CALL OF THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

Randhir Khare journeys into the Nilgiris and is mesmerised by the Longwood Sholas and its environs. He writes that he can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like a few hundred years ago. This is the first part of an essay on the southern mountain ranges and its indigenous peoples. Exclusive to Tehelka

Stripped of their myths and stories, the lands sacred to the native peoples…became real estate. A new symbolic landscape was superimposed on the old. But whereas the old one was animistic, related to the spirit of the place, the new one symbolised the imposition of a rational order upon the untamed wilderness and its division into private property.” Rupert Sheldrake.

It was early evening, I remember. Light was pale honey. The air heavy with the overwhelming aroma of damp vegetation. The rain had let up in Kotagiri, and the mountains of the Nilgiris, clothed in mist, gradually revealed their contours. The respite drew us out of New Rickford, the bungalow where we had been staying, and lured us on for a walk up the high road between a line of trees which gave way to brilliant green expanses of tea bushes. Usually dotted with leaf-plucking women, the gardens seemed unusually empty that evening. To our left the tight spread of shrubs carpeted the land which sloped off down to a fairly deep valley. To our right, the green climbed a gradual slope and met the borderline of Longwood Shola an ancient forest.

The Nilgiri Laughing Thrush and the Red Spur Fowl that had been painting the air with their gurgling raucousness, suddenly fell silent. Two cars drove up along the road past us and slipped out of sight, their rumble echoing a while after they had gone.

And then we saw him. A shiny black gaur bull, emerging from among a tangle of torn barbed wires that fenced off Longwood Shola. Head down, cropping tufts of grass between tea bushes, tail flicking flies, light flowing across his two thousand pound body, six feet from the shoulder, muscles rippling. He stamped his white socked hooves and snorted, the cloud of flies obviously irritating him.

When he had covered a few yards, he seemed to step aside from the path he had taken, turning his head to watch his herd emerge from the Sholas. There were fourteen of them -- his cows, a few young bulls and two calves trailing behind. They headed towards the road, crossed over to our left and followed the slope downwards.

We moved on after the herd was out of sight, turned off the road far ahead and sank into Longwood Shola, the dense foliage closing in around us. Leaf, wood, bark, stone, mud, insect, animal, bird, reptile and human flowing energies along a spiral. Moving along the line of the spiral, we went deeper till we reached the edge of a marsh in the sunken lowland of the forest. A giant heart beating.

Around us were profusions of butterflies – Blue Admiral, Great Orange Tip and Striped Tiger – above us Scimitar Babblers and Blue Throated Barbets, amid the expanding echoes of Giant Squirrel cries.We were forced to draw ourselves out of the Sholas as evening hauled in shadows and Great Horned Owls began hoo-hooing from high boughs. Back on the road, the mist had descended and we slow walked back to the bungalow.

That night, as the rain and wind and distant cry of monkeys circled the house, I savoured the throbbing energy that coursed through me.

Vanished Greens

If in the year 2002 Longwood Shola and its environs could evoke such powerful feelings I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like a few 100 years earlier when the entire region of the Nilgiris was covered in forests and grasslands.

Since I can’t travel across time I’ve listened to the voices of tribal elders – narrating accounts that they had heard from their forefathers, re-telling folk tales, myths, legends, trekking through shrinking wilderness, reading the spoors of vanished green on the changing body of the land. And of course pouring over old accounts by travellers, explorers and administrators of the Raj.

According to the Nilgiris District Gazetteer, because of its altitude and equatorial nearness, the region offered ideal conditions for a variety of forest cover and grasslands which existed in four tracts. The first stretched across parts of the plains and low hills of the Madras Presidency -- moving from dry deciduous to tropical foliage. There were a lot of valuable trees like White Cedar, Satinwood, Puva, Blackwood or Rosewood, Teak, Sandalwood, Amla and others.

The second was made up of moist evergreen forests which were a spectacular sight if viewed from the western slopes, between the heights of 3,000 and 4,000 feet. The taller trees there shot up to between 200 and 250 feet forming domes and umbrellas of variegated leaves. Beneath their shades and from the ground below, a riot of epiphytic orchids, mosses, balsams, tree ferns, climbing ferns and creepers thrived. Heavier woods like Poon Spar, Ironwood, Red Cedar, Ebony. On the Malabar side of the district, the forests trailed down to the plains. In other places, at about altitudes of 1000 feet from the low lands, they were outgrown by deciduous forests and reed bamboos.

As one climbed higher, the third tract became apparent as the ‘shola’ or ‘woods of the plateau’ were experienced. Though the trees there were somewhat like moist evergreen forests, they differed in that they didn’t grow tall but remained stunted, some rising to about 70 feet. The ‘timber’ trees were fewer and of less value, but there was a surfeit of ferns and mosses and of course orchids, reed bamboo, scrubby balsams and begonias.

The fourth tract was carpeted by grasslands spotted with numerous herbaceous plants that bloomed in the first showers of March. The trees were mainly Rhododendron arboreum, Saliux tetrasperma, Celtis tetrandra, Pittosporum, Dodonaea viscose, Wendlandia Notoniana. As for shrubs there is a list of about 35 to 40 varieties, the most visible being the Strobilanthes Kunthianus (or the Kurunji) which covered many acres with its flowers – forming as it were, a sheet of blue.

Authored by W Francis, this Gazetteer goes on to say that 78 species of ferns had been discovered in the hills, specifying that two, Lastraea scabrosa and ferruginea had not been found anywhere else in the world.

This green-mantled mountainous region which rose to a height of 6,000 feet on an average along the plateau lands with more than 20 peaks crossing a height of 8,000 feet, was watered by the Bhavani, Paikara, Avalanche, Moyar, Coonoor and innumerable seasonal and perennial streams.

Forest cover provided home and hunting ground to tigers, leopards, black panther, sloth bear, sambar, spotted deer, barking deer, black buck, bison (or gaur), wild boar, Nilgiri ibex, elephant, wild dog, Nilgiri langur, the lion tailed Macaque, Flying Squirrels and Giant Squirrels, birds, reptiles and insects.


INDIGENOUS SETTLERS

And the early human inhabitants? Well, there were several tribal communities living in the region at that time, each in environments that best suited their way of life. Records reveal that the lower reaches of the Nilgiris which were covered by deciduous and moist evergreen forests were home to hunting and gathering tribes such as the Irulas, Katunaickens, Paniyans and Kurumbas whereas the upper regions like the temperate forests and grasslands were home to the artisan Kotas and the buffalo herding Todas.

Evidenced by their lore, rivers, mountains, sacred groves, trees, creatures and spaces were invested with special powers, were of significance or epitomised as deities. Todas, for instance, believe that their places of creation and afterlife are located in the Nilgiris.

Records show that through the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, various religious, quasi-religious and political European expeditions, mostly unfruitful, were made into the Blue Mountains. It was the early Nineteenth century that the adventurous and pioneering John Sullivan, Collector of Coimbatore, finally broke the spell and opened up the region to growth and development. The initial expedition cost the Company Rs 300 and the survey another 800. Not long after, a notice appeared in the Gazetteer of India,

“We trust that future reports of the salubrity of this spot will remove all the apprehensions that have been entertained, and that it will become a place of resort for those whose state of health may require that change of temperature which it unquestionably affords. Should a continued residence in these regions prove that the climate is favourable to the European constitution, it may perhaps be deemed expident hereafter to form a military establishment for pensioners and invalids, with a regular hospital; and if it should become a military station, with Medical Officers attached to it, houses would soon become erected and conveniences would be provided for those who might be compelled to seek the benefit of the climate…”

With the growth of the Raj Establishment in the highlands, more and more plainspeople migrated into the blue mountains as labour or work force and to stake their claim to pieces of the wilderness that they could lay their hands on. A land once fecund with life that had a cultural geography uniquely its own was opened up, laid bare and ‘developed’. The region was, as Sullivan’s progress report summed up, ‘gradually approximating to a state of comfort and civilisation.’

Forest lands gave way to the cultivation of tea, coffee, spices and other plantation crops, grasslands were transformed into organised forests and the complex food chain of the blue mountains was snapped, destroying in the process a multitude of dependant plants, shrubs, creepers, grasses and the innumerable creatures who relied on them for their survival and growth.

Many of the indigenous trees were forced out to make way for trees like the numerous varieties of Australian Eucalyptus and Acacia, fast growing woods that were nurtured to fuel expanding settlements and to meet the demands of a growing empire.

The tribal communities living in the Nilgiris witnessed the ‘civilising’ process which destroyed much of their lands, their sacred places and spaces and irrevocably made them refugees in their own homes.


COLONISING PROCESS

To the ‘civiliser’, people from tribal communities were either unrefined, cunning, uncouth and backward or innocent primitives who could be manipulated and used as workhorses. The orientalists studied them, highlighting the exotic and outrageous aspects of their community practices, cultures and religious beliefs. The so-called learned treatises that they churned out did a distinct disservice and perpetuated stereotyping and communal discrimination. Their influence spread not merely abroad but through time into contemporary Indian thought and response in relation to marginal and traditional communities. I am horrified to report that much of those skewered treatises (anthropological and socio-cultural) that were penned during those times are still quoted and referred to as authoritative works (even by a number of Indian academics), indicating that the processes of colonialism continue alive and well in the bloodstream of a free and independent nation. In the same strain, ‘development’ approaches exercised and established during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth century are still being perpetuated.

Here are some classic examples of the ‘civiliser’ attitude –

Towards the Kotas:

“(Kotas) actually court venereal disease, and a young man who has not suffered from this before he is of a certain age is looked down upon as a disgrace.”

“The Kotas are looked down as being unclean feeders, and eaters of carrion; a custom which is to them no more filthy than that of eating game when it is high, or using the same toothbrush week after week, is to a European…An unappetising sight, which may be witnessed on roads leading to a Kota village, is that of Kota carrying the flesh of a dead buffalo, often in an advanced stage of putridity, slung on a stick across his shoulders, with the entrails trailing on the ground.”

Towards the Todas:

“The daily life of a Toda woman has been summed up as lounging about the mad or mand (Toda settlement), buttering and curling her hair, and cooking. The women have been described as free from the ungracious and menial-like timidity of the generality of the sex in the plains. When Europeans (who are greeted as swami or god) come to a mand, the women crawl out of their huts, and chant a monotonous song, all the time clamouring for tips. Even the children are so trained that they clamour for money till it is forthcoming.”

“It is an oft-repeated statement that the women show an absence of any sense of decency in exposing their naked persons in the presence of strangers.”

“Some of the young women are distinctly good looking (but they) speedily degenerate into uncomely hags…a race of superb men coupled to hideous women.”

But then, let me pick up the threads of this story and move on and examine the manner in which the very survival of people from tribal communities was threatened.

The Todas who lived in the high grasslands which provided them adequate grazing grounds for their immense herds of buffaloes were witness to the degradation of indigenous varieties of grass as a result of ecological interference. The new varieties of grass introduced were hardly nutritious for milch animals and so the yields decreased. In addition to this, the fact that grasslands had been converted into forests by planned forestry programmes meant that grazing grounds had shrunk and the threat of a growing number of protected predators increased.

The buffalo occupies a sacred place in Toda family, community, cultural and religious life and as herds dwindled, their very survival was in question. Today, the population of these people has been reduced to far less than 2000.

The Kotas, artisans working in metal, wood and clay, were the blacksmiths, carpenters, house builders and potters who not merely used these skills for the development of their own community but extended themselves to others too. In fact they were respected for their art and industriousness. The influx of settlers into the region and the phenomenal acceleration of markets made Kota skills and products redundant.

The hunting and food gathering Kurumbas, Irulas, Kattunaickens and Paniyans, were perhaps the worst hit. The forests which they once depended upon for their sustenance and cultural, community and religious identity were either replaced by plantations, altered by the introduction of new species of tree cover (seriously affecting bird and animal life and the growth of edible and medicinal roots herbs and bulbs) or made out of bounds by forest laws which chose to protect wild life and exclude humans who had traditionally been forest dwellers.

Most of the Kurumbas and Irulas became casual labourers on the plantations and fields of the settlers, the Kattunaickens reduced in numbers were pushed to the periphery of forests to eke out a living from minor forest collection and casual labour, the Paniyans became bonded labour.

TIMELESS ENCOUNTERS

But the story of the Blue Mountains does not end there. The tribal spirit is far too strong, well-founded and resilient to be dispensed with. It has survived through the centuries and will continue to do so. I have encountered this spirit wherever I have travelled in the Nilgiris.

In the little Alu Kurumba village of Sengalpudhur, high up on the shoulder of bare land wedged between tea estates and reserve forests, in the shadow of God Rock Hill, a young man by the name of Nagaraj, tells me, “no one wants us here, but we will hold on and remain. This is our land. This is Alu Kurumba land. We will protect it with our lives and with our culture. That is our strength – our culture, our songs, stories, music, our prayers, our gods, the power of our spirits.” He has lost most of one leg and hobbles around from village to village with a crutch, organising his people, inspiring them.

Five young Toda men and women sitting with us over tea in Ooty, strike the same chord, “Our culture is our identity, it makes us who we are.”

The Kotas are putting up a valiant resistance, using higher education and other tools of ‘civilisation’ to keep going. As the Kota CK Raju, President of the Nilgiris Adivasi Welfare Association, put it, “education is the key. It leads to empowerment.”

Shanmugam who is a Kalketti Irula and Secretary of the same Association, standing in the heart of his village lands says, “This is Semmanarai, my village, it was always here and it will remain. This is our land.”

His colleague, O Balan, a Moolukurumba from Gudalur looks at me intensely, and says, almost choking, “we were great hunters once, an ancient people but now our lands have shrunk, most of the forest is gone…but we hold on to what we believe in, our customs, our community identity. They make us what we are.” Ramaswami, the Irula from Semmanarai gave me a small packet of sambrani incense resin that he had collected from the forests near his home. Tonight I shall light some charcoal and burn a little of the sambrani and fill our study with the wild and beautiful fragrance of Semmanarai, think of all my friends in the Nilgiris, their families and the people of their villages and those who live in the many villages and hamlets of the Blue Mountains, holding on to what they believe in.

When you and I encounter each other again, I’ll take you on a journey into their lives.