When he bought his first mobile phone, in 2001, he was so nervous he did not make a call for nearly a week. When he finally did, he blurted out: “Friend, I have bought this mobile. Is this your number and your name? I am Babulal!” The next day his phone stopped working and he returned to the shop, telling the salesman that something was wrong with the phone.

“I had no idea what to do,” Mr. Neti said. “He said, ‘Your balance is over.’”

But this experience in no way prepared Mr. Neti for his first encounter with the smartphone, which he spotted about a decade ago in the hand of a computer operator in Taradand’s local administration building.

The official was an agreeable sort, and Mr. Neti began borrowing his phone for two- and three-hour stretches. He went on Google, searching for the word “Gondwana,” the name for the Gond tribe’s traditional land.

“It was as if I had opened up history, the history of Gondwana,” he said. “It seemed fascinating. You didn’t have to buy a book. The earth map came up as round, and part of it was Gondwana. Ireland, Gondwanaland, Switzerland. I was fascinated. No sooner would I see a mobile than I would run over.”

Only after some time, he recalled, did Mr. Neti realize it was possible to search for terms other than Gondwana.

“It seemed,” he said, “as if I was diving into a sea with no bottom to it.”

This marked the beginning for Mr. Neti of a wide-ranging inquiry about the world surrounding him. He was interested, for example, in knowing whether the residents of other countries worshiped Ram, the Hindu deity and, upon discovering that they did not, hastened to inform his neighbors of this startling news. He decided to fact-check the assertion of a childhood friend, who is from the Yadav caste, that the Yadavs had been present at the creation of the earth and learned this was not a universally accepted view.