River Gypsies of Bangladesh

Our motherland, the beautiful Bangladesh is a riverine country. Have you ever seen people living in boats or river gypsies of Bangladesh while passing by the river bank?  Most probably you have. They are the nomadic ethnic group of people roaming across the river of Bangladesh through boat. In fact, they are accustomed to live in rivers from the very beginning. Today we are going to learn about the lifestyle, culture, occupation, religion of these unspoken ethnic gypsies.

History of River Gypsies

The river gypsies are locally known as Bede, Beday or Baidda. It is said that they came from the Arakan province, Myanmar to Dhaka with refugee Arakanraj Ballal Raja in 1638. Actually, they are the Mon Tong ethnic group of Myanmar. They started to live in Bikrampur at first .Then they scattered to different areas of Bangladesh and India from there.The rural people call them Baidda( quack) as they try to treat diseases through using herbal cures and snake venom.

Occupation

River gypsies live on rivers or water. Mainly they survive by adapting some occupation as snake trading, selling herbal cures, petty business, fishing .Men show snake charming to entertain the local community.  Women walk door to door to vend cosmetics, bangles.Plowshares, they also suck the blood of people to reduce the pain.Moreover; they do fishing in monsoon season. In addition, they try to collect pearls from water sometimes. The village people tend to believe in their magical power to remove evil spirits.

Religion

Mostly river gypsies are Muslims nowadays. But they believe in Mansa, Ram, Lakshan etc deity. Hence, they also follow Hinduism, Shamanism and Animism.

Living Style

River gypsies stay close to their community by living in a group. They don’t have their own land. And so they either live on boats or tents. They usually travel in rivers from May to December. In winter season, they often go near the river bank and put their tents there to live in as rivers dry up hugely by that time.

Despite being ‘Patriarchal’ family, women have a lot to say and do in their families. In point of fact, women do the main hard work and men idle away their time. They have leader called ‘Sardar’ who lead a particular team or group and decide everything. If anyone of them violate any rule, sardar punishes them. River gypsies other than sardar visit village in the harvesting season. They call it Gaowal.After coming back from Gaowal; there occurs a celebration of marriage in their community. The bride and bridegroom can choose independently their life partner or spouse there. When marriage happens, the bridegroom comes to the boat of bride to live. Also the bride takes the oath to take care of both her husband and children. They don’t have the custom of polygamy, child marriage or extended family.

Problems

River gypsies are facing numerous problems due to many reasons nowadays.  Urbanization is taking place in a fast and rapid way in Bangladesh. For which they are losing their potential target customers. Because of climate change issue, rivers are drying up. Only 6000 kilometers waterways remain alive or flow properly in winter season which before was 24000 kilometers in length. That’s why they cannot live on rivers now as they before did.

They don’t own land and therefore are deprived of proper education. Again they are accustomed to the lifestyle of river rather than mainstream. So, they don’t earn much. Hence, their living standard is below poverty line and they are marginalized community of Bangladesh. But it is a matter of joy that govt. gave them rights to cast votes in 2008. Different organizations are trying to educate them through mobile school in boats.

They are an obvious part of our culture. If you have ever heard the name of the iconic or popular Bengali movie ‘Beder Meyer Josna’, you can realize their integral involvement in our culture. Through taking proper education and getting the right to take loan from banks and mixing with the mainstream, river gypsies can make a difference in their living standard.Thus; our country will go one step ahead to be a developed and prosperous country in the world.