Mythos and Logos of the Warlis: A Tribal Worldview (An Old and Rare Book)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

About The Book

This compilation represents a labour of love to describe a tribal culture before it is lost in an ethnocide, which threatens our tribal peoples today more than ever. A scholar and a priest have collaborated to bring together head and heart with a commitment to, and an empathy for the Warlis. These tribals have a contribution to make a challenge to pose to us, for the tribal is the 'other' who questions and critiques our society in ways we cannot ignore, if we want to address the fundamental issues of our society with a humanising agenda. To make the text more accessible and credible the Warli legends and myths are presented in English and Warli, in the Roman as well as the Devanagari scripts. As such this collection represents an important contribution to ethnographic literature, on the Warlis in particular and more generally as well.

About the Author

The Compiler

Fr. Avellino Remedios has spent most of his life with the Warlis of the Thane district. First as a Jesuit seminarian and now as a priest he shares a special relationship with the Warlis. He brings a lifetime of experi ence to this work.

The Editor

Dr. Ajay Dandekar did his doctorate from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in the early nineties. Since then he has been associated with the IGNCA and later a lecturer at Deccan College. His primary interests are with the pastoralists and hunter-gatherers of western India. He is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Social Science Centre, Mumbai, and a trustee of the Gunter Sonteimer foundation, Pune.

The Social Science Centre

This is a research centre started in 1980 on the campus of St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Its focus has been on action- oriented participatory studies on issues of social relevance and it works closely with voluntary agencies and NGOs in the field. The Centre's publications have covered various issues of identity and culture, education and development, and other related fields of research. Dr. Rudolf C. Heredia received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1979 He is the founder director of the Centre. His present interests include affirmative action in comparative perspective and 'eco-communities' in wasteland zones of western Maharashtra.

Foreword

The People and their History

The Warli tribals are located mostly in the hilly tracts along the West coast in northern Maharashtra and southern Gujarat. This ethnographic study was made in Thane district where their larg est numbers are found. However they are also scattered through the adjacent areas, though in much smaller numbers. In Thane district, out of a total tribal population of 7,29,424 they con- stitute 3,23,791, with concentrations mainly in Talasari, Dahanu, Palaghar and Jawhar talukas. Some of the other tribes in the district are the Thakurs, Kathkaris and the Mahadeva Kolis. Clearly the Warlis are the dominant tribal group here. According to the 1991 Census the total tribal percentage of Thane district stands at 18.21, which indicates a fall figure of 1981, which was 21.76 percent.

However, the tribals have not been not been able to protect themselves, or to assert their human rights, or preserve their in- digenous culture. Both their cultural identity and human dignity have been under threat from the outsider, here as elsewhere.

Already in 1936 the Symington Report on the Aboriginal Hill Tribes of the Partially Excluded Areas in the Province of Bombay records how their lives were "wretched in the extreme and constitute a blot on the administration" (Report 1939). Rack renting, forced labour or vetu, and widespread indebtedness were rampant. The progressive alienation of tribal lands in the area began with the Portuguese occupation, intensified under the Marathas and culminated with the British. The colonial system with its monetised economy as opposed to barter, and legalised rights, as opposed to traditional and community ones, left the tribals even more vulnerable to exploitation and oppression. In spite of the apparent protection given to them by the new gov ernment after Independence, the deterioration in their life situ- ation has only been further accentuated in post-colonial India.

For, their tribal culture was not able to cope with the changes consequent on the model of development now adopted. Neither could they protect themselves from its adverse effects. The result has been a progressive withdrawal of the tribals over decades into more remote areas, where the forest could still be their provider and protector. But as these areas too are drawn more and more into the process of change and modernisation, there is less and less space for the tribals and their way of life.

The government policy of "integration not assimilation" is intended to leave an autonomous cultural space for our tribals, while bringing them into the political economy of the mainstream. But such a policy has been problematic in its conceptualisation and more so its implementation. To our mind it has left much to be desired in its impact on tribal identity and dignity. The "Adivasi Revolt" of 1940s led by the then Communist Party of India under Godavari Parulekar, brought into prominence, "The Story of the Warli Peasants: In Struggle." (Parulekar 1975). But the Communists have focused mainly on economic issues. The Congress with Thakkarbapa, and other non-government agencies in the area have tried to address social concerns like education (Naik 1978). However, it is only with the Kashtakari Sangathana, a Marxist-Leninist group, that the cultural identity of the tribals is being given some serious attention in the political arena.

Introduction

"Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled over the kingdom of Jawhar. He was the ruler of the Warlis. His Kingdom was attacked by a neighbour, Popera, the Koli king. Popera demanded that he be given only that much of land that could be covered by a cattle hide. The Warli king agreed to this de- mand. Popera then covered the entire Warli land with a cattle hide. Thus the Warlis lost their kingdom." This loss is still today remembered by the Warlis and is symptomatic of their loss of identity today.

Indeed, the original affluent society (Sahlins 1963) finds itself at the cross-roads today. The Warlis find themselves in a situation where they have to take to agriculture for their subsistence, giving up on their earlier hunting-gathering habits, while the market forces stare them in their face.

We do not definitely know about the origins of the Warlis. According to a Sanskriti Kosa, the Warlis once inhabited the region near Dharampur, which has been described by Megasthenes as the Varalis. Many a scholars have argued that they derive their name from the region they once inhabited. Though it is a tempting line of argument to pursue, we today do not have sufficient evidence to independently corroborate this assertion. Interestingly, in the oral tradition of the Warlis, there is hardly any mention of the sea. The Warlis today need to be understood in the context of the present and against the backdrop of the forest laws that prove a watershed in the history of all gatherer-hunter communities.

The hunter-gatherers to a greater degree, and the pastoralists to a lesser degree have always been subjected to severe pressures by the agrarian communities. But in the precolonial era, such pressures were resisted, and sometimes reversed, especially in the Deccan. But the forests laws introduced by the colonial state have proved to be a major watershed in the history of these communities. The emergence of forests as major commercial entities in themselves altered the context and the colonial state asserted its right over the forest, which meant an active intervention in the day-to-day life of these communities, who depended for their livelihood on the forest. This direct control also meant an intervention in some of the traditional rights the people held over the forests. This fact introduced an altogether new system, where the traditional rights of wage-property obligations were replaced by the new ones (Gadgil and Guha 1992: 147)

Those changes affected different communities in different ways. The Chenchus for instance, were denied the right to hunt in the forest and were forced into a subordinate relationship with the cultivators. This in turn resulted in Chenchus being driven into banditry (Von Furer Haimandorf 1943). In another instance, the Baigas of central India lost their hunting skills, though their requirement for meat remained unchanged (Elwin 1959). In our case, the Warlis found themselves at the mercy of the money lenders, and found themselves at the door steps of a new subsistence system alien to their own. This exploitation and alienation re- sulted in the famous Warli revolt of 1940s.

Subsequent to the revolt, the condition of the Warlis remains by and large unchanged. They are still being denied the basic access to the forest, the rights of usage and the traditional duties and obligations that they once enjoyed over the forest. The fight for the forest has pushed the Warlis into a position where the very core of their culture is at stake.

It is this issue of culture which interests the compiler of this text. This work, we hope, shall be a small step in affirming the Warlis, their culture and their world view. There have been works on some other aspects of the Warlis prior to this one and we have learned a lot from them (Save 1943; Dalmia 1982). Save's is basically a classic old school imperialist ethnographer's ac- count. His is naturally the first reference point on the ethnographer's map in charting Warli culture. His work is influenced decisively by the existing concerns of ethnography then and makes interesting reading today.

**Contents and Sample Pages**