Kadar
Kadar Included in New Mapping Project
Three years ago, the Kerala state government agency for tribal affair, KIRTADS, opened a renovated ethnological museum, which features displays that include various Kadar artifacts—some ornaments, household objects, photographs and one of their huts. The museum is located about 7 km from Kozhikode, also known as Calicut, a city of one million people. The museum […]
Environment Minister in India Removed
Last week, the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, removed Jairam Ramesh, India’s Minister of Environment and Forests, from his position. Recent news reports had celebrated the decision of Mr. Ramesh to preserve the last remaining stretches of the free-flowing Chalakudy River in India’s Kerala State from a dam project. His decision had appeared to […]
Conflict Over the Chalakudy Dam Nearly Ended
The Deccan Herald, an important Indian newspaper, carried a story last week summarizing the protracted, bitter fight over the construction of a 163 mw power dam across the Chalakudy River in Kerala. Kanchi Kohli, the author, describes the way the opinions of the Kadar, whose Vazhachal village would be destroyed by the project, and other […]
Pepper and Honey from Kerala
The Hindu, a leading newspaper in India, recently reported on alcohol problems among the Kadar. The same paper last week published two more articles about them, the first of which focused on their new venture—the cultivation of pepper. The reporter indicates that the Kadar of Pokalapara, located in the Vazhachal Forest District of Kerala, decided […]
Kadar Women Try to Stop Alcoholism
Some peaceful societies forbid the consumption of alcohol, which they feel might make them aggressive. Peter Gardner, in an article published in the 1972 book Hunters and Gatherers Today, indicated that the Paliyan have such a prohibition. One of their safeguards for preventing anger is to carefully avoid alcoholic beverages. They believe that it causes […]
The Kadar of the Western Ghats
The Kadar are now being noticed. Their plight, if not their peacefulness, is receiving some attention lately. A lot of meetings and news stories over the past five years about the proposed Athirappilly Dam on the Chalakudy River in Kerala have focused on elephant corridors and hornbill habitat, with only brief mentions of a Kadar […]
Progress in the Anamalai Hills
A magazine article last week in The Hindu, one of India’s major papers, describes the health of the natural environment in southern India’s Kerala state from the perspective of a canarium tree growing high in the Anamalai Hills. The authors, T. R. Shankar Raman and Divya Mudappa, scientists with the Nature Conservation Foundation in Mysore, […]
Kadar News Increasingly Upbeat
The cause of peace is advanced when the rights and interests of minority peoples such as the Kadar are acknowledged and respected by larger states and nations. These small societies are often at the losing ends of disputes—the dams are built, the forests are clearcut, rights to lands are denied, communities are destroyed. Two of […]
Debate Continues in Kerala over Athirappilly Dam
A peaceful Kadar village, as well as a biologically diverse forest and the famed Athirappilly Waterall, would be destroyed by the proposed Athirappilly Dam in India’s Kerala state, but proponents do not seem to give up. The Union Minister of Forests and Environment decided in February to revoke permission from the Indian central government for […]
Impact of Chalakudy Dam on Kadar Villages
A feature article last week in Express Buzz, a major South Indian magazine, provides an in depth review of the continuing controversy over the proposed Athirappilly hydropower project on the Chalakudy River. Unlike many such articles in recent years, this one describes the effects of the dam on the two Kadar villages located near the […]
