The indigenous doctors and healers of Chhattisgarh

Mane Singh holding a leaf that is supposed to aid digestion

The indigenous tribes of the state of Chhattisgarh in central India have had their share of natural challenges when they lived largely self-sufficient lives, relying on forests for most of their needs. But they look at that period as one of peace and prosperity compared to the current set of manmade difficulties. These troubles first sprung up when the State and private companies were charmed by the rich mineral reserve in the area and started development projects like roads, railways and mines on a war footing. These interested parties then started having violent confrontations with Maoists, the rebel guerrillas in the forests whose stated aim is to fight the violent exploitation and forced displacement of tribals done by the government and the corporations. In all these, the tribes often get slotted as victims who need saving or Palaeolithic forest dwellers in need of civilizing. This piece recalls the knowledge, the respect for ecology and the learning from ancestors that has enabled the Indigenous Peoples of Chhattisgarh to practice medicine since the time when there were no health centres to the present day, when people still place immense faith in these homegrown systems.

The bone doctor

Sundar Singh

In Khamdongdi village situated in Kanker district, a well known spot is the house of the vaidyaraj, venerable for his patients as the bone-setting doctor. His clientele includes not just villagers but officials and city dwellers from the state capital Raipur and beyond. Sundays are the busiest at his clinic-house, I am informed, full of patients from morning till midnight. But even on a weekday, when I am visiting, there is news that a patient from Raipur is on his way.

Eighty-five-year old Sundar Singh Kavde, the village’s own orthopaedic, had stopped his practice after his son died, and patients had slowly started moving to other doctors. The son is spoken of as a legend. Bone surgeons from hospitals were said to visit him when he was alive, and to ask their own patients to come here if the case was complicated. I am shown a chart hung on the wall, naming the various bones in the human body. “The doctor would use this chart to explain to the doctors. The only difficulty came in fixing an injury to the spine, because you cannot bandage it properly, and the ointment doesn’t seep into the wound as well.” So how many people ended up getting cured? “The people who complained of not having recovered did not have restraint, and would have alcohol though they had been asked to abstain.” Within the campus of the house and the clinic, there is a half-constructed structure. The current doctor’s son had started building it so the patients and their relatives could stay there.

Sundar Singh applies medicine on the patient's injury

But one day Sundar Singh, the father, had a dream in which his ancestors advised him to resume his practice, and he did. In the hut that is his clinic, there are some roots and leaves brought from the jungle. He grinds the roots using a mortar and a pestle. With the advent of a mixer, he started putting the ground medicines into it so it could turn out as fine paste. A makeshift switchboard for the electric grinder is tied to one of the wooden poles that holds the thatched roof in place. A partition creates another room, which has an earthen choolha, so if a patient or their family needs to stay overnight they can cook their food.

After he has bandaged the patient’s leg, Sundar Singh comes to this other room and sits on a plastic chair, “My father, grandfather, everyone did this work. It is in our DNA. Earlier we were treating animals more frequently. Now with motors on the road, it’s people.” He gets herbs and roots from the mountains. I had heard that at some places, despite Forest Rights Act protecting the rights of indigenous people over forest produce, forest officials had been preventing villagers from accessing them. Singh hasn’t faced that problem so far: “People in the government come here to get treated. If they stop me, who will cure them?” Precious medicines do get lost, Singh adds, when there are forest fires due to people’s recklessness. Local reporter Tameshwar Sinha speaks with awe of a deputy forest ranger, quite an exception compared to corrupt government officials, according to Sinha, who had got burnt himself while trying to quell a forest fire.

After applying the ointment, the injured area is bandaged

Doctor Sundar Singh also reads books on Ayurveda to aid his learning. “At times our gods enter our dreams and guide us when we are not treating a problem in the required way.” He also gets some medicinal leaves, etc., from the market. “First we used to quickly get what we were looking for in the forests. Now we have to find them.” Since construction and militarisation on a big scale started in the state, it has lost a lot of its forest cover.

What about the fee? “We never ask for money. What people are required to get are some gauze (earlier leaves and bark were used) and some oil that we recommend. Besides that sometimes people come with an offering, say, a coconut. Even if they don’t have anything it’s fine.”

The vaidya nods when I ask if he ever has to visit a doctor. “Yes, we also get fever, typhoid . . . Then we have to go. But because they know me, often they come here and see me. But this one time I did not feel better even after injections. So I just went into the forest and got the medicinal plants I needed and they worked.”

When local doctors like Singh go to the forest, they take what they need for the time being and leave the rest, saving the rest for others and for the generations to come. They agree that people, including some of their own, have now been lured to sell for greed, which depletes the resources without replenishing them.

I ask Brijesh Sahu, the patient, why he came to the village all the way from the city of Raipur. He says, “Hospitals are expensive and there are no guarantees. Here one is almost completely sure of results if they also eat, drink and abstain as prescribed by the doctor.”

The vaidyaraj shrugs, “Sure, if someone has extra money, like thirty-forty thousand rupees, they can go for an operation. Here we have had some people come here even after they had surgeries but still could not recover completely.”

A farmer and a healer

Doctor-farmer Mane Singh looking up at the garud tree, whose leaves are an antidote to snakebites

The second visit I make is to Mane Singh Kavde’s farm in Kanker’s Bewarti village, another herbal doctor. Before we meet him, we are asked to wait outside a closed poultry shop. A while later we head to his farm, which has vegetables, fruits and trees growing. We find Kavde in the greenhouse and start talking to him but the heat pushes us out where we spread a gunny sack on the ground and begin the conversation.

Unravelling the story of how he became the accidental doctor, Kavde says that while DNA is definitely responsible for the transfer of medicinal knowledge within the family, it usually skips a generation. But in any case, he says, this way each village ends up having its own surgeon. “Apart from that knowledge and what is communicated by my ancestors in dreams, I started doing my own research. Our body is a part of nature and therefore when we take in something natural the body readily accepts it. Illness is nothing but a lack of natural elements.”

He talks of disease caused by eating what we like, not what we need. “We realize the extent of the damage only after it is done. Our resistance is going down and the size of the capsules we swallow is growing. Our ancestors ate naturally grown greens. But our government is interested in metals, not food.” He is referring to the growing number of mining sites in the state. He calls vikas, or development, a synonym of materialism, condemning the sort of food “development” sells to its buyers, “The kind of food we are putting into our body these days is like putting iron into a grinder that is made to crush pulses.”

Kavde was a trader running a profitable business, until he fell sick and had to find and prepare his own medicines for his recovery. “In modern medicine, they give you fifty medicines for one disease. Nature is such that one thing here can treat fifty ills.” The medicines he gives are supposed to do a speedy job of killing the virus, while the discomfort caused by the malady takes a few days to end.

To introduce us to some of the medicinal properties of the vegetation growing around him, he first offers us some tendu (Diospyros melanoxylon Roxb.) fruits, saying having them once is supposed to boost immunity for the next six months. He plucks a few leaves off the garud tree, named after the mythological bird, supposed to be an antidote to snakebites. “But the patient has to be brought within an hour. It becomes a challenge if the heart shuts down.” Talking of the tree’s potency, he states that if a snake rests under the tree for too long, it would die. Around another tree is a creeper called giloy, or Tinospora cardifalia (Wild.), used for tying the bandage in case of a bone injury. Mane Singh distinguishes trees by their sex and uses their products accordingly. “If a tree has a thick bark, it is male. Women’s hearts are full of kindness, and so the bark of female trees would be soft, and can be chewed.”

Tendu fruits

With government subsidies and his own knowledge and hard work, Kavde’s farming practice has been flourishing. It did receive a slight setback though at a time when he was inundated with requests for appointments from patients. He recalls an obese, ill young man who was too sick to walk. “I prayed to my ancestral pen (god) powers and gave him twenty millilitres of a plant juice. By the time his family took out a stretcher to take him back after the treatment, he was fit enough to walk.” Others sitting around, my young guides in the village, discuss the case of the two-year-old who had holes in her heart, and was getting better with Kavde’s treatment. “But then,” Kavde recollects regretfully, “the family discovered that I knew about their same gotra (clan) marriage, and were embarrassed to visit me any more, as such marriages are against the rules of our community. It was a pity that feeling uncomfortable about it they stopped the child’s treatment.”

The biggest challenge for the “natural” doctor came when he had his first HIV patient. The nurse who came to see him about it had to get over her sense of shame, because of societal stigma around the affliction, before she could tell the vaidya that she had been diagnosed as HIV positive. It was Kavde’s first case and he did not know much about it. The woman kept asking him if she would get well. “I prayed for guidance and the medicines I was able to give her transformed her. Her pale face looked radiant on the next visit.”

Mane Singh's farm

With his popularity growing, Kavde has had to allot fixed dates and time for his practice, which he sees as knowledge sharing and not a commercial enterprise. Then he was able to have time once again to devote to his crops. But as a farmer some of his concerns continue. “Farmers are forced to sell some crops to traders at rates even lower than the minimum support price. Subsidies are not there for everything. It was better earlier when we could barter goods amongst ourselves. Now it is more difficult to afford because to buy something our neighbour is producing we have to approach the trader and pay him a higher rate. That’s why the development song rings hollow. Let the delegates visiting from other countries come to the villages, not the big cities, to see the ground realities. We were more developed earlier because there was more prosperity amongst people. Now the only thing actually getting developed is capitalism.”

Sundar Singh and Mane Singh, both the doctors adhere to the pledge which says a doctor’s first duty is to treat and heal the patients. Today hospitals in bigger cities and the fraudulent work done by quacks have also made sections of the population suspicious about indigenous medicines. Yet when this knowledge is appropriated, patented and packaged by pharmaceuticals and sold at high prices, the public puts its trust in the drugs. While the healers I met were concerned about this development as it limits access and corrupts the natural composition of the herbs, personally they have no urge to be competitive because healing is not a commercial enterprise for them. “Here,” Mane Singh says, “we share our knowledge with the community. It has been transferred to us from our elders to benefit people, not for profit making.” Perhaps this is why youth groups like KBKS, Koya Bhoomkal Kranti Sena, receive higher education as well as local trainings, and attend inter-state tribal meets, to educate themselves and fellow tribals about their rights, so that they both preserve their own traditions and resist vested interest groups from taking advantage of their knowledge and resources.

First published in Intercontinetal Cry, 23 Apr 2018, supported by the Centre for World Indigenous Studies.

Seeds of an ancient culture

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.

First published in The Equator Line, Apr-Jun, 2018.

Chhattisgarh Farmers Protest on Rail Tracks Demanding Jobs Promised by Railways

Even as thousands of farmers from Maharashtra head towards Mumbai, their compatriots in Chhattisgarh have also been protesting since March 5, demanding jobs in lieu of their land acquired by the Railways.

In Bhanupratappur, situated in Kanker district in the North Bastar region, farmers whose land had been acquired for the Dallirajhara-Rowghat-Jagdalpur rail project have been sitting on the railway tracks since the past week demand jobs promised to them. Resolved to stay put till they get job appointments,  hundreds of protesters have spread tarpaulin and durries over stones on the tracks.

The rail line project would be carrying iron ore from Rowghat mines to the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP). Rowghat had also been in news earlier because of the local resistance to the mines.

Chandrashekhar Yadu, one of the protesters, said those whose land ownership is covered by the Forest Rights Act have not got any compensation or even the application forms for jobs. “The few farmers with revenue land who have jobs have got meagre amounts in the name of compensation. More than 400 farmers are waiting to get jobs. When we met officials from the Railways, the local administration and BSP on March 8, 2018, in the office of the sub-divisional magistrate, we were told that in 2012 there was a change in the 2011 policy, which now covers only those whose 75-100% land was impacted by the project. But the public wasn’t informed of any such change. We would believe the papers we have in our hands right now, which talk of jobs and compensation for all whose land was affected to any extent. Amendments can keep taking place.”

The farmers are against the provision, as listed in the notification issued by South East Central Railway on April 8, 2011, of jobs being granted only to the landowner, the spouse or their sons/daughters. People of the 28 affected villages feel it excludes those who don’t have children but may want jobs for other family members.

The 2011 notification also doesn’t take into account the fact that many elders own the land so it would be their grandchildren, and not their sons and daughters, who would be in the right age group for jobs. The prescribed age bracket is 18-33 years, relaxed by five years’ for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and for three years’ for other backward classes.

The farmers are demanding that the affected people should get appointment letters first and then should be sent for the technical training required. They do not want the candidates to be first sent to pass the training in an industrial training institute (ITI) and then kept under training again in BSP as they say the actual appointment in this case takes years.

Nandlal Jaiswal, a participant in the protest, said, “The government talks of sabka sath, sabka vikas. But how is this development for all? It is only for the government. It is also unfair that the Dalli-Rajhara farmers in Balod district were given jobs and we have been discriminated against.”

First published in The Wire, 11 Mar 2018.

Understanding Uranium Mining in Meghalaya: Perils, Pushbacks and Politics

When asked about their views on uranium mining in Meghalaya, most local people started with, ‘You know it is a very sensitive issue here’, and they were not exaggerating. The Atomic Minerals Directorate (AMD) found uranium in Domiasiat, Meghalaya, in 1984, and in 1991, the Uranium Council of India Limited (UCIL) first started drilling in the area. But during the next couple of years the project faced a roadblock. Many name the late Hoping Stone Lyngdoh, a legislator in the Hill State People’s Democratic Party (HSPDP) of Meghalaya, as one of the first to have started studying about uranium mining and its possible adverse effects, and then rallying people to oppose it. Khasi Students Union (KSU) was another resistance group at the forefront. Since then UCIL has been constantly trying to resume operations full throttle and, after a lot of back and forth, earlier this year the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC), which represents the region’s autonomy per the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution, withdrew the No Objection Certificate issued to the company.

I visited Meghalaya in May 2017 to understand the situation better, and most people I spoke to vehemently opposed the project. But there were also some who felt mining would have brought development to the State and contributed to nation building. Such people said that because elections were approaching, those who opposed the project were doing so to gain political mileage. I heard about a journalist who spoke in favour of mining and got assaulted. HS Shylla, ex-chief executive member (CEM) of KHADC, had also supported the project at one point. Having initially agreed to a meeting with me, he changed his mind later and sent a statement, ‘Rightly or wrongly, I don’t know for sure, but the people of Meghalaya in general and Khasi and Jaintia hills in particular have been made to accept that mining of uranium will cause deadly health hazard. People, especially youth, are ever ready to die for this’. I tried to contact UCIL and AMD for interviews but I was told the UCIL chief was travelling, and AMD did not respond.

There is one part of the project which interests even many of those who are staunchly against mining. This is the 68 km Nongstoin-Pambriew-Wahkaji-Mawthabah stretch, which UCIL was to make into a two lane road. Many among the general public had waited eagerly for this as it would have connected remote areas to the more developed ones. With the company currently out of the picture, this too has come to a standstill though the council has now taken up the task.

Ground Realities

Laitduh village, Sohra

In Laitduh, a village around 60 km away from Shillong in Sohra, UCIL had first made its presence felt around 2003. I travelled from Shillong to Sohra where a couple of KSU members accompanied me to Laitduh. The Khasi Students Union has been in Meghalaya for a long time now, and has a strong hold in the villages as well. The village secretary, Jingkyrmenlang Lyngdoh, met us in the village and showed us the old drilling holes, some of whose locations he remembered.

Some of the rusted metallic pipes in the ground had their mouths open. This was a cause for concern for the villagers. They feared such places might still be radioactive and could then contaminate the air and the water. Some others were just holes in the ground. At places they had been partially covered with big stones or cement lids, bearing the initials of the village. There were also spots which looked as if they were well covered by these lids but they could easily be lifted, exposing the holes.

I started talking to a group of construction workers and some villagers also gathered around. Richmond Kharmalki said that if mining took place in their area it would turn out to be another Jaduguda (in Jharkhand) where UCIL’s mining of the ore is known to have caused serious health hazards for the people. Golden Star Kharchandy added, ‘Since we have not been told by the government about what exactly the effects of the mining could be, people are scared’. To the development question, Apilattues Kharchandy’s answer was, ‘First people have to know what sort of development is being talked about’.

Apilattues continued, ‘In 2003, the company had taken the village’s permission only for a survey but they also conducted drilling. Around 15-17 people went with the survey team’. One of the men present remembered carrying a machine for the team as a teenager. At that time the company had taken the village headman’s permission. The company officials were seen taking some rock samples. But none of the villagers recalled any official having spoken about what exactly they were doing.

In the year 2015, Damil Bynnud, the district KSU President, had read in the papers about the AMD’s plan to come to the area and had told local people about it. They had a meeting attended by about 300 people and had decided that they would approach the CEM of KHADC to prevent the AMD from coming.

The local residents believed that after UCIL’s initial work in the area, even though it had not continued, some villagers had developed cancer and tuberculosis. I asked if such diseases did not happen earlier. ‘No, but we think in these cases it was the air from the open drilling holes’.

In a tea shop nearby, some women shared their thoughts. Bullina Kharchandy, now retired, used to teach in the lower primary school in Lummawshken village nearby. ‘When UCIL came, nobody knew it was for uranium. We learnt about this only after the drilling. We did not want it to continue because we want health, not wealth’. She laughed, proud of her knowledge of the proverb, and repeated the phrase. ‘Even if the government promises us safety, response from other elders, surrounding villages and NGOs has to be taken into account’.

Another woman in the group, S. Skhembill, said, ‘We do not want development if it comes only with uranium mining. It would affect our health. We are farmers; we cannot afford for our animals to fall sick either. And we have heard they would build nuclear weapons with the energy produced. We are not in its favour’. This concern for ‘all things both great and small’ is also found in traditional Khasi stories that begin with ‘When man and beasts and stones and trees spoke as one . . .’

I asked the shop owner for water and KSU members queried with a half smile if I would drink the water of this region. I asked KSU if they would. ‘We have to live here. What option do we have?’ I talked a bit about Amitav Ghosh’s book Countdown which mentions how government officials did not have the local water around Pokhran (Rajasthan), the site of India’s second nuclear test. The union people wanted to know if Ghosh had it. I didn’t remember that bit but I added that the author had also not been claiming that the water was safe to drink.

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Domiasiat village, Ranikor

KSU members agreed to accompany me to Domiasiat in West Khasi Hills, around 130 km from Shillong, and help me with the Khasi to English translation. I expected one or two members but on the day there were two jeeps full of them. Though nobody else I had met had mentioned this, KSU said they found it safer to go in big groups as the area has insurgents and there had been some recent kidnappings.

The road to Domiasiat is a long and arduous one and the students carried whatever they thought they would need, an auxiliary cable, to begin with. When it started working, there was a jubilant cry in the car. The soft hum that began to play made me think it was a Khasi love song. A student member, Phulchand, explained what it said, ‘Before it is too late, let us stand up to defend what is ours’. KSU has a group of people with whose help they compose such patriotic songs and sell the CDs. Even if the sales just cover the costs, they are happy to get the message across to people.

Once we reached Mowronong view point, the road started disintegrating. The conversation inevitably turned to the subject at hand. Pulljohn Wannianj was clear, ‘Constructing a two-lane here can mean one thing and one thing only: mining. If it's repair and proper road building for the sake of development, we would have been ok with that’.

As we neared Domiasiat, we came across the abandoned buildings where workers employed at the mining sites would have stayed. Near the entrance, a sign warned against leaving the campus after 9 pm, deforestation, alcohol, noise, bringing wives and children, and marrying indigenous people. The last bit reminded me of how some of the people interviewed had said that the main fear of the people (including KSU who have also been against railways) opposing mining was that of outsiders coming in. Starfing Pdahkasiej, editor of SP News Agency, who had told me his uncle Dominic Pdahkasiej was the first person to have been deputed for drilling, had also mentioned similar concerns among local people, “There is a limited number of government jobs available. People with MA degrees are applying to be peons. When companies like UCIL come, there is talk of employment generation but they always keep the locals in the lower rungs, not in decision making positions.”

Going further into Wahkaji, another abandoned construction is the primary health centre that was supposed to function while UCIL conducted its operations.

I was informed that after one point cars cannot go in and we would have to trek through the forest for about thirty-forty minutes to reach the site. The jeep almost miraculously made its way through the rugged terrain to the point where the forest began. The small plate of rice and meat the others had in the morning seemed like an old story at this point, everyone getting even more exhausted with the hot sun. With some reluctance, they agreed to share the packet of biscuits I had. With the renewed energy brought by four biscuits each, we started walking, trying not to be slowed down too much by mossy stones and brambles covering our way.

The now closed drilling sites shown to me seemed like big water tanks almost at ground level, now cemented and covered. What bothered people were the many cracks that had appeared. Where repairs had been undertaken to fix them, after people’s protests, they had not been to people’s satisfaction. Phulchand said, ‘If there are cracks there would be a leak. I've read that concrete can't stop radioactivity. Only lead can’. The other thing that made them uncomfortable were open pipes that apparently had been installed to release effluents. KSU people took care not to fill water in their empty bottles from streams around this area and kept insisting I cover my face with a mask even in the heat. For a long time after, we made do with the half a bottle of water that I, after a moment of hesitation about whether I’d be left with any and subsequent shame about the inadvertent thought, invited them to share.

Not far from the site is Nongtynger village, where UCIL’s engraved stone talks of its ‘donation’ of something like a small, open water tank-well. Covered on three sides, the opening showed water on the surface which two girls were using to the wash their hair and utensils. We filled our bottles with the water.

Our next stop was the house of Spleity Langrin, an elderly matriarch, around 90, who has become the face of the anti-mining resistance. The early evening light was still clear as it fell on the green fields around but inside the hut it was almost completely dark. Kong Spleity was not too well and we decided not to disturb her but she said she would like to meet us considering we had come all the way. I was wary of asking the usual questions about her opposition to the project, feeling she must have already narrated the same story to so many people. But she said, ‘If it is about asserting my right over my land, I can do it any number of times. We belong here and we won’t give up our land till death’. Of her experience with people involved in the project, she said, ‘The people who had come were very rude. They did not interact with the people here’.

Her daughter Silnola Langrin describes the various health effects due to mining that people, especially women and children, of the area had to endure. ‘One of them died at childbirth. My sister suffered too’. However, there are still people who are willing to sell their land to the company. KSU admits that in the Nongjri area many people did not want to talk to them because they were upset with KSU for opposing mining. KSU said in these families too there were children born with deformities but the parents were not ready to see uranium mining as the cause. But such people did not change Silnola Langrin’s opinion, ‘I know because I have seen the effects first hand’.

Silnola’s brother, Flavour Langrin, was happy to welcome anyone who came to meet them to offer support. With reference to their dark hut, he said electricity had reached them but after the first two months it never returned and complaining to the electricity board did not help.

Karmel Thongni, 45, is another resident of the Wahkaji area. ‘We definitely oppose mining, though people in villages supporting it are upset with us’. This area is so cut-off. What kind of development would be most helpful for people here? Karmel laughed, ‘There is so much we need. I don’t even know where to begin’.

The dhaba in Wahkaji where we stopped for dinner was run by the family of a traditional musician. His nephew, Ehbok Langrin, worked in Shillong and was visiting. About uranium mining, he said, ‘Some say it is good and others oppose it. But what we do know is we don't want to get displaced and leave our home. I am an engineer and I was getting paid better in Mumbai. Yet I came to Shillong to stay close to home’.

The Council

In an interview, the CEM of KHADC, P.N. Syiem, asserted, ‘Land is a state subject so how can the state pass a law against people’s wishes? The MoU we had with UCIL was only for the road. In 1993, they had been allowed some construction. But some paragraph in it talked about mining which we missed. Anyway now the MoU has been withdrawn’.

What happens now to the two-lane project proposed by UCIL? ‘At times there are so many complications. The outgoing CEM had opened a joint account for KHADC with UCIL for this project. First we had to close the account’.

The CEM was perplexed that despite the council’s supposed autonomy so many nods still have to come from the State government before decisions can be taken. ‘We have asked the government for an NOC to repair the road as 18 kms of work has already been done by UCIL of a total of about 70 kms. Once it comes through work would be resumed’.

What the Experts Say

Professor Om Prakash Singh teaches in the department of environmental studies in the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. When I raised the point of people’s concern over open drilling holes, he said, ‘That is a genuine point. When it rains, the same uranium goes downstream and during drilling the chances of leaching (which could release toxic effluents in the environment) increase’. Another issue that had come up in my discussion with NGOs was that there was only a small percentage of uranium in Meghalaya and the quality was not that good either. Singh shrugged, ‘UCIL seems to believe differently’. Responding to reports of deformities and diseases found in people living around mining sites, he said nothing had been proved.

In 2004, Singh was part of an environment impact assessment (EIA) group and had visited the concerned areas in Meghalaya. ‘The area-the flora and the fauna-seemed normal. The method involves generating baseline data which is later compared to the data of that place after mining is done. We can predict possible adverse effects and the mining company has to follow guidelines on the basis of which clearance is given’.

Do companies adhere to these guidelines and is there a strict check on them? ‘The state pollution board is supposed to get regular reports from them but, yes, I would say that implementation is not done properly’. What about the safety measures for the workers on the site? ‘Those too have been neglected in our country in the past; it’s true’.

Over email, I invited the views of some other academics on the subject. Craig Hart, associate professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia (UBC), shared, ‘Generally, open drill holes are not a problem. The only issue would be if there was water coming out from it, as it could cause an adjustment in the water table. In these cases, concrete could be used to fill them’.

Bern Klein is an associate professor of Mining Engineering in the same institution. He was of the opinion that ‘the risk would also depend on the concentration of uranium at depth.‎ However, drill holes can fill in over time so I really don't believe there is a radiation issue. To test, you could measure radioactivity near the drill holes and some distance away’.

Another mining engineering assistant professor, Marcello Veiga, UBC, said, ‘The main concern of uranium is not in the mining step but in the nuclear energy plants’.

The problem with scientific takes is that both in India and outside, the community has often been divided about the mining of uranium. Not enough has been done to break down this information in a layperson’s terms for people to understand. NGOs and unions are accused of propaganda but they are the ones who succeed in having conversations with people while companies share information mostly with selected urban, educated groups and officials.

Where do the Tribal Chiefs Stand?

An 1853 report on the Khasi and Jaintia Hills by AJM Mills, sent on deputation to the Northeast frontier by the British government, documents treaties between the then government and the ‘Khasia chieftains’. While the chiefs agreed to accede to the Company in a lot of matters, they also put up a fight to retain their autonomy wherever possible. The very first clause of one such treaty reads, ‘We (the chiefs), in conjunction with those who reside and trade in our territory, shall continue to conduct the business of our territories, keeping the ryots contented, in conformity to the former rules and customs. This country will have no concern with any of the courts of Government . . .’

Today too the tribal chiefs continue their efforts to assert their independence. The chair of the grand council of chiefs of Meghalaya (Federation of Khasi States), John F Kharshiing, isn’t one to mince words, ‘Kashmir was lucky to have article 370 grant it autonomous status. We had nobody to speak for us when these decisions were being taken’.

But isn’t the KHADC precisely there for this purpose, to protect the autonomy of the Khasis? Kharshiing rejects this claim, ‘Our chiefs are not represented by KHADC. The council is a political body’.

Kharshiing has been active in mobilising support against mining activities. Around 2007-08, he travelled to rural Mawkyrwat, taking a television set and a copy of the film Buddha Weeps in Jaduguda. ‘We should focus more on other advanced technology rather than atomic power. Look at the cyber attack on Russia; everything happened through computers’.

Coming back to the uranium rich areas in question, he recalled a British map that shows the presence of thick forests and special birds in the region that could get endangered. He also mentioned proximity to international borders and the requirement of huge amounts of water in the process of mining. ‘If the centre tries to forcibly do anything here, they would have a Kashmir like situation at hand’.

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In India where companies are granted EIA waivers and penalties are not paid even upon proof of violations, scientific studies and their results have not been the only basis of whether a company gets to launch operations that might impact the environment. In Meghalaya too, the issue of uranium mining is fraught with the apprehensions of student bodies and NGOs; the tensions between the State, the district council and the tribal chiefs; and the concerns of the people about land ownership and displacement, health, environment, the true purpose of nuclear energy, and whether mining is the mandatory cost they have to pay in order to be the benefactors of some much needed development, including the basic services of roads and electricity.

First published in EclecticNorthEast, July 2017. Subsequently published in The aPolitical, 15 Aug 2017, and DiaNuke.org, 17 Aug 2017.