Dhimal

Dhimal or Dhemal is an indigenous community of the Terai. They mainly reside in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal and Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India. Several scholars both in India and Nepal have referred to Dhimals as a 'forgotten ethnic group'. They are scions of the Kachari lineage, which includes Bodos, Dimasas, Tiprasas, Rabhas, Tiwas, Sonowals and many others.

Colonial ethnographers of British India identified the Dhimals as an aboriginal tribe and categorized them as non-Aryan. Their facial features, language and religious practices are close to those of the Limbu people and koch of Terai and of the northern hills. They also show the characteristic habits, quick temper and aggressiveness of the Limbu, koch Rajbanshi and Kirati people. However, they have their own language, culture and customs.

Dhimals consider themselves of Kirati descent. They consider the Limbu and Koch people of the hills as their brethren.

According to Hodgson the Mech, Bodo, koch and Dhimal tribes are of the same race; however, comparison of language does not support so close a connection, he added. He stated that "… but it is difficult to suppose the Bodo and Dhimal languages other than primitive". He also stated that the Dhimals are "… nomadic cultivators of wild. For ages transcending memory or tradition, they have passed beyond the savage or hunter state, and also beyond the herdsman's state, and have advanced to the third or agricultural grade of social progress, but so as to indicate a not entirely broken connection with the precedent condition of things … They never cultivate the same field beyond the second year, or remain in the same village beyond from four to six years". He again identified the barter system for the few things which they require and do not produce themselves.

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