Tea-garden community of Assam

rdf:langString Tea-garden community of Assam

rdf:langString The Tea-garden community are multi ethnic groups of tea garden workers and their descendants in Assam. They are officially referred to as Tea-tribes by Government of Assam. They are the descendants of peoples 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 1860-90s in multiple phases to work in tea gardens. They are heterogeneous, multi-ethnic groups which includes many tribal and caste groups. They are found mainly in those districts of Upper Assam and Northern Brahmaputra belt where there is high concentration of tea gardens like Kokrajhar, Udalguri, Sonitpur, Biswanath,Nagaon, Golaghat, Jorhat, Sivasagar, Charaideo, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia. 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 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 are not a single ethnic group but consists of different ethnic group speaking dozens of languages and have different set of cultures. They speak several languages including Sora, Odia, Assam Sadri, Sambalpuri, Kurmali, Santali, Kurukh, Kharia, Kui, Chattisgarhi, Gondi and Mundari. Assam Sadri, distinguished from Sadri language, serve as lingua franca among the community. A sizeable section of the community, particularly those having Scheduled tribe status in other states of India and living mainly in the village areas other than tea gardens, prefers to call themselves "Adivasi" and are known by the term Adivasi in Assam, whereas the Scheduled Tribes of Assam are known as Tribe. Many tea garden community members are tribals like Munda, Santhal, Kurukh, Gonds, and Bhumij. They have been demanding Schedule Tribe status in Assam but the tribal organization of Assam are against it, which has resulted in several clashes between them and deaths.