Castes and Tribes of Southern India/Kangara

by Edgar Thurston

Kangara.— The word Kangara means servant, and the Kangaras (or Khongars) were orginally village watchmen in the Vizagapatam Agency tracts, corresponding to the Kāvalgars of the Tamil country. They are described as follows by Lieutenant J. Macdonald Smith, who was Assistant Agent to the Governor in Jeypore in the sixties of the last century. "A Khongar, it seems, is nothing but a Kāvilgar or village watchman. That these people, in many parts of India, are little better than a community of thieves, is pretty well known, and what was the true nature of the system in Jeypore was very clearly brought to light in a case which was committed to my Court. It was simply this. Before we entered the country, the entire police and magisterial authority of a tāluk was lodged in the revenue ameen or renter. Whenever a theft occurred, and the property was of sufficient importance to warrant the trouble and expense, the traveller or householder, as the case might be, resorted at once to the ameen, who (if sufficiently feed by the complainant) forthwith sent for the Head Khongar of the quarter, and desired him to recover the goods, whatever they might be. The Khongar generally knows very well where to lay his hand on the property, and would come back with such portion of it as the urgency of the ameen's order seemed to require, while the zeal of that functionary of course varied in each case, according to the extent of the gratification the complainant seemed disposed to give. This is the Khongar system of Jeypore in its length and breadth, as proved at the trial referred to. Wherever a tāluk is taken up by the Police, the system of course falls down of itself. As for the Khongars, they willingly enlist in our village constabulary, and are proving themselves both intelligent and fearless." The Meriah Officers (1845-61) remarked that the former Rājas of Jeypore, and their subordinate chiefs, retained in their service great numbers of professional robbers, called Khongars, whom they employed within the Jeypore country, and in the plains, on expeditions of rapine and bloodshed.

The Khongars were generally Paidis by caste, and their descendants are even now the most notorious among the dacoits of the Vizagapatam district. Their methods are thus described in the Gazetteer of the Vizagapatam district (1907). "Like the Konda Doras, they have induced some of the people to employ watchmen of their caste as the price of immunity from theft, They are connected with the Dombus of the Rāyagada and Gunupur tāluks, who are even worse. These people dacoit houses at night in armed gangs of fifty or more, with their faces blackened to prevent recognition. Terrifying the villagers into staying quiet in their huts, they force their way into the house of some wealthy person (for choice the local Sondi, liquor-seller and sowcar *^[1] — usually the only man worth looting in an Agency village, and a shark who gets little pity from his neighbours when forced to disgorge), tie up the men, rape the women, and go off with everything of value. Their favourite method of extracting information regarding concealed property is to sprinkle the house-owner with boiling oil."

1. * Money-lender,