The Gondi (Gōṇḍī) or Gond people, who refer to themselves as "Koitur", are an ethnolinguistic group in India. Their native language, Gondi, belongs to the Dravidian family. They are spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Odisha. They are listed as a Scheduled Tribe for the purpose of India's system of reservation.
The Adivasi are a heterogeneous tribal groups across the Indian subcontinent. The term is a Sanskrit word coined in the 1930s by political activists to give the tribal people an indigenous identity by claiming an indigenous origin. The term is also used for ethnic minorities, such as Chakmas of Bangladesh, Bhumiputara Khasas of Nepal, and Vedda of Sri Lanka. The Constitution of India does not use the word Adivasi, instead referring to Scheduled Tribes and Janjati. The government of India does not officially recognise tribes as indigenous people. The country ratified the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 107 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the United Nations (1957) and refused to sign the ILO Convention 169. Most of these groups are included in the Scheduled Tribe category under constitutional provisions in India.
The Tea-garden community is a term for a multiethnic, multicultural group of tea garden workers and their descendants in Assam. They are officially referred to as Tea-tribes by the government of Assam and notified as Other Backward Classes (OBC). They are the descendants of peoples from multiple tribal and caste groups brought by the British colonial planters as indentured labourers from the regions of present-day Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh into colonial Assam during the 1860-90s in multiple phases to work in tea gardens. They are found mainly in those districts of Upper Assam and Northern Brahmaputra belt where there is a high concentration of tea gardens, like Kokrajhar, Udalguri, Sonitpur, Biswanath,Nagaon, Golaghat, Jorhat, Sivasagar, Charaideo, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, and Lakhimpur. There is a sizeable population of the community in the Barak Valley region of Assam as well in the districts of Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi. The total population is estimated to be around 7 million, of which an estimated 4.5 million reside in residential quarters built inside 799 tea estates spread across tea-growing regions of Assam. Another 2.5 million reside in the nearby villages spread across those tea-growing regions. They speak multiple languages, including Sora, Odia, Assam Sadri, Sambalpuri, Kurmali, Santali, Kurukh, Kharia, Kui, Chhattisgarhi, Gondi and Mundari. Assam Sadri, distinguished from the Sadri language, serves as lingua franca among the community.
Salwa Judum was a militia that was mobilised and deployed as part of counterinsurgency operations in Chhattisgarh, India, aimed at countering Naxalite activities in the region. The militia, consisting of local tribal youth, received support and training from the Chhattisgarh state government. It was outlawed and banned by a Supreme Court court order but continues to exist in the form of armed auxiliary forces, District Reserve Groups, and other vigilante groups.
The Tsundur Massacre refers to the killing of several Dalit people in the village of Tsundur, Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, India, on 6 August 1991. 8 Dalits were massacred by Reddy men with the alleged help of the police. When a young graduate Dalit youth was beaten because his feet unintentionally touched a Reddy woman near a cinema hall, the Dalits of the village supported him. As a result, Dalits were socially boycotted by the Reddy landowners of the village. Many Dalits have lost their livelihood as they depend on the daily wages by working in the paddy fields of the Reddys. The significance of this atrocity was Dalits collectively fought to gain legal justice by invoking SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act 1989.
Madia Gonds or Madia or Maria are one of the endogamous Gond tribes living in Chandrapur District and Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra State, and Bastar division of Chhattisgad State India. They have been granted the status of a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups by the Government of India under its affirmative action or reservation programme. The Madia Gonds are strongly affected by Naxal activities. The Madia Gond use the self designation Madia, and call the area where they live Madia Desh. They speak the Madia dialect of Gondi. The shifting agriculture of madia is known as jhoom.
A study mentions living megalithic practices amongst the Madia Gonds. One of the findings of The Bench Mark Survey done in 1997–1998: 91.08 per cent of Madia Gond families lived Below Poverty Line.
The Naxalite–Maoist insurgency is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups known as Naxalites or Naxals and the Indian government. The influence zone of the Naxalites is called the red corridor, which has been steadily declining in terms of geographical coverage and number of violent incidents, and in 2021 it was confined to the 25 "most affected" locations, accounting for 85% of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) violence, and 70 "total affected" districts across 10 states in two coal-rich, remote, forested hilly clusters in and around the Dandakaranya-Chhattisgarh-Odisha region and the tri-junction area of Jharkhand-Bihar and-West Bengal. The Naxalites have frequently targeted police and government workers in what they say is a fight for improved land rights and more jobs for neglected agricultural labourers and the poor.
Operation Lalgarh was an armed operation in India against the Maoists who have been active in organising an armed tribal movement alongside a group called the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA). The operation is organised by the police and security forces in Lalgarh, Jhargram, West Bengal to restore law and order in the area and flush out the Maoists. The area of operation is said to be expanded to 18 police stations in the three Maoist-affected districts of Paschim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia.
This is a timeline of the 1967–present Naxalite–Maoist insurgency in eastern India.
Komaram Bheem (1901–1940), alternatively Kumram Bheem, was a revolutionary leader in Hyderabad State of British India from the Gond tribes. Bheem, in association with other Gond leaders, led a protracted low intensity rebellion against the feudal Nizams of Hyderabad in the eastern part of the princely state during the 1930s, which contributed in the culmination of the Telangana Rebellion of 1946.
The April 2010 Dantewada Maoist attack was an 6 April 2010 ambush by Naxalite-Maoist insurgents from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) near Chintalnar village in Dantewada district, Chhattisgarh, India, leading to the killing of 76 CRPF policemen and 8 Maoists — the deadliest attack by the Maoists on Indian security forces.
The Singareni Karmika Samakya is a militant trade union of coal miners in the Singareni coal fields. Sikasa is allegedly linked to the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Vishwanath is the secretary of Sikasa.
The Radical Youth League (RYL) is a frontal organisation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), a Naxalite group, mainly operating in Andhra Pradesh.
Adilabad district is a district located in the northern region of Telangana, India. It is known as the gateway district to South and Central India. The town of Adilabad is its headquarters. The district shares boundaries with Asifabad, Nirmal districts and with the state boundary of Maharashtra.
The Gunjala Gondi lipi or Gunjala Gondi script is a script used to write the Gondi language, a Dravidian language spoken by the Gond people of northern Telangana, eastern Maharashtra, southeastern Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. Approximately a dozen manuscripts in the script were recovered from Gunjala, a Gond village in Adilabad district of Telangana, by a team of researchers from the University of Hyderabad, led by Professor Jayadheer Tirumala Rao. The script and preliminary font were unveiled in early 2014.
Kumuram Bheem Asifabad district is a district in the Indian state of Telangana. The town of Asifabad is its district headquarters and kagaznagar as its largest town. It is named after Gond tribal leader Kumuram Bheem. It was earlier part of Adilabad district and it became a new district in 2016. The district share boundaries with Adilabad, Nirmal, Mancherial districts and with the state boundary of Maharashtra. It is the second most backward district in India, according to the 2018 NITI Aayog ranking.
Podu is a traditional system of cultivation used by tribes in India, whereby different areas of jungle forest are cleared by burning each year to provide land for crops. The word comes from the Telugu language.
On 17 July 2019, eleven people were killed in a massacre in Ubbha village, Sonbhadra district, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The Gond tribals had refused to vacate land claimed by the village headman, Yagyadutt, who belonged to the dominant Gujjar community. Their resistance to his attempts to take their land led Yagyadutt to bring in goons and fire on the Gonds. The next day, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Commission of Uttar Pradesh asked the state government to invoke Gangster Act against the accused. The incident quickly gained national outrage as an example of caste-based killings and was taken up by the opposition as an example of the "Jungle Raj" of the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in the state.
The New Peace Process is an initiative of a conglomerate of tribal and non-government support groups and individuals, with the aim of bringing a negotiated settlement to the 50-year-old Maoist insurgency in Central India. Bastar Dialogues are a series of activities that started in mid 2018 by the New Peace Process to initiate a dialogue between the Naxalites and state security forces to restore peace in Central India.
