Dhimal
The Dhimal or Dhemal (Sanskrit: धिमाल) are ethnic group residing in the eastern Terai of Nepal and West Bengal of India.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.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".[11] The Central Bureau of Statistics of Nepal classifies the Dhimal as a subgroup within the broader social group of Terai Janajati.These days the Indian Dhimals are exclusively concentrated at Hatighisha and Maniram Gram Panchayat of Naxalbari Police Station under Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India.Their counterpart of Nepal, with whom they have a marital relation and belongs to the same (biological) population, have better numerical strength, socio-economic and educational attainment of their own.The monograph dealt with the Vocabulary, Grammar and Location, Numbers, Creed, Customs, Condition and Physical and Moral Characteristics of the People.Trubner and Co. in 1880 published the same original collection of 1847 in the book entitled "Miscellaneous Essays relating to Indian Subjects, Vol-I" (Hodgson 1880).Hodgson stated that Dhimal "…do not now exceed 15,000 souls, are at present confined to that portion of Saul forest lying between the Konki and the Dharla or Torsha, mixed with the Bodo but in separate villages and without intermarriage".Dalton in his ‘Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal’ identified Dhimals as tribe of Assam valley, clubbed with the Kacharis or Bodo and Mech; and stated " Hodgson describes the Bodo and Dhimal tribe as of the same race, and there appears no reason for separating them in a work of this nature, as their customs, religion, etc.belong to the same main stock with Kocch … rapidly losing their tribal identity by absorption into the large heterogeneous Rajbansi caste".Deb Burman and Chaudhuri (1999) identified Dhimals as a backward community having tribal origin and "acceptance of Mallick or Maulik title as well as adoption of Hindu religious practices is the stereotype for not considering them tribe.Because of the uneven competitions with dominant next door neighbours and others in respect of nation, push them much behind whether in the field of education, occupation or sociocultural context as a whole.