Textiles and Ornaments as a Cultural Marker of the Bonda Community

In the dense hills of Malkangiri district in southern Odisha, the Bonda, classified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), preserve a visual culture through their distinctive textiles and ornaments. Known as 'Remo’, meaning people, the Bonda women weave the Ringa cloth and craft elaborate jewellery that carry their identity and ancestral knowledge.

Origins and Cultural Context

The Bonda are an Austroasiatic Munda people, among the oldest forest-dwelling communities of the Eastern Ghats, settled across the Bonda Ghati, or Bonda hills, amidst dense forest. Women hold a central place in their social and economic life, and this is reflected in a bold attire that sets the Bonda apart: shaved heads crowned with beads, the Ringa cloth, and heavy metal ornaments that signal marital status, clan affiliation, and spiritual standing. The Ringa, also called Nadik, began as a narrow loincloth woven from the wild Kerang (Careya arborea), whose fibre is harvested each year during the Smegelirak festival, a communal rite that blends foraging with the preparation of weaving. Ornaments, forged from local metals and strung with traded beads, draw on animist beliefs that honour nature spirits, the Sun God, and the Earth Goddess. This visual language sets the Bonda apart from neighbours such as the Gadaba or Paraja, marking out cultural boundaries. In a community of about 12,000 by recent estimates, these crafts have withstood the pressures of a changing landscape for generations.

One story, old as the Ramayana, still travels through these hills. It tells of a time when the Bonda lived without clothes, until one day a woman, startled by the sudden arrival of Mahaprabhu, tried to cover herself with one hand while offering fire with the other. Moved by her predicament, the deity tore a piece from her own saree and gave it to her. That fragment of cloth, barely three feet long, became the Ringa, and is worn by Bonda women still.

Another telling reaches further back. Once, during her exile, the goddess Sita was bathing unadorned when some Bonda women saw her and laughed. In a moment of anger she cursed them, saying they would live apart from comfort and vanity. The women wept and begged her to lift it. The curse could not be undone, she replied, but she tore a loincloth from her saree to cover them below the waist, and this became the Ringa. She blessed them too, saying they would cover their upper bodies with beads and metal instead, and this became their jewellery.

Kerang Fibre and the Making of Ringa

Ringa weaving relies on resourcefulness more than equipment. On simple ground looms, weavers make narrow strips of cloth, roughly twenty to thirty centimetres wide, banded in bold stripes of red, yellow, black, and white, all coloured with natural vegetable dyes. The warp is drawn from Kerang bark, soaked and beaten until it softens into pliable fibre. This is now interwoven with a cotton weft for durability, a shift away from wholly wild fibre that the growing scarcity of the Kerang shrub has forced.

From plant to cloth, left to right, top row then bottom: Kerang, the wild plant whose bark yields the fibre for Ringa; a bundle of harvested Kerang, carried home after the season; the bark, soaked and beaten, before it is spun; short, broken strands drawn out and twisted by hand and foot; thread twisted between the fingers and against the thigh; spun thread rolled into small balls called badi; a ginara wound with hand-spun Kerang thread; dyed yarn and a finished length of striped Ringa cloth.

Photographs: Soumya Mukherji

After the harvest that follows Smegelirak, the fibre is macerated in streams for several days, then pounded with wooden mallets into fine strands. Because these strands are short and broken, women twist them into usable thread with a ginara, a spindle-shaped tool, worked between the fingers and against the thigh. The spun thread is wound onto an unokda and rolled into small balls, called badi, ready for the loom.

Dyes are drawn from the forest and the field: reds from manjistha root or lac, black from haritaki, yellow from turmeric or palash flowers, with local minerals used as mordants so the colour holds. On the loom, the warp is stretched between trees or posts, and the weft is worked in by hand or with a simple shuttle into geometric stripes. The finished cloth is sewn into a wraparound skirt, often paired with an upper cloth worn by married women, balancing modesty with ease of movement. Unlike more elaborate traditions such as Ikat, Bonda cloth carries no complex motifs; instead, its plain stripes hold their own meaning, standing for fertility and a tie to the earth. Production is largely for the household, surplus rarely entering trade, and the techniques pass down by word and hand across generations.

Bonda Jewellery and Bead Craft

For Bonda women, jewellery is a way of life. The Usungu, a neck ring of brass, aluminium, or iron, sits close against the throat and stands for strength, protection, and identity. Sungarae (or Sumarai) bangles, worn from wrist to elbow and especially by married women, speak of fertility, prosperity, and the wellbeing of the community. Oral histories recall a time of poor harvests and childlessness, until divine instruction tied prosperity to the wearing of bangles; since then they have been inseparable from the rhythm of life. In their metallic clink lie both faith and continuity. Ear ornaments such as Thinkodit, Surkoda, and Jinb Jinglo, usually of aluminium and worn along different parts of the ear, are held to guard against illness and evil and to keep body and soul in harmony. Married women also wear the Turuba, or Kurtop, a headband of date palm leaf worn like a crown, while the beaded Lubeidak, worn over shaved heads, carries a quieter, more ornamental tradition.

Adornment as identity. Top row: Bonda women at home in the hills of Malkangiri; a young woman in full adornment, with beaded cap, neck ring, and layered strands of beads and cowries; brass-coil earrings and a beaded headband, seen in profile. Middle row: a heavy metal neck ring strung with engraved bangles; hand-forged bangles, hammered and coiled at the ends; strands of glass beads and a finished beaded band. Bottom row: a beaded headband taking shape, bead by bead; beadwork and neck rings seen from behind; women gathered outside a village home.

Photographs: Soumya Mukherji

Protection and decoration meet in the Khagla, thick aluminium neck rings thought to shield women from injury and wild animals, and in the Mali, long bead necklaces that fall to the navel and dress the upper body above the minimal Ringa at the waist. Among men, adornment is more restrained, but not absent. The Gosi, a simple waist cloth, mirrors the Ringa in its purpose, while the Samba, an aluminium arm bangle, appears at festivals to mark a moment of celebration. Even utility is worn as ornament here. The waist belt, the Thunaya lubbaita, holds the Ringa in place and also carries the tools of the day, a sickle, a small knife. Once made from forest fibre, these belts now often gleam with brass and beads, turning necessity into adornment. What emerges is not a collection of ornaments but a system of meaning, where every bead, every ring, and every fibre holds a story of environment, labour, belief, and adaptation.

Today nylon thread has begun to replace bark fibre, market beads sit alongside forest seeds, and printed fabric edges out handwoven cloth. Yet the essence holds, a worldview in which adornment is inseparable from identity.

Symbolism and Social Significance

From anklets, said to hold ancestral serpents and guard fertility, to shaved heads set with beaded “crowns” that put communal strength above vanity, these ornaments are never merely decorative. Their layers mark outstanding: unmarried girls wear lighter sets, widows the plainest iron, a sign of endurance. Worn through the day and at rituals such as the Dheku dance, they assert the place of women, who hold unusual economic and social authority in Bonda life, the ornaments serving as a kind of armour against the outside world. In folklore, heavy jewellery is believed to bind spirits to the wearer, holding the clan together as its numbers fall.

Where an outsider may see only spectacle, the Bonda show that adornment runs far deeper than decoration. What they wear serves a purpose, defines relationships, offers protection, and holds meaning. It is a way of keeping a history that is worn rather than written. In the end, the Bonda are a people who carry their heritage on their bodies.

Indrani Chakraborty writes, campaigns, and investigates — often where the three overlap. Soumya Mukherji works across writing, editing, photography, and video, bringing alive the visual story.

This commentary is one of many rural visits, part of the project DAOLAT (Digital Archive of Odisha’s Living Arts, Crafts and Traditions), supported by the Common Ground Initiative.