Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Baganiyas


Well I was just going through my last post and as I had mentioned that I would write more about life in tea gardens.

As of now I am writing about the tea gardens of Assam. There are several unknown things to people. Specially the culture of  the people those work in tea gardens. The people those work in tea gardens in Assam are popularly know as "BAGANIYA." This word "BAGANIYA" is derived from "BAGAN" which means garden. So BGANIYA means people those are in BAGANS or in TEA GARDENS. 

Well these are very poor group of people. An epitome of exploitation done to the labor class of people especially in India. These people are not well educated so don't know about their rights. They are very hard working and innocent so they are easily getting exploited. These "BAGANIYAS" never realize up to what extent they are getting exploited. This exploitation is been happening over century now. The owners of these tea gardens are making millions out of it while exporting tea world wide. 
A labor of tea garden or "BAGANIYA" earns around Rs700 to Rs1200 per month for his family. And this happens to all tea gardens in upper Assam, especially in districts like Shivsagar, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Sonitpur.  If you are a tourist and traveling in this place you would definitely admire the natural beauty of these places but if you see the hard life of these BAGANIYAS you would feel pity about them. More then 90% of BAGANIYAS live Below Poverty line. 

Well now I would like to throw some light on their cultural life. Three things
1) JHOMOOR (2) BAGAAN BAZAAR (3) HADIYA

(1) They have their Folk dance called JHOMOOR. They enjoy doing JHOMOOR to the fullest. They organize JHOMOOR dance in their localities. Assamese film industry or small film studios has started making Audio and Videos of JHOMOOR and they release these CDs in Market now a days.

(2) BAGAAN BAZAAR is a weekly market. It means group of merchants settle down once in a week or once in two weeks in a particular place and they do trading (most of them are FMCG). BAGANIYAS go their and buy their stuff. BAGAAN BAZAAR   I always used to go to BAGAAN BAZAAR. The nearest BAGAAN BAZAAR used to happen two Kms ahead from my home and I used to go their to buy pork. 

(3)HADIYA:-  A kind of rice "KHUDDI" pour water in it. Add a kind of stuff thats only thing I know about it. Keep it for two days. And it becomes rice beer.  People enjoy rice beer a lot.

CHEERS !!!!!

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