Bhilala-land: "where no white has gone before"

This past weekend I visited my friend Prashanth, who I know from Pondicherry University. He works for Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) in the Narmada Valley, a few hours south of Indore past the Vindhya Range in Madhya Pradesh. SPS carries out several types of development projects (see the link), and Prashanth works on watershed development projects.

farmland managed by SPS and Bhikupura villagers

The Narmada Valley is not as remote as it feels. It's not far from Indore--only a 2-hour bus ride to Bagli followed by a 30-minute motorcycle drive over a ghat (hill)--but it seems like the middle of nowhere. When Prashanth picked me up in Bagli, we saw a procession of uniformed policemen playing instruments followed by a group of traditionally-dressed Muslims. We still don't really know what was going on.

procession of policemen (I think?) and Muslim men through the streets of Bagli

When we reached the SPS campus in the village of भिकुपुरा (Bhikupura), Prashanth gave me a quick tour: farmland, cows, biogasifier, etc. After dinner, we went stargazing. I haven't seen so many stars since... I don't even remember when. It was amazing. I could spot the Big Dipper! (Usually I can only find Orion. Or, in Delhi, zero stars.) It was unbelievably quiet, which is a very strange feeling in India. I could even hear crickets!! Prashanth found it a bit odd when I said the sound of crickets reminded me of home, of Maryland.

The next day we explored various tribal villages via motorcycle. Don't worry, Mom, I was wearing a helmet! We drove through recently-harvested fields and dry forest. The Narmada Valley gets very little rain, so when it is not monsoon season, everything is brown. Crops that grow here include wheat, cotton, chilli, and some others. Wheat, the biggest crop, was recently harvested, only a week or so before I arrived. Therefore most of the fields I saw were devoid of crops.

The people in this area are adivasi (tribal) and belong to the Bhilala, Bhil, Korku, and Barela tribes. Traditionally these tribes were hunter-gatherers who lived in the forest, but after independence the Government of India pushed them to enter mainstream agriculture. However, they did not have any land--except the forest they lived in. So the adivasis cut down forest to make room for their crops.

Agriculture finally took off in this region only about ten years ago, in the 1990s, when a Naxalite/Maoist leader came to Narmada Valley to bring reform and, of course, recruit people to the Naxalite/Maoist cause. However, the Madhya Pradesh police killed the top 5 Maoist leaders, either in a shootout or by firing squad (sorry, I don't remember which Prashanth said! But they were definitely shot). After their executions, the Maoist movement lost its momentum, though a memorial for these men was built. Today the Narmada Valley is one of the few tribal regions not under Naxalite control.

(Note: all of this information is from Prashanth. So if anything is wrong, blame him! Haha.)

Even though there are four tribes in the area, everyone I met was a member of the Bhilala tribe. The women had several tattoos: a pyramid made of 10 dots (4-3-2-1) on the chin, 2 exaggerated crow's feet on each eye, siblings' names on the wrists, and other geometric designs on the wrists and ankles. Some women wore giant bangle-like anklets, and for special occasions they wear big necklaces made of coins. They drape their saris a little differently than I'm used to, and many women cover their hair and even faces with their saris. Many men had earrings, and male members of the Korku tribe wear turbans, similar to the dotted, twirled Rajasthani ones.

Some of these tribes speak a language called Nimadi, which Prashanth says is similar to Hindi, and everyone understands and speaks Hindi as a second language. I couldn't understand anything they were saying, even when they were speaking Hindi, because their accent is very different from Delhi Hindi. But that's ok, because they couldn't understand my accent either. They told Prashanth, "we think she's speaking Hindi, but we can't understand her!"

Most of the houses were kachcha houses, which means they are made of natural materials and not as permanent as, say, concrete or bricks. A kachcha house is held up by a bamboo frame, stuffed with straw, and covered in a plaster made of a mud-and-cow dung mix. So one could say that their houses are literally made of sh*t. Or at least partially.

Prashanth told me that I was going "where no white has gone before," that no white person had ever visited these villages. I don't know if I really believe this--what about the British?--but I could easily believe that not many white people visit the area. I found it odd that almost nobody asked me the usual "which country, madam?" (Or the Hindi or Nimadi equivalent.) Since they weren't asking questions about my being a foreigner, I asked Prashanth where they thought I was from, if perhaps they thought I was Indian but from a place where people are more fair-skinned, like from Punjab or Kashmir. Prashanth responded that anybody beyond the Narmada Valley was considered a foreigner, that a Punjabi or Kashmiri would be just as foreign to these adivasis as an American. In fact, when he first came to the villages, they asked him which country he was from! And he's from Bangalore! I thought it was pretty interesting that I wasn't necessarily thought of as more foreign than Prashanth.

I wanted to post more pictures here, but alas Blogspot's image uploader hasn't been working for me recently. To see photos of the tribal villages, click here. (Note: you do not need a Facebook account to view these pictures. This is the public link.)