International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Year : 2018, Volume : 8, Issue : 11
First page : ( 341) Last page : ( 348)
Online ISSN : 2249-2496.

Environment Protection through Ethnic Taboo: A Case Study of Rajbanshi Community in North Bengal

Dr. Barman Ranjit

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Ananda Chandra College, Post. & Dist.-Jalpaiguri (WB), Pin-735101, India

Online published on 2 September, 2019.

Abstract

Taboo was one of the cultural beliefs and practices among the Rajbanshi community to control human behaviour in order to save environment. Rajbanshi culture, religion and their environmental philosophy showed a strong harmony with nature. But recently western or modern approach ignored this indigenous relationship between nature and human beings to maximize the human satisfaction which in turn led to serious environmental damage. The environmental degradation was caused due to the displacement of indigenous culture, habits and practices. Rapid growth of modernization, industrialization and urbanization were gradually diminishing their environmental taboos and so on. As a result a massive climatic change and natural calamities had been noticed in their region. The Rajbanshi community believed that since there was no cultural control of environment protection, there was no ecological balance between social environment and natural environment. They believed that social environment was made up of in accordance with natural settings and not vice versa, otherwise natural calamities were inevitable. However the Rajbanshi community followed protective taboos in order to carry out the blessings of nature and the following paper intended to explore how the taboos were practiced as environmental safeguard.

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Keywords

Environment protection, Ethnic, Rajbanshi community, Taboo.

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