Densely forested and hilly, Munnar was always inaccessible to the kings of southern India. It was inhabited by Adivasi hunter-gatherer tribals like the Malayarayan and Muthuvan for thousands of years. An unsubstantiated story claims that Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, was the first British person to pass through Munnar during Tippu Sultan’s campaign in Travancore. By the late 19th century, Europeans had established tea plantations in Munnar.

After independence, the Tata Company took over the operations of the tea estates and now manages over 57,000 acres of Munnar. Although India produces 25% of the world’s tea, the colonial-era plantation system, with its two million workforce, faces challenges due to global economic changes since the mid-1990s. Although the tea-growing area of Munnar is now in Kerala, the tea pickers are Tamil- speaking Dalit workers brought to plantations in the 19th century by the British. The current crisis in the global tea trade has heavily impacted their social identity and economic well-being.