The Tribal Tribune (Vol-6 Issue-3)_Published.pdf

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 1987

Indian Journal of Research in Anthropology, 2022

Tribal lifestyle is deeply associated with their culture, art and craft. A larger mass of tribal people live in rural areas. In central India, the area of Vindhya, Satpuda and Aravali Mountain ranges, starching from east to west in the states of West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan form a big tribal belt. Gond, Bhil and Santhal are the three biggest tribal communities residing in this central tribal region of India. These three dominating groups are comparatively developed then other tribal groups of the area, though their overall economy is still based on agriculture and labor work resulting in economic backwardness. But, new generation is gradually, getting educated and exposed to salaried jobs and modern technology. Due to better communication, exposure, marketization and modernization their culture is changing with time and need. Though, they have strong bond with their indigenous culture, religion and art, which has kept their tradition and lifestyle intact with relevant changes. But, changing lifestyle and economy has affected their art and craft. Themes, raw material and technology are changing their forms, symbols and patterns. Paintings have shifted from walls to canvas and taken professional shape. Festive and regular enjoyment with dance and music had developed as stage performance. But, they have not at all lost touch with their roots and cultural awareness is again revitalizing their bond with traditional dance, music and other art and craft forms. Celebrations are still celebrated with tribal songs and dances within the village's open courtyard. There are also several cultural and culinary habits, languages, social structures inclusive of marriage, and varieties of consciousness.

The art of living of the forest dwellers, the values (socio cultural and ethno linguistic) they cherish (Gardner and Mishra, 2014) and the emergence of unique concepts-often get reflected in their mother tongue all are very much in consonance with the cultural landscapes in which they dwell over a period. But, Changing cultural landscapes of the forest dwellers (often denoted as tribe), especially due to the so called 'development activities', appears to lead to the diminishing of cultural and linguistic heritage. Changes of cultural landscapes are of two types, as visualized. One: due to physical displacement/ resettlement. Two: shift to an align ethno linguistic environment, without any physical displacement. This paper tries to examine the above phenomenon viz. change of cultural landscapes in the backdrop of certain case studies with respect to the threat of the socio cultural, ethno linguistic and linguistic heritage of the tribes such as Eravalla spoken in Anaimalai Tamilnadu-Kerala (Gnanasundaram, 2012, 2013, Gnanasundaram & Vijayan, 2015) Bettakurumba spoken in the Nilgiris Biosphere, (Gnanasundaram, Perialwar and Rangan, 2012), villiyan alias Irular spoken in kancheepuram, Tamil Nadu (Krishnan, 2006), Andamanese spoken in the UT of Andaman & Nicobar Islands(Annamalai and Gnanasundaram, 2001) etc.

Do the Achuar perhaps constitute an exceptional case 2 , one of the picturesque anomalies that ethnography occasionally discovers in some remote corner of the planet? Have I, out of a lack of perspicacity or a desire to be original, not been able or not wished to see the actual way in which they treat that dichotomy between nature and society? Just a few hundred kilometres to the north, in the Amazonian forest of eastern Colombia, the Makuna Indians present an even more radical version of a theory according to which the world is resolutely non-dualist 3 . Like the Achuar, the Makuna classify human beings, plants, and animals as 'people' (masa) whose main attributesmortality, social and ceremonial life, intentionality and knowldegeare in every way identical. Within this community, distinctions among living beings are based on the particular characteristics that mythical origins, diets, and modes of reproduction confer upon each class of beings. They are not based on the greater or lesser proximity of those classes to the pinnacle of achievement that the Makuna would exemplify. The interaction between animals and human beings is likewise conceived as a relation of affinity, although this is slightly different from the Achuar model, given that among the Makuna a hunter regards his prey as a potential marriage-partner rather than as a brother-in-law. However, the Makuna ontological classifications are far more flexible than those of the Achuar, by reason of a faculty of metamorphosis that is attributed to all: humans can become animals, animals can change into humans and animals of one species can change into animals of another species. Their taxonomic grasp of reality is thus always contextual and relative, for the permanent swapping of appearances makes it impossible to attribute stable identities to the environment's living components. The sociability that the Makuna ascribe to non-humans is thus richer and more complex than that recognized by the Achuar. Just like the Indians themselves, animals live in communities, in 'long houses' that tradition situates at the heart of certain rapids or inside hills that are precisely mapped. They cultivate manioc-gardens, move about in canoes and, led by their chiefs, perform rituals every bit as elaborate as those of the Makuna themselves. The visible form of animals is really just a disguise. When they get home, they shed their appearance and deck themselves in ceremonial feathers and ornaments, thus ostensibly becoming the 'people' that they have never ceased to be even as they swam in the rivers or roamed through the forest. This knowledge that the Makuna have relating to this double life that animals lead is part of the teaching dispensed by their shamans, for these are the cosmic mediators to whom society delegates the care of relations between the various communities of living beings. However, the premises upon which this knowledge is based are shared by one and all. Although they are, in part, esoteric, they nevertheless structure the conception of their environment that all Preliminary draft (January 2012)not for circulation 18 the non-shamans share and they dictate the manner in which the Makuna interact with that environment. Many cosmologies analogous to those of the Achuar and the Makuna have been reported from the forest regions of the lowlands of South America 4 . Despite clearly detectable differences in their internal organization, all these cosmologies, without exception, draw no clear ontological distinctions between, on the one hand, humans and, on the other, numerous animal and plant species. Most of the entities that people the world are interconnected in a vast continuum inspired by unitary principles and governed by an identical regime of sociability. Relations between humans and non-humans in fact appear to be no different from the relations that obtain between one human community and another. They are partly defined by the utilitarian constraints of subsistence, but they adopt different forms that are peculiar to each of the tribes and thereby serve to differentiate them. The example of the Yukuna, a group with an Arawak language, adjacent to the Makuna of Colombian Amazonia provides a good illustration. Like their neighbours who speak a Tukano language, the Yukuna have developed preferential associations with particular species of animals and particular varieties of the cultivated plants that provide them with their main foodstuffs. The mythical origin of the Yukuna and, in the case of the animals, the houses that these share are all situated within the limits of the Yukuna tribal territory. To the shamans falls the task of supervising the ritual regeneration of these species,species that are, in contrast, prohibited for the Tukano tribes that surround the Yukuna. Each tribal group is thus responsible for protecting the specific populations of the plants and animals that provide its nourishment. And this division of tasks helps to define local identities and systems of interethnic relations of the various tribal groups, for these vary according to their links with different non-humans. If the sociability of humans and that of animals and plants are so intimately connected in Amazonia, that is because their respective forms of collective organization stem from a common model that is quite flexible and that makes it possible to describe interactions between nonhumans by using the named categories that structure relations between humans or that represent some relations between humans on the model of symbiotic relations between other species. In the latter case, which is more rare, the relationship is not designated or described explicitly, since its characteristics are reputed to be familiar to everyone, thanks to their generally shared botanical and zoological knowledge. Among the Secoya, for example, dead Indians are thought to perceive the living in two different forms: they see men as oropendolas birds and women as Amazon parrots 6 . This dichotomy, which organizes the social and symbolic construction of sexual identities, is based upon the ethological and morphological characteristics peculiar to the Chapter 2 The wild and the domesticated Henri Michaux was not yet thirty when he set off to the Andes to visit an Ecuadorian friend whom he had met in Paris. Fired by the temptation of adventure and despite his fragile health, in 1928 he decided to return to Paris by way of the rivers of Amazonia. This involved one month in a canoe, exposed to the rain and the mosquitoes, all the way along the River Napo as far as the Marañon, followed by three weeks of relative comfort on a small Brazilian steamer, travelling down the Amazon to reach its estuary. It was there, at Belém de Pará that he witnessed the following scene: 'A young woman who was on our boat, coming from Manaus, went into town with us this morning. When she came upon the Grand Park (which is undeniably nicely planted) she emitted an easy sigh. "Ah, at last, nature", she said, but she was coming from the jungle 1 '. Indeed she was. For this citizen of Amazonia, the forest was no reflection of nature, but a disturbing chaos into which she seldom ventured, a place resistant to all attempts to tame it and by no means conducive to aesthetic pleasure. The main park in Belém, with its rows of palm trees and its plots of mown grass planted with a succession of mango trees, gazebos and stands of bamboo, guaranteed an alternative to the forest: tropical plants, to be sure, but ones tamed by human labour, testifying to culture's triumph over the forest wilderness. This taste for wellgroomed landscapes is evident everywhere, as can be seen from the colour-prints that preside over all the reception rooms, hotels and restaurants of the little towns of Amazonia. Walls blotched with humidity display nothing but alpine scenes showing flower-decked chalets, cottages snuggling into hedged farmland or austere rows of yew trees in French-style gardens,all no doubt symbols of exoticism, but necessary contrasts to the excessive proximity of vegetation run riot. Do we not all, like Michaux's fellow-traveller, draw elementary distinctions in our environment, according to whether or not it bears the marks of human action? Garden and forest, field and heath, cultivated terraces and shrubland, oasis and desert, village and bush: all are well-attested pairs that correspond to the opposition that geographers draw between ecumene

India is one of the ancient civilizations of the world which has stood the test of time. In fact what makes Indian culture unique among other ancient civilizations is its ability to accommodate and assimilate external influences and weave them into its own cultural fabric. This composite influence has not only enriched the cultural milieu of India, it has also made it stronger. Indian art, architecture, music, language, philosophy and religion reflect this diversity of influence that has occurred through centuries. This is the beauty of Indian Culture and Heritage. As Indian citizens not only do we need to be proud of this pluralistic and rich cultural heritage but also to study it objectively and assess it critically.