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

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 20^th 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.