Tea-garden community

Multicultural group in Assam, India

The Tea-garden community is a term for a multiethnic, multicultural group of tea garden workers and their descendants in Assam. They are officially referred to as Tea-tribes by the government of Assam and notified as Other Backward Classes (OBC). 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 work in tea gardens. They are primarily found in districts with a large concentration of tea estates, such as Upper Assam districts of Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, and Golaghat, and Barrak Valley districts of Cachar and Karimganj. The total population is estimated to be around 7 million, 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, serves as lingua franca among the community.

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