Abstract
Nirmal Kumar Mahato. 2020. Sorrow Songs of Woods: Adivasi-Nature Relationship in the Anthropocene in Manbhum. Delhi: Primus Books. xiii + 197pp. Bibliography, index. ₹995 (hardback—ISBN: 9789390022172)
Nirmal K. Mahato’s Sorrow Songs of Woods is an anthropological- ecological history of the sub-region of Manbhum of the Chhotanagpur plateau, now mostly Purulia district in West Bengal. But Mahato’s intentions go deeper—as he points out often in remarking on how past studies have overlooked this important matter—in order to render a cultural ecology (p. 130) of these largely tribal/adivasi communities. By cultural ecology, the author means a study of the sociocultural regimes that emerged from and shaped human–nature relationships, including notions of identity (pp. 5–10, chapter 5).
After an introduction that lists all the pertinent academic debates in the field, the first chapter, titled ‘Ecological Setting, Administrative Geography and Creation of “Tribal Place’’’, describes the ecological setting and the changing colonial administrative geography of the region. In this chapter, Mahato tries to tell us about the ways in which the British territorial reorganisation of Manbhum prepared it for its subsequent use for colonial purposes.
The second chapter, called ‘Nature and Adivasi Society’, consists of an ethnology of the tribes, descriptions of their cultural—including religious and aesthetic—understanding of the land, their hydraulic sensibilities and management and their medico-ethnobotany. The sections on ponds (bandhs) and local medicines are quite informative. Mahato’s argument here is that though adivasi societies may not represent a perfect balance between humans and nature, they ‘never tried to interfere with the functions of nature as well as the life supporting system of the Earth to control nature’ (p. 67).
Titled ‘Colonial Interventions in the Adivasi Landscape’, the third chapter deals with colonial agrarian, forest and hydraulic policies. According to Mahato, these policies, which he calls ‘agrarian invasion’ (p. 187), commodified land, forests and water with disregard for the traditional ecological arrangements and cultural frameworks within which these were protected, setting the stage for a crisis in adivasi life. Contained in this exposition is also a short sketch of the polity of Manbhum and its reorganisation by the British.
In the next chapter, ‘Crisis in Nature and Society’, the author writes of how the ‘agrarian intervention and creation of colonial forestry had a catastrophic impact on forest dwelling Adivasis’ (p. 131). According to Mahato, the ‘disintegration of the land-vegetation-water system’ (p. 132) eventually led to the loss of food, health and freedom, and to sociocultural disorientation and demographic displacement.
In the final chapter, ‘Adivasi Movement’, Mahato ‘scrutinizes how the Adivasi people resisted and reacted to the above changes’ (p. 9) by tracking the changing nature of the adivasi protest from the 18th century to our times. The question of identity, which recurs throughout the book, finds its clearest discussion here, in the context of these movements.
However, despite the fact that the author brings a range of ethnographic material such as anecdotes from personal history, local literature, writings of veteran colonial anthropologists and local archival records into play, there is not enough of it and, he is not quite able to weave it together into a compelling narrative that evokes the pathos which the title of the book and its content intend to convey. There are several structural, stylistic and conceptual reasons for this.
A large part of the book, often entire sections, comprises arguments of other scholars, so much so that the author surrenders the narrative to these others, his voice disappearing in the process. The narrative becomes a mere survey of literature. Further, the prose has a somewhat dry tone, brought on by the book’s taxonomic template, where lists of types of tribes, tenures, ponds, rebellions, forests and so on and so forth produce a halting, broken narrative.
Although Mahato seems to be aware of the pitfalls of such academic lethargy, another critical weakness of his thesis is that key concepts such as tribe, adivasi, Hindu, Sanskritisation, raja, chief, community and so on are not tracked and unpacked sufficiently. Often, old binaries and neat but problematic sets of correspondences like Hindu/tribal-adivasi, Sanskritisation-indigeneity creep in to make the account predictable.
The book contains many simplistic, trite and confusing assertions and conclusions. A few among many such statements are given here:
The first school of thought, pioneered by Ramachandra Guha, is known as the Nationalist Political Economy School…Belonging to the Nationalist Idealist School, the second school, Richard H. Grove and his brand of scholars… (p. 2) The roots of present-day exploitative regimes and practices were found in colonial period and in this way the period is seen as ‘ecological watershed’… Thus, the early environmental histories failed to explain the process of marginalization of forest people. (p. 159) As a result of colonial intervention, Adivasi communities of Manbhum became marginalized. The indigenous economy and culture began to be dominated by upper class politics. A cultural silence was consequently thrust upon the Adivasi communities. As a natural corollary of dominance, the ruling power was successful in establishing the cultural hegemony over the Adivasis of Manbhum. (p. 188) The colonial administration ensured continuity in terms of water management … In Manbhum, however, there were significant discontinuities in the natural, social and cultural values of the ponds fostered by the Adivasi tradition. (p. 187)
Several important issues with great salience for our times, and repeatedly flagged in the book, are not discussed with the depth and care they deserve. These are issues of identity, indigeneity and sentience. Of these, the last is what I thought the book was supposed to foreground most of all, in its attempt at a ‘cultural ecology’, but this is where Mahato leaves you most dissatisfied. In chapter 2, he talks of an ‘eco-cosmic world’ (p. 73), and again, of ‘non-human storying of places’ (p. 51), phrases I feel best describe his understanding of Manbum’s anthropological- ecological history, but which are hardly fleshed out in what could have been a sharp yet touching account of the human condition.