Momin Chatchi
Garo
At a glance
- Called a
- Chatchi
- Community
- Garo
- Found in
- Meghalaya, Assam
About
Momin is one of the chatchis, the great exogamous clans of the Garo (A·chik), and the name is carried as a surname. A Garo is Momin because the mother is. In Playfair's day the Momin chatchi was found only among the Akawe and Awe, the Garo of the northern hills and the plains at their foot along the Kamrup and Goalpara side. Some Garos told him that all Garos had once been Momin. Its machongs include Naringre-do·kru, which traces itself to a girl who became a dove, and Ebang.
What “Chatchi” means for the Garo
A chatchi (Playfair, 1909, writes katchi) is one of the great exogamous clans of the Garo, taken from the mother: a Momin may not marry a Momin. Each chatchi holds many machong, 'motherhoods', lines descended from one ancestress, and the chatchi name is carried as a surname. It is a Garo clan in its own system, not a gotra.
Every chatchi of the Garo, with how the clan system works: the Garo page.
Name and Origin
The sources read do not explain the name Momin. Playfair (1909) recorded a Garo view that the Momin are the parent clan: at one time all Garos were Momin, and the other clans were formed by people who left the parent settlement and lived by themselves in distant places. He could not confirm this or any other account of how the clans began.
Historical Journey
Major A. Playfair, a Deputy Commissioner in the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, described the Garo in The Garos (1909). Of his three katchis, Momin, Marak and Sangma, he found Momin only among the Akawe and Awe, who live in the northern hills and the plains below them, from the Kamrup border westward to near the Jinari river. He saw new clans forming: Ebang, Areng and Sira were named by some as independent, but an Ebang would not marry a Momin, which showed him that Ebang still belonged to Momin. His Appendix A lists Ebang among the Momin machongs, with Dalbot, Do·kongsi, Golde, Konchikol, Mrenda, Nongsobal, Rimsu, Wari and others. Shuvash Jengcham, writing for Banglapedia, counts Momin among five major Garo clans today.
How the Chatchi Is Kept
In Playfair's account husband and wife must come from different chatchis and different machongs: a Momin cannot marry a Momin, and the children belong to the mother's chatchi and machong. To marry within one's chatchi was a social sin, though he was told that nearly one marriage in ten broke the rule. Property stays in the machong: a daughter inherits, and her husband, the nokrom, usually from her father's line, comes to live in the house. Sources do not tie a family deity to the Momin chatchi.
Presence Across Regions
Northern Garo Hills and the plains below, Meghalaya and Assam
Tribal - Garo
Home of the Akawe ('plains dwellers') and Awe, the only Garo division in which Playfair found the Momin chatchi.
Stories and Legends
The dove machong
Playfair records that the Naringre-do·kru machong of the Momin chatchi has the dove as its totem. A little girl was shut up naked in a shed by her mother for being naughty. Ashamed, she asked some children playing nearby for feathers, fire and wax, stuck the feathers all over her body with hot wax, turned into a dove and flew away. She became the founder of the dove machong.