The Badagas are an indigenous people

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

 inhabiting the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

, southern India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. Their language is Badaga

Badaga language

The Badaga language is a southern Dravidian language spoken by approximately 400,000 people in the Nilgiri Hills in Southern India. It is known for its retroflex vowels. The word Badaga refers to the Badaga language as well as the Badaga community/tribe...

.

Traditional Attire

In olden days the Badagas used to wear distinctive dresses. The traditional Badaga man wore a white mundu - dhoti and a white shawl called seelay, which is a long piece of thick special weave of cotton with distinctive borders in black and zari, and a white turban. The Badaga woman's attire consisted of white thundu, mundu and pattu. The thundu is a piece of white rectangular cloth wrapped around the body and reaching a few inches below the knees. The mundu is a piece of finer cotton cloth worn like a shawl over the shoulders. The pattu is a scarf-like piece of white cotton cloth, worn square across the forehead, and tucked in at the back of the head, very similar to the headgear worn in Himalayan pahadis. The traditional Badaga dress is only in white.

Further reading

• J. W. Breeks (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.
• Jayaprakash.B,. Wg.Cdr.(2009). Badagas of the Blue Mountains http://badaga.wordpress.com
• Balasubramaniam,B. (2009). Paame - the history and culture of the Badagas of the Nilgiris. Elkon Press,Bangalore http://www.dkagencies.com/doc/from/1063/to/1123/bkId/DK37423337114929835361731371/details.html
• Badaga Social Network (2010). Badagas of the The Nilgiris and the World over http://www.badagainfo.com