Tulu Nadu: the land, its districts and its towns

Tulu Nadu (ತುಳುನಾಡ್, tuḷunāḍ) is the Tulu-speaking land on India’s west coast, between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea ¹. This page covers where it begins and ends, what it has been called, and its districts and towns.

Tulu Nadu is not a state or a district today ¹. It is a region where people share a language and a culture. Today it falls across three districts in two states: Dakshina Kannada and Udupi in Karnataka, and the northern part of Kasaragod district in Kerala ^{2 3 4}. The rivers, the soil and the monsoon have a page of their own, the land itself.

Where Tulu Nadu begins and ends

Most accounts put the southern edge of Tulu Nadu at the Chandragiri river ^{5 6 1 4}. The Tulu Nadu article on Wikipedia calls it the old border on the south ¹. The article’s wider account starts at the Gangavalli. It goes on past the river to Nileshwar ¹. Nileshwar lies in Hosdurg taluk, south of the Chandragiri ⁴. The historian N. Shyam Bhat puts the line of Tulu speech today at the Chandragiri ⁴. He says Tulu culture spreads further south, to the Kavvayi river by Nileshwar ⁴. In Karnataka the same river is called the Payaswini ⁷. It rises in the Talakaveri sanctuary in Kodagu and runs 105 km to the sea. It is the longest river in Kasaragod district ^{7 8}. Since at least the fourteenth century, people have treated it as the line between Tulu and Malayalam speech ^{7 8}. Sixteenth-century Portuguese travellers recorded it as Rio Cangerecora ⁷.

The northern edge is disputed. One account says that in history Tulu Nadu reached from the Gangavalli river, far north in Uttara Kannada, to Nileshwar in Kasaragod ¹. Another puts the line much closer, at the Swarna river in Udupi district, which people also call the Kalyanapura river. The article on the Alupas says the land between the Swarna and the Chandragiri was called Tulunadu late in their rule ⁹. A traditional saying draws it there too: Tulu Nadu is the coast from the Chandragiri in the south to Kalyanapura in the north ⁵. This page keeps both answers and prefers neither.

Both answers can be right, because a kingdom’s border and the edge of a language are different lines. Under Vijayanagara, the province called Tuluva Rajya ran from Gokarna in the north to the Chandragiri in the south. That was a name used for governing, and it included some land where people did not speak Tulu ⁶. In Kundapura and the north of Udupi district, people speak Kundagannada, a form of Kannada ^{10 3}.

What Tulu Nadu has been called

The Alupa kings ruled the coast from about 200 to 1444, by one dating ⁹. Their origin before the Kadambas is unclear, because no inscription records it ⁹. Under them the land was called Alvakheda, the land of the Alupas. Inscriptions use that name, and its full form is given as Alvakheda Arusasira ⁹. The historian B.A. Saletore, in his 1936 book Ancient Karnataka, Vol. I: History of Tuluva, says it was one independent kingdom in the earliest records ⁶. P. Gururaja Bhat, in Studies in Tuluva History and Culture (1975), also names the Alupas as its main rulers until the fourteenth century ¹¹.

Vijayanagara ran the coast as two provinces, the Barakuru and Mangaluru rajyas. At times the two were joined as one, the Tulu Rajya ². Saletore used the old text Grama Paddhati and inscriptions to show how far it went, from Gokarna to the Chandragiri ⁶.

The British made it a district. After Tipu Sultan’s defeat in 1799, the East India Company formed the Kanara district under the Madras Presidency ¹². Between about 1859 and 1862 it was split in two. North Canara went to the Bombay Presidency, and South Canara stayed with Madras ¹². Undivided South Canara covered 10,410 square kilometres. It had six taluks: the Amindivi Islands, Coondapoor (Kundapura), Kasaragod, Mangalore, Udupi and Uppinangady ^{13 12}. Uppinangady taluk is now called Puttur ^{13 12}.

The line of 1956

The States Reorganisation Act came into force on 1 November 1956 and split South Canara ¹⁴. Most of it became Dakshina Kannada district, in the new Mysore state that was later renamed Karnataka ¹⁴. Kasaragod taluk, with Manjeshwar, went to the new Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala ^{14 4}. Kasaragod was the one part of South Canara where most people spoke Malayalam ^{2 4}. In the nineteenth century there had already been moves within the taluk to leave South Canara and join Malabar, the Malayalam-speaking district ^{15 4}.

People have argued since then about whether Kasaragod belongs in Kerala ^{15 4}. In the 1951 Census about 72 per cent of its people gave Malayalam as their mother tongue ^{15 4}. About 14 per cent gave Tulu and about 6 per cent Kannada ⁴. The Kannada poet Kayyara Kinhanna Rai (1915-2015), a Tulu speaker who lived at Badiyadka in the district, campaigned to bring Kasaragod into Karnataka ¹⁶. In 2002 he founded the Kasaragod Vileeneekarana Kriya Samithi, the Kasaragod Merger Action Council ¹⁶. The reasons on either side are not given here.

The second split was about running the district. On 25 August 1997, Karnataka created Udupi district from three northern taluks of Dakshina Kannada: Udupi, Kundapura and Karkala ^{17 3}. At the 1991 Census the two parts together had about 27 lakh people ^{2 3}.

The districts and their taluks

Dakshina Kannada had five taluks at the 2011 Census. It now has nine: Mangaluru, Bantwal, Puttur, Sullia, Belthangady, Moodabidri, Kadaba, Mulki and Ullal ^{18 2}. The last four were created from the first five ^{18 2}.

Udupi had three taluks in 2011. Since the taluks were redrawn in February 2018 it has seven: Udupi, Kundapura, Karkala, Kaup, Brahmavar, Byndoor and Hebri ³.

Kasaragod had two taluks in 2011. Since the taluks were redrawn in 2013 it has four: Kasaragod, Hosdurg (Kanhangad), Manjeshwar and Vellarikundu ⁴. Only the north of the district is Tulu-speaking today ⁴.

The 2011 Census counts of mother tongues show what this means. In Dakshina Kannada about 49 per cent gave Tulu as their mother tongue. Beary and other tongues were about 16 per cent, Malayalam and Konkani about 10 each, and Kannada about 9. Urdu and Marathi were each under 2 per cent ^{2 19}. In Udupi district, Kannada was the largest, at about 42 per cent, mostly the Kundagannada of Kundapura taluk. Tulu came next at about 32 per cent, mostly in the southern taluks ^{3 10}. In Kasaragod district about 83 per cent gave Malayalam and about 9 per cent Tulu. Tulu, Kannada and Konkani speakers live mostly in the north of the district ⁴.

In September 2026 the Karnataka cabinet decided to make Tulu a second official language in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts ²⁰.

The demand for a Tulu Nadu state

After the 1956 reorganisation, Tuluvas began to ask for two things: official status for Tulu, and a separate state called Tulu Nadu ¹. Groups such as the Tulu Rajya Horata Samiti have made this demand ¹. Meetings and demonstrations for it have been held at Kudla (Mangaluru) and Udupi ¹. The region is still not an official unit of government ¹.

The main towns

Where a town has a Tulu name of its own, it is in the first column. Where no separate Tulu name is recorded, the first column repeats the Kannada name.

In Tulu, Kasaragod is written ಕಾಸರಗೋಡ್ (kāsaragōḍ). It only drops the last vowel of the Kannada name ⁴⁹. For Kumbla no separate Tulu form is recorded, so both name columns give the Kannada form ⁵¹.

Rivers, hills and the coast

Eleven rivers of the region are named here. In Dakshina Kannada: the Netravati ⁵², the Phalguni or Gurupura ⁵³, the Nandini ⁵⁴, the Shambhavi ⁵⁵ and the Kumaradhara ⁵⁶. In Udupi: the Sita ⁵⁷, the Swarna ⁵⁸ and the Souparnika ⁵⁹. In Kasaragod: the Chandragiri or Payaswini ⁸, the Shiriya ⁶⁰ and the Mogral ⁶¹.

Where a river has a Tulu name of its own, it usually adds the Tulu word sude (ಸುದೆ), river, to the river’s name. So the Tulu names are Kumaradhara Sude, Nandini Sude and Netravati Sude ^{56 54 52}. The Netravati has two Tulu names: an older one, Nelyathar (ನೇಲ್ಯತಾರ್), and Netravati Sude ⁵².

Kudremukh is 1,894 metres high ². Its name, horse face, comes from the shape of its ridge ⁶². Sailors on the Arabian Sea are said to have used it as a landmark for more than two thousand years ⁶². The Tunga, the Bhadra and the Netravati all rise on it ⁶². Jamalabad, which local people call Gadayikallu, is a granite rock 1,700 feet high in the Kudremukh foothills ⁶³. Tipu Sultan built a fort on it in 1794 and named it after his mother, Jamalabee ⁶³. It is climbed by 1,876 steps cut in the rock, and the British took it in 1799 ⁶³. Near Maravanthe the Souparnika runs beside the sea, with only a narrow strip of land between them ⁶⁴.

Terms used on this page

• guttu and barke: the leading households of the old village order, with their houses and land. Sources give two views of which communities held each.

Related

• Kudla (Mangaluru): the junction of two rivers
• Udupi: the matha, the coast and the university town

Sources

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Last reviewed by tulunadu.org on 18 October 2026.