The Bondo

Abstract

The tribes of India possess a variety of culture. Every tribal group has a specific pattern of culture, artistic tradition and habits and customs. The most important implications of this cultural relativism is that different tribal communities follow different way of living as dictated by their cultural background and geographical conditions and the conclusion which flows from this premise is that the strategies and the plans need to be community-specific as well as location specific so that each group can make full use of the developmental programmes with greatest ability and efficiency. The objective behind the publication of a popular series of booklets on the various tribal communities is to make known their particular socio-economic characteristics and cultural profiles to the general public. These booklets are meant for those who are not very well informed about the Scheduled Tribes but are keen on knowing about such communities. Keeping such a target group in view, it was felt that the ethnographic and developmental accounts of these tribes should be presented in such a manner as would create and sustain interest in the readers without being too scholastic or technical. Demographically, some tribal communities are very large and some, very small. In the matter of development also, there are large variations-some of them are quite progressive while a few small communities are still at a primitive stage. These booklets would cover both the numerically large groups as well as the small communities which are presently recognised as primitive tribes. The Tribal & Harijan Research-cum-Training Institute (THRTI) has prepared these booklets. The booklets being published on the Bondo, the Juang, the Saora and the Kondh tribes are the beginning of a series of such publications on various tribal communities of Odisha. The present book is a short popular monograph on the Bondo tribe of Odisha. The ethnographic materials which have gone into these popular write-ups were collected both from the tribal people by the senior research staff of the Institute during their field work and also from many secondary sources