Tribals belonging to the Kattunayakan community, an indigenous group in the Nilgiris, have been staying in the Government Higher Secondary School in Cherambadi, Pandalur, for the last seven years as their mud houses have been damaged by wild elephants.
The seven Kattunayakan families residing in Kannampalli tribal village in Cherambadi said there used to be three hamlets with 15-20 families residing in the area more than 50 years ago. However, in the last few decades, the families had moved out due to poverty and lack of infrastructure in the area.
M. Vasu, one of the residents of the village, said that over the last seven years, the residents have been forced to spend their nights in the government school nearby. They leave in the morning and return to the school in the evening.
“As the area becomes heavily populated with elephants during the evening, which raid our homes in search of food, we have to leave just before sunset and find shelter in the empty classrooms of the local school,” he added.
Land rights
“We all leave our village at sundown, and spend the night at the school, taking our bedspread and mattresses with us. When there is school we have to wake up early in the morning and vacate the premises before the children arrive. We have been living like this for many years without any sort of help from the government,” said C Meena, another resident. The seven mud houses in the village have been damaged beyond repair by elephants.
Sobha Madhan, an Adivasi rights activist working in the Nilgiris, said there was no clarity among government officials as to whether the village in which the tribals reside is on land belonging to the Revenue department or the local tea estate nearby. “In the talks we have had with the tea estate they had no objections to houses being built for the community, but the government has done nothing to get them any form of permanent housing,” said Ms. Sobha. The remaining families in the village, most of whom rely on daily wage work to earn their living, and also on harvesting medicinal herbs and forest produce during most of the year, say that they want the government to set aside land for them, and also sanction the building of houses for them.
K. Bommi, another resident, said that the community has essentially been left homeless for the last seven years, with the residents having to shift between their homes and the government school constantly.
Speaking to The Hindu , C Maheswaran, former director of the Tribal Research Center in Udhagamandalam, said that the government should at the very least take up repair work in group houses, which could be used by Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs) like the Kattunayakans.
