Tour Nepal (Nepali dhimal lady and dress.)

Dhimal is a little known indigenous community of the Terai. Most of them live in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal and Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India. Several scholars both in India and Nepal referred to Dhimals as a 'forgotten ethnic group'. Colonial ethnographers of British India identified Dhimals as an aboriginal tribe and had categorized them as non-Aryan. Their facial features, language and religious practices are so close to those of the Limbu people of the Terai. They also show the characteristic habits, quick temper and aggressiveness of the Limbu people people. However, they have their own language, culture and customs. Dhimals consider themselves of Kirati descent. They consider the Rai, Limbu and Koch people of Terai as their brethren.

According to Hodgson the Mech or Bodo and Dhimal tribes are of the same race; however, comparison of language does not support so close connection, he added. He stated that “… but it is difficult to suppose the Bodo and Dhimal languages other than primitive”. He also stated that the Dhimals are “… nomadic cultivators of wild. 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”. He again identified the barter system for the few things which they require and do not produce themselves. Their animistic religion is very close to the Kirant religion. They worship nature and other household gods. Hodgson identified their religion as the religion of nature, or rather, the natural religion of man have neither temple nor idol; their cultivation as shifting cultivation; and “this race assure him that they once had chiefs when they dwelt as a united people in Morang”. The religion, as identified by Hodgson, is very much different from Hinduism as they have neither temples nor idols. “Altogether, their religion belongs to the same primitive era as their habits and manners”, Hodgson added.