Tea-garden community

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The Tea-garden community is a term for a multiethnic, multicultural group of tea garden workers and their descendants in Northeast India (formerly the Assam province). They are primarily concentrated in the modern state of Assam, where they have been notified as Other Backward Classes (OBC) and are loosely referred to as Tea Tribes.^[1][2][3] They are the descendants of peoples from multiple tribal and caste groups 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 the 1860-90s in multiple phases to the newly established tea gardens. They are primarily found in districts with a large concentration of tea estates, such as Upper Assam districts of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Lakhimpur, Santipur and Udalguri, and Barak Valley districts of Cachar and Karimganj.^[4] The total population is estimated to be around 7 million,^[5] of which an 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 speak multiple languages, including Sora, Odia, Assam Sadri, Sambalpuri, Kurmali, Santali, Kurukh, Kharia, Kui, Chhattisgarhi, Gondi and Mundari. Assam Sadri, distinguished from the Sadri language,^[6] serves as lingua franca among the community.^[7]

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 that term in Assam, whereas the Scheduled Tribes of Assam are known as "Tribe".^[8] Many tea garden community members are tribals like Munda, Santhal, Kurukh, Gonds, Bhumij and others. According to the Lokur Committee (1965) they formed around 20 lakh.^[9] They have been demanding Scheduled Tribe status in Assam, but the tribal organization of Assam is against it, which has resulted in several clashes between them and deaths.^{[10][11][12][13]}