|
Magazine
Branding for a better life?
The local bhagat searches for answers for a mother and child.
THE pristine Dangs, a tribal area in Gujarat on the western slopes of the Sahyadri ranges, shot into the limelight a few years ago and for all the wrong reasons. A communal face-off at its headquarters — Ahwa — had then snowballed into a veritable Hindu-Christian conflict throughout Gujarat. However, what remains the core USP of the Dangs, oddly yet undocumented, is its distinctive local bhagat's ways of dealing with the resident Dangi's ailments and interpersonal problems. While cities have medical breakthroughs, technology-aided surgeries, counsellors, physiologists and state-of-the-art health care, the Dangis have their own ethnic solutions evolved from archaic traditions.
Warlocks, known as bhagats by the resident Dangis, play an almost indispensable role in the tribals' life. Dangis, when afflicted with disease or infirmity, make a beeline for the nearest bhagat, instead of a medical practitioner and surprisingly — get cured. It is not the cure, which would baffle a scientific mind, but the treatment, which seems rather incredible.
For almost any ailment suffered by a tribal, whether an infant or otherwise, the cure is in the form of branding known as dambh. While a bout of jaundice is countered with a branding by red-hot rods of the wrists, gastroenteritis is cured by a dambh on the stomach. A mere throat pain is cured by implanting a dambh on the neck, while a case of an inflamed testicle (hydrocele) is cured by piercing the correspondingly opposite ear lobe with a hot copper wire. Medical treatment for a Dangi is usually out of reach, with the nearest state health centre miles away.
The bhagat, on the other hand, is the most accessible option. And, although the entire healing process seems to be appalling, the patient more often than not gets cured. The burn injury contorts into a scorched lesion filled with pus and bursts within a week. It is then that the infection is said to have left the body — and the victim is cured. The bhagats, who live in stark seclusion from the rest of the village, are said to possess occult powers, which enable them to exercise metaphysical control acquired by years of yogic penance, tantra and tatrak vidya. Going by hearsay, some of the bhagats even possess powers of summoning a spirit in woman-form that performs incredible tasks at the behest of the bhagat. Solving personal problems, such as infidelity, marital disharmony or for that matter, winning the heart of an unwilling partner are all child's play for the bhagat. Coupled with fowl and cattle sacrifices, the bhagat's ceremonies include repetitive incantation of tantras in a local Dangi dialect and numerous yagnas and religious rites.
A patient cured by a damph on her stomach.
The Dangi survives in a world of his own, cut off from science and technology, battling disease and disaster with raw and extremely crude resources. Hemmed by Surat and West Khandesh districts of Gujarat and Nasik of Maharashtra, the 64.4 km long district includes a densely forested area of over 1700 square km, used extensively by the simple-hearted race. Cosy hamlets with small thatched huts made of bamboo and dried grass provide homes for the rapidly disappearing tribe. It is perhaps the will to survive that has been responsible for the self-sufficient nature of the Dangis.
The origin of the Dangis could well be traced back to Mediterranean times, with historians even finding an uncanny resemblance with the Hamitic civilisation of Egypt. With the advent of the Aryans, it is felt that the tribals were forced to retreat to the innermost forests of Gujarat. Dangs, being by far the most inaccessible of woodlands in the entire State, was the best choice. Perched at a crest about 1,500 feet above sea level, the Dangs have since time immemorial been inhabited by aboriginal tribes such as the Bhils and Kunbis, also known as Kukanas in Dharampur area, Warlis and Gamits. The exceptionally rocky nature of the ground in Dangs does not retain any of the 80-100 inches of rain that the area receives annually, rendering agriculture nearly impossible.
The Dangi's day begins at the crack of dawn, when the first rays of sunlight fall upon the ground. While some of the women commence with their household chores of cleaning their house and sprucing up their looks, others move towards the forests. Ridiculing all gender battles encountered by their urban counterparts, the Dangi women are equal in all respects to their men. Deviating from the otherwise mundane pursuit of agriculture, the tribals depend on their own crude expertise in hunting prey in the dense forests. It is the contemporary Dangi who employs his liquor-making skills to earn him money — a concept alien to him — in order to effect a badli (barter) with a commodity he may require. The production of liquor, in itself, is an innovative feat. The tribal has to move down from his hut at a height of about 1,500 to 2,000 feet to the bed of a river nearby. Obscured from the prying eyes of the local police, the Dangi tribal, carrying two handas (pots) and a handful of mahuva or gur and navsagar, treks through dense forests of teak, sag (sectona grandis) and khadal (whitewood) trees, confronting a wild jackal or a spotted wild cat while on his way to the riverbed. At the end of the three-hour journey, the thick forests thin out revealing a much-used pathway, which slopes abruptly to the bed of a nearby river. Despite the mandatory ban on the production or sale of alcohol throughout Gujarat, liquor making and its consumption persist in the forests of Dangs. If a resident of Gujarat wants to buy liquor, he may have to drive all the way to Daman while a ``spirited'' enterprise is nevertheless under way within the confines of the forests of Dangs. It would not be uncommon to hear the banter of intoxicated tribals, carrying the intoxicant in hand trekking through marshy swamps, besides the occasional roar of a lion in the background or the slither of a chameleon against the leaves of a sag tree. Dangs' Mahaal jungles, inhabited by some of the most timid Warli tribals, are perhaps the most inaccessible of the region's forests. The jungles have some of the region's most rare wildlife.
And, it is in the midst of these formidable woodlands that huts of the tribal hamlets lie scattered. Light rarely reaches the ground on account of dense, tall imposing khadal trees branching into a web of green boughs before going on to taper into slim green twigs. And, although the Mahaal jungle lies shrouded in perpetual darkness, with visibility beyond a few feet a casualty even during daytime, the Dangi goes about his daily chores completely unperturbed. It is the relationship that the Dangi enjoys with nature, dodging deftly the pitfalls of the pseudo-modern city bred, which is almost enviable. Perhaps it's time to reflect and take a look within.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
|
