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Gondi people
The Gondi (Gōṇḍī, IPA: [ɡoːɳɖiː]) or Gond people, who refer to themselves as "Kōītōr" (Kōī, Kōītōr, IPA: [koː.iː, koː.iː.t̪oːr]), are an ethnolinguistic group in India. Their native language, Gondi, belongs to the Dravidian family. They are spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Odisha. They are classified as a Scheduled Tribe for the purpose of India's system of reservation.
The Gond have formed many kingdoms of historical significance. Gondwana was the ruling kingdom in the Gondwana region of India. This includes the eastern part of the Vidarbha of Maharashtra. The Garha Kingdom includes the parts of Madhya Pradesh immediately to the north of it and parts of western Chhattisgarh. The wider region extends beyond these, also including parts of northern Telangana, western Odisha, and southern Uttar Pradesh.
Gondi is claimed to be related to the Telugu language. The 2011 Census of India recorded about 2.4 million speakers of Gondi as a macrolanguage and 2.91 million speakers of languages within the Gondi subgroup, including languages such as Maria (also known as Maadiya Gond). Many Gonds also speak regionally dominant languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu.
According to the 1971 census, the Gondi population was 5,653,422. By 1991, this had increased to 7,300,998,[page needed] and by 2001, the figure was 8,501,549. For the past few decades, the group has been witness to the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency. Gondi people, at the behest of the Chhattisgarh government, formed the Salwa Judum, an armed militant group, to fight the Naxalite insurgency. This was disbanded by order of the Supreme Court of India on 5 July 2011, however.
The origin of the name Gond, used by outsiders, is still uncertain. Some believe the word to derive from the Dravidian kond, meaning hill, similar to the Khonds of Odisha or Konda-Doras of Andhra. The word gonda/gunda/gundar is used throughout South Asia to mean a thug and is said to be derived from this word.
Another theory, according to Vol. 3 of the Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life, is that the name was given to them by the Mughal dynasty of the 16th–18th centuries. It was the Mughals who first used the term "Gond", meaning "hill people", to refer to the group.
The Gonds call themselves Koitur (Kōītōr) or Koi (Kōī), which also has no definitive origin[citation needed] but is perhaps related to kō, meaning "mountain", other ethnonyms like Kui, Kuvi, Koya and Kubi (Konda endonym) are also said to be from it.
The origins of the Gonds is unclear. Some researchers have claimed that the Gonds were a collection of disparate tribes that adopted a proto-Gondi language as a mother tongue from a class of rulers, originally speaking various pre-Dravidian languages. While there is an affinity between Gonds and Munda peoples, researchers point to a more complex event involving language shift through a Dravidian linguistic expansion, rather than a recent event of Gondi replacing a North Munda language, hence supporting distinct origins for these two groups.
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Gondi people
The Gondi (Gōṇḍī, IPA: [ɡoːɳɖiː]) or Gond people, who refer to themselves as "Kōītōr" (Kōī, Kōītōr, IPA: [koː.iː, koː.iː.t̪oːr]), are an ethnolinguistic group in India. Their native language, Gondi, belongs to the Dravidian family. They are spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Odisha. They are classified as a Scheduled Tribe for the purpose of India's system of reservation.
The Gond have formed many kingdoms of historical significance. Gondwana was the ruling kingdom in the Gondwana region of India. This includes the eastern part of the Vidarbha of Maharashtra. The Garha Kingdom includes the parts of Madhya Pradesh immediately to the north of it and parts of western Chhattisgarh. The wider region extends beyond these, also including parts of northern Telangana, western Odisha, and southern Uttar Pradesh.
Gondi is claimed to be related to the Telugu language. The 2011 Census of India recorded about 2.4 million speakers of Gondi as a macrolanguage and 2.91 million speakers of languages within the Gondi subgroup, including languages such as Maria (also known as Maadiya Gond). Many Gonds also speak regionally dominant languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu.
According to the 1971 census, the Gondi population was 5,653,422. By 1991, this had increased to 7,300,998,[page needed] and by 2001, the figure was 8,501,549. For the past few decades, the group has been witness to the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency. Gondi people, at the behest of the Chhattisgarh government, formed the Salwa Judum, an armed militant group, to fight the Naxalite insurgency. This was disbanded by order of the Supreme Court of India on 5 July 2011, however.
The origin of the name Gond, used by outsiders, is still uncertain. Some believe the word to derive from the Dravidian kond, meaning hill, similar to the Khonds of Odisha or Konda-Doras of Andhra. The word gonda/gunda/gundar is used throughout South Asia to mean a thug and is said to be derived from this word.
Another theory, according to Vol. 3 of the Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life, is that the name was given to them by the Mughal dynasty of the 16th–18th centuries. It was the Mughals who first used the term "Gond", meaning "hill people", to refer to the group.
The Gonds call themselves Koitur (Kōītōr) or Koi (Kōī), which also has no definitive origin[citation needed] but is perhaps related to kō, meaning "mountain", other ethnonyms like Kui, Kuvi, Koya and Kubi (Konda endonym) are also said to be from it.
The origins of the Gonds is unclear. Some researchers have claimed that the Gonds were a collection of disparate tribes that adopted a proto-Gondi language as a mother tongue from a class of rulers, originally speaking various pre-Dravidian languages. While there is an affinity between Gonds and Munda peoples, researchers point to a more complex event involving language shift through a Dravidian linguistic expansion, rather than a recent event of Gondi replacing a North Munda language, hence supporting distinct origins for these two groups.