After the break-up of
Kamarupa around the 12th century till the colonial times (19th century) and beyond different ethnic groups settled in different ecological regions but the constant movements and intermixing of peoples led to the development of distinctive but hybrid cultural practices. According to , even as different state systems emerged, expanded, and fell—such as the
Mughals, the
Koch, the
Ahoms, and
British colonialism—the Boros resisted entry into their fiscal systems and moved slowly but continuously to avoid them. Due to the expansion of these states and the expansion of tenured peasantry, the Boros were those who finally converged close to the forested regions of the lower Himalayan foothills. In this habitat, the Boros practised
shifting cultivation for self-sustenance and controlled forest products. To cultivate in this difficult terrain the Boros developed innovative low-cost irrigation systems that supported shifting cultivation. Landholding, sowing and harvesting, irrigation, and hunting were all performed collectively. As those who controlled forest based produce, they emerged as intermediaries in the trade in these as well as other goods between the plains and the hills and complex relationships developed. The Boros remained shifting cultivators at least till the 18th century and then slowly became less mobile; even during the colonial period, most Boros refused permanent land tenure or made no effort to secure landholding documents. When the
Koch dynasty (1515–1949) consolidated its rule in the 16th century into the regions that the Boro people had settled in, it demarcated the region north of the
Gohain Kamal Ali—which came to be called the
Duars—as the region where non-Brahmin culture could thrive. After the
Ahom kingdom consolidated its power in
western Assam in the 17/18th century it made special arrangements with
Bhutan to share administrative and fiscal responsibilities. But when the British banned forest lands from being used for cultivation in the last quarter of the 19th century the Boros suffered a major habitat loss since the forest lands historically used for shifting cultivation and the source of other produce suddenly became unavailable to them. To alienate indigenous peasants from their lands was a stated colonial aim, to make them available as labour in other enterprises.
Boro identity formation Boros identity formation began in the colonial period, when the Boro elite and intelligentsia began differentiating themselves from the
Assamese caste-
Hindu society. The Boro, as well as many other communities as also much of the indigenous elite, were not exposed to education till the end of the 19th century, and it was by the early 20th century when a class of Boro/Kachari publicists finally emerged—a small Kachari elite formed in the early 20th century from among traders, school teachers and contractors. Foremost among them was
Kalicharan Brahma, a trader from
Goalpara who established a new
monotheistic faith called "
Brahma-ism" and most importantly, claimed for himself and his peers a new Bodo Identity. Whereas earlier educated Kacharis like Rupnath had few options for social mobility other than assimilating into the Hindu lower castes, thus the Brahma religion developed by the Bodos that asserted respectable and
autonomous Bodo identity while rejecting the cast dominance, and by the 1921 census the Boros began giving up their tribal names and identifying themselves as
Boro by caste and language and
Brahma by religion. Additional avenues, via conversion to
Christianity, were already available by the late 19th century especially with the evangelical work of Sidney Endle who is also known for his tome "The Kacharis", and this formed a parallel stream of Boro articulation till much later times.
Boro as a self-referential term for all Kacharis was reported by
Montgomery in 1838.
Bodo was a term reported by
Brian Houghton Hodgson (1847) as a
endonym that, he speculated, encompassed a wide group of peoples that included in the minimum the Mech and the Kacharis. This led to two type of approaches to the Boro identity: one is the notion of a wide group was picked up by Kalicharan Brahma and his peers who posited the Boro identity in opposition to the caste-Hindu
Assamese, Those of the Kacharis who preferred to progress socially by initiation into the
Ekasarana Dharma are called
Sarania Kachari and are not considered as Boros today.
Pre-political Boro associations The period from 1919 saw the emergence of different Boro organisations:
Bodo Chatra Sanmilan (Bodo Students Association),
Kachari Chatra Sanmilan (Kachari Students Association),
Bodo Maha Sanmilan (Greater Bodo Association),
Kachari Jatiyo Sanmilan (Kachari Community Association), etc. These organisations pushed divergent means for social and political progress. For example,
Bodo Chatra Sanmilan advocated giving up tribal attributes and wanted women to follow the ideals of
Sita of
Ramayana. Even as self-assertive politics was on, the Boros were not ready to severe their relationship with the greater Assamese society, with even Kalicharan Brahma advocating Assamese as the medium of instruction in schools, and Boro associations seeking patronage from Assamese figures who showed sympathy for their cause. In the absence of an acknowledged past history of
state formation, the associations felt particularly pressed to show that the Boros were not primitive as some other tribal groups and at the same time did not fall into the caste-
Hindu hierarchy. The demand for community rights was made for the first time when at the 1929
Simon Commission the Boro leaders evoked colonial imagery of backward tribes and requested protection in the form of reserved representation in local and central legislatures. The Boro delegation to the Simon Commission included, among others, Kalicharan Brahma and Jadav Khakhlari. The delegation submitted that Goalpara should remain with Assam and should not be included with
Bengal; and that the Boros were culturally close to the Assamese. In the early 19th century the
East India Company became interested in the 'tribal' question owing to situations arising out of insurgencies against local rulers who were seeking British protection; but over the years the East India Company/
British Raj evolved its role as saviours of the not the local rulers but the local people by offering to protect them against these rulers just as the primitive people of Africa needed protection. The notion of primitive vs non-primitive difference was further refined by the introduction of European notions of
racial differences and by the census of 1872, categories such as 'aboriginal tribe' and 'semi-Hinduised aboriginals' emerged. The 1881 census proposed that India consisted of two hostile populations and thus did not possess a cohesive nationality. And by 1901 the official definition of a tribe was set down by Risley. Within this formulation
Northeast India was seen as a special case that required separate legislation. The elites from these social groups, including that from the Boros, used these categories for political articulation. The
Tribal League, a full political organisation, emerged in 1933 as the common platform for all
plains tribes of the Brahmaputra valley that included the
Boro,
Karbi,
Mising,
Tiwa and the
Rabha. This formation excluded the
hills tribes which were not allowed political participation. The colonial state and ethnographers' desire to define the tribal people, the need of the people to define themselves, and the earlier pre-political associations were significant contributory factors in the development of the
tribal identity among the Boro and other groups. The Tribal League, which included Boro leaders such as Rabi Chandra Kachari and
Rupnath Brahma, succeeded in protecting the Line system in 1937 against the proposal by the Muslim League. ==Demographics==