Jhabua the Land of Tribe's

Jhabua is a predominantly tribal district located in the western part of Madhya Pradesh. It is surrounded by Panchamahal and Baroda districts of Gujrat, Banswara district of Rajasthan and Dhar and Ratlam districts of Madhya Pradesh. River Narmada forms the southern boundary of the district.

The terrain is hilly, undulating typically known as 'Jhabua hills topography'. In this Jhabua hill topography the difference between the highest and the lowest points is varies between 20 to 50 meters. But this difference goes on increasing as we move towards south of Jhabua.

In Alirajpur division which is in the south of Jhabua the areas is almost entire hilly and intersected by narrow valleys and low Vindhayan ranges covered with jungles. But most part of Jhabua is without any forest cover because of low fertility of land and soil erosion even mere existence becomes a hard problem and with the failure of rains the Bhils take to crime.
Jhabua is sparsely populated area with the total population of 13.94 lakhs.

The total area is 6793 Sq Kms. There are about 1313 inhabited villages. Out of which 47 per cent of the people live below the poverty line. Thus, Jhabua is an overwhelmingly tribal and poor district. The district is devoid of vegetation cover except Katthiwada and other patches and is full of undulated, hilly areas.


The area suffers from poor and skeletal soils with shallow to very shallow depth and erratic rainfall , high temperature . This area has two tribes named the Bhil and Bhilala.

BHIL Tribe
The Bhils are the third largest tribe in India. In the state of Madhya Pradesh, they are prominently found in the Dhar, Jhabua, and West Nimar regions. Anthropologists believe that the word Bhil is derived from the Dravidian word bil or vil, meaning a bow.

Over a period of time, the Bhils have given up hunting, and have taken to agriculture. They use very primitive tools, and even their agricultural style is very simplistic.

Bhil villages are generally dispersed, and each village consists of thirty to forty families. They worship numerous Hindu deities, chiefly a deity by the name of Raja Pantha. Bhils also worship crops, fields, water, the forest, and the mountains.


The Bhil dialect consists of Rajsthani, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi words, and also some unique words without any non-Sanskrit elements in it. Sawang is a popular form of entertainment among the Bhil tribals that consists of story telling combined with dancing and music. In the 1940s Uday Shankar tried to expose the performing arts of this tribe to the outside world.

Bhilala
Bhilala tribe is a tribal group located in the states of western and central India. They speak the Bhilala language which belongs to the Indo-Aryan linguistic family. The Bhilalas are descendants of the Bhil and Rajput immigrants.


The Bhilalas primarily work as farmers, farm servants, field laborers, and village watchmen. They grow crops such as millet, maize, wheat, and barley in the fields. The highlanders live in houses made with walls of sticks intertwined with twigs and small branches. Clay tiles, straw and leaves are used for the roof.

Each village is led by a head man, Mandoi, who takes care of the domestic disputes in his village. Familial ties are very strong, and they believe in the connection between the living and the dead. Male descendants inherit the property. The Bhilalas marry from their own class. For marrying into a different class, they have to convert to the higher class and leave behind all family ties. The Bhagoria festival of the Bhilala and other tribes in this area is unique in its own way.


This annual festival is celebrated with great fun and frolic, where a young man gets a chance to choose his bride from the crowd of women gathered there. The groom has to pay a dowry to the brides parents.

Bhilalas are known for their colorful, embroidered garments. Tattooing is very common among the villagers. Bhilalas love dance, drama, and music. They practice some type of ethnic religion. Hindu gods are worshipped commonly but catholic Bhilalas are known to exist in some states. Every family has its own guardian deity. Bhilalas are very superstitious and they believe in taboos and curses.

The Bhilalas are experts in handling the bow and arrow. The bow is a characteristic weapon of this tribe and they usually carry their bows and arrows with them. But with the change in technology they have started to use the double barrel guns.







The transport to these villages is by overloaded buses, jeeps, cycles and of course our last stretch will be by foot. Get ready to lose some weight if you do plan to visit these traibal of Jhabua but anyway one can still stay high on their toddy.