Dec 4, 2003, 12.00am IST
A question his ‘civilised’ friends frequently put to Verrier Elwin, the British missionary who quit the Church and found fulfilment in tribal India, was: Why did he choose to live in the remote and ‘primitive’ world of aboriginals?
Elwin would respond that in tribal India he had found an answer to the prayer: Lead me from the unreal to the real. Like him, many who visit Bastar, Chhattisgarh’s tribal heartland, go back enchanted, wishing that they, too, could live so close to nature and God, free from the stress and anxiety that seem so inescapable in their daily lives.
Tribals, however wise, generally do not bother to answer strangers’ queries to this end. Their simple life is their profound message, if you care to take it.
Tribals are the fortunate ones who shunned the bustle of war-infested plains and made the blessed hills and forests their home. To them, every hill, dale, river, forest and field is blessed by the Mother’s pre-sence. They have forged a symbio-tic relationship with forests.
To them, harming the environment is like committing suicide — or worse, like killing your mother. Their life is a model, an example of how to be in this world, rather than restlessly striving to become one thing or the other in the face of competition.
Tribal houses, set in sylvan surroundings, are built of locally available materials. Use of clay helps keep the houses cool in summer and warm in winter. Poultry and domestic animals are extended family.
Their possessions are a bare minimum, essential for life. Nothing is kept for the sake of hoarding or for decoration. There is no such thing as tribal art: all that the world values as tribal art are really items and patterns functional in their everyday life.
The tribal economy revol-ves around subsistence and self-sufficiency: agriculture is largely to meet domestic demand; collection and sale of forest produce helps meet cash expenditure. Value- time is devoted to festivals, dancing and celebration.
Tribals are reputed for their honesty. While honesty in the ‘civilised’ world matters at the inter-personal transactional plane (where honesty is important as the best policy), honesty for the tribal is a value at the individual plane, because dishonesty will invite the Mother’s wrath.
Atonement is an expensive process, besides loss of face. The gaita, priest, who is a divine pleader before the Mother (who firmly governs the tribal psyche) ends by stating: “O Mother! You understand the mind of this supplicant whose woe I have placed before you. Based on his honesty and your mercy, do what you deem fit in the matter!”
The tribals follow no scripture — and they don’t miss it — because the Devi, repo-sitory of all needful knowledge, is readily accessible through her me-dium, the siraha, to reveal her mind in any matter. Never dismiss this as super- stition, because tribals are known to dump both the siraha as well as a Devi if they are seen as ‘weak’.
Tribals are very pragmatic in their approach to religion. Tribals have rightly been described as ‘light-hearted’. They do not carry the weight of ego or anxiety: they live in the eternal Now.
What can be more refreshing than the sight of a group of tribal boys and girls bursting into laughter at the slightest provocation? Their laughter has depth and purity. It is perhaps the opposite of what Shelley observed in the ‘civilised’ world, where: “We look before and after/ And pine for what is not;/ Our sincerest laughter/ With some pain is fraught;/ Our sweetest songs are those that tell of the saddest thought!”
K S Ram
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