Badagas arrived later than other indigenous groups, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t indigenous to the Nilgiris: Anthropologist

.Prof. Hockings argues Badagas are an indigenous group to the Nilgiris, despite arriving later than other adivasi groups. He claims Badagas had ties to Kurumbas & migrated from Mysore 400 yrs ago. He says they fit the standard anthropological definition of a tribe & will release a book on the Nilgiris at the Ooty Lit Fest.

Just because the Badagas arrived in the Nilgiris much later than other tribal groups, like the Todas and the Kotas, it does not discredit their claims of indigeneity to the Nilgiris, said Paul Hockings, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Illinois and the Editor of the Encyclopedia of the Nilgiri Hills.

Mr. Hockings who is in the Nilgiris, recently participated in NilgiriScapes, a conference on a sustainable future for the Nilgiris, organised by KREA University, Keystone Foundation, Edhkwehlynawd Botanical Refuge, among others. Other attendees included Dr. Tarun Chhabra, author of The Toda Landscape, Explorations in Cultural Ecology, anthropologist, Nurit Bird-David and others.

“Firstly, all of the information that I give in the book is information given to me by Badaga elders who were growing up around the early 20th century.  I have no interest in this. I don’t care where the Badagas came from, but after doing linguistic research, I and my colleague Christiane Pilot-Raichoor find that there is a lot of Kurumba input into the Badaga language as well, which means that early Badagas were close to Kurumbas, taking wives from Kurumbas,” said Mr. Hockings in an interview with The Hindu.

Mr. Hockings said while a population of Badagas did migrate to the Nilgiris from Southern Mysore during the fall of the Vijayanagara Empire around 400-year-ago, that they did have existing ties to the Kurumbas in the Nilgiris.

“Those who did come from Mysore, we know exactly which villages they came from. We know from certain clans came from Nanjangud (in Mysore), and elders told me which villages they came from and there was no reason for them to make that up,” said Mr. Hockings.

Mr. Hockings said what can be clearly said was that at least “some of the ancestral Badagas came from Southern Mysore in a very restricted area near Nanjangud, while others are descended from the unions of Badagas with women who were indigenous to the Nilgiris.”

The renowned anthropologist said the Badagas are an indigenous group. “Indegeneity does not mean that they were here forever. For example, the English— the Anglo-Saxons came from the border between Denmark and Germany about 1,400 years ago. Most English people don’t know that because they think they belong in England, but the Anglo-Saxons have been in England only as long as the Parsis have been in India. But we do accept the English are indigenous to England,” he said.