TRIBAL
call them my indigenous people Gonds, Kols, Bhills, Murias, Baigas, Korkus, Kamaras, Marias and Oraons. They have preserved very remarkably their distinct way of life in small isolated communities.
Traditionally, the tribal were semi-nomadic, some living solely off what they could hunt, others relying on shifting cultivation. Most have now been settled, many it would seem as unhappily as the Australian aborigines, country liquor and drug dependency are said to be common among the men. Many cling to their older beliefs, such as buying there dead, rather than burning them according to Hindu tradition.
In the last hundred years the Baigas, have been forced to abandon shifting cultivation (the burning of forest strips and sowing of seeds in the ashes, the cultivation of crops for a few years on this land and its abandonment for regeneration) and to move from this axe and hoe agriculture to the plough.
Over the centuries, tribal territory has gradually been nibbled away, and every where their way of life is under threat. The Gonds, the largest of the tribes, managed to maintain their independence and retain their so- called ‘primitive’ ways until the last century. From 1200 A D there were as many as 4 Gond Kingdoms .One had an initiation ceremony centered on eating wild orchids. Today one of the biggest threats to the tribal comes from that symbol of modernization, irrigation dams. The proposed building of a succession of dams across the Narmada River in southern MP threatens hundreds of thousands of hectares of tribal forest land . Loud political protests are a feature of the states current politics.
