The Nilgiri Hills: A Kaleidoscope of People, Culture and Nature
Contents: Preface. Part I: Prologue. 1. The Eve of the Modern/Paul Hockings. Part II: Nature. 2. Biodiversity and Conservation Challenges/R. J. Ranjit Daniels. 3. A Climatologist in the Nilgiris/Hans J. von Lengerke. Part III: Communities. 4. John Sullivan and the Toda Monegars/Anthony R. Walker. 5. Innocent Times: A Glimpse Back into Sullivan’s Nilgiris/Philip K. Mulley. 6. Through Badaga Eyes: The Social Construction of a Cultural Landscape/Frank Heidemann.Part IV: Arts & Crafts. 7. Ancient Nilgiri Metallurgy/Sharada Srinivasan. 8. Among the Gems from the Nilgiris, the Kota Women Potters/Marie-Claude Mahias. 9. Experiencing Music in Tribal South India: On Doing a Recording Project/William Tallotte. Part V: Honey & Money. 10. ‘When We Have the Blessings of the Bees, Why Should We Worry?’: Chronicles of a Honeyhunter from the Northeastern Slopes/Pratim Roy and Anita Varghese. 11. Cultivating the Money Bush: Tea Production, Socioeconomic Transformation and the Ambivalence of Money/Jens M. Zickgraf. Part VI: Personalities. 12. Twenty-first Century Toda Recollections of the British Raj/Tarun Chhabra. 13. The Sadist Who Sired a South Indian Scholar-Administrator/Paul Hockings. 14. A Nineteenth-Century Photographer of the Nilgiris and its People/Christopher Penn. 15. ‘Everything is Poison Now’: Irula and Alu Kurumba Illness Narratives in a Changing Social Context/Andrew C. Willford. 16. The German Nilgiri Family: Team Members of the Indo-German Nilgiris Development Project/Peter Neunhauser. Part VII: Coda. 17. The Symbiosis in the Nilgiris/Indu K. Mallah. Index.
The year 2019 marked the bicentenary of British contact with the indigenous people of the Nilgiri Hills, in south India. This contact was initiated by John Sullivan, a local official from Coimbatore, who over a few years founded the town of Ootacamund from scratch.
Interestingly, and contrary to many accounts of colonial expansion, there is no indication anyone here was harmed by the outsiders, let alone enslaved or killed. Thus south India's first hill station came into being, in 1821.
The Nilgiris District is a bare 1,000 square miles in extent, yet it remains one of the most heavily researched areas of India. This volume brings together new articles from writers and scholars, including ecologists, filmmakers and a musicologist, local writers and overseas experts, on topics that have never before been examined:
ancient metallurgy;
the gathering of wild honey;
Toda views of the British;
the mythology of the Badagas and traditional healing systems of the Irulas and Alu Kurumbas;
the music of some of these tribes; and
the unique climate and several ecosystems of the region.
These fresh topics add to our understanding of this mountainous area; and stunning photographs, both historical and of the modern day, complement the chapters to bring the region alive.
