Reported By:
| Edited By: Pooja Salvi |Source: DNA |Updated: Aug 29, 2018, 02:20 PM IST
Tattooing is an integral part of the Baiga's lifestyle – the Adivasi community that resides primarily in the state of Madhya Pradesh and in smaller numbers in Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand. In fact, one of the distinguishing features of the community is that their women are known for sporting tattoos on different parts of their bodies including their faces.
Today, however, young Baiga girls from pockets in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh refuse to get these traditional face tattoos. "When they go out in the urban setting, they complain about being looked down upon – they'd rather not stand out," explains Ankush Vengurlekar following his visit to the districts. Vengurlekar runs the initiative Adivasi Lives Matter, which aims at preserving and promoting the conversation around Adivasis in India's youth.
"A big chunk of the tribal population is made of young kids, who, influenced by television and social media, want to dress and talk in a certain way," he says, adding that it is a result of lack of representation. "There is a certain 'need to belong', since there is no representation of children with forehead tattoos in our society. There is a push-and-pull factor," he says, adding, "The larger issue is the non-representation and lack of acceptance of Adivasi culture, customs, dressing or something like their tattoos. From schools to workplaces, Adivasis are forced to adopt a more "common" look, which forces them to unwillingly give up their practices," he states.
Cultural assimilation is just the beginning of Adivasi troubles, explains Vengurlekar and just one of the many issues ailing the community.
According to the 2011 Census, Adivasis make up close to 8.6 per cent of the Indian population, i.e. 104 million people. Tribal societies are prominent in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
While relations between Adivasis and the rest of Indian society have always been patchy, the marginalisation of the community began with the British rule. Minority Rights Group International is an organisation campaigning worldwide with around 130 partners in over 60 countries "to ensure that disadvantaged minorities and indigenous peoples (often the poorest of the poor) can make their voices heard," says a spokesperson from the group. They credit the alienation to not just the British colonial policies but also the Indian government's estranged behaviour. "It was not until the unifying political rule of the British from the late 18th century that the government made substantial inroads into Adivasi society. British rule brought money, government officials and moneylenders into indigenous areas, beginning the process of encroachment on Adivasi land by outsiders."
The British intensified the conversion of the tribal agrarian system into a feudal system. In fact, in many villages, where land inherently belonged to the community, Adivasis completely lost their proprietorship and were reduced to farm labourers on these newly acquired feudal lands. Following this penetration, resistance movements by the group from the mid-19th century in several parts of Eastern India were suppressed, eventually forcing the foreign administration to recognise the vulnerable position of the Adivasi and pass laws supposedly meant to protect their lands from outsiders.
"These laws (some of which are still on the statute book) barred the sale of indigenous lands to non-Adivasis and made provisions to restore alienated land. However, in practice, most of these laws were widely disregarded, and unscrupulous merchants and moneylenders found ways to circumvent them," according to Minority Rights Group.
Even today, Adivasis still find themselves struggling to keep up with these colonial policies, to an extent that even their homes don't really belong to them.
Shamutai Barap has been living in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Mumbai's Borivali with her family of nine for over 30 years now. "More than eight generations of our family have lived here in harmony with the forest. The entire Warli tribe here has a heritage that goes back decades," she tells us.
But even as SGNP is their home, they have a difficult time feeling at home.
While the tribe has traditionally occupied the forest land, recent intrusion by non-tribal communities in and around the national park has pushed them to the fringes, and invited suspicion from the Forest Department. "New slums have popped up inside the National Park. So, even our padas (hamlets) are looked at as encroachments," she says.
As a result, the tribe is required to ask permission to make even small changes to their kaccha houses. "Now if I want to drill a hole in my house, I have to submit a written application to the officials at the Forest Department.
Following which, they will make a visit (or visits) to see for themselves if my request is valid and then approve (or disapprove). If we do anything without the permission, they will destroy the house," she states. This applies to building bathrooms and toilets as well.
Dinesh Barap, Shamutai's 25-year-old son recalls how his mother had to save up for years before she could afford to build a rudimentary toilet covered by a tarpaulin. "The tribe was used to going to the toilet in the forests – be it day or night. Once my mother built a toilet for the house, others in the pada also followed her steps," he says.
These personal toilets were built at a very high cost. "Men from this pada and surrounding padas do manual labour jobs that pay them roughly Rs 9,000 a month. So any kind of construction work doesn't just see us struggling for permission but also a long wait," explains Dinesh.
While men also take up cleaning jobs with the Forest Department, women are employed as domestic helps in and around Borivali. Eventually, this affects the education their children receive. "There is often not enough money to send children to school," he shrugs.
Dinesh is the only one of Shamutai's four children to have completed his graduation. Studying History and Marathi from Mumbai's Ruia College, he now works towards the conservation of the tribe's Warli art.
"My interest in the art form came from watching my grandmother intricately make Warli Art. I started learning under her watchful eye, and mastered the technique," he recalls.
In an earlier interview with this paper, Dinesh had elaborated on how the forests in SGNP fuel his art form. "I have painted on wild kaayri (Entada gigas), dried wild mushrooms, rocks, bamboo shoots, small pieces of wood and even on discarded items. The colours I make are natural and are made from flowers that are found in the wild." He also uses cow dung, mud, turmeric, vermilion, geru, charcoal and wood ash.
The 25-year-old works in association with NGOs such as Committed Communities Development Trust (CCDT) to promote Warli paintings. Simultaneously, other NGOs work with him for painted jute accessories.
Dinesh's sister-in-law, Manasi Barap, makes cloth bags, jute containers and baskets for other non-profit organisations. "The necessary items (glue and jute ropes) come from them. Each basket takes some 45 minutes to make (depending on the size) taking one to two days in the summers to dry and three to four during the monsoon," she says. Every day, Manasi spends roughly three to four hours making these baskets and assists Shamutai with sewing classes for the pada women.
However, crafts and cottage industries such as basket-making, tool-making, spinning and weaving are occupations for the more advanced from the tribe. Even today, nearly 95 per cent of the tribes live in and around forests depending on the produce for livelihood.
In their paper titled Forest Dependent Survival Strategies of Tribal Women: Implications for Joint Forest Management in Andhra Pradesh, India, writers Gautam N Yadama, Bhanu R Pragada, and Ravi R Pragada write, "Forests play an important role in the viability and survival of tribal households in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere in India, because of the importance of forests in their social, cultural and economic survival."
The paper goes on to list dependance with respect to geographical locations. "Recent studies conducted in the tribal regions of Bihar, West Bengal and Karnataka offer further empirical evidence for the extent of dependence of tribal households on NWFP (non-wood forest products) collection. For example, in two southern districts of Bihar, 41 per cent of the families collect mahua flowers (Madhuca indica); 31 per cent collect tendu leaves (Diospyros melanoxylon) used to make bidis (indigenous cigarettes); 23 per cent of the families collect mushrooms and mahua seeds; 55 per cent of the families collect tamarind (Tamarindus indica); and 31 per cent of the families
One of the major reasons for the socio-economic problems of indigenous people is the gradual displacement of land since they have been denied proprietorship and compensation has been negligible. "There has only been a continuation of exploitative state policy where successive state and central governments have failed to secure land rights and ownership interests of Adivasi communities across India in the post-independence period," according to Minority Rights Group International. Land displacement could pose a serious threat to those communities that still follow their traditional way of life and may even result in the gradual cultural extinction of
smaller groups.
Vengurlekar points out to how the entire exchange between tribal and non-tribal populations has been one-sided. "We go to their forests in search of their traditional knowledge and ideas without giving them anything in return. In fact, this ideology extends to our media too – we do not have enough representation to offer them in our newsrooms," he says.
He elaborates on the non-tribal extraction of culture and ideas. "In the minds of the non-tribal people, progress revolves around economical properties as opposed to social and cultural richness – something that the tribal people have in abundance," he elaborates. "There is so much to learn from the tribal communities in our country. From their hundreds of languages and sustainable food practices to forest preservation methods, their egalitarian societies, among many other practices. But we push them to the fringes."
Decades after the Indian independence were spent alienating our tribal people, the indigenous youth is now taking things into their hands by developing sustainable models to promote and preserve their culture.
Adi Yuva Shakti is a volunteer-driven group created by Maharashtra tribal professionals and students in 2003 to help tribes (Adivasis) for their future based on the governing principle of contributing back to the community. Sachin Satvi, who works full time as a product manager at Hyundai Motors, lists preserving, developing and improving returns for artisans as their mission. "We are constantly working towards bridging the gap between markets and the tribal community by eradicating communication barriers and so on," he explains.
Vengurlekar stresses on the need to recognise their uniqueness for what it is rather than being intimidated by it. "Why do we ask the tribal community to be like us instead of celebrating their differences? Won't that be disempowering them?" he questions.
