Colonial Ethnography and the Rhetoric of Bodo Identity

Abstract

The Bodo tribe, considered as the largest plains tribe in Assam, has been agitating for a separate state since the 1980s. Land alienation, marginalization faced from the mainstream and dominant community, and prolonged economic backwardness are believed to be the driving factors for the Bodo identity movement. While the movement itself began to gain momentum only in the 1960s, the Bodo people’s insistence on a distinctive identity vis-à-vis the mainstream Assamese community can be traced to pre-independent India. The Bodo people’s consciousness of distinctness may have been a result of the onset of colonization. At the same time, the fact that this consciousness may have been influenced by colonial writings about the community cannot be ignored. Since the colonial period, the Bodos have lived in fear of assimilation and extinction while also being acutely conscious of their “glorious past” now lost. Both the fear of assimilation and the awareness of a lost glory are colonial legacies. While the first is a result of the Hindu/Assamese cultural hegemony, the second is inspired by colonial writings about the Bodos or Bodo-Kacharis. This essay is an attempt to study the Bodo identity movement as a colonial legacy by looking at its accompanying cultural nationalism through literature without negating the violent turn it took in the 1990s. It would be an attempt to establish the hypothesis that the Bodo tribe’s very perception of the self is derived from the knowledge produced by colonial writings on the tribe.

Keywords:

• Bodo identity movement
• Bodo literature
• colonial ethnography
• cultural nationalism
• knowledge construction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Hodgson begins his preface in Essay the First (1847) by declaring “the pagan population of India is divided into two great classes, viz., the Arian or immigrant, and the Tamύlian or aboriginal.” He goes on to identify the Bodos and the Dhimals as two “Tamύlian” groups.

2 Endle, (1884) was a study of the Bodo language spoken by the Bodo-Kacharis of Darrang district.

3 The last Bodo-Kachari king is said to have been Gobinda Chandra, the last Dimasa-Kachari king whose kingdom was annexed by the British.

4 The discourse of discrimination faced by the Bodos at the hands of caste Hindus also has its origin in colonial ethnography. For instance, Hodgson’s account of the history of the Kocch dynasty and their subsequent conversion to Hinduism narrates how the successors of Hájò looked upon “the Mecch (Bodo) with scorn, and renouncing the very name of their own country and tribe with their language, creed and customs, in favour of those of the Arians” (1847, 144).

5 Bibar featured various articles and stories expressing the sentiments of the educated Bodo middle class regarding their culture and society.

6 Pathak, (2010) says the term‘plains tribe is a generic one used by colonial administrators to identify the tribes of the Brahmaputra valley as one group. These tribes are the Kacharis (Bodos), Mikirs (Karbis), Miris (Mishings), Lalungs (Tiwas) and Rabhas.

7 The Line system was first mooted in 1916 and adopted in 1920 as a device to protect land belonging to the indigenous people of Assam while at the same time encouraging immigration of the East Bengali population into the region. Although accepted as a legitimate solution to the growing number of settlers, the Line system also faced opposition from the Muslim League as well as certain Assamese Muslim leaders such as Sayidur Rahman and Khan Bahadur Nuruddin Ahmed, who believed the Line system prevented immigrants from assimilating with the indigenous population (Guha, 2006).

8 Based on the demands made by the Tribal League, the British Government made provisions in the India Act, 1935, to reserve five seats in the Assam Legislative Assembly for tribals.

9 Phookan is believed to have said in a speech made in the Legislative Assembly in 1948 that “All the languages of the different communities and their culture will be absorbed in the Assamese culture. I speak with rather authority in this matter regarding the mind of our people that this state cannot nourish any other language in this province” (as quoted in Choudhury, 2007).

10 In one of his speeches made in the Assembly in 1948, Bordoloi is believed to have said, “For the homogeneity of the province, they (non-Assamese) should adopt the Assamese language. It is not the intention of the Government to make Assam a bi-lingual state” (as quoted in Choudhury, 2007).

11 At the same time, it must be kept in mind that most Bodos of the Goalpara region at that point attended Bengali medium schools. Therefore, the setback faced by those schools also adversely affected a section of the Bodos.

12 The popularity of Mwihoor may be gauged by the fact that it was soon adopted as part of the Bodo literature syllabus in some of the institutes of higher education in Assam. It was also chosen for the Someswari Brahma Literary Award by the Bodo Sahitya Sabha in 1997.