Tea tribe of Assam (Adivasi)
Tea-garden community are multi ethnic groups of Tea-garden workers in Assam. It is a term used to denote those active tea garden workers and their dependents who reside in labour quarters built inside 800 Tea estates spread across Assam.They are also known as Tea-tribe. They are the descendants of tribals and backward castes brought by the British colonial planters as indentured labourers from the predominantly tribal and backward caste dominated regions of present-day Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh into colonial Assam during 1860-90s in multiple phases for the purpose of being employed in the tea gardens industry as labourers. Tea-tribes are heterogeneous, multi-ethnic groups which includes many tribal and caste groups. They are found mainly in those districts of Upper Assam and Northern Brahmaputra belt where there is high concentration of tea gardens like Kokrajhar, Udalguri, Sonitpur, Nagaon, Golaghat, Jorhat, Sivasagar, Charaideo, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia. There is a sizeable population of the community in the Barak Valley region of Assam as well in the districts of Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi. The total population is estimated to be around 6.5 million of which estimated 4 million reside in residential quarters built inside tea estates. They are not a single ethnic group but consists of different ethnic group speaking dozens of languages and have different culture. They speak several languages including Sora, Odia, Sadri, Kurmali, Bengali, Santali, Kurukh, Kharia, Kui, Gondi and Mundari. Sadri with Assamese influence serve as lingua franca among the community.
A sizeable section of the community particularly those having Scheduled tribe status in their states of origin prefers to call themselves "Adivasi" and known by the term Adivasi in Assam.
