Jalia Kaibarta

Jalia Kaibarta (or Jaliya Kaibartta, or: Jāliya Kaibbarta, possibly also: Jalia Kaibartya) is a community which was earlier known as Dom, a people of low ritual status, fishermen, who later acquired respectable caste identities within the larger Hindu fold, helped by their commercial prosperity and Vaishnavite affiliations, through Sanskritisation[1] They are traditionally engaged in the occupation of fishing and originally belonged to Assam, West Bengal, Odisha and eastern Bihar along with Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan. The Kaibartas were initially considered a single tribe divided into two groups, Jaliya and Haliya in Bengal. Jaliya Kaibartas are categorised as a Scheduled Caste, though the Haliya Kaibartas are not.[2][3][4] They are recognised as Schedule Caste in Assam under the name Jal Keot or Kaibarta.[5][6]

Kaibarta fisherman from East Bengal in 1860s

The first proto-Assamese manuscript, in the form of Caryapādas, was written by a Buddhist priest, known in Tibetan language as Lui-pā, who is identified with Matsyendranātha, a member of the fishermen community of ancient Kāmarūpa, which later became Kaibartas.[7][8]

References
  1. The census of 1901 interpreted the act of renaming as a ‘‘refusal of those at the bottom of the social scale to acquiesce in the humble positions assigned to them.’’. For Assam’s Dom fisher caste, previously at the lowest end of the ritual hierarchy, this refusal took the form of claims to Aryanist belonging through the new names of Nadiyal and Kaibarta. In colonial Assam the upper echelons of Dom society succeeded for the most part in acquiring new, respectable caste identities within the larger Hindu fold, helped by commercial prosperity and Vaishnavite affliations. Sharma, Jayeeta. Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India (PDF). Duke University Press. p. 214.
  2. Atal, Yogesh (1981). Building A Nation (Essays on India). Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd. p. 118. ISBN 978-8-12880-664-3.
  3. Venkatesh Salagrama; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (30 December 2006). Trends in Poverty and Livelihoods in Coastal Fishing Communities of Orissa State, India. Food & Agriculture Org. p. 80. ISBN 978-92-5-105566-3. Retrieved 18 April 2012.
  4. Chakrabarty, Bidyut (1997). Local Politics and Indian Nationalism: Midnapur (1919-1944). New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 62–67.
  5. Tribes, India Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled (1969). Report. Manager, Government of India Press. p. 122. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  6. Indian Association of Social Science Institutions Quarterly. Indian Association of Social Science Institutions. 2003. pp. 104, 111. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  7. Dasgupta, Shashibhushan (1946). Obscure Religious Cults, Calcutta University Press, Calcutta, p. 384-385, Internet Archive copy; third edition: Firma KLM Private Limited, Calcutta 1960, Internet Archive copy; fifth edition: Firma KLM Private Limited, Calcutta 1995, ISBN 81-7102-020-8
  8. Ayyappapanicker, K. & Akademi, Sahitya (1997). Medieval Indian literature: an anthology, Volume 3. Sahitya Akademi. ISBN 81-260-0365-0, ISBN 978-81-260-0365-5, (accessed: Friday March 5, 2010)
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