Identity of 'borok'
By:borok david , Category: General, Posted on:2009-10-14 13:21:40
Like many human groups of the world, the Boroks have their own distinct identity. Their ecological setting, its history and tradition forming its cultural moorings, help it to conceptualize the Borok identity. The Borok community is an ethnic group, which is a self-perceived group holding a common set of cultural traditions not shared by others with whom they are in contact. Such cultural traditions include folk, religious beliefs and practices, symbols, language, ancestry, common history, common music and place of origin. Borok identity includes a feeling of continuity with the past, a feeling that is maintained as an essential part of one's self-definition. It is also intimately related to the individual need for collective continuity a sense of personal survival in the historical and traditional continuity of the group
It is imperative on my part to state that according to a galaxy of Borok intelligentsia the term 'Borok' has many meanings. The term 'Borok' may be considered as indicators of Borok identity. It carries as many as ten different meanings and is being used mainly in ten different senses, viz. (1) a name or identifier for entire socio-cultural scenario of an ethnic community called Borok community, (2) a name for human beings in general, (3) a name for citizen, (4) a name for member, (5) a name for a cultured, educated or civilized person, (6) a name for a crowd or population, (7) a name for life partner, (8) a name for people, (9) a name for a nation, and (10) a name for population.
The Boroks use the word 'Borok' every time and everywhere when they feel like asserting and expressing their identity. For instance, the Kokborok word 'Chaborok' means food of Borok people, 'Kanborok' means the pattern of wearing costumes and dresses of Borok people, 'Riborok' means Borok clothes, 'Muiborok' means Borok curry, 'Takborok' means Borok way of weaving and knitting clothes and other things.
It is the ethnic and cultural features coupled with history of the Boroks, which bind them together and help them to retain a distinct identity of their own. What I intend to emphasize here is the fact that the biological cohesiveness / racial traits are to be seen as the ethnic attributes of a community, whereas the non-biological attributes which include traits such as language, religion, collective self-consciousness, self-identity, common customs, traditions and institutions, common pride in the land of origin should be taken as the basis of their cultural distinctness. Language, culture, and ancestral history are the most fundamental determining factors responsible for identity formation of the Borok community of Tripura.
It is a historical fact, which nobody can deny that Boroks are the aborigines or natives or the first settlers or indigenous people of Tripura/ Twipra. They firmly believed that they were not migrants but discovers of lands located in different parts of the world particularly in the North-eastern region of India. They were known as Kiratas in the ancient time. They are also known as Tippras and Tripuris. They are part and parcel of the great Bodo or Boro family of present Assam. They belong to the Tibeto-Burman family of the Mongoloid race. They bear the common features of a Mongolian.
Generally, they are of medium, height and well-built stature. They have flat nose, small eyes, black-spiky hair and high cheekbones. Their skin colour is yellowish brown. By nature their behaviour is very simple and amiable ever ready to befriend even with a stranger.
It is to be mentioned here that language is one of the most important traits, which binds all members of a human group. Thus, Kokborok language being their mother tongue binds all the Boroks and it belongs to Bodo or Boro group of the Tibeto-Burman linguistic family of the Mongoloid race. Bodo or Boro language has many dialectical communities, namely Bodo (Boro), Garo, Hojai, Rabha, Dimasa, Borok (Tripuri), Sanoal, Chutiya, Tiwa (Lalung), Kuch, Kachari, Mech, Kamta, Brokpa, etc. They have a distinct and unique ethnic and cultural heritage of their own. Here in Tripura, linguistically they may broadly be categorized into two major groups i.e. the Kokborok speaking group and the Chin-Kuki speaking group, Kokborok speaking group being the dominant one among the aborigines of Tripura. The Kokborok speaking Borok people are Bru (Reang), Tiprasa (Debbarma), Jamatia, Koloy, Murasing, Noatia, Rupini, Tripura, and Uchoi, whereas the Kuki-Chin language-speaking Borok people are Bongcher, Chorai, Darlong, Halam, Hrangkhawl, Kaipeng, Mog, Molsom, Ranglong and the like. Here the term 'Borok' is being used in its wider sense, but in its narrow sense, only those people whose mother tongues are Kokborok and speak Kokborok are called Borok. In the present study, the emphasis is given on the Kokborok speaking Boroks.
It is owing to this fact that one of the common aspects of all the Boroks in Tripura which makes them assert Borok identity is the use of Kokborok language as the literary language and also as a language of higher thought and culture. It is a fact that although among all the Kokborok speaking people who claim to this Borok identity and their literary language is common, they speak different Kokborok dialects. Another element of the Borok identity is the feeling, which may itself be considered as a resultant of the use of Kokborok language as the literary language and as the language of culture. It is a fact that some Borok people believe that the Boroks had their own scripts called 'Koloma', although at present they do not have any scripts of their own.
So, the Borok community we may say is a self-perceived group sharing a sense of historical and cultural continuity and also a common set of traditions, which are not being shared by others with whom they are living as neighbors. As George de Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross aver "An ethnic group is a self-perceived group of people who hold in common a set of traditions not shared by the others with whom they are in contact. Such traditions typically include "folk" religious beliefs and practices, language, a sense of historical continuity, and common ancestry or place of origin." Indeed, when they interact with people belonging to other ethnic groups, they usually identify themselves as belonging to a separate kind of people, on the basis of sharing same overt characteristics and values and also same historical styles. In this regard it may be appropriate to refer to Royce's statement that "An 'ethnic group' is a reference group invoked by people who share a common historical style (which may be only assumed), based on overt features and values, and who, through the process of interaction with others, identify themselves as sharing that style."
Despite the apparent changes in the life-style of the Boroks in the villages due to many factors, the basic values of family ties and loyalties, obedience to village elders and their norms, the adherence to clan distinctions and all its implications, keeping up history, culture and the traditions of cottage industries like weaving, bamboo and cane work, wood carving - all these have kept the cultural identity in the Borok community a living force.
Here it can be said that quest for identity of self and one's own group is a natural human behaviour. Identity of a group may be on the basis of race, religion, occupation, language, territory, history, etc. Here I want to show that the origin of the term 'ethnic' is to be associated with the biological formation of human beings. However, today, cultural parameters or markers have been added to the term ethnicity making the study of identity movements more complicated. The situation gets further confusing when we note that (a) ethnic groups are not necessarily homogenous, and (b) boundary of an ethnic group is not a stable phenomenon.
It is necessary to mention that it is the cultural symbols, which are being used as a means of identity assertion by the Borok people. The various movements of the Boroks such as Kokborok movement for Roman scripts, Socio-cultural movements etc. may be referred to so as to highlight this fact. This kind of identity assertion is often expressed even through the extremist movements of the Boroks. Although it is a fact, that the Boroks today are outnumbered in their own territory; but there is seriously no threat to their bare existence as a distinct biological group. What are being threatened are their ecology, their language, autonomy, history and their culture as a whole. Accordingly, what seems to me here is that here identity assertion is assertion of cultural identity as against the identity of the dominant group (the Bengali identity).
In India, a citizen has, at least, three kinds of identity, viz. racial identity, geographical identity and constitutional identity. So, a Borok has these three kinds of identity; his racial identity is called Borok, geographical identity is Twiprasa or Tippra in Twipra and Indian as an Indian citizen and constitutional identity is tribal. Constitutional identity is transient in nature whereas racial identity is normally permanent and geographical identity is likely to be permanent if not fixed. It is unfortunate that many Borok people think of the constitutional identity i.e. tribal identity as their real identity, which seems to be misleading in regard to the identity of the Borok people under the present consideration. Because constitutional identity can change at any time wholly depending on the decision of the Indian Parliament. If tribal category of citizens is withdrawn, then tribal identity will no longer retain as identity. At this juncture, will a Borok not have any identity? Of course, the answer is no, because even after that a Borok will definitely retain his/her racial identity as Borok and geographical identity as Twiprasa or Tripuri. So the natives of Tripura are known as Borok, because it is their real identity. Likewise, non-tribal identity of a non-tribal person is simply a constitutional identity, which is not the real identity of the person. For example, a Bengali is a non-tribal but his racial identity is Bengali, not non-tribal. Will a Bengali lose his/her real identity after withdrawal of the non-tribal category of citizen in India? The answer is, of course, no. Because he/she will still retain his/her racial identity i.e. Bengali identity. Thus, a Borok has a Borok identity, which he/she always asserts in Tripura.
The Boroks assert their identity. Borok identity assertion is manifested in various movements organized by many Borok socio-cultural organizations and NGOs such as Kokborok Sahiyta Sabha, Kokborok Tei Hukumu Mission, Borok People's Human Rights Organisation, Borok Women's Forum, Borok Dopha, Twipra Students' Federation, Kokborok Sahitya Academi, Borok Mothers' Society, Movement For Kokborok etc. Celebration of Tring or Twipra Era New Year Day on 22nd December of every year is a part of manifestation of Borok identity assertion. It is also an identity assertion that the Borok people demand the appropriate authority to revive all the old and original names of various places (altered names of places in the recent times) of the State in Kokborok and also in other indigenous languages. So, they firmly state that for examples, if Bombay can be changed into Mumbai, Madrass into Chennai, Calcutta into Kolkata, West Bengal into Bangla, Burma into Mynmar, then why not Tripura be changed into its original and correct name Twipra? Why not 'Chalitabari' be turned into its original or old name 'Thaplokphang' (a Kokborok name), 'Sonachhara' into 'Twisarangchak' (a Kokborok name), and 'Harincharra' into its original Kokborok name 'Mwswitwisa' and so on and so forth. Thus, the Boroks urge upon the Government to revive and retain the original name Twipra officially and they think that its initiative should be taken by the appropriate authority, otherwise the authority may be considered that it has either no interest to revive and preserve the original names of various places (already changed) of the State or it has some unknown intention behind its negative attitude.
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