Affinity Bloc: South Asian Peoples

Overview: The Viswakarma are a major Hindu land owning commumunity in the Tamil Nadu state of India. Some of their subgroups are also distributed in the adjoining areas of Pondicherry, Kerala and Karnataka. The Viswakarma are vegetarian. They practice endogamy at the community level and exogamy at the gotra level. Tamil is their mother tongue but they also speak Telugu and Malayalam.

  -- K. S. Singh, People of India, Volume VI. India's Communities A-G. Delhi: Oxford University Press (1998), pp. 3662-3665

Peoples within this cluster: Viswakarma

Countries where they are found: India