Ho Tribe

Ho Tribe Latest News

The Ho Samaj Yuva Mahasabha (AHSYM) recently called upon tribal people not to celebrate picnics but to observe ‘Black Day’ on January 1 and 2.

About Ho Tribe

• The Ho, or Kolha, people are an Austroasiatic Munda ethnic group of India.
• They call themselves the Ho, Hodoko, and Horo, which mean ‘human’ in their own language.
• Distribution: 
  • They are mostly concentrated in the Kolhan region of Jharkhand and Odisha, where they constitute around 10.7% and 7.3% of the total Scheduled Tribe population, respectively, as of 2011.
  • Ho also inhabit adjacent areas in the neighboring states of Odisha, West Bengal, and Bihar. 
  • They also live in Bangladesh and Nepal.
• Language: Ho people speak the Ho language, an Austroasiatic language closely related to Mundari.
• Occupation: The majority of the Ho tribe is involved in agriculture, either as landowners or labourers, while others are engaged in mining.
• The men and women of this community wear very minimal dress. The women prefer to wear tribal jewelleries.
• Women have higher status among the Ho than they do in most tribes.
• Dance is very important in Ho culture. Most villages have a dedicated dancing ground, called akhra, usually consisting of a cleared space of hard ground under a spreading tree.
• Traditional Ho music incorporates native instruments, including a dama (drum), dholak, dumeng (mandar), and the rutu (flute).
• Religion: 
  • The majority of the Ho have their own nature-based religion (Sarnaism) that doesn’t fit in with Hinduism.
  • They have a village priest called a deuri.

Source: HT

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