Paper short abstract:

The paper presents ethnographic material from the South Indian Badagas. It combines a view on social change and active market-participation with several modern aspects of identity creation.

Paper long abstract:

The Badagas are a peasant society living in the South Indian Nilgiris District. Notably, during colonization they have quickly adopted new economic opportunities, switched to cash-crop production and abandoned traditional barter relations with other local tribes. With formerly British-introduced tea becoming their major plantation crop in the second half of the 20th century, the Badagas did not only manage to establish and control a large smallholder sector (including own factories) that by now accounts for more than three quarters of the local tea-produce, but also started to invest in education and to gradually diversify their economic activities into modern forms of employment and entrepreneurship. Starting from 1998 a long-term tea crisis has added further dimensions in terms of rampant land-sales and increased labour-migration. The consequences are manifold and include above all a geographical spread and internal social differentiation of the Badagas as well as a clear shift of economic power from the older to the younger generation. Observing these developments, the paper discusses the formation of new Badaga-Associations in India's Urban centres, the contemporary relevance of ancestral worship, the symbolism of temple-taxes, donations and in-town processions as well as the emergence of an increased number of indigenous book publications and other self-representations both as modern aspects of identity creation and against the background of a long term struggle of the Badagas to re-gain the political, social and economic status of a tribal community.