Like most other children in Hulikkal, a small village in the Nilgiris, Mani lives in one-room mud hut, where pots and pans are pushed aside every night to make room for mats, where they can hear their parents make love, or whatever else it is, through the mosquito net that hangs between them. Each time his stepmother moaned, the dog yelped. A mongrel laid beside Mani’s feet, its ears pricked for the sound.

His father stayed silent, though maybe his lips kept moving – he was always moving his lips as though he were talking to someone invisible. Moments ago, he had watched his father’s sweaty hips thrust up and down while his stepmother, Bindu, lay still beneath him, muffling her pain.

Lying on the mattress, Mani follows the movement of his father’s breathing. White as Milk and Rice weaves together prose, oral narratives and Adivasi history to tell the stories of six remarkable tribes of India-reckoning with radical changes over the last century-as they were pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them fathomed. Satisfied, thus making them (Badaga community) eligible for qualification as a Scheduled Tribe, she added.The Maria girls from Bastar practise sex as an institution before marriage, but with rules-one may not sleep with a partner more than three times the Hallaki women from the Konkan coast sing throughout the day-in forests, fields, the market and at protests the Kanjars have plundered, looted and killed generation after generation, and will show you how to roast a lizard when hungry. It was clear that the broad characteristics indicated for classification of a community as a Scheduled Tribe have been Referring to the recent representation by the 'Badaga' community to her, she said the evidence given to her revealed that they have been living in the Nilgiris hills for several centuries along with other tribes, such as Todas. 'In the Census of 1931, the Badagas were classified as a Tribe', she pointed out.

She recalled her letter sent to then union minister of tribal affairs during her previous tenure with a detailed analysis of various attributes of the Badaga community such as primitive traits, a distinctive culture, shyness of contact with public at large, geographical isolation and social and economic backwardness to declare them as a Scheduled Tribe. In a letter to Manmohan Singh, a copy of which was released to the media, Jayalalithaa said the issue had been pending for a long time and an immediate action may be taken to consider the request of 'Badaga' community to include them in the list of Scheduled Tribes, at the earliest. Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa on Saturday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to include the 'Badaga' people, a unique community of the hilly Nilgiris region, in the list of Scheduled Tribes category.

Badaga tribe