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| April 17, 2000 | ||
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| HAZARIBAGH, BIHAR Somewhere in Time A tribe of trappers struggle to balance tradition with modernity By Anshul Avijit
That is now a part of the past, as are the once wildlife-rich forests, which have seen a steady depletion of animals due to indiscriminate hunting. In the Hazaribagh National Park, where tigers were as common as deer till five years ago, hardly any big game remains, only small creatures like wild fowl. This once-proud tribe of monkey hunters now collects whatever it can -- hares, fowls, squirrels, rats. Bodham Birhor, an emaciated hunter in his late teens from Katkamsandi division, recalls the last time he caught a monkey was almost two years back. "It's difficult with nothing left in the jungles. Sometimes two or three days pass before we trap anything. Then we make do with eating kandmul and gethi (starchy roots)." On the rare days when there is a surfeit of game, the tribals make their way to the hatias (weekly market). Wild fowl sells at around Rs 90 each, rabbits fetch about Rs 120 and the lucky ones with a hare can get up to Rs 350. P. N. Vidyarthi, deputy development commissioner of Hazaribagh district, says that starvation among the tribe is common, and that lack of natural resources has created a distasteful new practice -- begging. "You can see many old and middle-aged women begging near the masjid during prayers on Fridays," he says. The tribe's population is also dwindling, mainly due to disease and excessive inbreeding. According to Vidyarthi, there are hardly 2,500 Birhors left in Hazaribagh and barely 5,000 in Bihar, down to half from a few decades back. The traditional leaf huts, the community's trademark, are also being edged out. Taking their place are grim Indira Awas Yojna cubicles, curiously built next to the highways rather than on the forest periphery, the tribe's kitchen. "Settle them fast" seems to be the government's rallying cry for all Birhor development work. Attempts to introduce the Birhors to agriculture have been in vain. In Terla, a ragged government-sponsored colony 20 km from Hazaribagh town, the men prefer the meagre compensations of trapping to the rigours of cultivation. The Birhors simply hate change. But there is some good news. Jagdish Birhor, from Bilandi in Vishnupur block, fought his tribe's insularity and apathy to education to pass his Class X from Pahaso High School and become perhaps the first Birhor matriculate. It was Vidyarthi who found him when he was in jail, implicated in a forest case. "He was protecting the trees, not cutting them," says Vidyarthi. "I bailed him out and gave him a Grade IV job. Now he's even learning computers." A self-assured Jagdish has the future of his children worked out: "I want my daughters to move ahead of me and pass Class XII." Clearly, many more will have to do that if this tribe is to survive. |
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It's
a dusty clearing somewhere on the edge of Hazaribagh district in Bihar,
and makes for a curious sight. A few small conical huts fashioned from
tree limbs and sal leaves, each with a diminutive hatchway. Patches of
handmade weed-mats make for more sophisticated covering material, as do
cerulean-blue plastic bags. But in an age of expeditious transition, the
encampment is rare -- the age-old dwelling of one of India's oldest and
most primitive tribes, the nomadic Birhors of south Bihar.
Traditionally
a tribe of trappers, the Birhors (literally "men of the jungle")
made a living selling the monkeys they trapped, as well as products like
rope from the once-abundant chob creeper (Bauhinia scandens). There's also
an interesting dietary aside to them. Colonel Dalton in his late 19th
century book Ethnology of Bengal describes a quasi-cannibalistic ritual
they followed of eating the flesh of their dead parents. The macabre
ceremony didn't arise out of taste or necessity, but from the belief that
the dead parent would be reborn in the family and not trouble the
survivors. In recent times, however, memories of this practice are fading
among them. Question a wrinkled and bent Birhor called Donga (nearly 80
years old, a rarity in a community with a life expectancy in the 40s)
about his tribe's flesh-eating past, and he protests vehemently: "No,
no, never. We never did anything like that." For a tribe that hates
to be quizzed about its customs, this vociferous response is all one gets.