Meeting on Tribal and Indigenous People

I am a Gond Adivasi and live in the northern part of Bastar. Today, I find a vast difference between what I see of my people and what I’ve heard of them. For one, my people never took a long term view of things though if analysed and understood by intellectuals and academia, there is a lot of merit in such an approach to living. My people took life largely one day at a time. Now that things have changed around them and are still changing rapidly, they are not able to mainstream into this modern life vision, competitiveness, changing laws and norms all of which amount to a disruption of their mores and rhythms. They find the contemporary social and political system as full of fear, terror, competitiveness, uncertainties, perplexity and a certain impasse. The Adivasi life is based on alikeness and constancy. It provided for all a simple and satisfying life for all. Earlier, my people had practically nothing by way of possessions, not even a pair of slippers, but they remained a happy and content lot since times immemorial. If we compare the Adivasi situation of today and 20 or 50 years earlier there has been indeed a material progress. Now they have a few clothes, utensils, slippers and things as such. But in the process they have lost their ethos of alikeness and constancy, togetherness, helpfulness and cooperation. This phenomenon is more pronounced in villages than urbanized areas. In our Adivasi we use a greater number of things that were never used earlier -- eg plastic - but our hearts have parted ways. Now, in order to progress, we have to continuously outsmart and repress each other. Today we are being educated on issues like ‘self-esteem’ but in practice it has come to mean thinking ill of the other, being violent, terrorizing. Symbolism of violence has come to denote self-esteem, that is how it is all over and we can’t be immune to it. Earlier, self esteem for us meant a lifestyle and code of social and personal behavior whereby everything needed could be provided for everybody without bringing anyone to harm. Self, arrogance, destroying the other was never a part of our self-esteem. Today we hear all kinds of incitements and provocations to destroy in the name of such esteem. Using swords and guns, crude and violent religious slogans or symbolism, running the other down etc was never a part of our codes of living or self-esteem. On the one hand we are witnessing the rise of Hindu fundamentalism, on the other its opponents, the secularists, are asking everyone to boycott the sacred Hindu colour of saffron. Hindus did not make this colour, nor can they patent it. It was made by Nature. We see that even the wise and intelligent are indulging in such ‘de-saffronisation’. In such doings they are handing over the monopoly to Hindus and thus supporting them. For Adivasis all the seven colours belong to God and none of them can be allocated as such to a particular group or religious denomination. Here, there is a parallel with the issue of property. Just as the Hindus think saffron belongs to them, a similar group - that of upper class people -- thinks all property belongs to them because they think they have certain qualifications to it, like education, skills, capital and learning. Adivasis have moved out of this space because they think they are not equipped to have a share in this space. This amounts to supporting those people in their claims. Adivasis do not have a religion as such insofar as we don’t have a formal religion or even a name for it. We have so many gods in our rivers, hills, trees, spirits etc. All of Nature is God. Many ways are being adopted to ‘mainstream’ us into society. One such way is to associate us with a particular religion. E.g., the teacher who comes to survey us puts our names under a category of religious denominations. If you ask an Adivasi his religion he will not know, though he will enumerate his religious practices. There is no separateness as such. As applicable to progress and development our ethos is equal opportunities for all, not separateness between few and the rest, as with government plans and schemes which develop only a handful in the name of community development. Separateness as such is a creation of modern systems. Even in my own lifetime looking or behaving different from the village was disapproved of. Everyone liked to attire the same way and appear similar. If one had to go the city for some work or the other, one would walk up to the village limits attired in the usual loin cloth and change into a trouser only outside it. Now, wearing a trouser in the village is a practiced symbol of status and separateness. For us, the Adivasi, land and forest are indivisible and inseparable. He could live off only land and forest for he knew nothing else. Earlier he could not work as a laborer; for him it is the worst form of sin and slavery and hurting to his self-esteem. So, for him land and forest were integral to his life and its worth. But now, he works as a laborer without inhibition and migrates in search of work as such but there is adequate work available. Now his relationship with land and forest is being further snapped. He continues to live off the plot of land and forest which his father and forefathers lived on. Everyday new lines are being drawn and re-drawn on government maps and ownership of land and forest is changing. This land belongs to that government department and this forest belongs to that department; this is now reserved forest and that protected forest. The Adivasi continues to live off as he is till one day he suddenly finds himself in jail. No one explained to him these maps and laws, hence even after landing up in jail he doesn’t know what has he done to land up behind bars. He doesn’t know what is paperwork and how it happens and no one cares to explain it either. That a piece of paper can change his status and that of his land and forest is, for him, inconceivable. For its own interest, the State thieves on his rights, declares him an offender and locks him up.

There is so much propaganda going on for decades now that the Adivasi fells forests. But he has not become a millionaire, nor has he hoarded wealth in any other form; he hasn’t even seen the city. They have been only eating from the forest which is their traditional right. The government declares that they have eaten up bamboo worth millions, hence his eating of bamboo should be banned. Now, if you are taking away his traditional food then give him something else to eat. If you are taking away something and not replacing it with something else, you are disturbing the equilibrium. Maintenance of equilibrium is Justice. By disturbing euilibriums as such Adivasis are being terrorized. Ironically, by inducting newer and newer things from the market into our households and lifestyle, the modern system is creating dreams for us, on the flip side it has usurped even our basic means to survive. The Adivasi life is in a limbo.

Many myths are being created in the name of global environmental protection. That for protection as such forests should be preserved is true. But if the Ministries of Forest and Environment are carrying out their tasks ‘well’, what is the Ministry of Tribal Welfare doing? Adivasis are being killed, jailed, terrorized, uprooted and destroyed with means of livelihood and survival being snatched brazenly while this ministry sits silently. He is already in a loincloth. His entire family survives on a mere 250 grams of coarse grains per day. Even though living at a less than subsistence level, he is being asked ‘sacrifice at least something for world environment’. Whereas government ministries and other vested interests act against the Adivasi on this, the Ministry of Tribal Welfare sits silently. He has already sacrificed so much that there is nothing left to sacrifice. But for any issue that comes up, the first target is Adivasi. Because he is the most vulnerable he is asked to pay the price for every form of progress and development. Not only is he being projected as enemy of environment and forest but, now, also of society itself: they are junk, uneducated, uncivilized, and useless. The scope of debate on Adivasis should be enlarged and corrective measures taken. Simply talking of land, entitlements and environment etc will not do. A larger debate has to be created and strengthened.

Narendra

I was in Bastar, in this Adivasi area called Abujh Mad (Unknowable Mad). That was not the first time I was in a tribal, Adivasi area. In other parts of Chattisgrah there are other tribal areas, in some other parts of north Madhya Pradesh also, around Karahal, and some visits to some other Adivasi areas in Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand.

But when I went to this particular Adivasi area in Bastar I was exposed; exposed in the sense tat I did not know I was capable of so much reaction and bafflement. E.g. I did not know what a forest is, though I had notions of forest, a whole imagery of forest. I always thought of Nature as very kind and nurturing only, but when I began living in that forest - that tribe of Hill Madias was still in the food gathering, hunting stage - I felt exposed. The sheer, raw, threatening Nature, for me it was threatening, though I discovered it was not so threatening for the Adivasi. Whether sleeping, sitting, walking, for greater part of the day one had to be extra careful. While sleeping there had to be at least a burning log to keep the snakes and scorpions away; while walking careful of sudden appearance of animals, of jagged rocks, thorns and so on and so forth.

That was one. The second was the sheer mysteriousness of the forest, the awe. One just did not know what lay at the next step. Moving alone was ‘forbidden’. I am giving this small background to say whatever bit I have been saying always: the contextual universe that generates mindsets, modes of understanding, objects of understanding and cogency of the same. There was so much fear. I felt that basically I have been brought up in a climate of fear and distrust. I could not initially trust my gods - by then I had begun remembering them - to save me. So I began trusting their gods, there was no other alternative. That was the first time in life when before sleeping I had begun praying, for houses are of thatch roof and walls of woven bamboo strips which any animal can demolish, probably even a goat. Also, I began believing in evil spirits and ghosts because I was told that’s the reality. See at every step one had to be careful, one cannot urinate here, one cannot defecate there because that’s so & so’s sacred spot, so & so’s sacred tree or bush. Even before performing these very normal functions of everyday living I had to remember some god or the other, I had to be careful and hope this is not some god’s or spirit’s spot. Actually… Suresh is here and I’ve shared this with him earlier that I had gone there with a clear-cut purpose in mind. ‘Clarity’ is a very powerful tool in my discourse, our discourse, probably without it the whole discourse tends to fall to pieces. So I’d gone with the purpose of…let’s say studying them. But in the process the tables were reversed and I found that I had become the object of my own ‘study’. My reactions, responses, incomprehensions and sheer inability to form relationships with that layered and layered universe, how can understanding occur without a corresponding relationship between the subject and the object; and my isolation from the outside world that sustained and nurtured me. All these things came as got exposing myself to myself.

There was a very important word used by Indu ji just now: smruddhi, it means prosperity. There is only prosperity there. The expanse of land is so much but occupation over it is bare minimum. Just a hut which is 8’X10’, about that size, and the hut was resorted to only at night; and then it was not just the occupants of that family that slept there but also their goats, some dogs, poultry and in some cases I saw pigs. Otherwise life was outside the hut over vast expanse of land, forest, hills, rivers, streams, ponds, animals and the whole sky. Their notion of prosperity and property was not linked, not in the same way as is the case with me. There was so much prosperity that there was no, if I am correct, at least a reported starvation death, a reported cold wave death. I never came across any report as such and Suresh examined the possible earlier reports at the Archives, libraries etc. I used to wonder why are there so many starvation deaths outside. Of course, I knew the reasons whatever reasons I knew. These people who don’t even know what is agriculture, who don’t even know domestication of animals in the way we know, who don’t have a namesake house for living, or even a sheet to cover themselves with in that severe cold, how is it that there are no deaths as such here. So it was a very different kind of universe I saw or felt exposed to.

There were those fears or uncertainties of every day living in the Hill Madia’s life and rhythm. However, these were not related to another human being but to Nature of which he was a mere part and he accepted it fulsomely. For instance, the acceptance of death, there is somebody dying at home because of snakebite, It is night, he will not go out though he knows where the herb is to be found; nor is he going to the medicine man’s hut for his chants. For one like me, that is not trying enough to save a noble life because I am told a human life is noble. But he is not moving out though his children are crying and he himself is crying. But he is not stirring out because it is night and time for animals and not for him. So, what does one call that: callousness, irresponsible, uncaring husband, patriarchy at work? What? Because when the man is dying similarly, the wife is doing the same. When the child is dying, both are doing the same. I discovered there is so much acceptance of who they were and where they were living and why there is death. To me they lived life on life’s terms instead of dictating terms to life itself or trying to change the unchangeable larger reality; and in the process undergo the sheer strain, stress, frustrations and eventually sheer futility of such endeavors. This is not to say that relationship between man and man was beautiful there but that I did not come across relationships that were un-beautiful. I could not find relationships that I find here, including mine own. It is lacking even in the basics. For me it’s a matter of shame, the kind of relationships I have as a human being of contemporary discourse. The kind of freedom the Madia lives in; like yesterday Bhuvan and I were talking in a different context, that if you slap an Adivasi he doesn’t really react to it. Is that not freedom from the other person, the slapper? My convictions like freedom, justice, equality etc were radically challenged. I discovered there is so much I need to correct in my own life as a modern human. The crisis, whether of survival or otherwise, is not there, the crisis is here. But I do create crisis for him by not identifying my own crisis, firstly and, secondly, as Indu ji was saying, by talking of land, entitlements, ownership, property, economic relationships, progress etc which I had done for a few years; at least before going there I was doing all this. As somebody was saying it here or elsewhere the Adivasi ‘culture’ is a ‘maun’ culture, a silent culture.

Certain things in that universe were so permanent, and that was the first time I really saw - I am talking of permanence and not change - and noticed in a conscious and informed way that the sun always sets in the west only. There were those hills those Abujh Mad hills and it always set there only, behind that particular and nameless hill. It seemed to have a bearing on the Hill Madia’s inner universe. I remember once Suresh was talking to a Madia and he was wondering what is justice. We tried to explain it to him and having understood it all he remarked, ‘Yes I think now I understand it but the problem is we have no thieves because whatever is, belongs to everybody. Where there is no individual ownership or acquisition of things how does jurisprudence as such come in?’ Like Indu ji was saying, ‘same clothes, same modes of living’, a phenomenon of a certain permanence. Coming from a certain universe as I was, it was a state of intellectual, emotional and spiritual confusion for me, a state of deep pain and anguish. I had come for a very simple purpose and here the whole table is turned around.

Usually I am diffident to talk about these things because I don’t have any conclusions about that society or the one that is mine own. I have only some experiences that probably have neither value nor relevance, probably even in the discourse of activism. There is nothing concrete, no visions as such to communicate, and this is an irregularity of sorts. Discourses rest on visions, at least relative conclusions, ability to challenge the ‘permanence’ or face its challenges, and the communicability of it all amongst other things. I have only experience of Abujh Mad, but when translated or integrated into discourse it gets challenged and tends to diminish if not distort. My experience of there is that permanence, even that of an experience, cannot face challenge. It is a paradox. In such engagement there is the deflected and the disparate. Pitch darkness and tiger are idioms of the unknown, and terror of the unknown, as also vulnerability in face thereof. Their communicability is an idiosyncrasy of speech, and there is something irregular about such speech as such.

So much got clarified in the process, at least about myself and the discourse I belong to. Even that which my discourse tells me is bare minimum is detrimental to both their and my autonomy and survival. It doesn’t seem really possible to talk about the Adivasi in my modern language. In some ways my modern language is woefully short and lacking in sensitivities. I am not implying I don’t have the words. I have the words but these very words don’t denote the same meaning as they acquire there. We are short on meanings and their sensibilities, not on words.

Prof. Suresh Sharma

I find myself in a deep anguish. I cannot speak in a language of certainty. I know that most of the people here are engaged in real life situations of struggle. The questions as to whose turn is it do something about this real world, to make a difference there. We say that we are in search of a karma bhoomi, we are in search of what can be their field of action. In such a gathering to speak of deep uncertainties and deep doubts may seem just, unwittingly perhaps, creating confusion. But I do not think about either the Adivasis or the kind of language in which we categorize some as more developed and some as backward without a language of deep uncertainty. Because without this demarcation that somebody, some communities, some individuals are backward and some have progressed further, implies that the path is known and the path is only one, everybody has to walk on the same path, some are walking ahead and some are struggling behind. So the issue is, what is the kind of energy, what are the kinds of skills, what are the kinds of preparations that you can summon to walk on this path. And those who can summon it better are ahead while those are not able to harness it are left behind. Of course, even within this rubric there is room for human compassion, there is room for saying that simply because people have been left behind you should not ignore them, you should pay some attention to find the ways to make them walk better. These are deeply human sentiments, sentiments without which human life would be less than human. The uncertainty that I am speaking of arises from two things. One, is this really the only path that one can walk. In reality and practice this may be the only path that everyone is compelled to walk. But, is this the path that can assure us of a decent human life for all time to come. Before I move further I want to talk about the drawing mental boundaries that my friend talked about from the metropolis. In it he said something which we need to pay attention to, that sitting in the metropolis you say that look we are doomed, we are condemned, we have no choice but you at least live in pristine innocence, so please don’t loose that. You must persevere and continue with it and we will try to learn. In effect, it is an argument of putting certain human communities in a museum like space, in a museum like cognitive framework. This is a real and great danger. It is in this frame that I would lie to cite one little personal detail. This was in the year 1974-75 and I was at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Simla. A friend who was also a neighbor, a Naga anthropologist, he’d just published a little book on the Nagas. He came to me and opened a page on which there was a photograph of a very stately old Naga man and a lady standing next to him barefoot and wearing ornaments. He said, ‘Friend, these are my parents - as the discipline of anthropology is practiced there is always a certain distance about the subjects that you are rendering and the observer, but in these kinds of change of cognitive positioning, here you have a situation where you have another anthropologist who on the first page publishes the photograph of his parents. He said to me, ‘Friend, these are my parents. Look at me and look at them. Now, the saddest thing is that I feel this is the only thing I can do for them. Publish their photograph in my book. I don’t even put in a title, I just tell it friends like you, in sense off the record but in a sense it is in this context that I speak of the true record. They are my parents and I don’t put it down because now I know there is nothing more that I can do for them’. Now, what is really happening here, what is the kind of boundary that’s being drawn? What are the kinds of possibilities that are being opened up and what are the kinds of possibilities that are being closed. The kind of possibility that is being opened is that here you have this anthropologist who can function as comfortably in modern academia, in the modern metropolis, from political platforms as anyone sitting here. And yet you have a past you relate to but you can only put it away. It is something that at one level just has to come to a halt. The ability to function effectively in the modern situation depends on being able to put that to closure. That is all right you might say; there is not a human community which has not done that. The point that, I am afraid, one comes to the deeper questions, the points that Narendra raised…I want to just pick up two things from there. One is the idea of property, and the other is, how do you deal with a stranger?

The idea of property has been something extremely weak, at minimal. I wouldn’t say it has been non-existent. There has been a certain notion even in the most tribal societies of personal possession. You must ask the question, what is the idea of personal possessions? There is an expression in the English language called ‘immovable property’. I think this word evolved perhaps in the 19th century. The idea of immovable property is that somebody has the right to do what he likes to do with a certain demarcated space. You can leave it as it is, you can farm it, you can put a factory there, sell it to somebody. I mean, the only limit to that is the relationship between your imagination and the idyllic possibilities of that space. In tribal communities there has been a notion of use of space and the use of things. It is a notion of usage and not of property, this was one extremely important distinction. It is not that there is no idea of a personal possession but that certain things are going to be used in a particular way. So, if there is a tree then it is possible that the tree may belong to somebody else but somebody else may have the rights to the fruits of that tree. It is also conceivable that the first picking of that fruit somebody has a right and for the second picking somebody else has the right. It is in the modern situation that this right of usage is transformed into a right of property. The other thing I want to mention is, what one does with a stranger, a person one doesn’t know? Between these two things the third question that one asks, and I would conclude with that … I find that particularly in situations like Bastar because the Adivasi communities in India are of a very diverse kind; there are communities which are no different from the peasant communities of settled agriculture. It is not something that can be seen as a neat boundary. Even in Bastar there is a history of settled paddy cultivation that goes back a thousand years. Even in Bastar you have these grand temples of Barsur, and they are truly grand, not a third rate inferior imitation of something built somewhere else. These are 800 years old. Of course when we went they were in a state of great ruin but I have read mid-19th century accounts of these and the description of the place, the description of solidity of the mortar used, this would have required gigantic efforts. If you go back 800 years what you have to speculate about the nature of space, about the transmission of space, it takes you to a very different terrain of consideration of history and historical possibilities. This we are talking of a region that even today is seen as farthest removed from the modern network. We are talking of different phases of transmission. Here what I found extraordinary, in particularly Aujh Mad region of Bastar -- which didn’t have roads, policemen telegraph line or electricity, which only has schools and that is the only intrusion of the modern world -- is the ability to deal with the stranger without excessive anxiety to prove yourself. You see the ability to deal with the stranger without anxiety to prove yourself is I think very crucial element in indicating a spontaneous self-confidence. This ability to deal as such with few words or no words but just to say, ‘remain assured, we mean you no harm, if something we can do for you without putting ourselves to too much inconvenience it shall be done. We will carry on as certainly as we have carried on. Now between these two the third question, in the modern world where you are placed, what ideology you belong to, what kind of work you are doing, what your expectation is about life or about Adivasis, somewhere the thing that you are referring to is the idea of walking on this path where somebody is ahead and somebody is behind. In other words, the idea of progress, that things should be better than they have been. They should be better not just for you but for a larger and larger number of people, ideally for everyone. Implicit in this question is a human pathos which is deeply admirable. But one question it does not ask, which is central to the traditional/Adivasi viewpoint, would be that whatever you are doing, whatever you are assuring, can you make it possible not only for everyone - or almost for everyone - but for all time. It is not something which you can say is there today, will be there 50 years, will be there 100 years but something conceptually you can say will last as long as life lasts, this sense of eternity which is overlaid. This again stems from a human pathos which I cannot define, which at one time or another had been universally shared across human communities, that can this last for all time. This is the kind of question that modern civilization dare not ask itself. At the same time the nature of temptation, the nature of choices that the modern civilization creates, nobody -- Adivasi, non-Adivasi, people who feel guilty people who don’t feel guilty - can say ‘we will not look at it, we will do without it’. That is my reason for speaking of uncertainties.

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