Hatti community
Why in news ?
An organisation of the Hatti community in Himachal Pradesh will organise a protest march on December 16 to press their demand for the implementation of a law giving the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the community.
About Hatti community
- The Hattis are a close-knit community.
- Harris people take their name from their traditional occupation of selling home-grown crops, vegetables, meat, and wool at small-town markets known as ‘haats’.
- Hatti men traditionally dress in distinctive white headgear on ceremonial occasions.
- In Himachal Pradesh, Hattis people live in 154 panchayat areas, and according to the 2011 census; members of the community are around 2.5 lakh.
- The present-day population of the Hattis is around 3 lakh.
- They live near the Himachal-Uttarakhand border area in the basin of the Giri and Tons rivers, both these rivers are tributaries of the Yamuna.
About Tribal in India
- The Term “Tribal” literally means ‘original inhabitants’ – are communities who lived and often continue to live, in close association with forests. They are very old Communities, being among the oldest inhabitants of the Sub-Continent.
- They are not a homogeneous population: there are over 500 different tribal groups in India.
- Their societies are also the most distinctive because there is often very little hierarchy among them. This makes them radically different from communities organised around principles of jati-varna (caste) or those that were ruled by kings.
- They practise a range of tribal religions that are different from Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. These often involve the worship of ancestors, village and nature spirits, the last associated with and residing in various sites in the landscape – ‘mountain spirits’, ‘river spirits’, ‘animal spirits’, etc.
Source – The Hindu
