NEW Quest

The process of globalization tends to homogenize particular cultures by submerging the distinctive features of traditions, knowledge systems and cultural practices. When these aspects of culture face threats, there are endeavours in some quarters to preserve and reinstate their distinctiveness. Local knowledge, an important aspect of folk traditions, requires serious consideration in a globalized economics. There have been several attempts in the past to preserve and document it, as it abounds in folktales, riddles, songs and tribal medicines. These elements should be preserved. Many scholars have made painstaking efforts in this direction.

In recent years, many members of the indigenous (folk) communities are literate enough to express their views on problems such as education and economic development confronting their societies and can comment on the life of their communities. The Dalit writer, Bama and the Tribal activist, C.K. Janu are two notable persons who offer new insights and information in their personal narratives which are often significantly different from the globally institutionalized and mainstream ways of looking at their problems.

I have made an attempt to study their narratives, particularly Bama’s Karukku (1992) and C.K. Janu’s The Mother Forest (2004)to foreground their use and understanding of local knowledge. I’ve argued that their views are unique and if adopted can contribute towards policy making and implementation in several developmental projects aimed at the marginalized sections of our society.

Bama is a well-known dalit writer and activist. She has written novels like Sangathi (1994) and Kusumbukkaaran (!996) in Tamil and has been working against caste domination and social discrimination. Karukku is her first book. It is an autobiography of an unusual kind. The narrative is “poignant memories and reflections” on the life and culture of her people. In the beginning, Bama introduces her people and village. She describes her village and its surroundings: forest, rocks and fields. About her people she says that they work as agricultural labourers. Their works include “ploughing, manuring, watering, sowing the seed, separating the seedlings and planting them out; then weeding, spraying the fields with fertilizer, reaping the grain, working on the threshing floors, planting ground nuts , selecting ripe coconuts” (41). She mentions that her people are hardworking and capable. As she states, “ When I saw our people working so hard night and day, I often used to wonder from where they got their strength…”(47). She also mentions that even though the people worked so hard and suffered bodily pain, they laughed and were cheerful. For her, this is a community that was born to work. This is in contrast to the images of dalits we get in the fiction of Mulk Raj Anand and Premchand who describe them as sick, suffering, greedy and immoral. Bama also speaks about the outlook of the dalit people. In a speech at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, Bama talked about the world view of the dalits and said that it was distinctive. She elaborated that if dalit people have enough food or grains at home during harvest season, they think that the world belongs to them and they celebrate life with joy, whereas the caste people tend to conserve things for future.

Bama’s reflections on the memories of her childhood throw light on the way dalit children grow up and learn in their surrounding. From her account, we gather that dalit children have a carefree life, playing and pursuing their interests. She recalls:

We played late into night before going home to sleep… we’d make toy chariots out of dried maize sticks and carry them around in procession; a few of us walking ahead, the others following on- with the petromax lamps. We used to make drums out of cattle-membrane and skin, and bang them as we went along. It used to be such fun. We marched along street by street. At last we’d come back to the shrine of St. Sebastian and put down the chariot there. You should have watched the fun as we went past our own houses. We’d each have a sly smirk on our faces then. Some of the older people would laugh at us and tease us. They would follow us, ranting and raving away… Children from other communities would walk along the lake shore, all dolled up, on their way to the cinema (49)

It may be observed that the children were engaged in creative activities. They spent time with things that were around them, instead of learning from books or going to cinema. These practices might give some indication to educationists when they design instructional materials for children from this community.

Bama also narrates how parents from the dalit community support their families by doing manual work.

Here, Bama highlights the condition of parents whose children are first generation learners in school and urges educationists to be aware of this and adapt to their situation. Bama points out that poverty and preoccupation with manual jobs does not allow the children, especially girls, to go to school to receive formal education. Also, they do not recognize the importance of formal education. As she writes :

In the face of such poverty, the girl children cannot see the sense in schooling, and stay at home, collecting firewood, looking after the house, caring for the babies, and doing household chores…And there are many who patiently accept and endure their hard lives, consoling themselves that this was destiny given to them, that they cannot see a way to change the caste they were born into, nor the poverty that is part of it all. (68)

This passage shows that they are not only deprived but that they accept the level of deprivation as part of their lives. They live in conditions that they accept as their fate and anything different is impossible. This prompts one to think that special efforts are required to motivate them and create awareness among them for programs like literacy and other social projects .

Bama critiques the missionaries approach to educate the dalit children. She is critical of the way they teach these children. She states that there is a mismatch between the method of teaching and the dalit reality. As she points out, children are “engaged in unrealistic prayers even if they were hungry” (74). She feels:

Besides the usual lessons, they could have educated the dalit children in many matters, and made them aware of their situation in world about them. But instead, everything they said to the children, everything in the manner in which they directed them suggested that this was the way it was meant to be dalit; that there was no possibility of change. And mainly because of this, those children seemed to accept every thing as their fate. (89)

Bama’s account also helps us to understand the dalit perspective on Christianity and Jesus Christ. Outsiders suggest this as a panacea for dalits. Mulk Raj Anand suggests three alternatives for dalits redemption - Machine, Christianity and Gandhi. Bama finds faults even in Christianity as here, too, she finds class and caste discrimination. Her perception of Christ is also different. For her, Christ is a man of compassion and righteousness, a champion of the oppressed. But she found that missionaries give a different picture of Christ. She says:

I learnt that God has always shown the greatest compassion for the oppressed. And Jesus too, associated himself mainly with the poor. Yet nobody had stressed this or pointed out. All those people who had taught us had taught us only that God is loving, kind, gentle, one who forgives sinners, patient, tender, humble, obedient. Nobody had even insisted that God is just, righteous, is angered by injustices, opposes falsehood, never countenances inequality. (89)

It is evident that Bama being a dalit woman and a champion of social change has a different perception of Christ and looks to him for inspiration and strength to fight injustice, to support the poor and oppressed and sympathize with the sick and disabled. She is disappointed that the religious communities who claim to be serving the poor and needy are actually engaged in supporting the rich by educating their children in convent schools. She wants the poor to “open their eyes and see” how they have been deceived by different religious groups. She wants them to live “again with honour, self-respect and with love towards all human kind” (94). She urges the mainstream to love the poor and the lowly with a steadfastness, to educate children and help them go forward. She also urges people to have first-hand experience of the struggling masses and “live a meaningful life, a life that is useful to a few others”(104).

Thus Bama’s account acts as an eye-opener to us on several issues. She gives a dalit woman’s perspective on the dalit world view, education, development and expectations from the civil societies. Some of these aspects are also touched upon by the tribal activist from Kerala, C.K.Janu.

C.K. Janu is not a writer like Bama but she has been an active leader of the tribal people and is committed to the cause of tribal rights in Kerala. Her fight is for the forest land of the adivasis of the Waynad in Kerala. Her book, Mother Forest:The Unifinished Story of C. K. Janu is a personal account narrated to Sri Bhaskaran and has been translated into English by N. Ravi Shanker. The narrative provides a glimpse of her attachment to the forest and its environment. She says in the epigraph of her book: “ No one knows the forest like we do. The forest is mother to us. More than a mother, because she never abandons us”. The attachment of the people to the forest is evident from Janu’s account of Ammeni, her companion. She says,

ammeni really loved making up stories. she could make out every tree in the forest, the little creepers in the bushes and the tiny medicinal plants. she knew about the plants needed for snake bites. when we walked through the forest she could make out the birds from the sounds they made and easily locate the directions of the forest. ammeni could catch the spoor of an elephant quite quickly. she knew everything about the forest. she could quickly sense the coming rain or the summer cold. (22)

But she laments that situation has changed. There is a scarcity of resources such as water, land and plants due to reckless misuse. The abundance has turned into scarcity as she points out:

We who dug the earth and found water at will are now reduced to agitating for drinking water supplied through pipes. We created a system of life for ourselves through centuries of direct observation of the earth and Nature. We never had a problem creating a place to cultivate for ourselves, the implements, the vessels, a hut to live in and such. Though it did not conform to the needs of civil society, it was a system of life that was complete in itself. We could rain and when it would grow cold. We had the tradition of preserving food and drink for long time consumption by watching when the leaves began to fall and when there were changes happening to Nature. All these were closely related to the forest, the earth and Nature.(47)

This passage not only indicates that tribal life used to be self-sufficient and balanced but also tells us that with displacement and deforestation, there is an adverse effect on their life. Janu also points out that a healthy and balanced environment can provide better creativity and vibrant cultural practices. “All our songs, customs and medicinal practices were born from the system of life that we adopted as intimately related to the earth. They have no existence in a different system” (50). This is an indication that the disintegration of an ecological system will have adverse effects on socio-cultural practices.

Janu’s concept of development is different from that of civil society. She says that the tribal people do not need the kind of development conceptualized by the government and civil society. That development is for their own profit. In her own words: “All development projects emphasize profits for civil society. That is why they build shinning roads to colonies that do not even have a bicycle. They are made for the bank vans that come to recover loans”(50). She further adds that “there is no purpose in having roads for settlements which do not have proper courtyards to enjoy the breeze and open or closed spaces for people to relieve themselves. That is how the roads were turned into public toilets. That is how we got to be unclean people” (50)

Janu also urges policy makers to integrate local subjects into the curriculum. She asks that the teachers engaged in teaching tribal students have some knowledge about the local culture. She cites Sibi, an activist working among them, as an example. About him, she says, “Sibi was just like one of us. He used to tell us about many things outside the textbooks. He had a thorough knowledge of the forest and the countryside. He would tell us about our own starvation and the meagerness of our wages and about other places. He knew the traditions and songs of our community and others.”(24). This is an example of the participatory approach to development.

While Bama critiques Christianity, Janu critiques the way tribal people are appropriated into the Hindu fold. Janu argues that adivasis are not Hindus. She asserts: “. . . in our community, there are no gods or goddesses like among Hindus. Never seen or heard like in the Calendars” (19). This statement coming from a tribal woman becomes very significant in the context of political and religious groups attempting to lure the tribals into their fold. If we study the tribal perspective with careful attention, we see that they stand independent and assert a specific identity of their own and that should be respected.

Thus, we have observed that Janu has stressed the bond between the adivasis and the forest. The very title of her narrative, Mother Forest, indicates the link between the people and the forest. This resonates with the statement of a tribal character called Shankar in Mahasweta Devi’s short fiction, “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay and Pirtha” who laments ecological degradation and its adverse effects on the socio-culturals aspects of tribal life. Shankar says:

Once there was forest, hill river, and us. We had villages, homes, land, ourselves. In our fields we grew rice, kodo, kutki, soma, we lived. There was game t4o hunt. It rained, peacock danced, we lived. People grew, the community grew, some of us moved to a distance. We asked the earth’s permission, we are setting down stakes to build a roof, settling land to grow crops. The chief of our society told us where we should settle land each for himself. We worshipped the tree that was the spirit of our village…And now?
Why did the foreigner come? We were kings, became subjects. We were subjects, became slaves. Owned nothing, they made us debtors. Alas, they enslaved and bound us…Our land vanished like dust before a storm, our fields, our homes, all disappeared. The ones who came were not human beings. Oh, we climb hills and build homes, the road comes chasing us. The forest disappears, they make the four corners unclean. (Devi 119).

Janu argues that the plight of her people will be the same if they are forced to detach themselves from the forest and it is for this reason that she emphasizes the forest as much as she does. She also highlights a participatory approach to development that involves local communities in the development process. She further claims a special identity of the tribal people in terms of religious belief and cultural practices.

I have tried to show that the knowledge shared by dalit and tribal intellectual needs to be taken seriously by policy makers. From the above discussion, we gather that these two writers have said significant things about their communities. Bama speaks about the learning conditions of children and world view of the people. C. K. Janu, on the other hand, talks about the links between her community and the environment. She also urges that develop-mentality should take environmental factors into consideration and make it, as Amartya Sen says, “ environment- inclusive” (Hindu 17,2006). It is hoped that these perspectives will be valued as they are lok(al) voices, voices of the collectivity.

Note: The punctuation and capitalization of the quotes from C.K. Janu’s Mother’s Forest have been retained as they are printed in the original.