Rabha

Clans and Kinship

The barai is an exogamous clan taken from the mother: if a father's barai is Rongkho and the mother's Charchung, the children are Charchung (Saikia 1987). The Pati Rabha call the clan mahari, the other sections barai (Assam institute 2018). Saikia uses mahari also for all the women born of one barai, whose permission is needed before a man takes a second wife, and hur for a loose union of two or more barais, bound by an old friendship, within which marriage is also barred; the Pati and Bitlia are less strict about this than the Rangdani and Maitori. Land and goods pass equally to sons; a daughter inherits only if her father sets aside a share or the daidi, the men of the father's barai, agree; a widow does not inherit, and the daidi hold a minor's share in trust. Saikia and Friend-Pereira took the matrilineal clans and the nok-dhankay marriage, in which the groom moves into his wife's house for good, as signs of an older matrilineal order. Endle (1911) listed seven sections: Rangdaniya, Maitoriya, Pati, Koch, Bitliya, Dahuriya and Sangha, of which the Rangdani, Maitori and Pati are the main sections in Saikia's account, the Pati the most numerous.

Only the barai named in the sources opened are given; none of them prints a full list. The Assam institute's 2006 study of Rabha reformers says Rajen Rabha wrote on the customs of each of seven barai, but that work was not seen.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Assam, West Bengal

  In Assam, in the part of the list for the plains, outside the autonomous districts.

• Scheduled Tribe

  Meghalaya

  Listed as: Raba, Rava

Assam's list for the autonomous districts has no Rabha entry in the compilation checked. Checked against a compilation of the Order and the Census 2011 tables for Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal; amendments of 2022 to 2024 were not checked.

Checked on 2026-11-07 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

Endle (1911) called the derivation of the name uncertain. He recorded two other names, Totla and Datiyal Kachari, 'borderer Kachari', and the view that their first home was the land along the northern slopes of the Garo Hills, since in their language the words for north and south were simply the Bhutan hills and Tura. Their language, he wrote, forms a link between Garo and Kachari. Saikia (1987) sums up later opinion: Playfair traced them, with the Garo, to Tibet; Gait in the 1891 census treated them as a tribe distinct from the Kachari, and B. M. Das found them most closely allied to the Garo. Rabha tradition remembers Dadan as the first hero of the tribe, with his general Marukhetri; J. E. Friend-Pereira, writing for the 1911 census, recorded that in the old stories Dadan was the maternal uncle and guardian of Toba Rani, the chieftainess of the tribe.

History

Endle (1911) counted some 30,000 Rabha in Goalpara and others in Kamrup, north-west Darrang and the Garo Hills. In 1930 a movement began among the Rabha to be accepted as Hindus; the Assam institute's 2018 study says it gathered strength after 1939, when Rabha were refused entry to a Hari Sabha by their caste Hindu neighbours. From 1971 a Rabha literary association worked for the language, which was brought into primary schools in Rabha-speaking areas of Dhubri and Kokrajhar from 1988 (Assam institute 2018). Customary law was written down by village consensus in pandulipis, codes such as the Mespara and Dudhnoi 'Purbanchal Rabha Samaj Bidhi', which cover the powers of the village council, inheritance, marriage and the atonement for offences, and are still applied through the jamad or mandal, the village units (Saikia 1987). Since 1971 the Rabha have held the Dadan Mela at the foot of the Dadan hills near Baida in Goalpara. In 1942 Kati Ram Rabha of Boko became a local leader of the freedom movement in South Kamrup (Assam institute 2022).

Faith and Worship

Older writers called the Rabha religion their own, close to that of the Kachari; Endle (1911) found that the deori (deosi) led the public rites without Brahmins or temples. The Rabha of Goalpara hold Sri Sri Risi to be the creator and protector of all life, and before a marriage a cock and a hen are offered to Risi-Sore, the deity of family welfare (Saikia 1987). Many Rabha now count themselves Hindu, worship Mahadeo, whom they call Langa, as the chief god, and keep the worship of Baikho or Khoksi, the deity of crops and plenty, and of Manasa in the Maroi puja of Boko and Bamunigaon, with a stage (maju) painted with the story of Behula. The Pati largely follow the Mahapurushiya Vaishnava faith, and there are Christian Rabha around Loharghat, Rani and Dudhnoi (Assam institute 2018).

Customs

No one may marry within the barai or the hur. A younger brother may marry his elder brother's widow but not the reverse, and a man may marry his late wife's younger sister; cross-cousin marriage is allowed only with the mother's brother's daughter, and the young now avoid it. A Pati marriage passes through several visits: the women's first visit with betel, the gathering at which the groom's side offers betel to the elders, the pan-cheni or joron when the bride receives her clothes and ornaments, and the malancha when the bride price is paid, before the bride is brought to the groom's house. Divorce is granted by the village council, the couple pulling apart a betel leaf. Rabha women spin, dye and weave their own clothes, the rifan, kambung and khodabang, and the men's eri pasra (Saikia 1987).

Festivals

Notable Personalities