Year: 2025 | Month: December | Volume 16 | Issue 3

Echoes of the Forest: Unveiling Socio-cultural Patterns of Baiga Tribe in Chhattisgarh

Sunita Singh
DOI:10.30954/2230-7311.3.2025.5

Abstract:

Baiga, a tribe well-known historically for its primitive characteristics, untouched and unaltered by the developments of the modern world, has nestled within itself a world full of unique culture, tradition, customs, and vast ecological knowledge of its surroundings. Known for their sense of medications using herbs and plants found in the forests and hence known as the healers, this tribe is also famous for tattooing and shifting agriculture known as ‘bewaar’. In contemporary times, Baiga have been recognised as PVTGs, i.e. Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, by the Indian government, and efforts have been taken to preserve their identity and ethnicity by safeguarding their rights. This research is an ethnographic study and aims to explore the tribal knowledge, culture, tradition, customs, ceremonies, rituals, idols, and festivals of the Baiga Tribe and the vast ecological knowledge of this tribe. This study was carried out in five villages, namely Polmi, Amera, Agarpani, Pandariya, and Bodla, confined within the Kabirdham district of Chhattisgarh state, India. The tools, such as observation schedules and semistructured interviews with tribal communities, have been used for this study. Additionally, Interviews, memo writing, diary writing, and FGDs were also used by the researcher to understand the nature of habits and habitat of these communities, schools, and families to identify the Indigenous traditional ecological scientific knowledge, culture, and health-related life practices.





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