Portraits People
INTRODUCTION
At the heart of anthropology is observing people and getting to know them. The Raj Gonds are gentle and polite. Their usual greeting is Ram Ram.
If you are a stranger a series of questions follow to find out if you have any kinship link. Having a Dravidian kinship system there are complicated kinship terms that establish whether the link is through an older or younger relation, and whether it is through marriage or patrilineal/male descent.
The core of kinship system is establishing if you are from the same phratry, saga, if you share the same ancestors and guardian deities. There are seven phratries, sagako, in Koitur society.
Next comes the issue of your clan, ‘pari’. Each phratry, ‘saga‘ has a different number of clans. This defines whom you are able to marry and what is your affinal in-law relationship. It is a system of complex etiquette that defines how close and intimate you can be.
Lastly comes the issue of where you live; who is your village headman? Kinship is therefore more important than politics. Together they define what gossip can be shared. The basis of friendship is a complex web of factors. Last comes the issue of personality. It establishes whether you have a shared outlook on life.
As a foreigner I was known as the ‘chela’, the student of Professor Haimendorf, who was my anthropological supervisor. He had studied the Raj Gonds from 1944 to 1949 and had been the tribal advisor to the Nizam of Hyderabad, their Mughal ruler. He had created their inalienable tribal title deeds to their land, which is of supreme importance to an agricultural people suffering from land alienation. This is typical of a peasant society subject to the vagaries of a monsoon climate. As a westerner they defined me by my profession, rather than by my kinship. This gave me a high, but outsider, status.
Children
As always children are the best people to photograph. They lack inhibitions and are nearly always curious and relaxed. This is a series of 39 charming images.
Young People
In the prime of life and often animated, these nineteen images are a pleasure to see. They show great promise for these people in years to come.
Mothers and Fathers with children
26 images of parents looking after children, and children taking care of a grandparent.
Adults
Getting to know the community elders, 90 character portraits – more than names – faces.
Groups & Family groups
A series of 15 largely posed group photos.
Banjara. Lambada
The Banjara tribe, also called Lambada, live among the Raj Gonds, but never in the same villages. Unlike the Raj Gonds they speak an Indo-Aryan language like Marathi and Gujerati. They originally came from Gujerat and Maharashtra where they were nomadic cattle herders with an expertise in training draught bullocks. They became the transport troupes for the Mughal army and were also used by the Nizam of Hyderabad to transport his army. However, in peace time they often lived as highway robbers,’dacoits‘. The British colonials defined them as a ‘criminal tribe’. They are still an assertive and occasionally aggressive people, who have been more successful at asserting their tribal status over the milder and gentler Raj Gonds. There is continual conflict between them for the advantages of tribal status under the Indian constitution. The Raj Gonds are always claiming that they should lose their tribal status.
Hijra, Ali
The Hijra, commonly known as Ali in Dravidian languages, are a group of transgender people, commonly found and accepted all over India, as well as among the Raj Gonds. Unlike in the rest of India they do not live separately in a household of their own, governed by a guru. They either live with their birth family or in their own house house. Many of them have gender dysphoria, very few undergo full castration, as in non-tribal India. They can be defined as a Third Gender, while some are only transvestites.
Among the Raj Gonds they cannot inherit the land of their parents, along the normal line of patrilineal inheritance, nor can they take the full role of a woman and get married. But they are considered to be a member of their paternal phratry and clan. However, I never witnessed a Raj Gond ‘hijra‘ at a religious ritual. Though, as inter-gender people, they always play an important role in the Dandari festival, when they are vital to its quality of bacchanalia and upsetting social norms. They are extremely fond of playing female roles in the Raj Gond street theatre, ‘kelk‘, particularly during Dandari and at Dasserah, when villagers perform the Ramayana Hindu epic. However, since they have no place in the accepted economic role of the men or the women, they are more intellectual and love their role as entertainers and dramatists. They like to wear elaborate earrings and necklaces, but I have never seen one wearing the traditional Raj Gond woman’s silver neck-ring, though they always wear the usual women’s glass bangles.