Gondi people

The Gondi (Gōndi) or Gond people are a Dravidian people of central India, spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, eastern Maharashtra (Vidarbha),Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Western Odisha. With over ten million people, they are the largest tribe in Central India. They are a designated Scheduled Tribe in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Odisha and West Bengal. The Gond are also known as the Raj Gond. The term was widely used in 1950s, but has now become almost obsolete, probably because of the political eclipse of the Gond Rajas. The Gondi language is closely related to the Telugu, belonging to the Dravidian family of languages. About half of Gonds speak Gondi languages while the rest speak Indo-Aryan languages including Hindi. According to the 1971 census, their population was 5.1 million. By the 1991 census this had increased to 9.3 million and by 2001 census this was nearly 11 million. Since past few decades they have been at the receiving end due to Naxalite–Maoist insurgency in central part of India. Gondi people are also used as shields against Naxalites by Government of Chhattisgarh through Salwa Judum.