Rabha people


The Rabha people are a Tibeto-Burmese ethnic group who live mostly in the Northeast Indian state of Assam, with a lesser population in the adjacent state of West Bengal. They primarily inhabit the plains of Lower Assam and the Dooars, while some are found in the Garo Hills. Outside of India, they have a presence in Bhutan, with communities in nine districts. Most of the Rabhas of Dooars refer to themselves as Rabha, but some of them often declare themselves as Kocha.

Groups

The Rabha community is divided into several subgroups or clans, each with distinct dialects, traditions, and cultural practices. According to linguistic and ethnographic studies, there are eleven dialectal groups of Rabhas: Rongdani, Maituri, Pati, Dahori, Dotla, Halua, Betolia, Hanna, Sunga, Modahi, and Kocha.
Among these, the Rongdani, Maituri, and Kocha Rabha dialects are still actively spoken, while others have become endangered or have completely died out.
These groups share close linguistic and cultural similarities with other members of the Bodo-Kachari ethnolinguistic family, including the Garo, Kachari, Mech, and Hajong communities.
The Rabhas belong to the Indo-Mongoloid group of people and are among the nine plains tribes and fourteen hill tribes of Assam.

Language

Linguistically, Rabha has been classified in the following way: Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, JingphoKonyak-Bodo, Konyak-Rabha, Rabha-, 2009). Members of each of the nine groups of Rabha are thought to speak their own dialect. However, except Rongdani, Maituri and Kocha the rest of the Rabha groups have abandoned their mother tongue for Assamese. In their day-to-day conversation they speak a variety of Assamese mixed with some Rabha words and expressions, and it has been called by a few researchers “Rabhamese.". The language of the Kocha-Rabhas is much more similar to that of the Koch rather than Rabha. A sociolinguistic survey conducted among the Koch establishes the evidence for this. According to U.V. Jose, the dialectic variations between Rongdani and Maituri are minimal. They are mutually intelligible, and the one merges almost imperceptibly into the other around the Goalpara Baida-Rongsai region. The Rongdani-Maituri dialectical differences become gradually more marked as one moves further west. Rabha in many cases shows points of resemblance with Atong which is a variety traditionally considered a dialect of Garo.