In the modern version of tribal development, a simple fact of life is lost. It’s time we get over our obsession with ‘developing’ the tribal population of India
India has been a fascinating land to many non-Indians since centuries. The list too is well-known and long to bear recount. Several of them not only enjoyed being in India or loved India for what it has given to the world civilisation; but also made significant contributions to Indological studies in the widest sense of the word. Max Mueller is an easy name to recall. Others helped ‘discover’ India not only for unsuspecting Westerners but also for Indians who could not see their innate strength.
Amongst the list of people who contributed to Indology, figure Vincent Smith, Verrier Elwin, Al Basham, and Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf made seminal contributions to explaining India in contemporary terms of ethnography and anthropology. His work on Nagas is notable. His explorations of Telangana, if heeded, would have perhaps given a different course to the Naxal movement there. An Austrian ethnologist, he made Britain his home and South Asia his karma-bhoomi. Forty years of field studies is a formidable record. This writer met him in the School of Oriental and African Studies, United Kingdom. He could cast a huge impact.
Christopher passed away in his mid-80s in 1995. He was active almost till two or three years before his death. He had in addition to the Nagas given significant insights into the Gonds. The Gonds are known to inhabit Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and their art may not be exquisite but is certainly unique and survived millennia of deprivation. The other-world-view of the Gonds could be seen as an essay about mind, spirit and matter. Alas! For many of the modernists, they are symbols of backwardness.
like many Fabians of the 1930s of the last century, the modernists look upon Gonds as a fit subject matter for being proselytised into post urban-technological way of life. Therein lies a tragedy which needs to be reversed.
The Gonds are not alone in this and tribal communities from various parts of the country are seen by many as fit subjects who have survived the past, and now need the ‘rites of passage’ to culture of ‘popcorns’ and ‘burgers’.
In this modern version of the so-called tribal development, a simple fact of life is lost. Any community which has survived for such a long time could not have done so by accident and would have much to recommend itself. Gonds are one of such a large list. The Chenchu, the Bhils, the Apatanis and more are all there. This includes people as widely apart as Bakkarwals to Khasis or Garos. A caste-prone society is likely to confuse tribes as a variant of castes. This is simply not true.
Anyone who has done some tribal field work or read a serious work on tribes of India knows that they are a cultural alternative. Be it Itanagar or Aizawl, there is vibrancy in being a part of the tribe which belies not just the conventional anthropological pattern but indeed the very concept of livelihood, social values, art and the world beyond.
Many times, when tribal movements have taken overtones of armorial dissent, arguments have been made based on economics and outlays for their integration. In many places, it has disturbed the structure of tribal way of life, not only reducing them to penury but possibly total elimination.
The evolved character of tribalism as seen in Saura paintings or Tarpa dance needs far more attention than it has merited so far. The painting scenes of hunting, fishing and farming are not only instructive but edifying. They etch the glory of nature and mark the celebration of life. Tarpa dance relies heavily on movement of circles. It represents the circle of life. The Saura paintings mark the 'tree of life'. It is a concept which was borrowed by the Taj group to mark the events of November 26, 2008. These should be a subject matter of any serious exploration of the meaning and motifs of life. It is time we got over ‘obsession’ of developing the tribal and met him in a spirit of equality. like in all relationships of equals, there is much to learn from each other.
(The writer is a well-known management consultant)