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ABSTRACT
The present paper is an outcome of the ethnographic study conducted among the Mal Paharia of Kuthuria village under the jurisdiction of Purbasthali Police Station in Purba Burdwan district of West Bengal, India. The paper deals with the migration, present socio-economic condition, status as per Socio-Economic Status (SES) scale, life–cycle rituals, traditional political organization and religion. It also informs us about the availability of Aadhar, Epic, Ration card, Caste certificate, Bank account, life insurance and job card that are said to constitute the State Conferred Identities (SCI) of this group. They are now facing a problem in the procurement of caste certificate, which is related to the identity of this group. The paper makes an attempt how anthropologists would approach this problem and suggest a solution.
Acknowledgments
The author sincerely acknowledges the help of Rakibul Sekh, Somnath Adhikary and Martin Schoenhals.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Census of India, 2011. It is published by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Government of India. The Mal Pahariais also spelled as Mal Pahariya.
2. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal.
3. Prasad, Land and People of Tribal Bihar.
4. Singh, The Scheduled Tribes.
5. Das et al., The Mal Paharias of West Bengal.
6. Bhattacharya and Mitra, “Mal Paharia.”
7. Das and Raha, Handbook of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
8. See note 3 above.
9. See note 4 above.
10. Bigha is an indigenous or local unit of land measurement. 1Bigha land = 0.3306 acre.
11. The Jajmani relation has been a quasi-permanent service obligations characteristic of the Indian caste system. In this relation, each servicing caste is in reciprocal relationship with each other or has fixed clients or jajmans from whom they get paid in cash or kind annually.
12. The word sadh literarily means desire or wish. In this rite, the expectant mother is fed with whatever she likes. She is also given some gifts like clothes and ornaments.
13. Ekuse means 21, and Kaman means shaving, therefore the custom literarily means shaving on the 21st day.
14. Sasthi is the tutelary folk deity for the welfare of the children in Bengal.
15. The earlier studies also lend support to this inference, see Sarkar, “The Social Institution of Mal Paharias,” referred to by Das et al., The Mal Paharias of West Bengal, 61; and Prasad, Land and People of Tribal Bihar.
16. Literarily dadhi means curd and mangal means welfare in the Bengali language.
17. The word sraddha is derived from the Sraddha meaning respect. This being the funeral ritual is also an occasion of showing respect to the departed soul.
18. Das and Raha, Handbook of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
19. See note 5 above.
20. See note 4 above.
21. Sharma, “Revised Kuppuswamy’s Socio-Economic Status Scale,” 867-70; and Salem, “Modified Kuppuswamy Scale Updated for 2018,” 4356-436.
22. Bandyopadhyay, “Trends of Change in Livelihood,” 871-04; and Bandyopadhyay, “Development Experience and Livelihood of a Traditional Hunting,” 295-317.
23. Bandyopadhyay, “Trends of Change in Livelihood,” 100.
24. NREGA stands for National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 which provides poor rural people with 100 days of daily wage work. Popularly it is known as ‘Eksho diner kaj’ (Hundred days’ work).
25. See Bandyopadhyay, “Trends of Change in Livelihood,” 87-104.
26. The full forms of the abbreviations SDO and BDO are Sub-Divisional Officer and Block Development Officer respectively. The SDO is the administrative head of the sub-division and BDO is the head of a block. A district is divided into a number of sub-divisions which in turn are composed of a number of blocks.
27. Cultural Research Institute (CRI) is a research institute set up by the Government of West Bengal in 1955. It undertakes research on the Scheduled Tribes of the state and conducts studies related to the determination of tribal status of a community.
28. Middleton, “Across the Interface of State Ethnography,” 249-266.
29. Bandyopadhyay, “Maharader Karma Parab,” [The Karma festival of the Mahara] 27-34. (In Bengali).
30. Singh, Islamization in Modern South Asia.
31. Das et al., The Mal Paharias of West Bengal, 61.
32. See note 2 above.
33. Sahay, “Mal Paharia Religion, Festival and Deities,” 19-38.
34. Das et al., The Mal Paharias of West Bengal.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sumahan Bandyopadhyay
Sumahan Bandyopadhyay is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University. He obtained his M.Sc. in Anthropology from the University of Calcutta and Ph.D. from Visva-Bharati University. He is the Editor of Man in India, the oldest anthropology journal in the Indian sub-continent.