Why are the Adivasis of Assam called ‘tea tribes’?
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
2 ANSWERS
Adivasis are the aboriginal tribal people of India. It is a Sanskrit word Adi+Vasi meaning Original/Earliest Inhabitants. They belong to the Australoid and Negrito group and have been living in India before the arrival of the Aryans.
The British set up Tea gardens in Assam after Robert Bruce discovered tea near Rangpur. It was in 1839, when the first company for growing and making tea was set up in Assam.
The tea garden communities are known as Adivasis but they are not recognised as tribals in Assam. However there was a dearth of labours to maintain the huge plantations.
As such the Assam Tea Company started to recruit labourers from predominantly tribal and backward caste people ( Munda, Oraon, Kharia, Santhal etc) of Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Telangana and Chhattisgarh region into Assam to be employed in the tea gardens as labourers.
As the tea trade flourished there were further waves of immigration of labours into Assam. According to 2011 census, Tea garden communities constitute about 18 to 20% of the total population of Assam.
These people belong to various sub groups but in Assam, they are clubbed together as Tea garden tribes
Coming back to the Question.
Coming back to the Question.
Tea Tribes are called Adivasis because they originally belong to the tribal population of Chotanagpur region where their ancestors have been granted ST status by the government of India.
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps


Comments
Post a Comment