Bodo

Bodo, group of peoples speaking Tibeto-Burman languages in the northeastern Indian states of Assam and Meghalaya and in Bangladesh. The Bodo are the largest minority group in Assam and are concentrated in the northern areas of the Brahmaputra River valley. Most of them are settled farmers, though they formerly practiced shifting cultivation. The Bodo consist of a large number of tribes. Their western tribes include the Cūtiyā, Plains Kachārī, Rābhā, Gāro, Mech, Koch, Dhimāl, and Jaijong; the eastern tribes include the Dimasa (or Hill Kachārī), Galong (or Gallong), Hojai, Lalung, Tippera, and Moran. The Bodo were formerly dominant in Assam until about 1825. The total number of speakers of Bodo languages in India was estimated at about 2.2 million in the late 20th century.

The Bodo tribes are not culturally uniform. The social system of some, such as the Gāro, is matrilineal (descent traced through the maternal line), while other tribes are patrilineal. Several of the Bodo tribes were so influenced by Hindu social and religious concepts that in modern times they have regarded themselves as Hindu castes. Thus the Koch (q.v.) lay claim to the high Hindu status of Kshatriya; their claim is not generally admitted, however, and many of the subdivisions of the Koch rank very low in the caste hierarchy.

The Kachārī tribe is divided into clans named after aspects of nature (e.g., heaven, earth, rivers, animals, and plants). Descent and succession to property are in the male line. They have a tribal religion, with an extensive pantheon of village and household gods. Marriage is usually arranged by the parents and involves the payment of a bride-price. Such institutions as the community house for bachelors and many features of their religion link them with the Nāga and other hill tribes of Assam, but the growing influence of Hindu ideas and customs works toward assimilation into the caste society of the Assam plains.

Among the Gāro, the village headman is usually the husband of the heiress, the senior woman of the landowning lineage. He transmits his headman’s office to his sister’s son, who marries the headman’s daughter (the next heiress). The lineages of the male headmen and the female heiresses are thus in perpetual alliance. Political title and land title are both transmitted matrilineally, one through one lineage, the other through the other. There are a dozen subtribes, with varying customs and dialects, but all are divided into matrilineal clans. Marriages involve members of different clans. Polygamy is practiced. A man must marry his wife’s father’s widow, who is in such cases the husband’s father’s sister, actual or classificatory. Such a wife takes precedence over her daughter, to whom the husband is already married. A man’s sister’s son, called his nokrom, stands therefore in intimate relationship to him, as the husband of one of his daughters and ultimately of his widow and the vehicle through which his family’s interest in the property of his wife is secured for the next generation, for no male can inherit property.