Babaria (alternate spellings of which include Bauria, Babariya, Bawaria and Baraiya) are a nomadic tribe found mainly in the
Indian states
India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories, for a total of 36 subnational entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into 800 districts and smaller administrative divisions by the respe ...
of
Haryana
Haryana () is a States and union territories of India, state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab, India, Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with les ...
,
Punjab
Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...
,
Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...
and
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh ( ; UP) is a States and union territories of India, state in North India, northern India. With over 241 million inhabitants, it is the List of states and union territories of India by population, most populated state in In ...
.
Traditions
The Babaria are traditionally a nomadic tribe and held a reputation as skilled trackers and hunters of animals large and small, the product of which they consumed themselves and sold to villagers. Their abilities were such that their services were used by royalty and nobility.
A survey of the Babaria in Rajasthan indicates two myths of origin. One is the claim of descent from a man called Dana, who lived near
Nagarkot
Nagarkot () is a former village development committee located 32 km east of Kathmandu, Nepal, in Bhaktapur District in Bagmati Province and as of 2015 part of Nagarkot Municipality. At the time of the 2011 census it had a population of 4,57 ...
and whom they believe married a goddess over a millennium ago; they still worship that goddess, together with
Kali
Kali (; , ), also called Kalika, is a major goddess in Hinduism, primarily associated with time, death and destruction. Kali is also connected with transcendental knowledge and is the first of the ten Mahavidyas, a group of goddesses who p ...
,
Shed Devi and
Thakarji. Their other belief is that they were cursed by god at the time of creation and thereby banished to live in forest and to steal.
Although they were sometimes historically believed to be aboriginal, modern studies suggest that there is little difference between them and the
Jat
The Jat people (, ), also spelt Jaat and Jatt, are a traditionally agricultural community in Northern India and Pakistan. Originally pastoralists in the lower Indus river-valley of Sindh, many Jats migrated north into the Punjab region in l ...
and
Rajput
Rājpūt (, from Sanskrit ''rājaputra'' meaning "son of a king"), also called Thākur (), is a large multi-component cluster of castes, kin bodies, and local groups, sharing social status and ideology of genealogical descent originating fro ...
communities, of which they once may have been a part and whom Andrew Major describes as being originally "predatory nomadic tribes from central Asia". Their shift from being mercenary soldiers and cultivators, and the scattering of their communities in India, came towards the end of the 13th century with the rise of the
Deccan sultanates
The Deccan sultanates is a historiographical term referring to five late medieval to early modern Persianate Indian Muslim kingdoms on the Deccan Plateau between the Krishna River and the Vindhya Range. They were created from the disintegrati ...
. The new rulers took control of Rajput kingdoms and caused the Babaria and various other groups to adopt thieving and vagrancy as a means of survival, as well as developing a mutual distrust with the more settled landowning peoples.
British era
British authorities in
Punjab Province became frustrated by the criminal behaviour they perceived to be exhibited by some nomadic and semi-itinerant communities, including the Babaria, some of whom had developed a tactic of raiding British-controlled territories and then seeking refuge in areas controlled by native princes. The authorities thought that limiting the movement of these groups would minimise this as well as allowing for better monitoring of their activities and encouraging them to switch from criminality to agricultural pursuits.
Inspired by the reported successes of
William Henry Sleeman in controlling the
Thuggee
Thuggee (, ) was a network of organized crime in British Raj India in the 19th century of gangs that traversed the Indian subcontinent murdering and robbing people.[North-Western Provinces
The North-Western Provinces was an Presidencies and provinces of British India, administrative region in British Raj, British India. The North-Western Provinces were established in 1836, through merging the administrative divisions of the Cede ...]
, they initially attempted to restrict movement by imposing a system of compulsory registration at police stations, insisting on the targeted people being in their own village overnight unless they had permission for absence, and loading of responsibility for their location and actions on to the village headmen. These measures were easily evaded by many nomads, who just dispersed or proffered different identities.
Thus, by the mid-1850s, the British turned instead to internment as a solution to their problem. The experiment failed and indeed was forecast to fail by several British administrators, who noted that the communities were so averse to engaging in agriculture that it could never work and that they would just become a burden on food supplies, for they would either have to starve or be fed via aid.
Rather than letting a bad idea die after the courts deemed internment illegal in 1867, the ruling spurred the administrations of both Punjab and the North-Western Provinces to seek a national system. Using data compiled from then accepted theories of
scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that the Human, human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called "race (human categorization), races", and that empirical evi ...
and poorly-sourced ethnographic surveys of folk tales, which suggested entire groups of people as hereditarily criminal, this ultimately resulted in the introduction of the
Criminal Tribes Act
Since the 1870s, various pieces of colonialism, colonial legislation in India during British Raj, British rule were collectively called the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA). This criminalised entire communities by designating them as habitual criminals ...
in 1871. The Babaria of the Punjab became subject to it by order in August 1875 and their alleged characteristics were subsequently documented by
V. T. P. Vivian in his ''
A Handbook of Criminal Tribes of the Punjab'' (1912).
Modern era
The Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in 1952, after the
independence of India
The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events in South Asia with the ultimate aim of ending British Raj, British colonial rule. It lasted until 1947, when the Indian Independence Act 1947 was passed.
The first nationalistic ...
, meaning that they were then recorded as a
Denotified Tribe, but it was replaced by the 1953
Habitual Offenders Act which, together with the long prior history of being stigmatised as a criminal community, means that the Bawaria remain a socially oppressed people, are still subject to harassment by law enforcement bodies such as the police and forestry departments, and are still stereotyped as criminals. Fear and wariness of outsiders has persisted among them as a consequence.
The 1981 census of India recorded the Babaria living in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, with populations of 31,296, 62,624, 31,903, and 4,893, respectively. They remain largely a nomadic community but their traditional lifestyle, which revolved around hunting in forests and selling anything surplus to their own requirements, has been severely affected, as also has their movement, by the introduction of the
Wildlife Protection Act, 1972
The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted for the protection of plants and animal species. Before 1972, India had only five designated national parks. Among other reforms, the Act established schedule ...
. Their ability to move has also been affected by changing land use, caused by urbanisation and agricultural strategies that are significantly reducing areas of common land on which they traditionally camped in tents.
The Bawaria are classified as a
Scheduled Caste under India's
reservation system.
See also
*
Babariawad
Babariawad was a small principality under suzerainty of the Princely State of Junagadh. During British India, was the easternmost district of Princely State of Junagadh, in south central Kathiawar. It consisted then of some 51 villages and city o ...
References
{{Reflist
Denotified tribes of India
Scheduled Castes of Rajasthan
Scheduled Castes of Uttar Pradesh
Scheduled Castes of Punjab
Scheduled Castes of Haryana
Nomads