They live close to the last
forests, for they still keep the secrets of nature. Perhaps unknown
to them for centuries, the forestland and mountain ranges they
inhabit contain the richest mineral reserves in the country. Now that
India is growing as an economy, development has turned its glare on
tribal country. The region that has come under the sharpest focus of
the growth-rate-driven new economy is the tribal heartland of
Chhattisgarh. This is a state that abounds in minerals, which in turn
have brought the horde of mining companies to devour the wealth lying
hidden inside the hills. Ruthless mining has left the surroundings
badly scarred and the people devastated. Since the administration
invariably sides with the big companies both from the private and
government sectors, and the mainstream political parties are
reluctant to cross swords with the corporates, the resistance has
come from the far-left guerrillas. The tribals have often been caught
in the crossfire between the armed forces on one hand and the plucky,
at times ruthless, guerrillas on the other. Their identity has been
reduced to that of victims. But beyond it all lies their everyday
life and ancestral practices, informed by science and wisdom that
comes from living in close proximity to nature. They hold the key to
many layers of a past otherwise lost to us. This way of life too has
now come under attack from a slash-and-burn consumerist culture and
the bludgeoning impact of ‘civilization’, which threatens to
steamroll all individuals and social groups into a homogeneous,
conformist mass, a community to be benchmarked by primetime
television. To see what survives and find out about the traditions
that are still extant, I visit a few villages in the districts of
Kanker and Balod and meet members of the Gond tribe.
Religion
Palash flowers, or flame of the
forest, whizz past our lines of vision as our motorcycles make their
way from Kanker town to Khamdongdi village. Reluctant to annoy my
guides as the awestruck city dweller who wants to photograph
everything, I make a special request to stop at the lotus pond framed
by the mountains on one side, and the blossoming plants and trees on
the other. Natural beauty in the region is the rule, not the
exception, so I get ready to record with my mind and eyes what I
cannot click.
Entrance to a village
My guides
are members of KBKS,
Koya Bhoomkal Kranti Sena, a youth group that stands up for the right
of the indigenous people and tries to understand and preserve their
own culture. One of them, Yogesh Nareti, says to me, ‘At
times we are not allowed to enter these jungles that you see. What
has always been ours is now being claimed by the state. But so much
of our life does not fit into the existing diktats and forms. We have
no religion, we worship nature; yet we are being clubbed with Hindus.
We don’t believe in untouchability but sometimes we are treated as
untouchables. Our people are being exploited because they do not have
formal education and those who get educated are buying into the
majoritarian myths.’
I notice in the forest some
gravestones, painted and elevated to mark the dead, a trend, I am
told, that has been prevalent for the past three decades or so.
Before this, huge stones used to be erected, many can still be seen
about, at the burial sites, tilted in the direction of the sun to
mark the time. Under some trees, I see wooden figurines suggesting it
was a place of worship. But Adivasi culture has not been about
idolatry, I am told. A greater, purer being is said to find refuge in
trees, birds and animals, different in different communities. Each
community has a few specific trees, birds, and small and big animals
that they have to protect and cannot kill. This way each social group
ends up protecting some flora and fauna.
The
deceased are considered to have got transformed into gods who now act
as the guiding lights for their descendants. Thus, the farewell, not
seen as final, is celebrated. When the family members and neighbours
take their dead for burial, they tell everyone around that so-and-so
has ‘become a god’, not that he is dead. ‘Unmarried people are
not buried with the older, married ones,’ Yogesh laughs. ‘Because
we the young ones can be useless and foolish, not to be cremated with
the purer, wiser ones.’ Then he shakes his head, more serious this
time. ‘They used to call the burial place the gudi,
the living place of our pen,
the
ancestral god each community has.
Now
they have picked up the current day parlance and call it marghat,
the place of the dead. Of course when the young die it is not the
same thing as the passing of an elderly person, leaving the world at
the ripe age.’
With
modernity pushing its way into tribal life and the pressure mounting
for retaining their unique identities and getting recognized as such,
some people have started adopting visible markers for their tribe. In
one
house, I notice a framed emblem on the wall denoting the seven
seasons through that many colour stripes. The ancestors,
also symbolised in some of these flags, are commemorated with
gratitude because they brought up their children in harsh, at times
hostile natural conditions.
The pen
gudi,
or the place of worship, is usually in marh,
or forested areas. Since God is supposed to preserve nature – the
realm they therefore inhabit – nobody is allowed to cut trees in
this sacred territory. The Rowghat mines, part of the government’s
development agenda in the Bastar region, became a site of contention
for this reason too; it is at the heart of this pen
worshipping circle. The fabled festival of
lingo
karsad
or jatra
is held here every year. Participants come from Orissa, Maharashtra
and some other parts of the country. Interestingly,
aboriginals from the other end of the world – as far away as the
Pacific – arrive to be part of the celebrations. ‘People
who come to pay their respects from other places,’ Yogesh says,
‘including the indigenous tribes of Australia and New Zealand, ask
us if their wishes would be granted by the gods. We tell them they
would come
true for sure, but they should not be against nature or harm it in
any way.’
Raj
Mandavi, another KBKS member, is upset about the mines too. ‘Our
puja cannot be done inside closed doors; we don’t have buildings
for our gods. But when we tell the government to protect our
religious areas, they say they don’t see any temples around.’ Now
some educated Adivasis have started mocking the old customs, and call
the followers regressive. Raj is dismissive of them: ‘They have
started doing havan,
imitating the Brahminical rituals.’
I meet Mane Singh Kavde, a herbal
doctor, in Bewarti village in another part of Kanker; he draws
another comparison to explain the tribes’ way with God, a highly
refined form of animism that the poet Wordsworth would have
appreciated. ‘If you look at how we follow the cycles of the moon,
bury our dead, and so on, you would find that these ways match with
the people who practise Islam.’
In
the village of Vishrampuri, the youth leaders say that to them
others’ caste or religion has not mattered because at the end of
the day everyone around is communicating with each other using the
same Gondi language.
‘We
have been taught that our history begins from the time there came to
be stones and rivers on this earth,’ Yogesh shares. ‘We come from
water. No god has birthed us.’ He is upset that the tribes are
being slotted as Hindu, and he talks of how in the official forms
they are made to check the ‘Hindu’ box.
Some
tribals are also borrowing from religion. On the wall of a village
home in Khamdongdi is painted the ‘Om’ sign, and on the other
there is a symbol marking the ancestral tribal deity Boodha Dev. A
few days later, travelling in the town of Dalli-Rajhara in Balod
district, in the car I listen to a song in praise of the tribal god
Bada Dev. The track is a remake of the popular Hindi bhajan Om
Jai Jagdish Hare.
My guides are visibly embarrassed. ‘Aarti
is
not even a part of our customs.’
To
explain this, Yogesh says, ‘See, Brahmins would come to our
villages and read from the Ramayana. Feudal overlords like the old
zamindars had brought them in. If a person opens a big heavy book and
his audience cannot follow it, he then would be called the learned
man. Now some people have a problem that we don’t burn Ravana’s
effigy during Dussehra; they think we don’t because we are his
descendants. I mean we don’t even know who this guy is, he means
nothing to us. Why should we go about setting him on fire? Our
culture is scientific. But in today’s time a doctor worships a god
with four hands and calls a child born with an extra limb an
aberration.’
Seasons,
festivals, language
For the
tribes, who have preferred the forests and mountains to multilane
roads and swank flyovers to be true to their way of life, a change of
seasons signifies a lot more than an extended Bombay Stock Exchange
bull run or the crash of the blue chips. A good monsoon or the spring
blossoms would impact their life in a more basic way than events that
qualify for primetime breaking
news.
‘Each
season is so important, we actually don’t have a first,’
concludes a KBKS member after a discussion among themselves. Seven
seasons, or
pandum,
which means to create a system, are counted following the lunar
calendar: beeja
(celebrating the seed); kusir
(before which
one is not to have leafy vegetables; garab
(the paddy is pregnant
and people are wishing for a good crop); punang
tindana
(celebrating the new harvest); charu
(till this time harvesting a crop is not allowed, and certainly not
chopping trees) and the second charu
(the
time for
storing
and winnowing); hessa
(offering
to the pen
what
people would be consuming in summer – having the same in winter can
make one sick); and marka
pandum.
The
marka pandum
or the mango festival
signifies the ripening of the fruit, when the seed is fully formed,
and the fruit can be eaten. The mango tree is supposed to put up a
fight to save its children – its fruit – and therefore, it is
said, eating unripe mangoes causes mouth sores. It is not surprising
therefore that a traditional rela
song cautions against
eating the fruit in a hurry even when the time is right.
The tonda
sanskar festivities
mark a new birth. The tonda,
or the umbilical cord
of the infant, is placed in a utensil, covered and buried to preserve
it and keep it safe from misuse. The namkaran
or christening
ceremony involves showing a diya
to the child, wishing
that they are always able to see. KBKS says that the elders of their
communities actually retain their sight and hearing until they reach
very old age; even after their eyesight weakens, their ears remain
sharp.
At the time of death, there
is the kunda sanskar.
‘The rites are to store the energy of those who have passed into
another state,’ explains a KBKS activist, ‘through
this energy, through the DNA, our ancestors will guide us.’
The most
important maternal deity is tanurmutte
yaya,
or the first mother hen, who is believed to protect her community
just as a hen keeps her brood safe by hiding them under her feathers.
During the festival of dewari,
which KBKS members insist must not be confused with Diwali, food is
laid out in a bamboo soop,
a
flat-hand winnower, and the family members as well as their pets eat
from it together. The activists proudly claim that hardly any
‘civilized’ community would have such respect for animals.
Talking of
civilization and language, Prahlad Netam of KBKS, who has been quiet
so far, says, ‘Try saying aloud ‘ya’, our term for mother. Now
say ma. You will find that ‘ya’ takes much less energy, and
therefore when a newborn cries it seems to be saying ‘yaya’. The
Gondi language has evolved in a way that speaking takes the minimum
energy. So our ancestors could live long without much eating.’ He
chuckles, ‘Now we speak too much and keep getting hungry.’
When I
reach Dalli-Rajhara, a small town in Balod, I am surprised to see not
many people speak Gondi. In the family I visit, the elderly woman and
her son converse in Hindi. But they have proudly displayed some of
their tribal markers, like the calendar in Gondi script placed next
to the English one and the anti-clockwise clock that moves in tune
with Earth’s motion, which the tribe worships along with the moon
and the sun, and other elements of nature.
Food
and drinks
Having
remained cut off from urbanity and development
for so long, the tribal way of life has been built around the
concepts of self-sustenance and barter. Food, building material,
natural medicines – everything comes under it. Even today,
communities located deeper into the forests like Abujmarh are largely
self-reliant. The proximity to the forests gives them access to the
bounties of nature. In March, when I was there, it was the season for
mahua. The small flowers from the trees are used to make a drink
popular among the tribal people. Romanticized by pop music and films,
mahua is inseparable from any celebration in tribal country. Actually
the mahua flower has many medicinal properties that make it a
favourite with the herbal doctors. It is perhaps a measure of mahua’s
importance in tribal culture that it is offered to the gods. The many
associations of mahua are indeed mindboggling – from the toast of
loud music blared across Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, to the herbal
doctor’s prescription for many ailments, to an oblation to the
gods. At several places we were served it as a welcome drink.
While going for an interview, we
find a mahua tree on the way. Our driver stops and steps out with my
other guides to pick the mahua flowers lying on the ground. A piece
of cloth is spread out on the ground, and everyone starts putting
their handfuls into it. Participating in the collective act of flower
picking, I notice that while the tree is laden with the blossom,
nobody thinks of touching any of it, as one is only supposed to pick
what the tree has dropped on its own.
Mahua flowers being dried in the sun
Similarly, for salfi, another
popular brew preferred over mahua in summer, a particular person is
chosen from the community for the job of climbing up the tree to
collect the juice. My guide, a young man in his twenties, talks of
the beliefs that in a way maintain the order in tribal society. ‘If
any of us randomly goes up and tries to get it, the juice will dry
up.’ According to customs, girls are to plant the saplings, and
when the drink is received from the tree the very first time, it is
distributed for free to everyone around. An offering has to be made
to the deity of the community the tree belongs to.
Marriage
When we are
invited
into the house of a KBKS member, Yogesh excitedly goes inside and
comes back with a soop.
‘If
a young man wields this soop assertively, moving it in a way that it
brings a strong gust of wind, the parents come to know he is now fit
to marry. If a woman can firmly hold it on both sides and winnow,
she, too, everyone around would know, has reached the marriageable
age.’ This is an unencumbered way for the young people
to let their parents know they have arrived. If they like someone
they can make it clear to their parents, and the young man’s family
will then meet the girl’s. In case there are only daughters in the
house,
the
family goes to the boy’s family to make him their lamhaade,
a son-in-law who would stay at their place taking care of the girl’s
parents like his own.’
The young
men talking to me contest the simplistic urban narratives, the
‘sensationalist’ media write-ups describing some festive Adivasi
gatherings as the rendezvous for young men and women to hook up for
the purpose of sex. KBKS sees
this mindset as an attempt to belittle tribal culture.
Marriages within the same gotra
or clan is not allowed, (the pair must be sam-visham,
or
belonging to opposite
gotras).
But a marriage
between distant cousins
is not considered wrong. ‘So if you see me flirting with a woman at
a rela,
our community song-and-dance ritual, it is because I have known her
since childhood. Both men and women sing to tease each other. We can
do this only because our elders are around, and we have their
sanction. If we come across the same person elsewhere, say going
somewhere, our behaviour would be entirely different. We would be
most respectful and see if they needed any help from us, if they had
had their lunch and so on.’
More
importantly, in tribal culture, women enjoy an equal status and
remarkable freedom. In the days I spent there, I did not hear of
dowry harassment or obsession with the male child. Tameshwar
Sinha, a local journalist, explains that here a girl is valued, not
considered a burden, as she is seen connecting her parents’ family
to her husband’s, acting as a bridge. Among the states,
Chhattisgarh significantly has the highest female-male ratio. ‘My
father keeps telling me,’ Tameshwar laughs, ‘we were waiting for
a girl. How come you ended up in our family?’
And what if
there's a marriage across the caste or clan injunctions? Yogesh says,
‘The rules are clear. Such a couple cannot participate in some of
our most important community rituals. They will not be pressured to
break up; and there is certainly no censuring them, “honour
killings” do not happen here. The young people also abide by these
rules and know that in these rituals they can still sit at the back,
and if they have a boy, he, again, will be allowed to take part.’
But the tough part is if such a couple gives birth to daughters.
Their marriage then becomes difficult. People would see this same
gotra
marriage as a flaw in the family line.
KBKS
members resent the TV-induced urban culture seeping into village life
spoiling the tribal simplicity: people now celebrate weddings under
colourful marquees. ‘Earlier we would just chop some wood to erect
a temporary structure and keep lending it to any family that had a
wedding coming up; that way costs would be minimum.’ Relatives who
came for the
marming
or
manda sanskar,
the wedding, would stay for three days. It was a time for the family
to forge deeper
bonds. Now everything is governed by expenses, and guests come and go
even the same day. Also, while people were previously happy with
silver jewellery, now, under the spell of heady consumerism, they are
gold-struck. Keen to protect the tribal identity and distinct way of
life, the young KBKS members are troubled by the infusion of such
undesirable influences.
There
is of course the ashirvad
sabha,
where people come to bless the couple with presents; this is called
tikawan.
To make sure that the host is not burdened, guests bring and
contribute rice to the community kitchen. When people visit their
married daughters, they follow the same practice.
xxx
Some
researchers have been keen enough to understand the tribal culture by
making themselves a part of it for some time and treading the complex
terrain of being an observer-participant. Not very far from where I
am – meeting the tribal activists and ordinary villagers nearly a
hundred years ago – self-taught anthropologist-ethnologist Verrier
Elwin did his seminal work among the Gonds. Much later his Tribal
World of Verrier Elwin
won him much acclaim and recognition. Still the loneliness of the
forest people has not ended. They are either part of the tourism
literature as part of the Indian exotica playing up to the cameras of
the curious tourists or othered by the country’s political
system. Their choices are limited: either getting exploited by a
corrupt system or fetishized by the media and cultural commentators.
