Mythologies of the Dhimal Tribe

The Dhimal or Dhemal (Nepali: धिमाल) are an Kirati ethnic group residing in the eastern Terai of Nepal. They are a Sino-Tibetan-speaking ethnic group of the eastern Terai. They mainly reside in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal and Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India. They are respected as the "First Citizens" of Damak municipality. Dhimals consider themselves of Kirati descent. They consider the Limbu, the Rai of the hills and the Mech, and Koch people of the tarai as their brethren. Dhimals are cultivators, although the frequencies of labourers, including agricultural labourers or to some extent tea garden labourers, may not be overlooked. These days the Indian Dhimals are exclusively concentrated at Hatighisha and Maniram Gram Panchayat of Naxalbari Police Station under Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India. However, sporadic occurrences of Dhimal population may have seen outside the above-said areas but within Darjeeling district of West Bengal. Even this diminutive group sometimes misleads as vanishing races by some amateurs. Their counterpart of Nepal, with whom they have a marital relation and belongs to the same (biological) population, have better numerical strength, socio-economic and educational attainment of their own. The Dhimals of Nepal receive much importance in various writings of Nepali scholars. On the other hand, the Indian Dhimals have been neglected by the government and others in any field of development. Anthropological documents on the Indian Dhimal is yet to be received; some sporadic documents by amateurs and some field-based study by trained scholars in a part of Dhimal population may be available but all of them cover social-cultural-linguistics aspects only, and physical or demographic data on the entire population are literally absent.

The Dhimal of North Bengal had categorized as non-Aryan tribe by eminent scholars of pre- Independent India like Hodgson, Dalton, Hunter, Risley and O’Malley. However, several years after Independence, they have been going through a non-recognition period simply by wiped out from Govt. census. Recently they have been classified as Other Backward Classes (OBC) of West Bengal. Even in terms of education, occupation or Social- Cultural context they are very similar to tribal communities of West Bengal even primitive one. Therefore, they (Dhimals) demand for Scheduled tribe status instead of OBCs. The present paper is an attempt to identify almost all the documents on Dhimals, which has a historical importance in the field of Anthropological research, and also to conclude the status of Dhimals as per previous writings. The study is a type of documentary research; data have been collected from almost all secondary sources after scanning of existing literatures scattered in different forms as well as through retrospective search of non-printed sources. The sources have identified the Dhimals as a non- Aryan Tribe, with distinguishable characteristics; though with some recent changes in cultural aspects, which is not so deviated that can exclude Dhimals from previous status.

The Dhimal live both in Nepal and West Bengal, India. In Nepal, they live in 24 villages of Mechi zone in Jhapa District and 51 villages in Koshi zone, Morang District. Dhimal women are good at weaving and have unique dress among the ethnic peoples of Nepal. Education is almost completely absent among them. A landless people, the traditional occupation of the Dhimal was hunting and gathering. Nowadays, agriculture is their main occupation. They worship nature and household gods, and worship Chaitanya Nityananda as their family deity. They also worship other deities like Buda Thakur, Sadi Buri, and Kali.

Naxalbari, situated around 25 km from Siliguri in North Bengal, was once the epicentre of the Naxalite movement in the eastern state. Today, the face of this erstwhile Left bastion has changed, both politically and economically. But for decades, the situation has not changed for the Dhimals, a small but significant group of tribal people that traces its origin to the Himalayas. For the past four decades, the Dhimals have been fighting for scheduled tribe (ST), a demand that remains elusive even to this day. A smart highway leads to Naxalbari from Siliguri, with swathes of tea plantation on one side and concrete on the other. From Naxalbari bus stand, two Dhimal villages, Ketugabur and Siubarjote, are at a walking distance. But transportation has improved over the years and one can travel in an auto for a ride on a pebbly road. Dhimals also live in the neighbouring Hatighasa and other localities. Some are also found in Nepal.

Dhimal is spoken in the southern Terai of eastern Nepal, specifically in the districts of Morang, Jhapa and Sunsari. In the region the Dhimal make up slightly more than 1% of the population. The eastern and western dialects are separated by the Kankai River in Jhapa District. The main areas of concentration for the western dialect is between the towns of Belbari and Damak, while the eastern dialect is concentrated along the Mechi River bordering India. Until the early 20th century, the Terai was considered a hostile environment for non-indigenous peoples and the Dhimal were thus left undisturbed. With the mass migration of hill people to the Terai came the destruction of most of the forest cover and thus the Dhimals were displaced and forced into a marginal position in society. The Dhimals have been thrust into a cash economy without specific skills or land, and their culture is thus rapidly eroding due to intermarriage with other groups and assimilation to the dominant Pahadi culture. Many Dhimal parents, especially in the eastern region, have stopped teaching their children Nepali making the language highly endangered, likely to go extinct in two generations without revitalization efforts. Since the return of democracy to Nepal in the 1990s, the Dhimal have joined the struggle for linguistic and cultural equality being done by other Janjatis. In 1993 the Dhimal People's Development Centre in Damak was formed to revitalize Dhimal culture and in 2001 was given some government land to build a facility. Some literature has been published in the language and many of the youth are recording and posting Dhimal songs on sites like Youtube.