The Bodos need no special introduction. Even if required, they have become well known to the outside world as the real sons of the soil of Assam, who, once were powerful and dominant race in the entire northern and north-eastern India, are struggling for their barest existence till today. Racially, the Bodos, the earliest known ethnic group to inhabit Assam (erstwhile Pragjyotispur and Kamrupa) with their distinctive culture and linguistic traits, belong to the Mongoloid or Indo -Tibetans from the historical point of view and other general interests of India, their contribution towards the Indian civilization and culture is very great. According to Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, the Indian National Scholar, "the great Bodo people of Assam" are "offspring of the son of Vishnu and Mother Earth". During the Epic times, they were known as the "Kiratas". They were well-known to the Vedic Aryans also and they found mention in the Yajur and Atharva Vedas too. It is rightly said by the scholars that " Assam has thus to meet all the tribal movements from the east, involving the advent into India of Tibeto-Chinese speaking Mongoloids; and it was in Assam primarily that this great element in the formation of the Indian people became largely Indianised -particularly in the Brahmaputra Valley……This can be looked upon as Assam's great contribution to the synthesis of culture and fusion of races took place in India…..a synthesis which had started in the pre-historic times when two distinct races found that they were to reside together in the same country - the Austric and Mongoloid, the Dravidian and the Austric, and the Dravidian and the Mongoloids ". F.W.Thomas has rightly observed that this sysnthesis took a definite shape, and its character and line of movement was forever, when the Indian Man as the result of the fusion of the Aryan and Dravidian, Mongoloids and Austric came into being at the end of the Vedic Period (i.e.by 1000 B.C.). But it is an irony that such great communities like the Bodos, who gave fundamental contributions to the formation of great Indian people, have been now neglected in total and are being treated as the class citizens. Hence, Dr. S.K.Chatterjee made a significant regret -"The Mongoloid contribution (especially the contribution of the Bodos) has not yet been seriously studied as element in Indian history and civilization". But he has a timely warning who made it long fifty years back: "It is now the lot of Assam to act as India's Sentinel against any aggression from the East, where the basic Mongoloid character of large masses of the people (although they have become in some cases wholly Indianised) would appear to afford temptation and wistful thinking in quarters for territorial expansion at the expense of India which would seek the support of this racial affinity".

     Source:bodoland.org

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