Dharmalingam Venugopal is an angry man, and an anguished one too. A Badaga, he has grown up with stories woven around his beloved hills. Pointing to where a herd of gaur grazes on a Kotagiri hillside, he talks of the wisdom of his forefathers, who spoke of the emme thada, aane(y) thada and aan thada (the gaur path, the elephant path and the one for human beings).

One would not trespass into the other’s territory; there was none of the man-animal conflict. “If only we had the intelligence of our forbearers, and the sense to leave well alone,” he laments.

Venugopal’s anger is at the wilful devastation of the hills. He knew the land sharks in the Nilgiris would get their comeuppance. “I only wish it had not happened in so violent a manner. So many innocent people suffered,” he says.

He quotes a 1982 study by the Tamil Nadu Government and the Geological Survey of India. The report predicts dire consequences for the Nilgiris unless immediate measures are taken.

Astonishingly, the warnings seem to have gone completely unheeded. Twenty-seven years after the report, in the recent deluge in the Nilgiris there have been more than 1,000 landslides, which have left many dead and homeless. Loss to property has been immense. Venugopal says, simply: “I rest my case.”……………..

Then, in 2006, Venugopal initiated the Nilgiris Documentation Centre (NDC) and Nilgiris History Museum, of which he is the founder and honorary director. “I have always believed no activism is meaningful without the backing of proper research.” Venugopal’s ambition is to bring under one roof all Nilgiris-related material available in India and abroad so that researchers can work on them in the future. He hopes those who have lived here will contribute information and memorabilia related to the Nilgiris. ………….

Read the full article here

Download this or this Badaga Dance music as Ringtones for your mobile hosted by Wg Cdr JP

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Badaga Recipes

Mouth watering Badaga recipes on the net

…..Thuppadhittu, Hachikkay and Koi Baadu Udakka(Chiken Curry) …surprised….visit

Badaga recipes…..

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இந்தியர் என்று எழுந்து நிற்போம் , படகர் என்று நிமிர்ந்து நிற்போம்

BADAGA SONGS ON THE WEB

A lot of you have been writing about my choice of  the “BADAGA SONGS ON THE WEB” and how to listen and download the same.

The easiest way is to go to this weblog of mine. Enjoy while it lasts !

It has always been felt that for a language to survive, it should have its own script. It cannot remain only as a spoken language for long. But of course, the script need not be peculiar and specific one pertaining to that particular language.

So too is the necessity of a script for Badaga. Many have attempted to achieve this objective with various degrees of success. But unfortunately, to my knowledge, no records exists, if any. I am no expert on phonetics or languages or much less innovating an unique script. But the urge to have a separate script has convinced me that it is very much possible to ‘ADOPT’ an existing script and ‘ADAPT’ it to Badaga language.

To know more about the BADAGA SCRIPT or rather the need for one go here

Hethay Amma and Gayatri Chalisa

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A prayer to Hethe in Badaga

[since Badaga language does not have a script, it is given in English and Tamil]

SINNADHA KODAI IDUTHU; SINGARADHA NADAI NADADHU;

BETHU DHADI YA HEGALUGE ETHI….. HETTAI

NEE SATHIYADHA VAAKA HEGI;SANDHOSHA MATHA THORI;

SEEMAIGA SIRI THORA BAA….SEMAIGA SIRI THORA BAA,

HA HA HETTAI OH OH HETTAI ANANDA MADINIYO ODI BAA HETTAI

சின்னத கொடை ஹிடுத்து; சிங்காரத நடை நடது

பெத்து தடியா ஹெகலுக எத்தி…..

ஹெத்தை நீ சத்தியத வாக்க ஹேகி;

சந்தோஷ மாத்த தோரி;

ஹா ஹா ஹெத்தை ஒ ஒ ஹெத்தை ;

ஆனந்த மாடிநியோ ஓடி பா ஹெத்தை !

[The above Hethe Song in Tamil fonts is 'coded' in html. Idea courtesy - Gopinath & Dev_ Mathan at badaga.org]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

L. Gandhi
Lecturer, Guruvayurappan Institute of Management,
Coimbatore

JP’s reply >Hello Gandhi, Thanks a lot for your email and I am taking the liberty of putting it up in my blog.

As I have said in my site, I have been requesting our friends to send me info on First Badaga and on other matters so that the same can be incorporated but I hardly get any info. I am sure, even if not First Badaga, the achievements of many of our Badagas are bound to be a source of inspiration to the future generations. First Badaga from the leading institutions like IIT, IISc, IIM must find a place. Only info is not available. If you can pl send more info abt Dr.Hariprasad with a pix, if possible.

11-12-2009 Email from

Dr. B. S. Krishnamoorthy, Post-Doctoral Research Assistant
University of Paris, France,

Dear JP Sir,
I am very happy to say that Dr. Hariprakash is my senior and one of the motivators for me to complete my Ph.D., Certainly we have to provide a space for him in our Badaga website.

Thank you Dr. It will be my pleasure and honour to put up more info on Dr.Hariprakash and other highly educated Drs like you as I feel it will motivate our youngsters-JP.

Bharath Kamaraj fromPuduhatty (near Nanjanad) now living abroad had sent in this very interesting info.

It’s everyone’s pleasure to write about their hatty. And first, I like to show you a miracle. Hope you have heard about Bembatty village (my Iyyana hatty) and there they celebrate Hettai habba during January of every year. Here with I have attached a pic from google earth of Bembatty village(2008). What the miracle I’m talking about is that the Google satellite has captured the earth on the day of Bembatty Hettai habba. I was really amazed to see this for the first time a year back and I shared with all around me. Now it’s time to share with everybody with your website. I made a arrow mark against the people sitting in white dress surrounding the Temple’s tree.

Incidentally, this year (Beraganni/Peduva) Hethai Habba will be celebrated on the 4th Jan, 2010

Calling the kind attention of all friends in the Nilgiris. Can you, volunteer to help out the ‘really’ affected people during the recent rain/flood havoc if assistance in cash / kind is made available? You are expected to identify the genuinely ‘affected’ without any party or political interference.

Please contact me at bjaypee@gmail.com immediately

Music from the blue mountains by Pankaja Srinivasan

(The Hindu – 07-12-2009)

They came down from the hills. To tell the plainsmen haunting stories of their beloved home. To see if they could touch a chord in their hearts. To make them aware of their homeland. They had come as part of an initiative of the Nilgiris Documentation Centre (NDC) to take part in programme called Nilgiris Nostalgia organised at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan to pay homage to the victims of the recent devastation caused in the hills. The unprecedented rain had left many dead and homeless and had caused huge damage to property

The musical tribute began with Badaga elders rendering songs. The indigenous people of the Nilgiris have a rich oral tradition. Their history and literature has been preserved and handed down from generations by word of mouth. That evening, they shared some of that with the audience. Beginning with an invocation to goddess Hette, their main deity, who clothes their hills with verdant vegetation, the different seasons, and magic, they then sang not just about the beauty of their land but also of past hardships. They kept time with nothing more than hand claps and the simple Buguri, a cane flute.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Homage to a Badaga Woman (from Spain)

In Oct 2009, I received an email from Mª Teresa Llop Navarro (Spain), President of a NGO called ‘ESPURNA’ which has been formed as an association for international co-operation which collaborates in helping poor families in the Nilgiris….

Read the full article in the ‘General Interest’ page

Ms.Teresa Llop also sent me the following >

A homage from Barcelona for a Badaga (tribe which lives in the Nilgiri Mountains, the majority of whom work on or are small owners of tea plantations) woman.

I left India the 18th of August and she came to visit me the week previous having just left hospital. She could barely walk but she climbed the steps little by little barefoot with swollen feet holding onto her sari which scarcely covered her breasts. She came to see my kitchen,have some tea and put flowers on the altar in my house. ( In all Indian houses there is a small altar which at nightfall is lit by an oil-lamp.On the altar are the deities for which the owner of the house feels devotion , in my case , as related to me, the deities were Saraswaty, the godess of wisdom and for Visnu the god of balance, the owner of the house being a doctor who works in the Apolo Hospital in Hydrebad.) During the time of the monsoons at the end of June, beginning of August ,in Gandinagar, a town-land on the outskirts of Ooty in the Nilgiris where we had the house, the light goes quickly in the evening and I acquired the habit of lighting the lamp then and she saw the glow from her house.She wanted to come and visit as she had never seen a white woman in the flesh before.

She entered slowly, sat on the cane sofa. I touched her feet in a sign of respect

as she made a movement as if saying “ No, no I´m not that important “I touched her feet and then my front.I prepared a tea with milk and sugar in the hindi style.She took a sip looked ar the kitchen and said “nice tea and a clean kitchen“. Her English was fairly incomprehensible.I sat beside her.Her daughter-in-law , Sarda, looked at me and then her. Viswa’s  amma closed her eyes and began to pronounce words strange to me. Now and again I heard the word –Yoga-.When she had finished, very tired and with eyes shut she lay as if asleep. Sarda said that lately she was speaking a lot of yoga, of her Master and her childhood. That she did not fell well and was in and out of hospital where they could find nothing wrong with her except old age and fatigue.Visw amma took her leave of me her last words being –Love, Master and Yoga.

The day I left the Nilgiris for Europe on an early flight she was asleep and I left a red rose at the door of her house.

This month of October I heard she had died the 28th of August.

In Barcelona I light the lamp-light on the altar in honour of mother of Viswa who will always be in my heart.

I was indeed touched by her act and am sure so will you be, too. I thank Mª Teresa Llop Navarro on behalf of all Badagas.

Badaga Origin

Is Badaga one of the ancient Dravidian languages and predated ‘halaya’ Kannada? Is it a separate language all by itself? By inference, are Badagas one of the oldest ‘tribes’?

Arunan from Cannada has given some very interesting links which suggest Badaga language existed with old Kannada and equates it with Sangam or purana Tamil period.

“…..Some of the Kanarese too seem to have been called Vadugar. In consequence of the Andhras and the Kanarese having been called by the common name of Vadugar in the days of the Sangam, it has been surmised that they were then one race and that their language too must have been known as Vadugu and that it is only later that Kanarese must have branched off into a separate language. But llam-Ko-Adigal, the great epic-poet of the Sangam age, mentions distinctly those who speak the Kanarese language as Karunadar, and other classical writers make mention separately of the lands where Kanarese and Telugu were respectively spoken. The northern portion of the Mysore state and parts of the districts of Bellary and Anantapur seem to be known even now as Badaga-nadu and the Kanarese of those areas are known as Badaga-varu and Badaga-natti-varu. A poem of the Sangam mentions an Erumai as a ‘Vadugar chief’ in whose land flowed the river Ayiri. This is evidently the Agiri which falls into the Tungabhadra. It is this country which was probably the extreme southern limit of the Asokan empire as is evidenced from inscriptions found in the vicinity.

If these be so, it follows that the Telugus who were to the north, and the Badaga Kannadas who were to the west, of the Tamils were known generically as the Vadugar. The poet, Ma-mulanar, says that it is beyond the lands of a chief of the name of Katti that the language changed into that of the Vadugar. Perhaps the chiefs well-known as Katti-Mudaliyars in the days of the Vijayanagar empire and later belonged to the lineage of this Katti. It is worthy of note that these Katti-Mudaliyars occupied those portions of the Tamil country which Ma-mulanar assigned to Katti. There are reasons to hold that the land called Vadugar-munai and placed beyond the lands of this Katti is identical with the Badaga-nadu we have already mentioned. It is these Badagas that seem to be referred to by St. Sundara in one of his psalms on a shrine in the Kongu country…..”

The Tamils and the Andhras by PANDIT M. RAGHAVA AIYANGAR

Read the full article in Badaga Language page

Badaga Origin

Arunan from Cannada has given some very interesting links which predated badaga language to Kannada and equates it with Sangam or purana Tamil. Here is the link http://yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/TheTamilsandtheAndhras.htm
” Some of the Kanarese too seem to have been called Vadugar.7 In consequence of the Andhras and the Kanarese having been called by the common name of Vadugar in the days of the Sangam, it has been surmised that they were then one race and that their language too must have been known as Vadugu and that it is only later that Kanarese must have branched off into a separate language.8 But llam-Ko-Adigal, the great epic-poet of the Sangam age, mentions distinctly those who speak the Kanarese language as Karunadar,9 and other classical writers make mention separately of the lands where Kanarese and Telugu were respectively spoken.10 The northern portion of the Mysore state and parts of the districts of Bellary and Anantapur seem to be known even now as Badaga-nadu and the Kanarese of those areas are known as Badaga-varu and Badaga-natti-varu. A poem of the Sangam mentions an Erumai as a ‘Vadugar chief’ in whose land flowed the river Ayiri.11 This is evidently the Agiri which falls into the Tungabhadra. It is this country which was probably the extreme southern limit of the Asokan empire as is evidenced from inscriptions found in the vicinity.

If these be so, it follows that the Telugus who were to the north, and the Badaga Kannadas who were to the west, of the Tamils were known generically as the Vadugar. The poet, Ma-mulanar, says that it is beyond the lands of a chief of the name of Katti that the language changed into that of the Vadugar.12 Perhaps the chiefs well-known as Katti-Mudaliyars in the days of the Vijayanagar empire and later belonged to the lineage of this Katti.13 It is worthy of note that these Katti-Mudaliyars occupied those portions of the Tamil country which Ma-mulanar assigned to Katti. There are reasons to hold that the land called Vadugar-munai and placed beyond the lands of this Katti is identical with the Badaga-nadu we have already mentioned.14 It is these Badagas that seem to be referred to by St. Sundara in one of his psalms on a shrine in the Kongu country.15