{"id":30764,"date":"2026-08-03T11:43:39","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T06:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=30764"},"modified":"2026-08-03T13:20:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T07:50:49","slug":"cholanaikkan-tribe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/cholanaikkan-tribe\/","title":{"rendered":"Cholanaikkan Tribe"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Cholanaikkan Tribe Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, members of the Cholanaikkan tribe came out from the forest to receive essential government documents at an event organised by the district administration in Kerala.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Cholanaikkan Tribe<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cholanaikkans are an <\/span><b>ethnic tribal community<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> distributed only in the Nilambur valley of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/nbr\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve<\/a><\/strong>, <\/span><b>Western Ghats of Kerala state.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Cholanaikkans (coolanaaykkan) are called the <\/span><b>Cavemen of Kerala.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These people are regarded as one of Asia\u2019s last surviving <\/span><b>cave-dwelling indigenous communities.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They call themselves as <\/span><b>Malanaikan or Sholanaikan.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Shola or chola means deep thicket in the forest and naikan means king.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They live deep in dense forest, <\/span><b>mostly in rock caves called Kallulai<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (Kallu &#8211; rock, aalai &#8211; cave), near the banks of streams.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are divided into <\/span><b>smaller groups called Jenmam<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. They have no fixed dwellings but prefer to live close to water sources.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Language:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They speak the <\/span><b>Cholanaikkan language,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which is categorised into the <\/span><b>Dravidian family<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by linguistic experts,<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Occupation:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They are largely depending on <\/span><b>collecting forest produce<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for their livelihood, rarely coming out of the forest.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are classified as a <\/span><b><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/particularly-vulnerable-tribal-groups-pvtgs\/\" target=\"_blank\">Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG)<\/a>.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/theprint.in\/india\/cholanaikkan-tribe-members-in-kerala-emerge-from-forest-to-receive-official-documents\/3003671\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TP<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cholanaikkan Tribe are an ethnic tribal community distributed only in the Nilambur valley of Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, Western Ghats of Kerala state. Read more about Cholanaikkan Tribe, Location, Language, Occupation, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":30765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9204],"class_list":["post-30764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-cholanaikkan-tribe","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30764"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116908,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30764\/revisions\/116908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}