Bodo People of Assam

The Bodo people are an interesting ethnolinguistic group found in Assam. The Bodo people are the largest minority group in Assam and are concentrated in the northern areas of the Brahmaputra River Valley. 

The Bodo people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The total number of speakers of Bodo languages in India basically was estimated at about 2.2 million in late 20th century. As they are concentrated in the northern areas of the Brahmaputra River Valley, their main occupation is farming.

The Bodo consist of a large number of tribes. Their western tribes mostly include the Cūtiyā, Plains Kachārī, Rābhā, Gāro, Mech, Koch, Dhimāl, and Jaijong; the eastern tribes generally include the Dimasa (or Hill Kachārī), Galong (or Gallong), Hojai, Lalung, Tippera, and Moran. 

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 particularly are patrilineal. 

Several of the Bodo tribes for the most part have been greatly influenced by Hindu social and religious concepts, to the extent that they regard 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 (eg, heaven, earth, plants, rivers, and animals). 

Descent and succession to property goes to the male line. Parents usually arrange marriages, which also 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 essentially are a dozen subtribes among the Bodo , with varying customs and dialects, but all are divided matrilineal clans. Marriages involve members of different clans. Polygamy is largely practiced by the Bodo people. A man must marry his wife’s father’s widow, who is in such cases the husband’s father’s sister. Such a wife takes precedence over her daughter, to whom the husband is already married to. A man’s sister’s son, called his nokrom, stands 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.