Toda tribes & their masks help in the fight against COVID-19

• Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the indigenous Toda artisans from the Nilgiris are producing thousands of masks with exquisite embroidery for local residents, police, and sanitary workers.

About:

• Toda people are a Dravidian ethnic group who live in the Nilgiri Mountains of Tamil Nadu.

• During the 20th century, the Toda population has hovered in the range 700 to 900.

• The Toda traditionally live in settlements called Mund, consisting of three to seven small thatched houses. The Toda huts, called dogles, are of an oval, pent-shaped construction built of bamboo.

• Their economy was pastoral, based on the buffalo, whose dairy products they traded with neighbouring peoples of the Nilgiri Hills.

• Fraternal polyandry – a practice in which a woman marries all the brothers of a family – in traditional Toda society was fairly common; however, this practice has now been totally abandoned, as has female infanticide.

• Since the early 21st century, Toda society and culture have been the focus of an international effort at culturally sensitive environmental restoration.

• The Toda lands are now a part of The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO-designated International Biosphere Reserve; their territory is declared UNESCO World Heritage Site.