Dimasa Rituals of Death and Mourning in Contemporary Assam

Pamidi Hagjer

doi:10.3390/rel13010082

Abstract

Deaths provide an important setting for Dimasas in Assam to engage in collective ritual performance. These rituals not only allow the people to affirm their identities, but also provide a space to create strategies to adapt to the changing urban landscape. This paper is an attempt to understand the shift in Dimasa death ritual processes in contemporary Assam. The essay has traced how people mobilize resources as a community to ensure the smooth journey of the deceased from this world to the afterlife, within the constraints of an urban environment. A small but critical part of this process is engaging in bodily techniques that recreate the unique cultural practices of meser-moso and collective grieving, called grasimang. By using ethnographic methods, the paper highlights the perseverance of the people as a functioning collective, and the meanings and symbols that are shared to ensure a successful ritual.

Highlights

For the Dimasas, death at an old, ripe age, after bearing children and seeing those children grow up, is the ideal scenario;
In the Dimasa society, death rituals are performed for everyone, i.e., it does not matter if the individual was morally bad or good, lazy, selfish, greedy, notorious, kind, etc., during their lifetime
The relationship between the local neighborhood/community and clanship, and the obligation towards one’s ancestors, lies at the center of Dimasa death rituals and, like several other communities in the region, we see the Dimasas slowly trying to fashion their cultural practices with forces of modernity and urbanization. It is in this context that the paper asks a broad question—what can rituals of death and mourning tell us about the lives of communities, those that identify with clans and kinship network, in an urban setting? Urban spaces are heterogeneous spaces, that are multiethnic and multi-cultural

Summary

Introduction

For the Dimasas, death at an old, ripe age, after bearing children and seeing those children grow up, is the ideal scenario;. The relationship between the local neighborhood/community and clanship, and the obligation towards one’s ancestors, lies at the center of Dimasa death rituals and, like several other communities in the region, we see the Dimasas slowly trying to fashion their cultural practices with forces of modernity and urbanization It is in this context that the paper asks a broad question—what can rituals of death and mourning tell us about the lives of communities, those that identify with clans and kinship network, in an urban setting? With diminishing physical space for the dead, there have been accompanying changes in ritual processes In such situations, events that require some degree of adherence to a specific set of cultural norms have to be strategically reformulated to ensure a successful completion.

A Brief Note on the Dimasa Community in Assam

The Experience of Death

Confronting Death in the Community

Management of Dead and the Living

Conclusions