Hazaribagh

Painted mud house in tribal village near Hazaribagh

I've just spent two intense days at Sanskriti https://buluimam.wixsite.com/sanskritimuseum 

staying with Bulu Imam and his family, visiting painted houses in tribal villages, meeting the villagers, very lovely people who welcome visitors, inviting them into their houses, proudly showing off their painted walls, inside and out. These people's carbon footprint is zero. Their villages are clean, without a scrap of rubbish. In some villages they have enough land to grow vegetables and build nice big mud houses with plenty of storage space. In some villages they have very little land and the government policy of introducing concrete houses is eroding their way of life. 

10,000 BCE cave paintings 

On the second day we visited caves covered with geometrical paintings that have been dated to 10,000 BCE. Bulu has spent days camped out in these caves, copying the paintings in pen and ink into a book which he has printed one copy of. 

He told me about a a wonderfully proud, strong, healthy nomadic community called the Birhors, who lived in houses made from leaves, who hunted, trapped and gathered. Bulu went hunting with them when he was young and recorded everything about them, the plants that they used as medicine, their hunting and trapping methods, their habits, beliefs and customs. They claim that their ancestors painted the rock art in the caves near Hazaribagh and it is indeed identical to the rock art of the oldest layers in Hazaribagh. Their art is not pretty but simple, strong and authentic, the art of one of the world's First Peoples. It is different from that of the other tribes, because it tells stories and depicts series of events related to their survival in the scrub jungle environment. Village art depicts the developed form of the abundance of nature, the 'overflowing vase' of the natural environment, a common theme in ancient Indian art.

Unfortunately the government has forced all the Birhors that they could find to abandon their nomadic way of life, building them ugly concrete houses, where we saw them sitting and lying, with lifeless eyes, utterly dejected. There may be some Birhors still hunting and gathering, wisely keeping a very low profile, who hopefully will survive, for those who have been forced to settle will not. I noticed that many of the concrete houses were deserted. Hopefully they have left them and gone back into the forest, but life will be harder and harder for them as the wild animals decrease.

Jhharkhand is a beautiful state with rolling hills covered in Sal forest which sheds its leaves in 'autumn': March April, growing fresh new leaves in May. There is a huge coal deposit in a valley in Jhharkhand, which the government is allowing various mining companies to exploit. The coal is forty metres below the surface, so the mining companies strip off all the top soil and vegetation to dig out the coal with their gigantic machinery. In the affected areas they have mined right up to the villages, leaving the villagers staring out over a cliff into a vast, dusty wasteland. I did not visit the mines. Visiting the concrete houses of the Birhors had made me sad enough and I'd seen photos of the mines. However I did see the road widening scheme that is stripping the land of its beautiful trees, all the way up to Hazaribagh, creating immense amounts of dust, that left me with a sore throat that lingered for a day or two. Again the government is destroying the environment in the name of progress, driving the highway right through the middle of the national park which is supposed to be protected. 

But there is still much of Jhharkhand that is beautiful and untouched. After visiting the caves we visited another village where the villagers spend more than half their time in the forest. The villagers welcomed Justin, one of Bulu's sons, crowding round him, asking him questions. The headman's son put his arm round Justin's shoulder affectionately and accompanied us to the caves and back to the village, chatting with Justin all the way. Many of the old women had tattoos on their arms, in the form of bracelets and necklaces round their necks. 

This old woman is magnificent, straight and upright without an ounce of fat on her, despite numerous pregnancies. These people live a hard life and yet they welcome us cheerfully, offering us everything they have. One woman insisted in filling Justin's bag with tomatoes. "I never tell them when I'm coming," he told me, "otherwise they would cook for us." Even so while we were visiting the cave they cooked rice for us, which we had to refuse because it was getting too late.