Banjara Community
- Banjara is a nomadic tribe in India.
- They have permanently abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and settled in their settlements called Tandas.
- They speak Gor Boli also called Lambadi which belongs to the Indo-Aryan Group of Languages.
- Lambadi has no script.
- They celebrate the festival of Teej during Shravanam.
- In this festival young unmarried Banjara girls pray for a good groom.
- Fire dance and Chari are the traditional dance forms of the banjara people.
- In 1871, the Banjaras and several other tribes were brought under the Criminal Tribes Act.
- The community was denotified in the 1950s but was listed under the Habitual Offenders Act, 1952.
- They live in several states and are known by different names like
- Lambada or Lambadi in Andhra Pradesh,
- Lambani in Karnataka;
- Gwar or Gwaraiya in Rajasthan.
- They are believed to have come from the Mewar region of Rajasthan.
- They are listed in various States as
- Scheduled Caste (SC) – Delhi, Karnataka, and Punjab,
- Scheduled Tribe (ST) – AP, Telangana, and Odisha,
- Other Backward Classes (OBC) – MP, Haryana, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra and
- Vimukta Jati/denotified tribes.
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