Vegetarian religions and tribes are extremely rare in the world today, except in India. There are approximately eight million adamantly vegetarian Jains, nearly one million (Hindu) Bishnio of the northwestern desert of Rajasthan, and approximately 12 hundred Todas of the high Niligiri mountains of Tamil Nadua state, in South India. My focus in this paper will be on the Toda tribe of the high Nilgiri mountains of Tamil Nadua state, in south India. Among the five tribal groups of the Nilgiri massif, the 1200 Toda (known by themselves as the Ahl) are the most ancient and unusual. About one-thousand years ago, the entire tribe apparently converted to vegetarianism, a fact documented by the first appearance of their cattle worship. Since that time the Toda have showed their love for animals and there concern toward the preservation of life and land. This cattle worship is a complex religion with its own priests, cattle temples, and elaborate rituals that define the entire Toda civilization. What is unique about this tribes religion is that none of the neighboring tribes practice vegetarianism.
One of the first serious ethnographers to make contact with the Toda was a British anthropologist W. E. Marshall, he published a major study of the Toda in 1873 when the reported Toda population was somewhere around 700 people. Along with his encounter of the Toda, he wrote of their ways of life. “I would like to extensively quote his findings. The Toda have no sports or games, except the innocent tip-cat, corresponding in its play very much with our boys game of rounders. No violent exercise. No means of settling disputes by scientific personal conflict, as in wrestling, fencing, or boxing. Nothing in fact pointing to natural turbulence of character and surplus energy. They wear no weapons of offense or defense. They do not even hunt, either, for the sake of providing themselves with food, or for the pleasure of the chase. They do not attempt to till ground. The products of the buffalo form the main staple of the Toda diet. No food but a milk diet and grain.” (Marshall, 1873) Most family units have about a dozen buffaloes, four of which are milking buffaloes producing something around fifteen liters of milk a day. The cattle range freely on their own. The buffaloes are the economy, the religion, and the primary focus of the town. Buffaloes are the primary source of exchange and gift giving, food, and interspecies companionship, along with dogs. Whenever disputes do arise, the elders meet for a noyim on a hill called Asxwilyfem. There they honorably and rationally work out resolutions that involve no screaming, fighting, or killing. Norms of justice among the Toda are similar to those practiced throughout rural India.
In the 19th century, with the advancement of the British in the southern Hill Stations, the Toda women were sexually sought after by the foreigners, who transmitted a variety of diseases. By 1927, according to anthropologist Anthony Walker, “49% of the Toda population was suffering from venereal diseases” (Walker, 1986). This was also found to be the reason for the Toda’s low fertility rates.
1) Chhabra,T. (1993, September). “A journey to the Toda afterworld.” The India Magazine of her People and Culture, pp. 7-16.
2) Marshall, W. E. (1989). A phrenologist amongst the Todas or, the study of a primitive tribe in the South India. Gurgaon, Haryana: Vipin Jain for Vintage books.
3) Tobias, M. (1985). After Eden: History, ecology, and conscience. San Diego: Slawson.