Tchamar

Tchamar, low-caste aborigines of India, numerous especially in the North-West Provinces in Panjab, Bengal, Malva, Bandelkand, and Gondwana and numhering altogether over 12,000,000. Although officially free, they still remain practically slaves or serfs, bonnd to the soil in the rural districts, confined to separate quarters in the towns, everywhere despised and condemned to the lowest pursuits by long-established custom more powerful in India than legal enactments. Some, however, such as the so-called Satnami of Chattisgarh, have been partly emancipated since the first half of the present century.