No Full Stops in India

by Mark Tully

  Elwin's wife, the sarpanch's sister, is still alive, with a house in Shillong in the north-eastern hills of India. She visits Patangarh from time to time.

  Sahiba Singh Tekam's election as sarpanch had been a close-run thing. When the votes were counted, it was found that he had drawn with his Congress rival. According to the sarpanch, the battle was decided on the toss of a coin. That was two years ago. He had been elected on the ticket of the right-wing orthodox Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party. He himself was still very much a believer in the tribal gods of his community, but such theological niceties did not bother him. He spoke proudly of his great-grandfather, Dani Tekam, who had been a gunia or tribal priest of the Pradhans. Gunias offer sacrifices and, when possessed by the gods, act as counsellors, soothsayers and doctors. Both Elwin and Shamrao knew Dani Tekam, and Shamrao described him in his book The Pradhans of the Upper Narbada Valley:

  When the fit is on him, Dani dances in ecstasy. He beats himself with the iron scourge. He thrusts a pointed iron rod through his cheeks. He sits uninjured on his seat of spikes. The goddess comes upon him and reveals the secrets of the other world and of this, the cause of this disease or that death, where a wandering bullock has strayed and how an errant wife may be restored. The house is poor enough but spotlessly clean and it has a sense of dignity and good reputation.

  Shamrao recorded a conversation with the gunia during which he described his relationship with the goddess, whom he called ‘the 64 Jogini’.

  Sometimes when she wants to show her presence she appears for a second exactly like a lightning flash and then I know she has some message for me. When I have stopped breathing and my tongue loses control, I know it is possessed by the goddess and whatever she wants to say, she says through my tongue… Sometimes she wants to dance and I may suddenly find that even in my bed I hear her music and I am dragged to her place and begin to dance… Sometimes the Mother desires physical love and then she comes as a most beautiful girl and sleeps with you and when you have awakened, she disappears but all the same you have had intercourse with her, successful and complete. You are perspiring and breathing hard and there is a discharge.

  The sarpanch made no claim to being a gunia himself, but he was anxious to demonstrate the power which still resided in tribal gods. He went into his house and emerged with a trident wrapped in peacock feathers. Standing over Gilly, he said, ‘Now you see I can pierce this through your cheek and nothing will happen.’ Gilly flinched, and he said, ‘Don't worry – I will do it to myself afterwards and nothing will happen to me.’

  Fortunately Jangarh persuaded his brother-in-law not to test the goddess's strength. The disappointed sarpanch sat down on the charpai again and said, ‘The trouble is that there are no great gunias any longer. They just don't seem to exist.’

  There is still one tribal priest in Patangarh. He lives in a house at the bottom of the hill. In his courtyard stands a long pole surrounded by flags, tridents and spikes. There is also a sanctuary in a dark corner of his room, filled with tridents and peacock feathers, each trident symbolizing a god. Nanku Panda, the priest, had long, straight, black hair brushed neatly back – unlike the unruly mops of the other villagers. He was softly spoken and shy, but willing to talk about his craft. He told us, ‘Sometimes a god takes a pig sacrifice for curing someone from sickness. Other gods demand a goat. Chickens are only for very small gods.’

  I asked whether he was ever possessed by a deity. He replied, ‘When the goddess comes, I pierce myself with tridents and dance, and people play instruments and sing.’

  ‘When does this happen?’

  ‘If anyone pays money it can be done. It doesn't cost much. Just enough for mahua, biris and pan for four or five people.’

  One of Jangarh's relatives who had accompanied us suggested that we should pay for the priest to go into a trance, but, remembering Gilly's narrow escape from the sarpanch, I decided against it. In any case, it didn't seem right to purchase the gods of Patangarh, even though I realized that I couldn't possibly understand the rights and wrongs of the Pradhans’ religion.

  Nanku Panda knew all the rituals by heart – nowhere were they written down. So far his children had not shown any interest in learning them, but the priest said, ‘If they don't want to learn from me, the goddess will teach them in their dreams. Actually, every house should have one man who knows these things.’

  While we were sitting with the tribal priest, his rival – or someone I assumed must be his rival – had entered the village. He was an orthodox Brahmin priest who visited the village regularly to perform Hindu rituals. He had come to collect some money he had been promised for performing the puja or worship of Ganesh, the elephant-god. When I asked whether there was any conflict between him and the tribal priest, he replied, ‘No, he is different to me. There is no tension between us. People here often ask me to come and perform pujas. Then, you see, they like to hear me recite the Ramayan. I come to do that every year.’

  Was this the stealthy advance of Hinduism – the gradual undermining of the tribals' traditions which I had read and heard so much about? I rather doubted it. Jangarh certainly didn't seem to be worried about the Brahmin.

  ‘He is the village Brahmin. Why shouldn't he come here? He came to see me, and I'm glad that he did. I respect him and touched his feet as I would an elder of the Pradhans.’

  In fact, anthropologists say that the Gonds have long been closer to Hinduism than other tribes. I was reminded of some of Swami's words: ‘There are no full stops in India, only commas.’ It's we Westerners who insist on categorizing everyone and everything, and that is why we so often misunderstand India.

  It's not religion but materialism which is undermining the tribals' way of life. The Indian forests have been cut by timber contractors to meet the growing commercial demand for wood, by the government and industrialists to exploit resources like iron ore and coal, and by the more prosperous farmers and plantation-owners to cultivate the land. The villagers of Patangarh, whose life and culture depend entirely on forests, now have to walk six miles to collect wood.

  The commissioner appointed by the government to review the safeguards the constitution provides for tribals and Harijans has in his most recent (twenty-ninth) report described those safeguards as ‘more or less meaningless’. The report is a tribute to Indian democracy, in that a civil servant has been allowed to publish a damning indictment of the government's development policy. The tragedy of Indian democracy is that other civil servants will try to make out that the commissioner is exaggerating, and will then put the report on a shelf to gather dust. The commissioner says that one quarter of India's population – the poorest quarter – is still denied the right ‘to live with dignity’. He puts much of the blame on the survival of colonial legislation and attitudes, and says of the courts which administer that legislation, ‘It is well known that a simple person has no hope of getting justice there.’

  The commissioner is particularly critical of the way in which tribals have been robbed of their forests. He blames this on ‘growing inequality and the rising tide of consumerism’. The only forests which are really well preserved in India are the wildlife sanctuaries set up and managed with the help and advice of the World Wide Fund for Nature, and much praised internationally. The commissioner points out that wildlife is preserved at the expense of the tribals, who are no longer allowed to live in the forests. He says, ‘The tribal people and the wild animals have co-existed reasonably well from times immemorial. Wildlife has not been destroyed by bows and arrows, the real culprit is the outsider.’

  Patangarh is in the valley of the River Narmada. The government, in conjunction with the World Bank, is planning to dam the river's waters in a massive development project which will lead to what the commissioner claims will be ‘the largest displacement of people in the world’. Seventy per cent of the people whose villages will be destroyed are tribals. The government has promised they will all be resettled, but the commissioner is not convinced. He says, ‘I
t is clear, notwithstanding the promise about land for land, that land is not available for rehabilitation, and rehabilitation of people as communities is not possible.’ If the Narmada is dammed, Patangarh will apparently not be affected but thousands of villages lower down the river will be drowned and communities similar to Patangarh will be destroyed for ever.

  We had been promised a bathe in the River Narmada but were denied it because the mahua was calling again. It was calling in the shape of the sarpanch, who, clad in an immaculately clean kurta, had arrived with the mukhia, the largest landowner in the village, to start the next round of celebrations of the return of Jangarh. This time we were to be included.

  We were taken back into Jangarh's house, where a dholak or drum and a traditional harmonium had been laid out. Jangarh's friends followed us into the room. Jangarh took over the dholak, securing it under one leg. There was no shortage of candidates for the harmonium. The singing started – traditional and modern tribal songs, well known by everyone there except, of course, us. The sarpanch sang loudly and made sure that we were plied with mahua. When the instrumental players changed or there was a lull in the music for any reason, he discussed the problems of the village.

  Apparently a young man from Patangarh had recently been murdered by his father-in-law, who lived in another village. The girl, who was eight months pregnant, was still in Patangarh. According to the sarpanch, the couple had fallen in love, but the girl's father was comparatively wealthy and the boy was not. It is customary in such cases that the boy should work for a number of years in the home of the girl's parents. This the boy did for four years, but the father was still not willing to give permission for the wedding. So the couple had eloped and set up house in Patangarh. The girl's father came to the village, took the boy into the forest and killed him.

  ‘What about the police?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, they were bribed, and the boy's father is terrified. He put his mark on a statement saying that the boy had died of illness. We are only adivasis without any money – who will listen to us?’

  I offered the sarpanch one of the south-Indian cigars I smoke. He accepted, saying that Dr Verrier Elwin smoked cigars. I was glad to find out later that Elwin said his health improved enormously after he started smoking them, and that they cured him of malaria.

  The sarpanch kept insisting that I was a big man and that it was a great honour to the village that I had come to visit them. He was sorry that Jangarh had not brought Swami too, because he wanted to ask him for something. He said, ‘I won't tell you what it is, because you will write it down and then Swami will think I have been speaking behind his back.’ I gathered, however, that the sarpanch's troubles were to do with a provident-fund payment he had not received. He had worked in a government tribal research unit in the neighbouring state of Bihar but had left when his wife fell ill.

  By now the mahua was taking its toll. The mukhia was dozing squatting on his heels, dancing had started and the singing was getting louder. The sarpanch was becoming truculent again. He got up, staggered across to the mukhia and then squatted beside him. Puffing fiercely on his cigar, he stared angrily at me. I didn't know what I had done wrong, and Jangarh was not at hand to ask. The sarpanch then talked earnestly to the mukhia and pointed angrily at me. The mukhia shook his head, clearly not at all agreeing with the sarpanch's complaints. Then suddenly the sarpanch straightened his back and started to make a speech. The music stopped and the sarpanch could be heard saying, ‘You have come to our village. We have welcomed you because you are big people from the cities and this is an out of the way place. Anyway, unlike you we welcome everyone.’ He then shouted, ‘You are canjoos [mean]. I am sorry to say you are canjoos.’ A crowd gathered round the sarpanch and an argument started up, but he refused to take back his words.

  Jangarh appeared by my side and I asked, ‘Should I give some money for the party? Is that what he means?’

  ‘Well yes, I am afraid it is.’

  I got out my wallet and gave Jangarh 100 rupees. ‘No, not as much as that. Nowhere near that.’

  I insisted. I didn't want to be accused of meanness again.

  Jangarh went across to the sarpanch and told him that I had given 100 rupees. The sarpanch immediately got to his feet and made another speech. ‘These are good and generous people who have come to our village. We are very glad that we have been able to welcome them, and that they have come so far to see us.’ He then started to sing a song which, as far as I could understand it, went, ‘You have come from far, and you will go away, but there will always be a place for you in our hearts.’

  All embarrassment was forgotten and the party continued. A 5-year-old boy with a deformed leg and hand danced energetically, and we all sang ‘Mahua ke phul charhao’ – ‘Let the flower of the mahua go to our heads.’

  Jangarh later wrote a letter to us, apologizing for the sarpanch. We replied that we had not been in the least upset by him. In fact I was glad that the matter had been sorted out and that we had not left a reputation for meanness behind. It had been my fault – I should have discussed the question of making a contribution to the party with Jangarh much earlier. We had presumed on Patangarh's hospitality.

  We left Jangarh's house with one of his brothers walking ahead of the Ambassador, waving a torch to guide us down the bullock-cart track. When the brother nearly fell over in a pothole, Prakash said, ‘There isn't a single person in this village who is not under the influence of mahua.’ Prakash was, in fact, the one exception – although drink-driving laws are not strictly enforced in the depths of Madhya Pradesh, he was not going to risk our lives or his Ambassador. By the time we lurched over the last shallow ditch on to the main road, we had picked up Jangarh's police-constable nephew returning to Jabalpur from leave and another young cousin who just wanted to see Bhopal. On the way back to the rest house we fell asleep, ignoring a sinister smell of burning from underneath the car.

  The next morning I lifted my head off my pillow cautiously, but Jangarh had been right – mahua was a clean spirit and I had only the lightest of light hangovers. Outside the rest house, Prakash was preparing the Ambassador for the long drive back. I asked him about the burning we had smelt on our way back from Patangarh. He said it had been caused by some nut which had worked loose. I did not let him know that I suspected he had been driving with the handbrake on. Anyhow, there was no smell of burning that morning.

  We hit one more vicious pothole on the way to Jabalpur. Prakash quickly assessed the damage: ‘Ek aur shocker baith gaya’ – ‘One more shocker has sat down.’ Nevertheless, he was confident that we would reach Jabalpur on two shock-absorbers. We did, but not, unfortunately, until after the police constable's leave warrant had expired. I hope he did not find himself doubling around the parade-ground, rifle above his head.

  In The Pradhans of the Upper Narbada Valley, Verrier Elwin wrote:

  Amid the weary decline of the great Gond race, he [the Pradhan] still stands out, jovial, original and witty. While the Gond now thinks the sum of human ambition is to be a railway clerk, an Excise Inspector or an E.A.C., the Pradhan still believes that life itself matters more than life's achievements, that a poem is more important than a file, that to know how to make love to your wife is a much more important bit of knowledge than how to read or write.

  That tradition is still alive in Patangarh, but how long will it survive what is today called progress?

  10

  THE DEFEAT OF A CONGRESSMAN

  Dharhara is a small village in northern Bihar. In 1951 northern Bihar was still a remote region, cut off from the rest of the state, between the Ganges and the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. Patna, the capital of Bihar, could be reached only by crossing the river in an ancient steam ferry. Dharhara itself was three miles away from the nearest road. Yet on 19 June 1951 the whole of Bihar – or at least everyone who counted in the state – had gathered in that remote and unremarkable village.

  Fifty richly caparisoned elephants, garlanded with marigol
ds, red sandalwood paste smeared over their foreheads, plodded solemnly down the bullock-cart track to Dharhara, leading a wedding procession of some 2,000 people. A special train had brought the wedding party to the nearest railway station. The bridegroom, Rudrashawar Prasad Singh, a 19-year-old medical student, was carried in a silver and gold palanquin. He was a magnificent sight with his brocade turban and shervani. A large emerald and pearl brooch pinned to the front of his turban glittered in the bright sunlight, and the ostrich feather crowning his ensemble swayed with the movement of the palanquin-bearers. But the bridegroom was not a happy man. He later remembered the procession as ‘a nightmarish experience’. The heavy turban, which had been tied five times before his father was satisfied with its shape, had given him a headache, the long-sleeved, tight-fitting shervani coat was like an oven encasing his body and the swaying palanquin made him feel sick.

  The bride was the 14-year-old sister of Digvijay Narain Singh, always known as Digvijay Babu. ‘Babu’ is a term of respect and affection in Bihar. Digvijay was the young head of a wealthy landowning family who lived in a feudal palace of 100 rooms in Dharhara. The only other buildings of any substance in the village were the school and the small hospital built by the founder of the family fortune two generations earlier. Digvijay was setting out on what was to be one of the most remarkable but least acclaimed political careers of independent India. During that career he never sought or held office, yet at one stage he was the most important politician after the prime minister. He spent a fortune on politics, while most of his party colleagues were making theirs. His constituents loved him for his honesty, his generosity and his concern. Digvijay finally gave up politics on a point of principle – or perhaps ‘honour’ might be a better word.