காணி இன மக்களின் வரலாற்றுப் பின்புலம்: ஒரு விரிவான ஆய்வு

Historical Background of the Kani Tribe: A Comprehensive Study

Abstract

If we do not know the history of yesterday, we will fail to understand what happens today; and if we fail to understand what happens today, tomorrow will not be in our hands” — in the spirit of this observation attributed to poet Bharathidasan, this paper argues that forgetting the history of the Kani (Kanikkaran) people is tantamount to erasing an indigenous community and its culture from our collective memory. The Kani are a Scheduled Tribe who have historically inhabited the Kurinji (hill) and Mullai (forest) landscapes of the southern Western Ghats, living in close harmony with nature. This paper documents the historical background of the Kani people for future generations — their geographical distribution, the etymology of the name ‘Kani’, their distinctive settlement pattern, food habits, cultural style, leadership structure, religious worship, social organisation, language, traditional ecological and medicinal knowledge, and the way of life woven together with nature. Building on primary field-based secondary literature, the study is further extended with open-access scholarly articles, government reports and Census of India data to examine contemporary issues facing the Kani community, including land rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, education, and the protection of traditional knowledge — most notably the Arogyapacha–Jeevani benefit-sharing case.