Inside the wild tribal festival of Nilgiris
A fter an exhausting day (May 13, 2019) in the field, one might only think of an appetizing meal and a good nap at the base camp. But, sometimes taking away a few hours from that special nap for some learning is excellent, which everyone would agree on. One such moment in my field days was when I heard about the big festival of the Irula community from the local villagers of Thegumaradha earlier called as ‘Getthapatti’ (Thengu= Coconut tree, Patti = cattle herd) . As my interest awakened, I decided that the best way to explore more about this festival Is to be part of the experience. Irula are the Dravidian ethnic group native to the Nilgiri mountains of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka. They are dark people and speak their own dialect Irula language. Moyar Irula’s speech has mixed Tamil and Kannada language. According to the Irula heads, the festival is celebrated for ages and they doesn’t know the exact date when it started. It stopped in the early 90s by the active movement of...