Cultural Survival in the Age of Progress

See Braudel Fernand , The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. I (London: Fontana, 1978) Part II-3, ‘Is it possible to Construct a Model of the Mediterranean Economy’, pp. 418–461. For Braudel, ‘the Mediterranean’ is both geographic-historic space, and a metaphor for the quest of Modern Europe to measure and master what in the 16th century was experienced as the forbidding expanse of elements that enclosed Man. Towards the end of the 16th century, the hub of this phenomenal outward thrust—the complex of techniques and economic arrangements—shifted to the Atlantic seaboard.

Levi-Strauss Claude , The Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1966) pp. 13–15.

See Drekmeier Charles , Kinship and Community in Early India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962) pp. 369ff.

‘Historical structure of being and becoming’ refers primarily to the complex of beliefs which shape the sensibility of a civilization. Between beliefs, as a statement of first principles, and sensibility, extends the mediating realm of ‘working out’, praxis. A particular historical sensibility is a specific appreciation of beliefs and actual historical configuration as sensibility and material culture are intimately linked, but not in the sense of cause and effect. Historical configuration could thus be characterized as ‘grounded’ or ‘rooted’ in a structure of beliefs. For illuminating this crucial distinction I am grateful to Dr R.K. Gupta.

Gandhi perceived in this a dangerously flawed quest of devising institutions that would make it unnecessary for Man to be good. From within the Modern tradition, Gramsci in a searing critique of ‘passive revolution’ sought to restore the presence of human volition in any meaningful conception of historical praxis. But given his epistemological framework, the problem is merely postponed. Human volition is envisaged as a significant presence in the historical praxis until the emergence of the conditions in which humanity is destined to find its true significance: the classless society. See Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1973, ‘Problems of Marxism’, pp. 381–416; and ‘Passive Revolution’, pp. 106–114 and pp. 118–120).

The best a particular, beyond the ambit of modern validation, can seek is toleration as archaic survival; harmless and amusing.

In recent years a deepening sense of discomfort with this sense of Nature has acquired a sharp visibility on the margins of modern discourse in the ecology movement. But this critique is shackled by the fact, at least so far as the advanced industrial world is concerned, that the question is no longer of making the world in a particular way but of unmaking it in a substantial sense. One of its unintended consequence has been the attempt, likely to be more systematic in the future, of a global transfer of social costs of production in the form of ‘dirty industries’ to the less industrialized world.

Marx's characterization of British Rule in India as the ‘unconscious tool of history’ faithfully reflects the supreme value assigned in his conceptual schema to extending the reach of the industrial dynamic: the indispensable first step towards a truly universal human history in freedom. This belief remained unshaken despite Marx's acute awareness of the rapacity of colonial conquest and British rule. See Karl Marx, ‘British Rule in India’, New York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853; and ‘Future Results of British Rule in India’, August 8, 1853, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969) pp. 488–499. For a more stark if crude reiteration of the notion of the ‘necessary price’, see Friedrich Engels' pronouncements on Eastern Europe. Except the Poles and Magyars, the other ‘races and peoples have the immediate destiny of going under in the world revolutionary storm’. Engels on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, cited in David McLellan, Engels (Fontana, 1977) p. 46.

The ‘permanent settlement’ (1793), perhaps the most audacious attempt by colonial rule to transform the hitherto ‘stagnant’ countryside by fixing revenue demand in perpetuity, was conceived as a measure to regulate accumulation of surplus in the hands of a ‘dynamic’ class of landowners. For a meticulous exploration of the ‘intellectual ancestry’ of this idea, see Guha Ranjit , A Rule of Property for Bengal (New Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1982).

‘European culture’, noted Gramsci, is the ‘only historically and concretely universal culture’. And therefore, the ‘significance’ of ‘other cultures’ could be admitted ‘only in so far as they have become constitutive elements in European culture’. This instinctive faith in Europe as the final measure of human worth survived unscathed the grim experience of Fascist terror and imprisonment, Gramsci, op cit, note 5, p. 416.

See Gandhi M.K. , ‘Hind Swaraj’, Selected Works, Vol. IV, pp. 83–208. For Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (1908) remained his definitive ‘seed text’. A text of exceptional historical significance, it is a critique of the ‘modern industrial civilization’ formulated in terms of categories that arise beyond the ambit of modern discourse. Hence the instinctive inattention and the virtual denial of a ‘hearing space’ to it. Ram Manohar Lohia, consciously in the tradition of Hind Swaraj, elaborated in the modern idiom a critique of Development: the nexus of ‘development’ and ‘continual retardation’. See Ram Manohar Lohia, ‘Economics After Marx’, Marx, Gandhi and Socialism (Hyderabad: Navahind, 1963) pp. 1–90. But this issue—formulated as the problem of ‘development of underdevelopment’—acquired compelling presence within modern discourse only with the critiques of Furtado, Seers and Andre Gunder Frank. For a succinct statement of the development of the theory of underdevelopment see, Harold Brookfield, Interdependent Development (London: Methuen, 1975) pp. 124–165; and Robert I. Rhodes (editor) Imperialism and Underdevelopment—A Reader (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970) Part I, Chapter I, and Part II, Chapter II. Wallerstein extends the formulation by postulating two level formations in the world political-economy: global division of labour and cultural-ethnic entities within nation-states. But the conceptual implications of his critique are poised on the bend of a theoretical blind alley. From whence is to arise the sustaining force to reorder a world of equality and justice? See, Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy: Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); and Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 2 Vols. New York: Academic Press, 1974).

Census of India, 1981, Series-I, Paper 2 of 1984, General Population and Population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, 1984, p. 3; Statement 1 and 2.

The poignant plea (1835) of a Chief of Chermis—a ‘heathen’ Finnish tribe in the till then untamed expanse of Siberia—to the Church and the Czar: ‘In the forest are white birch trees, tall pines and firs; there is the little juniper. God suffers them all and bids not the juniper to be a pine tree. And so are we among ourselves, like the forest. Be ye the white birch, we will remain the juniper; we will not trouble you, we will pray for the Tsar, will pay the taxes and furnish recruits, but we will not change our holy things’. Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968) Vol. I, p. 253.

Levi-Strauss Claude , Tristes Tropiques (London: Penguin, 1984) p. 48. Of course anthropology is also informed by serious scholarly concern to discern in primitive cultures elements that could be of significance for modern life. But that offers little solace to those marked out for extinction.

Fieldwork (1983–85) was primarily in the Abujhamad region of Bastar district of Madhya Pradesh. Shri Narendra and Shri Madhu Ramnath assisted in the fieldwork. Ms P. Girija helped me in library work. To all of them I am thankful.

For example, in Uttar Pradesh Agaria, Kol, Baiga, and Gond are enumerated as ‘castes’, whereas in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh they are all enumerated as ‘tribes’. See Census 1981, op cit, note 13, Series I India, part II-B (iii), Primary Census Abstract Scheduled Tribes, pp. lvii-lviii, and p. lxxi.

See Pathy Jaganath , ‘Towards a Theoretical Framework’, Tribal Peasantry-Dynamics of Development (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1984) pp. 1–43. For a statement of the basic theoretical concerns that inform Pathy's attempt see Joel S. Kahn and Josep R. Llobera (editors), ‘Marxist Anthropology and Segmentary Societies’, and ‘The Renewed Discussions on the Concept of the Asiatic Mode of Production’, The Anthropology of Pre-Capitalist Societies (London: Macmillan, 1981) pp. 57–108.

Kosambi D.D. , An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1956) pp. 25–27.

For directing attention to the possibilities of ‘approximation’ as a concept of change and historical interaction, I am indebted to some of the audacious and seminal essays of Lohia. See Lohia Rammanohar , ‘Ram and Krishna and Shiva’, Interval During Politics (Hyderabad: Navhind Prakashan, 1965) pp. 29–49; see also Rammanohar Lohia, ‘Approximation of Mankind’, Wheel of History (Navhind Prakashan, 1963) pp. 48–55.

The centre of civilization and political power in Ancient India tended to shift gradually eastwards. The Mohanjedaro, or the Indus Valley civilization in the northwest (present day Sindh in Pakistan) is the earliest known urban civilization on the subcontinent (3000 B.C. to 1500 B.C.). Uncertainty persists regarding its apparently sudden end. Recent excavations suggest, however, its far greater spread and continuity in what was earlier believed to be a completely new beginning: the pastoral Vedic civilization. The historian Kosambi in an audacious sweep pivots the continual shift to the east—trade and political power—to the need for securing a sufficient supply of iron ore. Kosambi argues that the dense forest vegetation of the Gangetic Doab could not have been tamed for settled cultivation without the heavy iron ploughshare. In a remarkable and characteristic use of contemporary evidence, Kosambi shows the striking identity between the ploughshare still used by the peasant and the one carved in stone 2,000 years ago. See D.D. Kosambi, The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline (Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1970). Kautilya, the author of Arthasastra and, according to tradition, the prime architect of the Mauryan polity (3rd century B.C.), specifies elaborate rules for bringing virgin tracts under settled cultivation. See The Kautilya Arthasastra, Vol. II (Bombay: University of Bombay, 1965).

Forsyth J. , The Highlands of Central India (London, 1871) p. 5; also see E.A. de Brett, Chattisgarh Feudatory States Gazetteer (Bombay, 1909).

The British acquired Bastar and Kanker as territories under the suzerainty of the Maratha ruler, Bhonsale (1818). But effective control over Bastar was extended only after the final disposition of the Bhonsale in 1854. For an account of relations between the British, the Bhonsale and the subordinate chiefs, see Sir Richard Temple, Report on the Zamindarees and Other Petty Chieftaincies in the Central Provinces (Nagpore, 1863); and Richard Jenkins, Report on the Territories of the Raja of Nagpore (1827) (Nagpur, 1923). For a comprehensive account of Bastar and its people, see W.V. Grigson, The Maria Gonds of Bastar (OUP, 1938).

Op cit, note 13, 67.79% of the Bastar inhabitants are listed as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ in the 1981 census. Census of India 1981, Series III Madhya Pradesh, Part-II B Primary Census Abstract, Director of Census Operations, Madhya Pradesh, Statement 8, pp. 8–9.

Various castes that predominate in different regions constitute according to Srinivas, the actual mediations that translate in practice the idea of what he terms ‘sanskritization’—essentially an abstract idea of Brahminic purity and social conduct. See M.N. Srinivas, Caste in Modem India and Other Essays (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1952).

See Braudel F. , The Mediterranean And the Mediterranean World In the Age of Philip II (in 2 Vols.) (London: Fontana, 1978) Vol. 1, pp. 25–59 and pp. 188–230.

The railway network was virtually non-existent till the recently built Visakhapatnam rail-link to transport ore. In 1958, the ratio of surface roads was 5.2 to 100 per square miles of area, and no ‘village roads’. U.N. Dhebar, Report of the Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes Commission, 1960–61, p. 365ff., para 35.10, Table 71.

Prior to 1884, there were ‘only footpaths’ and a few ‘narrow tracks for country carts of the solid disc wheel types’. Kedar Nath Thakur, Bastar Bhushan (Benares, 1908) p. 35. Concerning begar and desertion of villages, see pp. 39–40.

See Lt. Col. Smith E. Clementi , ‘Man in India’, The Bastar Rebellion, 1910, Vol. 27 (1947) pp. 239–253.

Glasfurd's report had a formative influence on British policy in Bastar. See Captain C.L.R. Glasfurd, Report on the Dependency of Bastar, 1862, Foreign Department, General A., Pro. Feb/1863, No. 151/56.

Blunt's account of the hill country between Kaimur and the Godavari furnished the almost only available information to the colonial rulers till the mid-19th century. See Captain J.T. Blunt, ‘Narrative of a Route from Chunarghur to Yertnagoodum, in the Ellore Circar, in Early European Travellers in the Nagpur Territories, reprinted from old records (Nagpur, 1924) pp. 91–174.

See Motte T. , ‘A Narrative of a Journey to the Diamond Mines at Sumbhulpoor, in the Province of Orissa’, in Early Travellers, ibid, pp. 1–50.

Blunt , op cit, note 30, pp. 104ff.

Ibid, p. III.

See Wills C.U. , ‘The Territorial System of the Rajput Kingdoms of Medieval Chhattisgarh’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, New Series, Vol. XV, 1919, pp. 197–262.

See Beames John , History, Folklore of the Races of the North Western Provinces of India, 2 Vols. (1869) (Delhi: Gian Publications, 1980, reprint) concerning the significance of the number 84, pp. 74ff; concerning the prevalence of ‘Chaurasies’, Vol. II, pp. 52ff.

In Bastar, village and pargana panchayats continued to be effective and powerful well into the 20th century, see Grigson, op cit, note 22, pp. 284–297.

Wills , op cit, note 34, p. 249.

Hiralal Rai Bahadur , Inscriptions in the Central Provinces and Berar, Nagpur, 1932, No. 213.

See Macmurdo James , Journal of a Route Through the Peninsula of Guzaraut in the year 1809 and 1810, in Ghosh Suresh Chandra (editor), The Peninsula of Gujarat in the Early Nineteenth Century (New Delhi: Sterling, 1977) p. 124.

The King of Bali, in response to the plea of a villager sought to have the panchayat's judgement reversed. The panchayat simply told him, ‘slowly, obliquely, and even more deferentially, to go fly a kite’. See Geertz Clifford , Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983) pp. 176–181.

Chisholm J.W. , Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of Bilaspore District, 1868, paragraph 64.

Vans Agnew P. , A Report on the Subah or Province of Chattisgarh, 1820, p. 10.

Glasfurd , op cit, note 29, paragraph 139.

Lt. Macpherson's Report Upon the Khonds of the Districts of Ganjam and Cuttack, 1841, p. 27.

Glasfurd , op cit, note 29, paragraph 172.

Excerpts from my conversation with Bhattji, a tribal Gunia of village Patiyapali in Janjgir tehsil of Bilaspur district (MP), January 1982. For making this conversation possible I am grateful to Shri P.V. Rajgopal (founder of Lahar), Shri Narenda and Shri Damodar Patle.

Grigson , op cit, note 29, pp. 3–19.

Ibid, p. 4.

Ibid, p. 4.

Glasfurd , op cit, note 29, paragraph 143.

Elwin Verrier , The Agaria (Oxford: OUP, 1941) p. XXV.

Ibid, p. XXV.

The enduring presence of kheti within the tribal contiguity though crucial to the viability of outside influences—crafts, techniques, ideas and institutions—can be grasped only as an intrinsically fluid continuum: enclaves of kheti in intimate proximity with penda. Warned Chisholm: it would be a ‘mistake’ to suppose that even in the most extensively cultivated district of Bilaspur, cultivation was ‘continuous’ and ‘unbroken’. See Chisholm, op cit, note 41, paragraph 7.

Lucie-Smith C.B. , Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of Chanda District, 1870, paragraph 56.

Halbas are descendants of militia soldiers (paiks) and local tribal women. They never cultivate penda, see Russel R. V. Bahadur Rai Lal Hira , Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India (1906) (Delhi: Rajdhani Book Centre, 1975) Vol. III, pp. 182–201.

Ghotul as a focal institution of the culture and social life of particularly the young, is to be found in its most evolved and vibrant form on the fringes of Abujhamad in the Muria area. See the classic study by Elwin Verrier , The Muria and Their Ghotul (Oxford: OUP, 1947).

Bari as a cultivated enclosure—in the Madia villages, a sub-form of penda—around the house.

Sulphi is a gentle drink extracted from the wild ‘sago palm’. Mahua is a strong local brew made from Mahua flowers.

Devagudi, literally the abode of the deity. Pujari is the Devagudi priest.

Mad is the local usage for Abujhamad.

Angadev or patdev are two logs joined together in a rectangular shaft-like frame. An interesting mediation between the cult of Danteshwari—originally the household deity of the Bastar rulers—and the spirits who are supposed to be exclusive to the Bastar hills. They are worshipped alike by Madia tribals and other communities in Bastar.

Rauts are cattle-herders. See Russel and Hira Lal, op cit, note 55, Vol. III, pp. 143–144 and pp. 160–165. Gandas are village watchmen, musicians and weavers. See ibid, pp. 14–17. Gonds are tribal cultivators from the adjoining districts. See ibid, pp. 39–143.

Notion of land as private property was at best exceedingly fragile, even in the valleys of dense rice cultivation. Migration was a common fact of life. Colonial revenue settlements elevated revenue collectors to the new status of landowners. They were to be nurtured as a ‘rural aristocracy’ with a ‘strong stake in the stability of the British rule’. See, Lucie-Smith, op cit, note 54, ‘Note by Commissioner C. Bernard’, paragraph 32. Concerning migratory habits and the prevalent notions of property in land, see Chisholm, op cit, note 41, paragraphs 240, 343, 344 and 345.

Crop failure did not entail destitution and hunger of the kind frequent in regions of settled cultivation. Rain was scant (1984–85) in Abujhamad and the harvest meagre. The administration declared it a ‘scarcity area’. Yet there were no signs of mass hunger and destitution. Consider in this context the following extract concerning years of bad harvest in the Bastar of 100 years ago: ‘Even the partial failure of crops affected the people but little, since the wild aborigines … are accustomed to live on forest produce and hunting. Prior to 1884 no records of any famine are forthcoming. The distress of 1896–97 did not affect the state much, though it sent a number of Chattisgarhis into Bastar in search of relief, E.A. de Brett, Chattisgarh Feudatory States Gazetteer, 1909, paragraph 52. The observations of Conybeare regarding the implications of crop failure in the hills of Mirzapur—the northern extremity of the tribal continguity are remarkably similar: ‘the scarcity of the two former years was the first recorded in the annals of Dudhi, for the famine of 1860–61 did not reach this corner of the country, and the voice of earlier hunger never made itself heard’, see Conybeare, Report on the Settlement of Land Revenue of Pargana Dudhi, Mirzapur District, 1879, paragraph 61.

Lucie-Smith estimated that the State had effectively appropriated around 50 per cent of the hitherto ‘common resource’ from forests and wastes. See Lucie-Smith, op cit, note 54, paragraph 303.

Settlement operations systematically refrained from taking legal cognizance of the rights of those engaged in ‘scattered’ or ‘intermittent cultivation’. What is now designated as the varg char or shaskiya zameen. Problem of varg char or shaskiya zameen has its origin in the revenue settlements effected by colonial rule, see ibid, paragraphs 315 and 320; and Chisholm, op cit, note 41, paragraph 166.

Tribal Kalahandy in Orissa is one of the most grim and horrendous instances of this process. In an area which had never known destitution and mass hunger, several hundred people have died of starvation in the past few months.