Bhotiya

Bhotiya or Bhot (भोटिया, ) is an Indian and Nepali exonym lumping together various ethnic groups speaking Tibetic languages, as well as some groups speaking other Tibeto-Burman languages living in the Transhimalayan region that divides India from Tibet. The word Bhotiya comes from the classical Tibetan name for Tibet, བོད, . The Bhotiya speak numerous languages including Ladakhi. The Indian recognition of such language is Bhoti / Bhotia having Tibetan scripts and it lies in the Parliament of India to become one of the official languages through Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. The Bhotiya identify as Raghuvanshi Rajput and prefer to be referred as Thakur or Rajvanshi. The Bhotiya may be the original immigrants to north Oudh in the period of Nawab Asaf-Ud-Dowlah (1775 to 1797). The Bhotiya people are closely related to several other groups and ethnic boundaries are porous. One group is the Bhutia, the main ethnolinguistic group of the northern part of the Indian state of Sikkim. A second is the Uttarakhand Bhotiya of the upper Himalayan valleys of the Kumaon and the Garhwal divisions of Uttarakhand. These include the Shauka tribe of Kumaon, the Tolchhas and the Marchhas of Garhwal, Gyagar Khampa of Khimling, Bhidang. A third related group are the Dzongkha speaking Ngalop people, the main ethnolinguistic group of Bhutan. The Bhotiya are also related to several dispersed groups in Nepal and the adjacent areas of India including the Tibetans and Sherpas. In Nepal, Bhotiya is 0.1 percent of the population. They live in villages throughout the Himalayas. The language of the Bhotiya people is called "Bhoti" or "Bhotia", but is in fact a cover term for a wide variety of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in India. It is usually written in the Tibetan script. Bhoti and Bhotia is spoken in Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, and parts of Pakistan and West Bengal. Bhoti is not included in the languages with official status in India.