Before independence, official district records and census volumes consistently treated the Badagas as one of the tribes of the Nilgiri Hills, alongside the Toda, Kota, Kurumba and Irula.
Commissioned by the Madras government and written by the first Commissioner of the Nilgiris, this account documents the Badagas within the district's tribal framework alongside the Toda, Kota, Kurumba and Irula.
Source: Breeks, An Account of the Primitive Tribes and Monuments of the Nilagiris (1873)
Printed by the Madras Government Press, the district's official manual describes the Badagas within its account of the Nilgiris' hill tribes.
Source: Grigg, A Manual of the Nílagiri District in the Madras Presidency (1880)
The official district gazetteer records that educational authorities of the time classed the Badagas, Kotas and Todas among the district's tribes requiring special educational effort.
Source: Francis, Madras District Gazetteers: The Nilgiris (1908)
Edgar Thurston's government-commissioned survey of Madras Presidency communities describes the Badagas as the agricultural tribe of the Nilgiris — set beside the pastoral Todas and artisan Kotas — and records the 1901 census figures: 34,178 Badagas against 1,267 Kotas and 807 Todas.
Source: Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, "Badaga" (1909)
The 1931 Census of India is the final colonial-era census to classify and enumerate the Badagas as a tribe before the constitutional Scheduled Tribes framework replaced this system after independence.
Independence replaced district-level tribal description with a fixed, statutory Scheduled Tribes list. On the founding version of that list, and on its first revision, Badaga does not appear.
The Government of India Act 1935 creates a dedicated legislative seat for "backward areas and tribes" in the Madras Legislative Assembly — the first statutory tribal-representation mechanism for the province, predating independence and the Constitution.
Issued by the President under Article 342, the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 (C.O. 22) is the founding Scheduled Tribes list. Its Tamil Nadu part (Part XIV) names 36 communities — including Toda, Kota, Kurumbas (in the Nilgiris district), Kattunayakan and Irular. Badaga is not among them.
Source: The Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 (C.O. 22), Part XIV — Tamil Nadu
The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Lists (Modification) Order, 1956 revises the state-wise lists following the reorganisation of Indian states. The Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras) list again does not include Badaga.
Source: Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Lists (Modification) Order, 1956
The criteria used to evaluate any community's claim to Scheduled Tribe status were set almost a decade after the Badagas were first left off the list, and the government still cites them when the subject of Badaga's status comes up.
Source: Report of the Advisory Committee on the Revision of the Lists of SC/ST (Lokur Committee, 1965)
A formal push to add Badaga to the Scheduled Tribes list has moved between the state government, the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Parliament and the courts for over three decades — with recorded objections from other communities along the way.
The Tamil Nadu government sends its first formal recommendation to the Union government to include the Badaga community in the Scheduled Tribes list.
Source: The News Minute — Nilgiri tribes oppose ST status for Badagas, question their unique identity status
Then Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa writes to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs on 5 September 2003, and again to the Prime Minister on 28 July 2011, asking that the Badaga community's tribal status be reinstated.
Source: The News Minute — Nilgiri tribes oppose ST status for Badagas, question their unique identity status
Tamil Nadu submits a fresh proposal to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which is passed on for review by the Registrar General of India — the office responsible for concurring on any change to a state's Scheduled Tribes list.
Source: The News Minute — Nilgiri tribes oppose ST status for Badagas, question their unique identity status
Answering a written question in the Rajya Sabha, the Minister of State for Tribal Affairs sets out the five criteria (see above) used to evaluate any community's Scheduled Tribe claim, including Badaga's.
Source: Rajya Sabha, Official Debate, Vol. 244, No. 8 — 28 December 2017
As the campaign continues, other tribal communities of the Nilgiris — including Toda, Kota, Irula, Paniyan, Kattunayakan and Kurumba representatives — and tribal welfare associations publicly oppose Badaga's inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes list.
Source: The News Minute — Nilgiri tribes oppose ST status for Badagas, question their unique identity status
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs writes to Tamil Nadu's Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare department seeking further material to support the state's proposal.
Source: DT Next — Cannot pressure State to declare Badaga community as ST: Madras HC
The Registrar General of India and the Census Commission decline to support the proposal for want of supporting material. Published ethnographic descriptions characterise the Badagas as a prosperous, landowning peasant community without evident traces of primitiveness. Tamil Nadu accepts this position and, at that point, considers the matter closed.
Source: DT Next — Cannot pressure State to declare Badaga community as ST: Madras HC
A Madras High Court division bench (Justices S. M. Subramaniam and K. Rajasekar) dismisses a public-interest petition — Green Mount India Foundation v. Registrar General of India — seeking to compel the state to send a fresh proposal, holding: "We cannot compel the State to send a fresh proposal to the union government seeking such declaration; any decision in this regard should be taken based on facts and available data." This remains the most recent word on the matter.
Source: DT Next — Cannot pressure State to declare Badaga community as ST: Madras HC
Independently of the Scheduled Tribe question, Badaga is catalogued as "definitely endangered" (source: UNESCO's Red Book of Endangered Languages), with the ISO 639-3 code bfq and roughly 134,000 speakers recorded as of the 2011 census.
This timeline is built entirely from verifiable, linked records. If you can point us to a document that corrects or adds to it, we want to see it.
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