Nilgiri

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Nilgiris district map

Nilgiri (नीलगिरि) is one of the 38 districts in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, India. The administrative headquarters is located at Ooty.

Variants

Origin

Nilgiri (English: Blue Mountains) is the name given to a range of mountains spread across the borders among the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The Nilgiri Hills are part of a larger mountain chain known as the Western Ghats.

Their highest point is the mountain of Doddabetta, height 2,637 m. The district is contained mainly within the Nilgiri Mountains range. The district is bounded by Coimbatore and Palakkad to the south, Erode to the east, Chamarajnagar district of Karnataka and Wayanad district of Kerala to the north, and Malappuram district of Kerala to the west. As it is located at the junction of three states namely Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka.

Jat clans

District administration

The Nilgiris district has been headed by a government-appointed Collector since 1868. The first was James W. Breeks, who was called Commissioner. Since then there have been more than 100 men who have held the post. They were responsible for overseeing the various Departments active within the district.

The district comprises six taluks: Udhagamandalam (Ooty/Ootacamund), Kundah, Coonoor, Kotagiri, Gudalur and Pandalur. These are divided among four panchayat unions: Udhagamandalam, Coonoor, Kotagiri and Gudalur. Besides four Municipalities of Ooty, Coonoor, Gudalur and Nelliyalam, there is a Wellington Cantonment and Aruvankadu Township.

History

The history of peoples settled in the Nilgiri hills has been recorded for several centuries. The Blue Mountains were likely named for the widespread blue Strobilanthes flower or the smoky haze enveloping the area.

This area was long occupied by the indigenous tribal peoples of the Toda, Kota, Kurumba, Irula and Badagas. The Badagas were also indigenous to the district but were never a tribal group. Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups PVTGs, the dominant land owners of the tribal district. The lower Wayanad plateau in the west of the district had a different tribal population namely Kattunaika and Paniya. The Todas and Kota, who are similar in culture, language and genetic ancestry, were settled across the fringes of the Nilgiri plateau, as sentries to the Central district. They were the ancient agriculturists in the district, cultivating traditional crops such as samai, vathm, ragi. Under British influence they cultivated English vegetables and later moved on to tea.

Unlike elsewhere in the country, no historical evidence is found of a state on the Nilgiris or that it was part of any ancient kingdom or empire. It seems always to have been a tribal land. The Toda had small hamlets ("mund") across most of the plateau. The Kota lived in seven dispersed villages ("kokal"). The Toda had only a few hamlets on the lower Wynaad plateau and in the nearby Biligiriranga hills. Originally occupied by the Toda people, the area came under the rule of the East India Company at the end of the 18th century. The economy is based on tourism and agriculture, along with the manufacture of medicines and photographic film.

Since the turn of the 21st century, the Badaga have numbered about 135,000 (18% of the district population), the Toda are barely 1,500 and the Kota just over 2,000.

Beginning in 1819, the British colonial administration developed the hills rapidly and peaceably, for use as coffee and tea plantations, and summer residences. The 40 mud-forts in the area had been abandoned.[1] During the British raj, Ooty (the popular name for Ootacamund) served as the summer capital of the Madras Presidency from 1870 onwards. District Gazetteers published by the government (1880, 1908, 1995) were reliable reports on the district, its economy, demography and culture. They with the support of political parties inimical to the natives of Nilgiris have been superseded by the Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills (2012)[2] authored by China-based researcher Paul Hockings, who calls the Nilgiris his first home and holds a bias against the Badagas.

Before British-owned tea and coffee plantations were developed, the dominant landholders were the Badaga. A great deal of linguistic and other cultural evidence[3]—based on unauthentic interpretation of ballads and stories collected from unverifiable individuals—indicates erroneously with a malicious intent that the Badaga non scheduled tribes have lived in nilgiris thousands and thousands of years ago. Supposedly unnamed Badaga elders have regularly recounted these baseless facts as oral history and cannot be relied upon. Though their language is very close to Kannada, it is a mixture of almost all Dravidian languages and yet unique. The migration theory is now totally rejected by educated Badagas,[4] as admittedly the land holdings of the district majorly indicates the Badagas as owners in almost all Taluks of the district. This land is the major resource amongst the Badagas, which even today most Badagas are ignorant about. The Badagas did not find any representation in independent India's Constituent Assembly; to deprive the unlettered Badaga of their land it was intentionally left out of the tribal list post independence. The result of this socio-economic engineering seems to be bearing fruit for the perpetrators of such engineering.

During the early 17th century, the first European is recorded as entering the Nilgiri Hills, an Italian priest/explorer named Fenicio. He interviewed people who identified as Toda and Badega, the latter occupying three villages at that time.[5] The British in India mostly ignored the Ghats for two centuries. Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, conducted a short military operation in the Wynaad in 1800.

During 1804–1818 several East India Company personnel briefly visited parts of the district.[6] John Sullivan, then the collector of Coimbatore, just south of the Nilgiris, sent two surveyors (W. Keys and C. McMahon) to make a comprehensive study of the hills. They reached the site of Ootacamund, but failed to see the complete plateau. In 1812 they were the first British to make a cursory survey of the Nilgiri plateau and produce a map. A more detailed exploration was done in the 1818 survey by J.C. Whish, N.W. Kindersley and Mohammed Rifash Obaidullah for the Madras Civil Service, who reported back that they had discovered "the existence of a tableland possessing a European climate."[7]

Collector Sullivan became the first European resident the next year, when he built a seasonal residence on the plateau. He reported to the Madras Government on the mildness of the climate.[8] Europeans soon started settling here or using the plateau as a summer resort and homes for retirees. In 1870 the practice began of key government personnel moving to the hills to conduct business during summer months in this more temperate climate. By the end of the 19th century, the hills were completely accessible, as several Ghat roads and the railway line had been constructed.

In the later 19th century, when the British Straits Settlement shipped Chinese convicts to be jailed in India, some of these men were settled on the Nilgiri plateau near Naduvattam. They married Tamil Paraiyan women and had children with them. One Chinese gardener was critical to the district's future, for he worked with Margaret B. L. Cockburn in Aruvenu, near Kotagiri, to develop Allport's, the first Nilgiri tea plantation, which started operations in 1863. Her father, Montague D. Cockburn, had opened the first coffee plantation there soon after 1830.[9]

Languages

More than a dozen languages are spoken in the Nilgiris, but the indigenous people did not write or read them. After 1847 German and Swiss missionaries opened schools for boys and girls in some Badaga villages, teaching them literacy. Ten Dravidian languages are found only here, and they have been studied in great detail for decades by professional linguists. Local place names are derived mainly from the dominant Badaga language, e.g., Doddabetta, Coonoor, Kotagiri, Gudaluru, Kunda, etc. Ootacamund is of Toda origin, and Udagamandalam is a very recent Tamil-language version of this place.

नीलगिरि

विजयेन्द्र कुमार माथुर[10] ने लेख किया है ...3. नीलगिरि (AS, p.505): सुदूर दक्षिण की प्रसिद्ध पर्वत श्रेणी. प्राचीन काल में यह है श्रेणी मलयपर्वत में सम्मिलित थी. कुछ विद्वानों का अनुमान है कि महाभारत, वनपर्व 254, 15 ('स केरलं रणे चैव नीलं चापि महीपतिम्') में कर्ण की दिग्विजय के प्रसंग में केरल तथा तत्पश्चात नील नरेश के विजित होने का जो उल्लेख है उससे इस राजा का नील पर्वत के प्रदेश में होना सूचित होता है.

नीलगिरि ज़िला

नीलगिरि एक भारतीय ज़िला है, जो मद्रास राज्य (वर्तमान चैन्नई) के पश्चिम भाग में है। इसका मुख्यालय ओत्तकमंदु है। इस ज़िले से पूर्व में मुख्यत: नीलगिरि के पर्वतीय क्षेत्र हैं। इसमें अनेक पहाड़ी नदियाँ हैं। यहाँ की पहाड़ी नदियाँ मोयार तथा भवानी नदियों में गिरती हैं। यह ज़िला शीतोष्ण कंटिबंधीय तथा तरकारियों के उद्यानों एवं प्रायोगिक कृषि क्षेत्रों से सुशोभित है। यहाँ मक्का, बाजरा, गेहूँ तथा जौ की खेती होती है। यहाँ सिनकोना के बाग़ान हैं। सिनकोना से कुनैन निकालने का कारखाना नाडुबट्टम में है। नीलगिरि ज़िला यूकेलिप्टस, चाय तथा कॉफ़ी के बाग़ानों से परिपूर्ण है। पायकारा जलविद्युत केंद्र प्रणाली का हेडवर्क यहीं पर है। यहाँ के प्रसिद्ध नगरों में ओत्तकमंदु, कूनूर तथा कोटागिरि मुख्य हैं। इस ज़िले की जनसंख्या का 30 प्रतिशत पहाड़ी जातियों का है, जिनमें कोटा तथा टोडा प्रमुख हैं। इसी नाम की एक देशी रियासत उड़ीसा में भी थी, जिसकी राजधानी का नाम 'राज नीलगिरि' था।[11]

नीलगिरि पहाड़ियाँ

नीलगिरि पहाड़ियाँ तमिलनाडु राज्य का पर्वतीय क्षेत्र है। यह सुदूर दक्षिण की पर्वत श्रेणी है। इन पहाड़ियों पर पश्चिमी एवं पूर्वी घाटों का संगम होता है। प्राचीन काल में यह श्रेणी मलय पर्वत में सम्मिलित थी। कुछ विद्वानों का अनुमान है कि महाभारत, वनपर्व 254, 15 ('स केरलं रणे चैव नीलं चापि महीपतिम्') में कर्ण की दिग्विजय यात्रा के प्रसंग में केरल तथा तत्पश्चात् नील नरेश के विजित होने का जो उल्लेख है, उससे इस राजा का नील पर्वत के प्रदेश में होना सूचित होता है।

भौगोलिक तथ्य: दोदाबेटा नीलगिरि पहाड़ियों की सर्वोच्च चोटियों में गिनी जाती है। भारत की टोडा जनजाति इस पर्वत श्रेणी के ढलानों पर रहती है। नीलगिरि पहाड़ियों को 'ब्लू माउण्टेन्स' भी कहा जाता है। इसकी चोटियाँ आस-पास के मैदानी क्षेत्र से अचानक उठकर 1,800 से 2,400 मीटर की ऊँचाई तक पहुँचती हैं। इनमें से एक 2,637 ऊँची दोदाबेटा चोटी तमिलनाडु का शीर्ष बिन्दू है।नीलगिरि पहाड़ियाँ पश्चिमी घाटी का हिस्सा हैं और नोयर नदी इन्हें कर्नाटक के पठार (उत्तर) तथा पालघाटी इन्हें अन्नामलाई, पालनी पहाड़ियों (दक्षिण) से अलग करती है।

वनस्पति: नीलगिरि पहाड़ियाँ आस-पास के मैदानी क्षेत्र के मुक़ाबले ठंडी और नम हैं। ऊपरी पहाड़ियाँ लहरदार घास के क्षेत्रों का निर्माण करती हैं। इन पर चाय, सिनकोना (पेड़ और झाड़ियाँ, जिनकी छाल से कुनैन मिलता है), कॉफ़ी और सब्ज़ियों की व्यापक खेती होती है।

संदर्भ: भारतकोश-नीलगिरि पहाड़ियाँ

References

  1. ↑ Hockings, Paul (2013). So Long a Saga: Four Centuries of Badaga Social History. New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 51–67. ISBN 978-93-5098-018-7.
  2. ↑ https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopaedia-Nilgiri-Hills-2-Parts/dp/8173048932
  3. ↑ Hockings, Paul (2013), So Long a Saga: Four centuries of Badaga Social history, New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 13–29
  4. ↑ https://www.badugaa.com
  5. ↑ Paul Hockings, ed. (2012). "Fenicio, Giacomo, S.J.". Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills. New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 314–321. ISBN 978-81-7304-893-7.
  6. ↑ Hockings, Paul (2012). "History". Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills. New Delhi: Manohar. p. 422.
  7. ↑ Hockings, Paul, ed. (2012). "Whish, John Clinton, and Nathaniel William Kindersley". Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills. New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 989, 991.
  8. ↑ Hockings, Paul, ed. (2012), "Sullivan, John", Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills, New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 881–888
  9. ↑ Mulley, Philip K. (2012). "Cockburn Family". In Paul Hockings (ed.). Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills. New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 213–214.
  10. ↑ Aitihasik Sthanavali by Vijayendra Kumar Mathur, p.505
  11. ↑ भारतकोश-नीलगिरि
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