Gondi people

గోండి - गोंडी -Gondi
Total population
4 million
Regions with significant populations
India
           Madhya Pradesh 4,357,718 [1]
           Maharashtra
           Chhattisgarh
           Andhra Pradesh
           Orissa
           Uttar Pradesh
Languages

Gondi/Goindi language, Hindi

Religion

Hinduism, Islam

Related ethnic groups

Dravidian people · Khonds ·

The Gondi, Gondi (Gōndi) or Gond people are people in central India, spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, eastern Maharashtra (Vidarbha), Chhattisgarh, northern Andhra Pradesh, and Western Orissa. With over four million people, they are the largest tribe in Central India.

The Gondi language is related to Telugu and other Dravidian languages. About half of Gonds speak Gondi languages[2], while the rest speak Indo-Aryan languages including Hindi.

Contents

History

Akbarnama, the official chronicle of Mughal emperor Akbar's reign, mentions the Gond kingdom. It refers to the Gond Kingdom as Garha Katanga and having 70,000 villages in India.

For many years during the British colonial period of India the Gonds were considered to have performed human sacrifices, although this notion was later discredited.[3]

Status

The Gonds have scheduled tribe status in most of the Indian states.

Gonds of Uttar Pradesh

The Gond are also found in Uttar Pradesh (UP). Unlike in other parts of India, the UP Gond have Scheduled caste as opposed to Scheduled tribe status. They no longer speak Gondi, but now speak Hindi. The UP Gond are divided into seven sub-groups, the Dev Gond, Dholi, Kolan, Kailabhut, Mudipal, Padal and Raj Gond. Traditionally, the Raj Gond have had a higher status, and were rulers of a number of states in the region. Each of these clans is exogamous. The Gonda of UP are a landowning community, and most of them practise settled cultivation. Historically, the community practiced slash and burn agriculture, but these practices have long been discontinued.[4]

Education

Multiple education commissions on the "language question" have called for instruction, at least at the primary level, in the students' native tongue. However, state governments have often introduced regional language instruction in Gondi areas. Primary schooling among the Gonds of Andhra Pradesh, for example, began in the 1940s and 1950s. The Andhra Pradesh government selected a group of Gonds who were semiliterate in Telugu and taught them the basics of written script. These individuals became teachers who taught in Gondi, and their efforts enjoyed a measure of success until the 1970s, when state policy demanded instruction in Telugu. The switch in the language of instruction both made the Gond teachers superfluous because they could not teach in Telugu and also presented the government with the problem of finding reasonably qualified teachers willing to teach in outlying tribal schools.

Gonds frequently are reluctant to send their children to school, needing them to work in the fields instead.

See also

Further reading

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Madhya Pradesh: Data Highlights the Scheduled Tribes". Census of India 2001. Census Commission of India. http://www.censusindia.gov.in/Tables_Published/SCST/dh_st_madhya_pradesh.pdf. Retrieved 2008-03-06. 
  2. ^ Beine, David K. 1994. A sociolinguistic survey of the Gondi-speaking communities of central India. M.A. thesis. San Diego State University. chpt. 1
  3. ^ *Bates, Crispin (1995). "Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: the early origins of Indian anthropometry". In Robb, Peter. The Concept of Race in South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 233. ISBN 978-0-19-563767-0. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PwNkQgAACAAJ. Retrieved 2011-12-02. 
  4. ^ People of India Uttar Pradesh Volume XLII Part Two edited by A Hasan & J C Das page 546 to 551 Manohar Publications

External links

This article includes material from the 1995 public domain Library of Congress Country Study on India.