About Our Nilgiris Adivasi Welfare Association

The blue mountains of the Nilgiri in Tamil Nadu were once so densely forested, considered the region to be wild and impenetrable. However, the truth of the matter was actually Nature at her resplendent best with multiple eco-zones supporting a variety of forest cover and vegetation alive with a baffling range of creatures. Rivers and streams fed by springs and substantial rainfall watered region.

On the lower slopes towards the adjoining Kerala lived the ancient hunting tribe of Moolukurumbas and the food gathering Paniyas, the tropical and sub-tropical moist evergreen forests were inhabited by the hunting and gathering Irulas and Kurumbas with the marginal forest dwellers know as the Kattunaichens, in the belt below the temperate and the artisan Kotas lived and in the high temperate grasslands the Todas established their settlements and grazed their buffalos.

The indigenous people became strangers in their own lands and rootlessness, poverty and ill health took their toll as cultures fell by the wayside under the ruthless plough of change. Toda grazing grounds shrank, markets for artisan Kota produce vanished, the Kurumbas and Irulas lost most of their forest, the Moolukurumbas were isolated, the Kattunaickens were pushed to the edge of survival whilst the Paniya were forced in bonded labour.

When The Nilgiris Adivasi Welfare Association (NAWA) was founded in 1958 by the pioneering humanist Padmashri Dr. S. Narasimhan, it aimed at addressing the challenges of rejuvenating a battered people and empowering them to take their destinies in their own lands.