Society, Culture and Indigenous Worldview of Lodha Sabar People

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The Sabar (also known as 'Saur', 'Sar', 'Sayar', 'Suir', 'Swiri') is a 'primitive community scattered in different parts of India mainly West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar. This community belongs to the Munda branch of the Austro- Asiatic linguistic group. These indigenous people are known as Lodha, Kheria, Juang etc. Another significant subgroup of the Sabar is Muslim Sabar - a piquant blend of religion and ethnicity. In West Bengal this community is largely known as 'Lodha Sabar' and 'Kheria Sabar'. The former mainly live in Paschim Medinipur (subdivisions like Midnapore and Kharagpur in particular) and in Jhargram whereas the latter primarily belong to certain areas of Purulia and Bankura. It is perhaps not wise to bracket these two communities together because they differ from each other in respect of their clans bearing distinctive totem names and certain religious and cultural practices. But both these Adivasi communities are basically forest- dwellers and depend on forest produce and hunting for their subsistence. In a fascinating way Prahlad Kumar Bhakta, the author of Lodha Shabar Jatir Samaj Jiban (Society, Culture and Indigenous Worldview of Lodha Sabar People) attempts to search for the etymological meaning of the word "Sabar and argues that it most probably means 'axe-man'. Regarding the root of the word Lodha' he cites the analysis of certain sociologists who claim that the word probably derives from the Sanskrit word 'lubdhak' which means 'trap". The Lodha Sabars are skilled hunters and they set traps in order to catch birds and animals. In the colonial period they were defined as criminals along with some other tribes across India. In this connection, one may mention the Criminal Tribes Act passed in 1871 that empowered "the local government" to stigmatize any "tribe, gang or class of persons" as "a criminal tribe" if it was found "addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences". The Bengal District Gazetteers (Midnapore, 2011) by L.S.S. O'Malley defines the Lodhas living in the Narayangarh and neighbouring thanas as an "aboriginal tribe" and describes them as "professional thieves and dacoits". So, the Gazetteer sheds light on their criminal identity from the perspectives of the colonial rulers in the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1952, the Act was repealed. And after that they were described as a "de-notified" tribe.

But even till the last part of the twentieth century these people were sometimes branded as dacoits by the people of the mainstream and tortured at their hands. In an essay titled "The present state of the Lodha Bhasha and the roadmap to its conservation and development" Prahlad Kumar Bhakta documents how the Lodha-dominated villages were vandalised from time to time under the allegation of theft: in Jalkati in 1965, in Patina at Nayagram in 1979 and in Chakua and Saro village in the then Jhargram subdivision in 1983. The Lodhas living in these places, therefore, lived in an ambience of terror, and some families later moved to Hooghly, Nadia and other districts and started residing there incognito, concealing their identity, culture and even their mother tongue. This sharply reflects how this Adivasi community was marginalized and socially ostracized by the caste-Hindus even in the post- Independence period.