Kerala's Kurumba Tribe Faces Census Threat Over Unwritten Language

The Kurumbas of Keralam are an Adivasi community living in the hilly forest regions of Attappady in Palakkad district. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs classifies them as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group, and they are one of five such groups in the state. As the current Census exercise gets underway, the community faces a major question regarding their primary identifier.

Language Crisis

Community members speak Kurumba, which is an oral language with no written script. While people in the community still use it widely for daily communication, outsiders do not speak it. This forces Kurumba speakers to learn Malayalam or other languages just to talk with people outside their community.

Context

Many indigenous groups around the world rely on spoken traditions rather than written alphabets to pass down their culture and history. When official population counts classify tongues with very few speakers into broad category buckets, distinct cultural identities risk losing official recognition and support.