On a Shoestring to Coorg

by Dervla Murphy

  Of course there was the occasional realist, like Thomas Edwardes, who in 1880 observed that ‘Neither Buddhism, Hinduism nor Mohammedanism … can be expected to fall asunder and evaporate at the touch of the Ithuriel spear of Christianity. These religions are part of the race characteristics of the peoples who possess them, and are worked into the very tissue of their lives … and, until events arise that shall materially alter the conditions of their existence, these historic faiths will retain their supremacy … in the lives of their adherents.’

  Educated Hindus have always distinguished between conversion in response to outside pressure and conversion as a result of some personal inner change. The first, which in their experience has usually had political overtones, they see as a threat to social and national order: the second they can and do sympathise with. However, despite Hinduism’s traditional tolerance there has been a strong post-Independence move to make ‘conversions’ illegal and, though unlikely to succeed, this is a significant symptom of India’s new nationalism. The extremist Hindus, such as the Rashtriya Swayamasevak Sangh – one of whose members assassinated Gandhi – interpret missionary efforts as ‘an integral part of the domination of white races over Asia’. And basically they are right, though few of the men who ruled India were themselves pro-missionary.

  More important than the extremists’ attitude is the resentment felt by politicians and industrialists because some aboriginal tribes are being encouraged by their Roman Catholic and Lutheran friends to fight for various forms of national autonomy. This could cause endless trouble, as much of India’s unexploited mineral wealth is in aboriginal territory. Already missionary and industrial activities have undermined the tribal way of life and it is certain that these primitive hunting peoples, who have survived for so long amidst India’s jungly mountains, are now doomed.

  Yet one cannot ignore the immense amount of good that has been done all over India by medical missionaries. Kay is a typical example, as selflessly dedicated to ‘the cause’ as anyone could be. By worldly standards there is nothing in it for her – no money, fame, glamour, adventure – nothing but hard work and discomfort and worry and frustration and the consoling conviction that she is doing God’s will. At four-thirty she returned from three days of camping out near her jungle leper-clinics and swept us off to spend the night on her bedroom floor. Since our Nepalese days she seems to have became a shade more paternalistic (sorry: maternalistic) in her approach to ‘heathens’, but otherwise she is splendidly unchanged. And, despite certain radical differences in our outlooks, it has done me good to see her again.

  6

  Andanipura Farm

  6 December. Andanipura Farm, near Kudige.

  Last week, on the way to Byerley Stud, Tim pointed out an estate near the village of Kudige which belongs to his wife’s brother, K. C. Appayya, who is one of Coorg’s few experimental farmers. I expressed an interest in Mr Appayya’s agricultural theories – and at once, with characteristic impulsive kindness, Tim announced that he would arrange for us to spend a couple of nights at Andanipura before we moved down to South Coorg for Huthri. At the time I felt ungratefully lukewarm about this plan, since a tour of the stately homes of Coorg was not really the object of our journey, but the Appayyas are such a warm-hearted and fascinating couple that I am now blessing Tim for having introduced us.

  This morning we got a bus from Mysore to Kushalnagar, and from there to Kudige we shared a ramshackle five-seater car with fourteen other passengers – which meant paying only 50 paise for the four-mile journey. Rachel went free, though she must have added considerably to the already acute discomfort of the pyramid of men on whom she sat.

  Our taxi put us down where the Andanipura track meets the motor road and we walked for half a mile between acres of wild heliotrope until suddenly this house came into view – a new, crescent-shaped bungalow, surrounded by banks of white and scarlet flowers. As we aproached the vine-draped veranda ‘Casey’ – his Cambridge nickname – came hopping down the steps to meet us. A rotund, bright-eyed little man, with the air of one who cannot help enjoying life, he irresistibly reminded me of a cock-robin – an impression reinforced by his quick, darting movements while he poured drinks, and said how happy he was to meet us, all the while making rapid, pecking movements of the head as though each word had to be captured before being articulated.

  Then his wife appeared, in a turquoise Coorg sari spangled with tiny golden stars and tied on the left shoulder with a golden brooch. As we stood up to greet her I was reminded of a Botticelli Madonna. In India womanly beauty often has an ethereal quality and even Rachel was overcome by Shanti’s loveliness. When we went to our room she said – ‘I think our hostess would look like a queen if she wore a crown’.

  Within moments the Appayyas had made us feel like dear friends instead of total strangers, and before sitting down to a superbly cooked lunch I had my first bath for a week and massacred the numerous fleas which had been my constant companions since that night we spent in Kushalnagar’s Hilton. So this afternoon all is right with my world.

  The siesta-habit is a great boon to writers; while everyone else snoozes I can get on with my diary. I am now sitting on the veranda, facing a semicircle of mountains and overlooking the Appayyas’ farmlands. There are gay expanses of sunflowers in full bloom, and guava orchards, and glowing acres of paddy, and across wide fields from which a tobacco crop has just been harvested pairs of small black oxen are drawing simple wooden ploughs. Casey uses tractors sparingly; with the oil-crisis gathering momentum oxen make more sense. Of course most South Indian farmers will scarcely notice this crisis, since they are still using ‘agricultural machinery’ first invented 5,000 years ago.

  Casey hopes to be able to improve production in the less fertile parts of Coorg and here he has demonstrably made a good start. However, he is worried by recent rumours about State government plans to confiscate big estates and divide them among the villagers, paying the owners Rs.6o (£3) per acre as compensation. Even to my politically naïve ears, this sounds more like a vote-catching device than a genuine programme. But what disturbs Casey is that such threats could so easily be carried out, without anyone paying the slightest attention to the landowners’ pleas. Power has very definitely shifted, in modern India, to the hands of the career politicians.

  I know too little about the intricacies of this problem to have strong views on it, though I cannot but sympathise with men like Tim and Casey, who clearly do not abuse their privileges. According to the Gazetteer, Coorg, fifteen years ago, had some 60,000 agricultural holdings, of which 42,000 were under five acres, 6,700 between five and ten acres, 10,040 between ten and fifteen acres, 880 between fifteen and thirty acres and 806 above thirty acres. The ‘Gazetteer’ gave no indication of the average size of the ‘above thirty acres’ estates, but I am told that Tim – admittedly one of Coorg’s chief landowners – holds some 500 acres of coffee, apart from his paddy, grazing and forest. So on the one hand it does seem an excellent idea to give the peasants more land, though the estates of the rich 806 might not go very far amongst the poor 42,000. On the other hand, any drastic land redistribution would inevitably lead to a perilous drop in food production at a time when India desperately needs more and more food for those 55,000 additional citizens born every day. But if the status quo is maintained, how are the peasants to gain the funds and experience needed to cultivate larger holdings efficiently?

  I always seem to end my digressions on Indian problems with a question mark.

  7 December. Andanipura Farm.

  The hospitality here is so generous that by bedtime last night I was in no fit state to do my usual late writing stint. We had a memorable evening, during which – while still able to focus – I got out my map and with Casey’s aid established the boundaries of Coorg. It is a small district, by Indian standards – only about 1,585 square miles. Its greatest length is just over sixty miles, its greatest width scarcely forty. To the east it merges into the high Mysore plateau, to the
west its mountainous frontier is twenty to thirty miles from the Malabar coast. Most of its rivers flow east and are too shallow to be navigable.

  The Appayyas, like Tim, enjoy nothing better than explaining and speculating about their own distinctive culture. The speculation centres on the origin of the Coorg race, a puzzle which greatly intrigues those Coorgs who have read the informed guesses made by foreign experts about their forbears. Yesterday, for example, on the Mysore bus, a charming old gentleman from Mercara enthusiastically presented me with his own personal theories, but unfortunately I could only catch one word in ten above the roar of the engine. When the bus stopped at Hunsur, and we got out to drink tea together, I gathered that ‘a singular tendency towards brachycephalism distinguishes Coorgs from other South Indian races’. This might have enlightened me had I known what the ‘ism’ in question means. But I do not, and as I was about to request a translation we saw the driver rinsing out his mouth and had to hurry back to our seats.

  From the start of their association with this region, the British were impressed by the Coorgs’ comparative indifference to the taboos of the caste-system and by their marked independence of Brahmanism. These traits set them decisively apart from other South Indians, as do their traditional costumes and fair skins. Yet the Coorg language is purely Dravidian and more closely allied to Tamil and Malayalam than to Kannada. This is the sort of contradiction that makes the ‘Coorg origins’ problem seem insoluble.

  The Puranas prove Coorg to have been long recognised as a region with a separate identity (The Puranas – ‘Ancient Stories’ – are a vast collection of myth and folklore accumulated during the first millennium A.D.) According to the Cauvery Purana, the Coorgs are descended from a Kshatria (Aryan warrior) father and sudra (non-Aryan slave) mother and so are called Ugras, a word meaning fierce, formidable and powerful, and also used to describe a tribe of mixed caste origins. This ties in very nicely with the Coorgs’ attitude to caste taboos; and they have had the best of both worlds, being traditionally regarded as equal to the Kshatrias, except in the possession of the four Vedas and six Angas.

  Casey quoted Fr Henry Heras of the St Xavier’s Historical Society, who believed the Coorgs to have been mentioned in Mohenjodaro inscriptions; but this left me unimpressed, since the Indus Valley script has not yet been ‘cracked’. He also quoted Professor Ghurye of Bombay, who believes they belong to the Indo-Scythian race. Another pleasing and not impossible theory is that they have some Roman blood. This could be a result of intermarriage either with the numerous Roman traders who appear to have settled in South India during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, or with the Roman mercenaries employed by early Pandyan rulers, if these fled to the safety of mountainous Coorg when the Pandyan Kingdom collapsed in the eighth century.

  Everyone in Coorg must have their own favourite answer to this ethnological riddle, so I decided last evening to sponsor the delightful though highly improbable theory that the Coorgs are descended from yet another group of Alexander’s ubiquitous soldiers.

  The Appayyas have two children, and though Shanti is 36 years old and her daughter Kalpana 16 years old they look like sisters – as do many Indian mothers and daughters of the privileged classes. Obviously being a Repressed Indian wife and mother is a much less ageing occupation than being a Liberated Western wife and mother.

  The 12-year-old son of the house, just home from school for the short winter holidays, promises to be as handsome as his parents. I cannot even attempt to spell him since the use of traditional Hindu names has very properly been resumed, after a period during which it was fashionable in Coorg to call one’s children Bobby, Tommy, Mickey, Kitty, Pam, Betty and so on. Many Coorg children are sent away to school at the age of 4; but judging by the affectionate Appayya family atmosphere, this does nothing to alienate them from their parents.

  Kalpana expects to begin her university career in six months’ time, at either Bangalore or Madras, but the present student unrest in India is so extreme that her parents naturally feel uneasy about the prospect of their ewe lamb falling among rioters. Yet they are as determined as she that she shall get a degree. This surprised me at first, since Karnataka’s sixteen engineering colleges, nine medical colleges and four universities annually produce many thousands of graduates who cannot hope for appropriate jobs unless they know how to manipulate the relevant set of strings. However, when Kalpana graduates she will be looking for a husband rather than a job and I soon realised that in her circle ‘attending college’ is regarded much as ‘finishing abroad’ once was in Britain. Neither Shanti nor Casey seemed to see my point when I hinted last night – after their daughter had gone to bed – that for a girl of her personality, intelligence and beauty a university degree was surely superfluous, unless she proposed to use it. Since formal education first came within their reach, in the 1830s, the Coorgs – both men and women, of all classes – have been avid for it, and they remain reluctant to admit that nowadays the intelligent daughter of intelligent parents can complete her education more effectively at home than at a grossly overcrowded and understaffed college.

  At the moment utter chaos prevails in Bangalore University, and conditions seem not much better in Madras. I have been following a curious drama in the newspapers, to do with a recent speech made by Mr Basavalingappa, one of the Karnataka State Ministers, who innocently deplored the numbers of trashy novelettes now being written in Kannada. South Indians have become so touchy about language issues that the poor man was immediately accused of being anti-Kannada – the worst imaginable crime in Karnataka. After days of serious student rioting all but two of Karnataka’s eleven Cabinet Ministers resigned yesterday in protest against their colleague’s remark and the Chief Minister begged everyone – but particularly the students – to ‘put an end to this pointless controversy’. Of course there must be more involved than appears in the papers: Mr Basavalingappa has recently been at the centre of other rows. Moreover, he is a Harijan, and so cannot afford to be too controversial lest he might provoke inter-caste friction. The powerful conservative element in rural India strongly resents the fact that Harijans can now become high government officials.

  I am beginning to feel vaguely guilty about having fallen so deeply in love with Coorg. I set out, after all, to tour South India, and my lingering here seems suspiciously like escapism. Undeniably, Coorg is a place apart – clean, quiet, uncrowded, unmodernised, not impoverished at any level of society, never too hot or too cold at any time of the day or night and populated by exceptionally congenial people. Add a truly magnificent landscape to all this and you have Paradise. No wonder the Coorgs are so proud of their country, with something more than the normal regional pride of Indians.

  Atmosphere is such a mysterious thing. Why or how could I feel so sure, on our first evening in Mercara, that for me Coorg was somewhere special? I then knew nothing whatever about the place, so no part of my initial reaction can be attributed to preconceived ideas; yet my antennae were functioning with flawless precision – as most people’s do, if their owners are willing to rely on them.

  . . . . .

  Later. This afternoon, when I mentioned that I would like to live for a couple of months in Coorg, Casey said it would be impossible to rent accommodation since letting rooms or houses is not part of the local way of life. But then he added, reassuringly, that Tim would solve my problem; and I fancy there are few Coorg problems beyond the ingenuity of that descendant of dewans.

  Until Casey explained, I had not realised that there are no Coorg villages, as we understand the term. Instead, the Coorgs live either in large, isolated houses on their estates, or in groups of several smaller houses occupied by members of a joint family and surrounded by the family lands. A scattering of such homesteads is known as a grama and corresponds to what we in Ireland call a ‘townland’. A group of gramas forms a nad and in Coorg today there are six taluks, divided into twenty-four nads. Such real villages as exist are occupied by Moplah traders or non-Coorg Hindu merchan
ts and craftsmen.

  After tea we all strolled down to the farm buildings, accompanied by two sloppy Labradors. Casey employs about ninety farm workers – men and women – and his openly feudal relationship with them seems to suit everybody. He told me that the 80,000 true Coorgs now form only about one-sixth of the population of Coorg, but are so dominant a minority that their culture has powerfully influenced most of their neighbours. Coorg customs have been adopted by thousands whose forefathers were freed slaves, or plantation workers imported from near-by states a century ago, or tribesmen forced by the reduction of the forests to become part of the farming community. As a pleasing result of this, the graceful traditional Coorg women’s costume may even now be seen all over the countryside, worn by the peasantry, though the majority of the younger ‘genuine’ Coorg women have foolishly abandoned it.

  Shanti and I went back to the house together, leaving the rest pottering about the farmyard, and as we walked through gay acres of sunflowers the conversation turned to recent pro-women changes in the laws of India.

  According to Coorg Civil Law, which in this respect follows the general Hindu law, a daughter only has the right of maintenance from her father’s family property until marriage, and after marriage no right either of share or inheritance. In theory, however, all ancient tribal, regional or religious laws have been superseded since Independence by new laws giving women full equality with men, so that they may now own property and insist on full and equal shares in any family inheritance. But most villagers, of both sexes, disapprove of this violent tampering with the fundamentals of Hindu society. They do not want their country reduced to the level of that pernicious, permissive Western world of which, through their transistors, they from time to time hear faint and disquieting rumours; and they cannot conceive of a moral world in which men and women are treated as equals. It is one of history’s minor ironies that these particular changes should have been enforced immediately an Indian government came to power, when for so long the Raj had scrupulously avoided offending Hindu susceptibilities.