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Bodo Identity Essay

3537 Words15 Pages

Defining the self has been a major task of mankind today all around the world. A sense of common origin, common beliefs and values, a common sense of survival; in other words a common cause has been a defining feature of mankind uniting themselves under various identities. A distinct ethnic identity when fueled with the feeling of alienation and exploitation tends to demand autonomy; most of the time it is in the form of territorial autonomy or ‘Homeland’ is demanded by such groups. This paper analyses the ‘Bodoland’ movement as a means of constructing a distict identity for the cause of a seperate homeland. The study finds that contemporary construction of the Bodo identity is based on a sense of alienation from the state due to years of economic neglect and attempts to assimilate into a common culture; which they resist as being a symbol of colonialization over the tribes.
Keywords: Ethnicity, Boundary, Conflict, Bodos, Accord.
A major form of group …show more content…

By analyzing the language data of 1891 census, he revealed that the languages/dialects of the Bodo group were dying out and would gradually be extinguished. He commented on the decline of number of speakers of Bodo language group from 1881 to 1891 census. The Bodo-Kachari (present day Bodos) speakers declined by 24% from 2, 63,186 to 2, 00,129 people, whereas Hinduised Bodos of lower Assam (Meche) increased by 19.6 percent. According to him, most of the converted Bodo Hindus could move into some higher status Hindu caste. As a result, those joined the Assamese formation no longer identified themselves as Bodos (such as Koch Rajbongsis of Assam). Many of them such as Sonowal-Kacharis, Chutias, Rabhas etc. changed into different ethnic identity (Assamese under S.T. category), lost their original Bodo

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