5 - ‘Dual were Dual, Kochu were Kochu’: Garos Divided

Summary

Although the cultural distinctiveness an ethnic identity provides is a necessary condition for the existence of an ethnic group, it is not a sufficient condition. … there must also be structural oppositions between groups for ethnic boundaries to exist.

Away from home and outside the Garo area, a Garo may well ask anyone who looks Garo: “Na Mandi ma [are you Mandi]?” A positive reply surely leads to smiling faces. This question shows more than inquisitiveness. It also reflects the strong sense of Garo identity that is shared by most present-day Bangladeshi Garos. Feeling Garo plays an important role in their lives and meeting a fellow Garo on the way provides a sense of recognition, identification, and security. Garos share a strong sense of belonging together, of constituting a distinct ethnic community with a common history, culture, origin, and cause. Contemporary Bangladeshi Garos also answer the definition of what De Vos' calls an “in-group”:

A sense of common origin, of common beliefs and values, and of a common feeling of survival – in brief, a “common cause” – has been important in uniting people into self-defining in-groups. Growing up together in a social unit and sharing common verbal and gestural language allows humans to develop mutually understood accommodations, which radically diminish situations of possible confrontation and conflict.

Although in practice, relations between hill Garos (from India) and plains Garos (from former East Pakistan and now Bangladesh) have become much more difficult to sustain since the partition of 1947, and the people on each side of the border seem to have increasingly developed in two different directions, Indian Garos “are also Garos”, and are considered a vital part of the imagined community of Garos. These perceptions are consistent with nineteenth-century colonial observations, which also portrayed all Garos – whether they lived in hills or plains – as members of one race, nation or tribe. However, in the previous chapter, it was suggested that colonial categorization did not correspond with local perceptions of social groupings and boundaries, and that nineteenth-century Garos did not constitute one category of people or one self-defined in-group with a shared ethnic identity.