Trees like acacia and eucalyptus dried up much of the marshes and swamps, which had been sources for reeds used to build the warm Toda huts. The kurinjee along with other plant and shrub species disappeared with the vanishing of the shola grassland landscape. The dark brown honey processed from the nectar of the kurinjee flower by the bees was no longer available. Diseases brought by the white people into a pristine terrain decimated the Toda population and they were reduced to a few hundred by the 1940s.
With the marketisation of the economy, starting in the early part of the 20th century the cooperative relationships between the indigenous groups more or less came to an end by the 1950s. The market became a means of exchange for all the groups. Many of the products produced by these groups no longer had any takers and became slowly extinct. Kota pottery, which was mainly the work of Kota women, has almost become an extinct art. The demand for Kota blacksmith articles also dwindled drastically because of the British policies of import of goods and lack of support for Indian rural crafts. The Kotas were also not trained to manufacture the implements required in the plantation economy. So in the end these industrious creative artisans were forced to limit themselves to agricultural activity, mainly on their own lands, but some also do work as skilled or unskilled agricultural labourers and some are engaged in animal husbandry. Loss of land and livelihood transformed many Kurumbas and Irulas of the Upper Nilgiri Plateau into plantation labourers.
The population in this area, hitherto sparse because of its inhospitable climate, grew by leaps and bounds with large-scale immigration from the plains for doing the coolie work on the plantations. The percentage of the population of the indigenous people declined in relation to the total population. Today, the tribal population of the district is only 4.32% of the total population, which stands at 7.35 lakhs as per the 2011 Census. Presently, the Todas, the most ancient tribe of the Nilgiris, total about two thousand including Toda Christians. The changes in the land use pattern also affected the terrain negatively. Land erosion began to take place and landslips became commonplace.
The Post-colonial Period
In the post-colonial period the horticultural and plantation economy of the Nilgiri district continues, though now the ownership has been transferred to Indian business houses and to the State government. The region has also developed into a major domestic and to some extent international tourism destination as has happened in the case of most ‘hill stations’ developed under British rule. Every significant bank and big business house within the country has built up its own holiday home here. Hundreds of hotels, small, big, medium and large have come up. Much of the construction activity takes place in gross violation of hill area building rules and the Master Plan. None of this heightened building up was followed by a complementary expansion of civic amenities like proper roads, sanitation and drains, waste and sewage disposal means. Thousands of tourists come to a town like Ooty every day during the tourist seasons. The situation is pregnant with serious dangers for public health. Already incidences of jaundice, typhoid and other such water-borne diseases have spectacularly increased in the last few years.
With every passing year so-called natural calamities are also increasing in scope and frequency. For example, the two principal towns—Coonoor and Ooty—are often cut off from Coimbatore, which is their life-line. Enormous land slips occur with even a few days of rainfall. It is not that the rainfall is extraordinary, but the reality is that the whole land mass is steadily becoming more and more vulnerable. The frequency of heavy and light vehicular traffic on these roads, unscientific construction activity and agricultural practices have become clearly insupportable for the terrain and contribute considerably to soil erosion and air, soil and water pollution.
The tourism sector is carried out mostly by private players coming from outside the region and by the State and central governments, for which it is a major source of revenue. Very little benefit accrues to the local indigenous people, apart from some sales of embroidered shawls by Toda women, some pottery items by Kota women, and honey and other products sourced by Kurumbas. Toda villages are objects of tourist curiosity and the streams of visitors to the village sited above the Botanical Garden (situated on grasslands usurped from them) have misled some of the inhabitants to indulge in begging from the tourists. They have degenerated into objects of tourist curiosity and are victims of flavoured social and cultural anthropological studies by Western scholars.3
Roads and highways that are built for trade and tourism purposes have cut into the remaining pasture lands of the Todas endangering whatever buffalo stock they still have with them. Now buffalo herding is done in the vicinity of the settlements and the milk and milk products sold. This remains a source of livelihood for the majority of the Todas. Many Todas have been forced to become agriculturists cultivating potatoes, vegetables and even tea. Some of them do not themselves practice agriculture, but have leased out their land for cultivation. Not all Todas have been able to switch to agriculture. They are poor and are not able to avail of bank loans required for agriculture. They do coolie work, collect eucalyptus leaves, act as extras in the many commercial films shot here, or work as caddies in the golf course.4
The change in lifestyle and loss of the traditional buffalo culture, much unemployment or employment not suitable to their educational qualifications among the educated youth, and the free and plentiful availability of IMFL has made a large number of Toda youth and men into alcoholics. Healthy habits like drinking of buttermilk are replaced by tea and coffee drinking. There is clear-cut degeneration of once tremendously healthy people. Toda women are trying to improve their status within a largely patriarchal pastoral culture. While polyandry and infanticide are no longer practiced (which were used to control population growth earlier and maintain clan solidarity), bride price has given way to the dowry system. Full equality is not yet assured to the women, who are still not allowed anywhere near the sacred dairy temple, where the priest is always only a male, and where no ceremonies accompany the name giving function of a female child.
Hydro electric power stations have also destroyed vast stretches of forest, wiped out some endemic flowering plants and broken up older pasture lands of the Todas and destroyed their hamlets. Water pollution due to effluents let out from seven major factories, tea factories and small-scale units, pesticides and fertilizers being used in plantations and for vegetable cultivation, and from municipal wastewater and sewage have affected the local plant species, many of which do not flower now, and fish populations in the water bodies.5 This pollution also kills many local insect species and birds. Many species of Nilgiri bees have begun to disappear. Chemicals used in agricultural lands adjoining the forests are destroying them. Forest Protection Acts are often violated in connivance with forest officials and trees are cut down. Illegal stone quarrying is going on by stone mafias and road contractors buy stones from these illegal quarries with impunity.
It is estimated that the Nilgiri sholas have shrunk from 8600 hectares to about 4225 hectares and there is an 85% loss of grasslands. The role of the sholas as ‘overhead tanks’ feeding underground aquifers from which springs the Kaveri many kilometres away in Kodagu is thus undermined creating water shortages crucial for farming in the plains and deltas of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Water shortage is there in many parts of the Nilgiri district too with an unsustainable rise in the settled population and with an enormous floating tourist population. The swamps in the region too have diminished in numbers due to exotics. In addition to sustaining many wetland flora and fauna they also support many streams with water round the year. They too need to be conserved for their role as water catchments.
A large chunk of government reserves still remain under exotic plantations in the Upper Nilgiri Plateau, which cater to the industrial demands of companies like South India Viscose and others.6 The forest departments are making efforts now to remove many ecological predator species that have got introduced into the region. This includes acacia, eucalyptus, lantana and parthenium weeds. Pine trees are also not suited to the grassland terrain; having shallow roots on thin soil strong monsoonal winds are apt to uproot and crash them down causing much damage to overhead electrical power lines, dwellings, and passing vehicles on the roads. Adivasis, particularly the Todas and Kotas have repeatedly complained about the encroachment on their traditional lands by the forest department. Apart from such land losses there is land alienation also due to debts and through engaging in leasing rather than self-cultivation of commercial crops.
All the three main sub-regions of this biosphere face a severe agrarian crisis pertaining to cash crops like pepper, tea and coffee. Wayanad especially witnessed a spate of suicides of the primary producers resulting from this crisis.7 In the Tamil Nadu part the crisis of the cash crops sector is no less severe (for e.g. in the tea sector), but as yet suicides are not common probably because there is the cushion of food crops, mainly vegetables (also mainly market dependent), to fall back upon. In the last several years tea prices had dropped below sustainable levels. As usual, the many small growers (mainly from the Badaga community) were the worst-affected. Farmers in Nilgiris bitterly point out that in spite of many promises of fixing a minimum support price for green tea leaves nothing concrete has been done to date. Price fluctuations are a part of the globalization process.8
Since the beginning of the crisis in the tea sector at the beginning of the new millennium the central government started supporting floriculture in the region. The district was declared an agri-export zone for the purpose of generating revenue. But the small farmers who took to the cultivation of flowers for the domestic market in the big cities of India and for export abroad are again facing a debt crisis due to the imbalance between input and output costs. Input costs—greenhouses, which get damaged very often due to the strong velocity winds, drip irrigation planting materials, costs of fertilisers and pesticides—are more than the prices received, which are not able to cover production and transportation costs. As in the case of tea, manipulation of prices is there by the private traders in collusion with the big farmers. Small farmers who had taken bank loans to support the costs involved have recently been involved in many agitations for the writing-off of the loans, for the formation of a Floriculture Board, co-operative marketing rather than through private dealers. But the government departments or bank officials are not willing to concede any of these demands. Alienation of the land of small growers to real estate players is a growing reality.
In short, displacement and marginalization of tribal communities has taken place due to an economy based on tourism development, commercial forestry and cash crop cultivation. An agrarian crisis is affecting the small growers hailing mainly from the indigenous Badaga community.
Notes and References
1. The following account of the ‘tribal’ situation when the British came upon the scene is drawn both from the extensive written accounts of British administrators and European anthropologists and missionaries as well as from my conversations with members of the indigenous groups. Among the secondary literature consulted I would like to specially mention Paul Hockings, 1980 and 1989.
2. Paul Hockings, 1980, p. 227.
3. See T.G. Jacob, What Ails the Nilgiris, www.keralatourismwatch.org
4. Information given by Toda activist, Ms Vasamalli.
5. Periodic deaths of fish populations are reported in the various reservoirs and the Ooty Lake due to pollution of water bodies by municipal sewage and untreated factory effluents.
6. See A. Rangarajan, pp. 33-4.
7. See T.G. Jacob (2006) for a detailed exposition of this crisis.
8. T.M. Kullan has provided a detailed view of the nature of the tea crisis in the Nilgiris, particularly regarding the role of outside corporate linked traders in fixing unremunerative prices of raw tea leaves.
Bibliography
Daniels, R.J.R.: The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve: A Review of Conservation Status with Recommendations for a
Holistic Approach to Management. Working paper no. 16, South-South Cooperation Programme, UNESCO, Paris, 1996.
Hockings, Paul: Ancient Hindu Refugees. Badaga Social History 1550-1975. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1980.
__________ (ed.): Blue Mountains: The Ethnography and Biogeography of a South Indian Region. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Jacob, T.G.: Wayanad: Misery in an Emerald Bowl. Mumbai: VAK, 2006.
Keystone Foundation: The Choice of Grain: Adivasis and Food Sovereignty in the Nilgiris. Kotagiri: 2005.
_________ : Honey Trails in the Blue Mountains. Kotagiri: 2007.
Kullan, T.M.: Toxic Tea Market in the Nilgiris, Nilgiris Profusely Bleeds, Save Nilgiris’ Classic Tea. Thummanatty, Nilgiris: TAMG Publication, 2006.
Rangarajan, A.: Shredding the Nilgiris. Sanctuary Asia, vol. XVII, no. 2, 1997.