Affairs of an Indian Tribe (The Story of My Tharu Relatives)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Merry Hamlet is a tiny Indian village on Indo-Nepal border far from the madding crowd inhabited by the Tharus, a Scheduled Tribe of U. P. known for their zest of life. Till 1978, it was a forest village cut off from the rest of the world. In that year it became a normal revenue village and things began to move, in the beginning slowly and later with speed. The author discovered this village in 1979 and fell in love with it and its inhabitants. In course of his twelve-year long study of the village, he became deeply involved in the affairs of the village and happenings in the lives of its' people and developed great love and respect for them. That this relationship has been reciprocal, is amply proved from this book in which the author shares his understanding of a simple, straight-forward and loving people with his readers. This book will be found useful by social scientists, planners, administrators and social workers engaged in tribal development and welfare.

Amir Hasan, dedicated his life to the welfare of tribals. interest His was ignited when he was working as a research scholar of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research at the Central Fuel Institute, Jealgora, Dhanbad (Bihar) in 1953- 1954. This led to a long association with the tribals. Later, as a civil servant, he maintained a dedicated and productive association with the tribals and their welfare. His large collection of authored books is a result of his intensive live research.

Our earliest memories of our father, Dr. Amir Hasan (1929- 92) are of an author at work. Every morning, we would find him diligently working on some article, paper or book chapter. An early riser, his writing work would be taken up after a walk and a spot of gardening .He would be surrounded by reference books, loose sheets of paper and a tea tray precariously balanced in the midst of it all. One by one, we would wake up and troop to where our parents were having their morning tea. He welcomed us with a smile and read out parts of what he was working on. We were treated to beautifully worded narratives of Awadh, his experiences with the tribals of Tarai and on some rare occasions tribal folklore and also Awadhi shayari. All this was delivered in his deep mesmerizing voice which overrode the early morning chirping of birds and the whisper of breeze in the trees. The scents of the earth rose in the background from the plants he had watered when the rest were still asleep. We were given small proof-reading tasks in the summer vacations. We got to work after breakfast and competed with each other to complete our tasks. We were amateurs and perhaps our work yielded no real results but we learnt camaraderie, team work and we learnt to be proud of our ink-stained fingers. This was the nourishment we grew up on and this was the exposure that enriched our childhood and furnished us with a legacy for life. Our father did not teach us how to become authors. Through sharing his interests with us, he taught us a way of life. His writing was his hobby. He was a civil servant dedicated to the nation and his profession. By sharing his interests with us, he shared values, wisdom and notions of nobility.

The tribal people in U.P. are facing rather a peculiar problem in so far as they were not included in the Schedule which was initially prepared soon after Independence in most of the other states. This was largely due to the fact that the tribal people comprise a very small section of the population in the most populous state of our country. This non-recognition has had severe consequences for the tribal people. They have been denied the protection even in a formal sense provided for them in the Constitution.

This book tells the story of a tiny Tharu village on Indo-Nepal border. I visited the village for the first time in October 1979 and since then I have been visiting it and staying there frequently. In the process, I was able to develop an intimate relationship with the people of the village. This became possible because I tried to help them to solve some of their problems and was instrumental in bringing several development schemes to the village and in securing government jobs to a few youngmen of this and other Tharu villages. Above all, I tried to be one of them. I let them feel that their problems were my problems. No wonder, they extended their wholehearted cooperation to me in my study of their life and lore.

In early seventies, I stayed for about three and half years at Bazpur in Nainital District, the main town in the habitat of the Buxas, one of the five Scheduled Tribes of U.P. I was then posted as the General Manager of the Bazpur Cooperative Sugar Factory. I was surprised to find that cane cultivation, the main cash crop responsible for the prosperity of non-tribals of the area, was almost non-existent among the Buxas. Therefore, I managed to introduce a subsidized scheme of cane development among them. Like the Crooke's Settlement Officer, I too used to go and distribute cane seed and fertilizers among them. In the process, I built a good rapport with the tribal people and became friends with many of them. I was naturally prompted to make a study of this tribe. After finishing my day's work, I would often drive into a Buxa hamlet and like the Crooke's 'Hakim', I would ask them about their 'manners and customs'. Although I soon realised that the Buxas were too innocent to tell me a 'pack of lies', I always took precautions to verify my information from different sources and also from the same source sometimes by using a different technique.