Ethnography of Pathor : Decaying Peripheral Ethnic Community in Sylhet, Bangladesh

In the district of Sylhet, northeast part of Bangladesh , lives a small semi-tribe known as Pathor (Patra). Pathor\u27s villages are located within 15 to 20km east of Sylhet city and these villages are on two sides of Khadim Nagar Tilla-north and -south and spread lately east and west. Total number of Pathors would not exceed more than three thousand, distributed in twenty-five villages. They, looks like Bangladeshi, are said to be a Mongoloid race who speak a language of China-Tibet origin. The Pathors are in the abyss of poverty. The reason is simply that previously they did not know agriculture. Later they took up agriculture. Their most important economic pursuit was preparing charcoal in the jungles of hills, and selling them in the Sylhet market. For long and continued inroad over the hill resources tress have become fewer. Moreover, the installation of gas line in Sylhet has made a death-blow to age-old occupation of the Pathors. Many of them, as result of this, have become jobless and consequently very poor. In many cases they now work as hired labor of miscellaneous type. Practically the Pathors have double identity apart from broader national identity, e.g., identity of aboriginal community and that of religion. It seems that the Pathor of Sylhet could not yet form a component of the Bangladesh society. Such dichotomy of identity is well demonstated in their social and religious life. They practice the religious ceremonies of the Hindus along with their own aboriginal religious practices. But their social system and norms reflect their own aborignal characteristics. Ramakrishna mission in Sylhet played an important role in improving condition of their life and enlightening them as well as in letting them Hindunized. The Pathors, as a tribe, are now rapidly decaying for many reasons. Their pecuniary condition is becoming worse day by day. A large number Pathors migrated to India during the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971.http://nwudir.lib.nara-wu.ac.jp/dspace/handle/10935/277