Koch people

Not to be confused with Rajbongshi people or Koch (caste).

Koch people
Koch male and female (1872)
Regions with significant populations
 India    Nepal
 India36,434 [1]
Assam12,550[2]
Meghalaya23,199[3]
 Bangladesh13,702[4]
   Nepal1,635[5]
Languages
Koch
Religion
Animism[6]
Related ethnic groups
Garo people, Rabha people, Mech people

The Koch are a small trans-border ethnic group of Assam and Meghalaya in India and northern Bangladesh.[7] The group consists of nine matrilineal and strictly exogamous clans, with some of them preserving a hitherto sparsely documented Boro-Garo language called Koch, whereas others have switched to local varieties of Indo-Aryan languages.[8] It is a Scheduled Tribe in Meghalaya, India.[9][a] Koches want to preserve language and culture and heritage.[11]

The Koch people in this group are those who have preserved their languages, their animistic religions and follow non-Hindu customs and traditions.[6] They are related but distinguished from the empire building Koch (the Rajbongshi people) and the Hindu caste called Koch in Upper Assam which receives converts from different tribes.[12]

  1. ^ "Census of India Website : Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India" (PDF).
  2. ^ "C-16 Population By Mother Tongue - Assam". censusindia.gov.in. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
  3. ^ "Census of India Website : Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India". Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  4. ^ "Table 1.4 Ethnic Population by Group and Sex" (PDF). Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. 2021. p. 33. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  5. ^ "Population Monograph of Nepal Volume II" (PDF). Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Nepal. 2014. Retrieved 9 April 2024.
  6. ^ a b "The Koch included in this report are those who preserved their tribal dialects, animistic religion and non-Hindu cultures and traditions." (Kondakov 2013, p. 5)
  7. ^ "Koch is a people group mainly found in the Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam and in northern Bangladesh. The Koch people call themselves Kocho (in Meghalaya) or Kocha (in Lower Assam). The number of Koch in Meghalaya is about 25,000 people (Census 2011). (Kondakov 2020, p. 1)
  8. ^ "The clans are matrilineal and strictly exogamous (Koch 1984:180), i.e. marriages are not permitted within the same clan. The first six groups have preserved their original Tibeto-Burman forms of speech while the remaining three have long switched to local Indo-Aryan varieties." (Kondakov 2020, p. 1)
  9. ^ The STs in Meghalaya are predominantly rural (84.4 per cent). Individual ST wise, Koch are overwhelmingly confined to rural areas (97.2 per cent), followed by Raba (92.6 per cent), Hajong (91.4 per cent), and Garo (88.7 per cent). On the contrary, higher urban population has been registered among Synteng (28.2 per cent) and Khasi (18.6 per cent).
  10. ^ Census of India.
  11. ^ "Koch union seeks to preserve culture". The Telegraph. 11 May 2018. Retrieved 11 July 2019.
  12. ^ "The Koch of western Meghalaya also claim relationship with those empire-building Koch. On the other hand, Koch is known as a Hindu caste found all over the Brahmaputra Valley (Majumdar 1984: 147), and receives converts to Hinduism from different tribes (Gait 1933: 43)." (Kondakov 2013, p. 4)


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