Who are they; their Origin? What is their present status? What is the necessity of this site?

Most of us might have seen in many parts of our country that caravan of bullock carts loading with belonging of daily household use with ladies and older men are passing through in and around villages, the younger family members trailing behind them with their kids. And they put their tents in the village outskirts for few days and then again pack their belongings and head for a new direction. Who are those people? They are Banjaras, the caravan men.

According to some authorities, the actual Banjara lineage goes back to some 2000 years. They are said to be the descendants of the Roma gypsies of Europe who migrated to India through the rugged mountains of Afghanistan and finally settled down in Rajasthan. The colourful stream of the Banjaras began to travel down to the South in the 14th century. Many of their families and pack bullocks crossed the Vindhy as and reached the Deccan country in the wake of the plundering armies. The Banjaras also came to the Deccan following the invasion by the armies of Aurangzeb.

Those were hard time for the Banjaras. “There were no navigable rivers and no roads to wheel their belongings. Thousands of laden bullocks and carts had to travel on mere dust tracks. A single tribe owned as many as 50000 to 60000 cattle” says Capt. Briggs (1813). And so, thanks to the number of cattle they owned, the Banjaras worked for the Moghuls as commissariat carriers transporting provisions and arms, setting up camps on the outskirts of army encampments. When the Southern campaigns ended, the Banjaras forgot their desert homes in Rajasthan and settled down in the Deccan.

Due to their strong physique, cleverness, swiftness, the Banjaras were preferred for services in places like Pune, Satara in Maharashtra, Hyderabad and Mysore. They sold grain to the armies of Lord Cornwallis besides helping Comte de Bussy with stores and cattle. They even acted as spies for the British later switching over to help Tipu Sultan.

For last few decades due to the spread of communications the Banjara lifestyle has naturally altered and the tribals have had to abandon their packs of animals and take to working as labourers on building and construction projects. Despite all this, their traditional customs, manners and ceremonies have undergone little change and their migatory instinct is still intact.

They move wherever work is available, set up their temporary hamlets and build simple homes of mud and bamboo plaits. They keep very few domestic possessions and make do with earthen vessels, small quilts, bamboo and date mats and some rickety wooden articles. Brass and copper vessels are only recent additions and even these are very few in each family. The tanda (hamlet) members are controlled by a leader who is elected. His word is law on all matters and there was a time when he was credited with supernatural powers and had powers of life and death over his members.

Fond of festivals and domestic celebrations, the Banjaras revel on occasions like the New Year which to them is ugadi celebrated with gaiety. They also celebrate holi and dasara festivals as community affairs when women go from house to house collecting donations for the feast, singing and dancing all the way. Family deities are worshipped on such occasions. Banjaras share some of the religious beliefs of the Hindus and consider Lord Venkateshwara of Tirupati as their family deity. They save money over the years to go to worship the Lord of the Seven Hills whom they call Balaji.

Song and dance come naturally to these tribal women who excel in these arts. Dances and songs also form an integral part of the Banjara wedding which in olden days used to last a whole month and is pruned down to just three days of celebration.

Liquor is distributed freely on the first day of the wedding when the bridegroom and his relatives are welcomed at the bride’s tanda. The welcome is accompanied by offering paan-supari (betel leaves and nut) according to custom. A square silver ornament or bottu is tied round the neck of the bride. The boy and girl exchange seven round balls made of rice, ghee (clarified butter) and sugar while a hundred pairs of eyes are focused on them and the assembled women giggle and make merry. The couple then hold hands and do seven rounds of grain pounding with pestles.

The whole place echoes to the sound of music sung by the women in chorus. The shy bride is taunted all

All eyes are misted when the bride leaves her parent’s home to go to her husband’s in another tanda. Tears roll down from her eyes as she begins to sing sad yet meaningful melody

A stunning silence descends on the tanda as the bejwewelled bride worships the family cow as a parting customs and walks slowly with her husband to her new home.

Now a days Banajara the caravan men are found all over the districts of Maharashtra and other parts of the country. They say they came from Bombay and Karnataka when and why they do not know. In south of the district of Akola (Balapur) are Vanjaries and Banjaras, the two are absolutely distinct. The Vanjari hold Patilki of sixteen villages in the north of Wasim taluka, all bearing a kind of allegiance to a "Naik" or the Patil of Rajpura. In former days, considerable trade between Noth India and the seaboard passed through the district of Ahmednagar. The carriers were a class of Vanjaras called as Lamans, owners of herds of bullocks ,but since the opening of the two lines of the Great Indian Peninsula Railways the course of traffic has changed. The trade is almost entirely carried on by means of permanent market. Lamans or Vanjaries, pass through the district of Ratnagiri (Sawantwadi), along the trade routes between the coast and the Deccan. Carriers of grain and salt on pack-bullocks, they generally pass rains in Deccan and after the early harvest is over, come to the coast. They generally make two trips each fair season. Formerly they were a very large class, but since the opening of the hill-passes fit for the carts, the demand for their services has in great part ceased.

Banjaras of Berar (Vidharb & Varhad) are the same people as the Lambadies of Madras Presidency and the Manaris mentioned by Tavernier. They are supposed to be the people, mentioned by Arrian in the 4th century B.C., as leading wandering life, dwelling in tents and letting out their beasts of burden.

With different culture, dress, dialogue, now Banjaras are settled in separate villages named “Tanda”. The history of the Banjaras is as colourful as their dress. They belong to a nomadic tribe whose sojourn in the subcontinent dates back to thousand years. The traditional Banjara man wear a dhoti (loin cloth tied around the waist), a wrinkled coat and turban – looked austere like that of any Indian villager. The Banjara women, however, are holding steadfast to their ancient mode of dress which is perhaps the most colourful and elaborate of any tribal group in India. Undoubtedly, their dress and jewellery sets them apart from all others. Their full length skirt, is blazing red with borders embroidered in mustard and green thread. The odhni (mantle) which covers the head is long enough to drape down their backs almost touching the feet. This also elaborately embroidered and studded with little mirrors which embellish their cholis (blouses).

A variety of materials – silver, brass, some gold, cowries, ivory, animal bone and even plastic – are used in the making of a Banjara wardrobe. The women wear pretty silver anklets which clink as they walk barefoot. Long silver earrings are conspicuous and patterned cowries decorate their plaits of hair.

Banjaras in contemporary periods.

In the 18th century a chain of mobile traders connected India to the outside world. Central Asian traders brought goods to India and the Banjaras and other traders carried these to local markets. They bought and sold these goods as they moved from one place to another, transporting them on their animals. They moved over long distances with their animals. They lived on milk and other pastoral products. They also exchanged wool, ghee, etc., with settled agriculturists for grain, cloth, utensils and other products. The Banjaras were the most important tradernomads. Their caravan was called tanda. Sultan Alauddin Khalji used the Banjaras to transport grain to the city markets. Emperor Jahangir wrote in his memoirs that the Banjaras carried grain on their bullocks from different areas and sold it in towns. They transported food grain for the Mughal army during military campaigns. With a large army there could be 100,000 bullocks carrying grain.

The Banjaras Peter Mundy, an English trader who came to India during the early seventeenth century, has described the Banjaras:

“In the morning we met a tanda of Banjaras with 14,000 oxen. They were all laden with grains such as wheat and rice. These Banjaras carry their household – wives and children – along with them. One tanda consists of many families. Their way of life is similar to that of carriers who continuously travel from place to place. They own their oxen. They are sometimes hired by merchants, but most commonly they are themselves merchants. They buy grain where it is cheaply available and carry it to places where it is dearer. From there, they again reload their oxen with anything that can be profitably sold in other places. In a tanda there may be as many as 6 or 7 hundred persons. They do not travel more than 6 or 7 miles a day – that, too, in the cool weather. After unloading their oxen, they turn them free to graze as there is enough land here, and no one there to forbid them.?”

Banjaras were a community much more in evidence all over India thousand of years from now. In fact, banjaras were called the "exporters" of grain, salt and other goods to distant provinces and regions of the country. Essentially, banjaras were a numerically larger community, operating on a much larger scale, traversing a much larger geographic area. They are also called as Vimukta Jati and Nomadic Tribes. The social category generally known as the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs) covers a population of approximately 6 crores. In the period of Raja and Maharajas they however earn their bread and butter by hard working and doing ladeni work. In British period due to deforestation, industrialization and mammoth constructions work they used to get works of labour and loaders. But in the later stage due to advent of machine age and cutting of jungle and increasing dependency on machines by the British these people became jobless. By working in different areas and settling in those areas they became no longer nomadic and bereft of their earlier occupations, they were suspected of being desperate criminals by the police and public alike, and continue to be hounded as in colonial times. And by the British Government they were notified as criminal tribals.

Soon after Independence, these communities notified as criminal tribals were denotified by the Government. This was followed by the substitution of a series of acts, generally entitled 'Habitual Offenders Act'. This preserved most of the provisions of the former CT Act, except the premise that an entire community can be 'born' criminal. The denotification and the passing of the HOAs should have ended the misery of the communities penalised under the CT Act. But, that has not happened. After independence, various state governments have done little to restore land to the DNTs. Schemes for economic upliftment does not seem to have benefited them. The rate of illiteracy among the DNTs is higher than among Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, malnutrition more frequent and provisions for education and health care almost negligible since most of them have remained nomadic. Above all, there is no limit to the atrocities that the DNTs have to face. However, in some State like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, Bihar, Punjab and Orissa they have been included in SC/ST List.

In India, as described above, it was the colonial revenue policies which destroyed the itinerant/nomadic communities' earlier trading practices. Till 19th century the local people must find the nomads quite useful for the unusual wares they bring periodically. Their various skills of weaving mats or making baskets or playing musical instruments and more dramatically in the case of acrobats and dancers make them a colourful and interesting presence, in all probability providing relief and diversion from the tedium of daily routine.

Mathura Banjara

The Mathura Banjara live in a few villages of Adiladabad and Nizamabad Districts. Lambhani is their synonym. Like the Lambhani, the Mathura Banjara were also nomadic people. Their settlement is known as Tanda and its hereditary leader, Naik. They claim that they migrated to the southern parts along with twin pack bullocks from Mathura in Northern India and hence they are called Mauthra Banjara. According to the census report of Hyderabad State 1921, “the Lambadas are divided into four tribes, viz. Mathura, Lambhani, Charan and Dahia. Members of these sub tribes neither intermarry nor interdine. The Mathura and Lambhani or Lambada are Hindus, while the Charan are mostly animistic in their religious beliefs. The Mathura claim their descend from Mota, the mythical herdsman of Sri Krishna. They profess to be of the highest rank, are fairer and cleaner in their habits than the other Lambadas and also were the sacred thread. They do hot eat flesh and nor food cooked by a person of any community other that their own. They speak a dialect which is a mixture of Hindi and Gujarathi (Hassan 1920). The Mathura and Lambadi are two different communities. There are no commensal or connubial relations between these two groups.

Banjara is a community in India spread in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. They are also spread in other states of India. Locally they are known by different names such as Banjara, Lambadi, Sugali, Ghor etc. They live in settlements called Tandas, They have a unique culture and Dance form. The women wear colorful and beautiful costumes and have tattoes on their hands. A model of a Lambadi Women with her picturesque dress is one of the most attractive exhibits at the chennai museum. They are classified as Scheduled Tribes in Andhra Pradesh. They speak the Lambadi Language. Their traditional occupation is agriculture and trade.

The traditional food of Lambadis is Bati which is Roti, Their customs,language and dress indicate they originated from Rajasthan. Their traditional occupation is agriculture and trade. The accurate history of Lambanis or Lambadis or Banjaras is not known but the general opinion among them is that they fought for Prithivi Raj against Mohammad Ghazni. The trail of the Lambadi/Banjara can be verified from their language, Lambadi borrows words from Rajasthani, Gujarathi, Marathi and the Local language of the area they belong to.

Present position of Banjaras and its synonyms and Sub-Castes in the list of Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) of the Constitution of India, in different States and Union Territories of Republic of India