Jungu, the Baiga Princess Page 6
I certainly want to help them. You see, I was born when the British were still ruling India, and I grew up in the jungle districts of the Central Provinces, now called Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. I came to love and respect the tribal people who lived in the forests for their courage, their honesty, their friendliness and wisdom. I know they are suffering now and in great danger, and I very much want to help them in any way I can. I hope my little story will also make you do something to help the Baiga children and their families live the life they have always lived, but under better, more secure conditions, and with all the benefits that the modern world can give them.
In the pages that follow, you will learn of all the many ways you can help them. These few pages may read like a text book, but I hope you will take it as a ‘Challenge,’ read them, so that you get to know all about Baigas and tribals. Only then can you do something to help them in their struggle for survival.
The Baigas and other Adivasis
First let us learn who these people are. In the story, we learned that Baigas are an old and wise tribal people who live mostly in Chhattisgarh state. But they also live in the eastern part of Madhya Pradesh, mostly in Balaghat and Mandla districts, and are composed of sub-tribes, with special rights and duties, such as the Binjhwaris, like Jungu’s tribe, and many more. The Baigas themselves belong to the much larger family of Gond tribes who are to be found all over central India. These are India’s ancient Adivasis, or the First Settlers of the land. Scientists tell us that human beings first evolved in Africa, and then migrated from there all over the earth. We do not know when these first human beings, the Adivasis, came to India and settled in the thick forests, but it was a long, long time ago. Long before the Hindus came from south Russia, and even much before the Dravidian peoples of the Indus Valley civilization, which existed 5000 years ago.
All tribal people have their own creation legends – that is, how the world was created with human beings. The creation legends of the Baigas tell us that God first made man and woman out of the earth, and the very first man was Naga Baiga. When God made society, Naga Baiga pleaded that his younger brother, the Gond, should be made king. God gave the Baigas an even greater blessing. ‘All the kingdoms of the world will fall in time,’ said God, ‘but you Bhumi Raja will endure. You will be priest and doctor to men. You will live from the earth, you will dig roots and eat them, you will cut wood, your wife will pick leaves. You must not tear the breast of ‘Dharti Mata’, mother earth, with a plough like the others. You will cut trees, burn them, and sow your seed in the ashes. You will never be rich, so that you may not forsake the earth!’
The British officials of the nineteenth century were the first to try and understand the Baigas. They admired the Baigas for their independence, courage and skills. Pearson, a forest officer, wrote about the neat appearance of their villages. Thompson admired their sportsmanship, while another officer, Ward, reported that they had ‘a power of combination and independent organization very rare among savage tribes,’ and that their village tribunals were skilled in managing their own affairs. And yet they strongly disapproved of the Baigas’ slash-and-burn method of agriculture, known as ‘bewar cultivation,’ believing that it destroyed the forests. They insisted that the Baigas should use a plough, but the Baigas refused to do so since the earth was their mother. All this may sound very strange to us, but recently Masanobu Fukuoka, the great Japanese Zen farmer, has shown that better crops can be grown by ‘no-till’ methods, which is what the Baigas have always maintained. Even today, the Indian government and its forest officials are firmly against the Baiga way of life, and are doing all they can to dislocate them from their forest homes.
The British tried to herd the Baigas into special reservations, called the Baiga Chak, similar to what happened to Native Americans in the US. But this attempt failed, thanks to the interventions of kindly and knowledgeable British officers. Chief Commissioner Temple commented wryly that prohibiting bewar would ‘improve these poor people off the face of the earth!’ Forsyth, who wrote a classic about central India, warned that only moneyed people could survive the British legal system, and that it delivered ‘death to the honest, timid, and unsettled aboriginal.’ Experienced foresters like McCrie and Percival found that Baigas practised bewar above the frost zone permitting ‘the extraordinary re-growth that springs up within a few years.’ The key was giving sufficient rest to bewar lands, not possible anymore because of massive illegal encroachment on forests by non-tribals and contractors, and the stripping of forests for mining. Ketu Baiga is reported to have said during the Freedom Struggle: ‘The English are giving swaraj to everyone but the Baiga; why can’t they give us bewar swaraj?’
Administrative oppression was mitigated by quite a few British officers doing their best individually to protect the Baigas. Bloomfield was one such Collector who appreciated their ways, their agricultural science, and their medical knowledge. His notes written in the late nineteenth century are still considered the most authoritative source on Baiga culture. He records that one Baiga, Ranjar Pujari of Khandapar village, was a respected doctor, and wealthy landlords would send elephants to fetch him!
The Baigas and their Villages in the Olden Days
Baiga villages were usually perched on a craggy hill, and built in a regular square with a tree at the centre surrounded by an earthen platform for the elders to sit and decide the affairs of the community.
The closely-built mud houses, with thatched roofs, were small, low and clean, with brightly painted animals on the walls. The courtyard of the village would have a low mud-walled entrance. It was always kept clean despite children playing there, and chickens and pigs running round. At a little distance would be their Agaria or blacksmith’s forge. The Baiga people have always been slim and lithe; nowadays they appear much smaller than they used to be. Doctors say that is because of malnutrition. What always strikes the visitor on first meeting them is the warmth of their greeting, their frank gaze and broad smiles. On greater acquaintance, the visitor notices that while the village head and elders are very much respected, most relationships are equal and democratic, especially among men and women. Many times, it is the girl who chooses whom she will marry.
The Baigas were always simply dressed in loin-cloth, dhoti and sari, though the girls love to wear many bead necklaces. The women invariably carry a sickle tucked in at the waist while few Baiga men can be seen without a bow and a quiver of arrows within reach. They have always been expert hunters and trackers. Many years ago, the Shuklas, the most important political family of Madhya Pradesh, owned a shikar company, Allwyn Cooper, which promised every foreign tourist a tiger to be shot for a payment of ten thousand rupees. It was the Baiga who led the hunter to his prey for a paltry baksheesh of five rupees!
They live very simply on a diet of small coarse millets, called koton and kutki, roots, tubers, a few pulses, greens, and small game.
The Larger Gond and Adivasi Communities and their History
As I mentioned earlier, the Baigas are a part of the great communities of Adivasis we refer to as Gonds, who live all over central India. These Gond communities established a kingdom as early as the tenth century. Their rajas were independent, although nominally owed allegiance to the Moghuls after the Emperor Akbar defeated the Gond Queen, Rani Durgavati of Jabalpur, still venerated for her courage in battle. The Gonds established three main kingdoms of their own. The Garha-Mandla kingdom ruled over most of the upper Narmada valley; the Deogarh-Nagpur kingdom was centred on the upper Wainganga valley, while the Chanda-Sirpur kingdom reigned in the south, from around Wardha to the confluence of the Wainganga and the Penganga rivers. Early in the eighteenth century the Gonds built Nagpur. If you spread out a map of India you will see how large a region was ruled over by Gond rajas!
In the early years of British rule, it was the Adivasis who first waged heroic battles against them. In 1772, the Paharia revolt broke out, followed later by a long uprising led
by Tilka Manjhi. He was treacherously caught and hanged in Bhagalpur in 1785. The Paik rebellion of 1817 was followed in quick succession by the Tamar and Munda uprisings, and by Adivasi revolts everywhere, in Singhbhum, Gumla, Birbhum, Bankura, Manbhoom and Palamau. In 1832 people witnessed the great Kol risings, and the Khewar and Bhumij revolts. Then the Santhals waged a historic war against the British Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis, in 1855 and a year later, numerous Adivasi leaders, from Ghusar and Sambalpur, played key roles in the gigantic revolt of 1857 against British rule.
By 1858, the British had established their supremacy all over India. A forest regulation act passed in 1865 empowered the British government to declare any forest land as belonging to the government forest. At one time, Malabar teak had been in great demand for the wooden ships of the Royal Navy. Later, the great timber wealth of India became a rich revenue earner for the British. The British justified this theft with the false argument that all forests must have belonged to Indian kings and the Moghul Emperor, and their weakness in later years had allowed this right to lapse. Hence the British Crown was only reclaiming this royal prerogative. But Indian kings had never held such legal rights over forests. In Kautilya’s Arthasastra, written in the fourth century BCE, we find that the emperor, Chandragupta Mauraya, recognized a variety of forest rights, some belonging to the king, some to village communities, some to temple priests to maintain sacred groves, and the rest left as elephant forests exclusively for animals to live in. Such differentiated rights over forest land were respected right up to the British days, but then, in 1878, they passed a comprehensive Indian Forest Act, disinheriting all Adivasi communities. As further punishment for resisting such illegality, the Criminal Tribes Act was passed in 1871 arbitrarily naming many Adivasis as born criminals!
Adivasis rose up in the Jharkhand belt and were put down by the army. The Kherwar uprising was followed by the heroic Birsa Munda movement, perhaps, the bitterest of all struggles against the British. In 1914, Jatra Oraon ignited the Tana Movement which involved over 25,000 Adivasis in the struggle. In the tribal tracts of present-day Andhra Pradesh a revolt was launched in 1922 by Alluri Sitarama Raju. Special Armed Forces were brought to kill the tribals. Their leader also perished in the attack.
In the Gond heartland the struggles have gone on almost without pause from the early British days right up to the present. In 1876, the Rajmuria and Bhatra tribes rose up in Bastar. They were crushed only when the army was sent there from Odisha. In 1910, a new forest policy declared the forests of Bastar as reserve forests. A huge tribal revolt broke out soon after, and went on for a long time. Again, the government sent in the army.
There have been many peoples’ movements in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh. The root cause was conflict over control of the forests and their resources. The state in independent India, supporting industrial interests, viewed its forests and their natural resources as open to exploitation. This attitude further marginalized the tribals who felt the newly independent government continued to threaten their livelihood, culture and society. Bhanj Deo, the Gond king of Bastar, took part in his people’s struggles even from a young age. He would not bend to threats and was dispatched to Switzerland as mentally ill, but the Swiss doctors found him quite sane. Finally, in the 1960s, he was assassinated in his palace in Jagdalpur by armed forces, and several Gonds, who tried to protect him died in the surrounded palace. As we are informed daily, peace has not returned to the region, and tribals live oppressed, exploited and in fear of their lives.
Unfortunately, even after more than sixty-five years of Independence, Adivasis have benefited least from the attaining of swaraj. Thousands upon thousands of Adivasis have been displaced from their traditional lands, and become refugees of ‘development,’ their lands seized for mining, road building, dam construction and other projects from which they have benefited not at all. Forest wealth continues to be stolen by forest mafias and corrupt officials. Independent India continued to maintain for a very long time the British fiction that the forests belonged to the government with few rights to the Adivasis.
A few years ago, at long last, after several years of outcry from ‘civil society’ – which means ordinary people like you and me – parliament has passed the Forest Rights Act. But it remains mostly unimplemented. Any protest by the Adivasis continues to be brutally put down by the police. You may ask why this happens. Well, in the story you have just read you hear a person like the servant Motu speaking badly about the Baigas, and even a highly educated and honest officer like Uncle Vish knows next to nothing about them or their lives, and wants to evict them from their ancient forest home. The main reason why Baigas and other tribals are ill-treated is that few people know much about them or what is really happening in distant forests. That is the main reason I want you to find out for yourself what the truth is.
The loss suffered by the fast disappearing tribal communities is also a loss for all India and all humanity. Scholars proclaim that the holy Gautama Buddha was inspired to model the Buddhist Sanghas on the Adivasi pattern of living, where every member, man, woman, and child was respected, and granted equal status, and every person was looked after according to their need. Society functioned on a cooperative basis and no work was considered lowly or relegated only to some. Sharing formed an integral part of the tribal philosophy of life. Other scholars, such as the famous Bengali writer, Mahashweta Devi, have shown that many Hindu gods have their origin in tribal myths. Many modern Indian languages developed through a fusion of tribal languages with Sanskrit or Pali. Adivasis developed an intimate knowledge of the medicinal uses of various plants. Indian medical researchers recognize that Adivasi communities have medical knowledge of over 9,000 plant species, and that the science of Ayurveda is indebted to them for its very origin.
If we wish to help Adivasi communities, such as the Baiga, we must learn about the new Forest Rights Act, and help all those who are struggling to see that it is implemented in the right sense and spirit.
The Forest Rights Act
The recently enacted Forest Rights Act potentially holds great hope for India’s threatened Adivasi communities. But it needs to be properly implemented, and for that to happen many people, including children, must support them.
The most important group is the Campaign for Survival and Dignity.
You can reach them at:
Campaign for Survival and Dignity
Secretariat: c/o First Floor, Q-1, Hauz Khas Enclave
New Delhi 110016
Mobile Nos: 9810819301, 9873657844
Website: http://www.forestrightsact.com
You can find all you want to know by going to their website. I suggest that you first read three important papers of the Campaign:
What is the Forest Act All About – this will give you a quick bird’s eye view of the whole problem.
Tiger Reserves: The Realities Behind a Controversy – this will show you how tribals are dispossessed in the name of saving tigers.
The N.C.Saxena Committee Report for the Ministry of Environment & Forests on the Vedanta bauxite mining scandal in the Niyamgiri hills. Dr Saxena is one of India’s most respected civil servants. This report shows us how tribal land is taken away illegally to help mining companies.
Other Civil Society Organizations You Can Support
There are many other organizations which you can help through contributions, by volunteering, by raising public awareness about their work, or petitioning government in support. You can contact them by visiting their websites.
Ekta Parishad is a mass-based peoples’ organization working in 53 Vidhan Sabha Assembly Constituencies of Madhya Pradesh, with a membership of over 100,000 people.
Contact: www.ektaparishad.com
Bharat Jan Andolan is a peoples’ movement with a mass base, active in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Its National Coordinator is Dr. B.D. Sharma, a highly respected senior
civil servant, who has worked tirelessly for tribal welfare while he was in government and after retirement. Contact: www.bharatjanandolan.wordpress.com
Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan organizes tribal people to struggle for their livelihood rights and their right to dignity and for social justice. Its coordinator is Madhuri Krishnaswamy, a remarkable woman who has dedicated her life to work for tribals. Contact: madhuri.jads@gmail.com
Jan Swasthya Sahyog is a non-profit registered society of health professionals running a low-cost health programme providing both preventive and curative services for the past ten years to tribal and rural people of Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, through a community health programme, a rural health centre and hospital. The team includes specialists trained at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Contact: www.jssbilaspur.org
The Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network is an alliance of indigenous and tribal peoples’ organizations and individual activists across the Asia region. You can subscribe to the AITPN’s journal, Indigenous Rights Quarterly. Contact: www.aitpn.org
Survival International is an organization working for tribal peoples’ rights worldwide.
‘Our vision is for a world where tribal peoples are recognized and respected; an end to the unjust treatment tribal peoples are subjected to; and a world where tribal peoples are free to live on their own lands, safe from violence, oppression and exploitation…Their survival is in the interest of all humanity. Their diversity shows us how alternative ways of living can be successful. They show us what is really shared by all human life, and what is just social conditioning.’