About Toto Tribe and Language

Toto language, which is spoken by only 1,600 people in West Bengal and is in danger of extinction. The central government is taking a step towards its conservation. A trilingual dictionary named “Toto Vocabulary” (Toto-Bengali-English) was released in Kolkata on October 7, 2023.

The objective of this program is to protect the language heritage of the Toto tribe, who live in West Bengal near Bhutan. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Toto is one of the critically endangered languages.

Despite the development of a script in 2015 by a prominent member of its community, Padmashree awardee Dhaniram Toto, the language is often written in the Bengali script or Bengali.

The Toto community is a primitive and isolated tribal clan that lives in the remote Totopara region of Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, India. Totopara is home to the entire Toto tribe and as of the 2001 census, has a population of less than 2000. The Toto, a Mongolian people, practice endogamous marriage, preferring to marry within their own tribe.

Toto families have a patriarchal structure, with nuclear dominance being common. Nevertheless, joint families are not uncommon. While monogamy is common in toto marriages, polygamy is not explicitly prohibited. It is noteworthy that Toto culture does not approve of divorce.