Tribe Dongaria Kondh

 

            Once I was
travelling deep inside of Odisha where I found a unique tribe called Dongaria
Kondh. This tribe mostly lived atop Niyamgiri Mountains in wilderness of the
Eastern Ghats region of South Orissa a fascinating Kuvi speaking tribe are
called Dongaria as Dongaria means mountain Kondh means caste. The Niyamgiri
hills are densely forested with deep gorge and cascading streams. Their living
and attires are very attractive. They use to wear simple but colorful and
traditional cloth, women and men both use to wear hair clips, women also use to
wear a small knife in their hair and three rings in their nose and men two.
Sometimes it is quite difficult to differentiate between men and women as they
look same in their attire. Women wear traditional jewelers as well as wild
flowers in their hair. They are far from modern day life due to severe lack of
lliteracy, but some youth are using mobile phones wearing jeans but there is no
network in deep jungle.  

 

            Dongarias
fought long legal battle against Medanta Resources Project for their survival and
won that is a great achievement for them. Dongarias moves in queue and their
women aggressively use to take part in village meetings. Dongarias come under
primitive tribes and are found in district Raigada and Kala Handi. Their main
resources of living is cultivation, women use to take water from waterfalls and
rivers for cooking and other house hold cores they also keep goats, chicken,
cows, pigs in a makeshift  bamboos
surroundings.

 

            As Dongrias
worship the spirit of dead ancestors so they are inclined towards Hindu rituals
and worship Durga and Kali but their worship don’t complete without sacrificing
goat, bufellow, fowls etc. Dongarias live in deep forest so they say that all
the jungles, mountains, waterfalls, water streams are their property and nobody
can snatch these from them. Those all are theirs and nobody can uproot them
from their natural habitat, so they fought long battle and won.

 

Text and Photos by- Ashok
Karan,

 

Ashokkaran.blogspot.com

 

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