about tiwa community

Brief understanding of the community: The Tiwa

Tiwa is one of the indigenous ethnic communities of Assam, a state in India’s northeast. It is a
Scheduled Tribe community under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act, 1950. Tiwa
populations are found in both plains and hills of the state. The Tiwas belong to the Bodo-Garo
sub group of peoples. Linguistically, they are in the Tibeto-Burman family. Tiwas live in both
plains and hills territories of Assam and in the Ri-Bhoi district of Meghalaya. West Karbi
Anglong is the place where Tiwas live completely in traditional socio-cultural practices. They
also live in Nagaon, Morigaon, Kamrup, Dhemaji and other sporadic places of the plains along
with east Karbi Anglong.

Tiwas trace their origin from a sacred water body and believe they are all its children. The very
word ‘Ti’ means water. In addition to the name Tiwa, some neighboring communities in Assam
also call them Lalung - a name that came to prominence during the colonial British
administration. Archival records and official documents from the colonial era have extensively
used the term Lalung to refer to the Tiwas. This term continued to be used after 1947, when
India gained independence, and the Tiwas were accorded Scheduled Tribe status.

The Tiwas, however, consider using Lalung as derogatory and feel the term does not represent
any linguistic or cultural aspects of the Tiwa society. The community, therefore, appealed to
the Government of India to officially use the nomenclature Tiwa instead of Lalung. An
amendment in the year 2002 to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act, 1950, brought
about change and ceased the use of the term Lalung in official language.

Colloquially, however, many communities in the plains of Assam still use the term Lalung
instead of Tiwa. With the advancement of time, among the neighboring communities Lalung
became a so familiar nomenclature that some Tiwas from the plains had also started to use it
to express their identity.

It is worth mentioning that the Tiwa is one of the few ethnic communities of Assam which so
far attracted very few social scientists to conduct in-depth research on different aspects of its
ethnography. Until now very few attempts have been made by the researchers to understand
the ethnography of the Tiwa community in general and faith system in specific. Out of this
nothingness, though in limited sphere, the first serious ethnographic research had been
conducted by Philippe Ramirez, a renowned French scholar.

Most of the research so far conducted on the Tiwa community is chiefly concentrated either on
the linguistic or folklorist perspective. This paper only tries to focus and understand traditional
religious world view of the Tiwas and not involved with those who have been converted to
Hinduism or the Christianity. For different reasons large number of Tiwas in both plains and
the hills have been converted to other religious faiths leaving their traditional animistic rites
and rituals.