Peaceful Societies

Despite the distance from Sikkim to Vermont, a Lepcha leader referred to a famous poem by Robert Frost when he summarized recent events related to the destruction of the Dzongu Reserve. At an annual general meeting of the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), the primary Lepcha organization fighting the construction of power dams in their sacred reserve in northern Sikkim, the General Secretary, Dawa Lepcha, described the recent decision to cease their hunger strike as an effective negotiating stance with the state government.

Some people in the organization appear to have opposed the cessation. Mr. Lepcha disagreed. “Many people might be of the opinion that we have surrendered our protest by withdrawal [of] the relay hunger strike but this is wrong. We have come a long way and [we] still have a long way to go before we go to sleep,” he said.

He welcomed the initiative of the state government to take the matter, finally, to the negotiating table. “We are hopeful [we will] get a positive response from the government [which] would let us to live in our land peacefully,” he said. He cited major victories his organization has already won, including an earlier decision by the government to cease planning four other dams along the Teesta River, which also would have harmed the spiritual values and ecology of the area.

As member meetings of such organizations often do, the discussions included a lot of self congratulations for all the projects that the group has successfully completed. The meeting elected a large slate of leaders, including Athup Lepcha as president, Chopel Lepcha as senior vice president, Norzing Lepcha as vice president, Dawa Lepcha as general secretary, and numerous others.

Opponents of a proposed dam on the Chalakudy River in central Kerala, which will destroy a Kadar village, are launching a scientific investigation to study the management of the entire river system. The proposed dam would have a severe impact on the nearby Athirappilly waterfalls, a major tourist attraction for the region, and, its opponents claim, it will have a devastating effect on the biodiversity of the entire river basin.

The Chalakudy River Protection Forum (Chalakudy Puzha Samrakshana Samithi), which is leading the opposition, announced last week that it will be working with another group, the Forum for Policy Dialogue for Water Conflicts, to assess all the uses of the river as a way of trying to propose balances that will solve the problems. Dr. A. Latha, who directs the Chalakudy River Protection Forum, indicates that her group has mapped the river, including the human uses, as a first step to understanding the issues relating to the ecosystem.

Dr. Latha, a scientist, believes that many people do not understand that a river basin needs to be viewed as a single ecological body, which is affected by upstream as well as downstream interventions. Most techno-centric approaches to river systems are fundamentally flawed, she argues. She gives an example of poor, techno-centric management: “When the water meant for paddy cultivation is used for other crops, then there is every possibility that it gets exhausted midway and never reaches downstream.” This can cause conflicts, she says.

An article by Rajeev Raghavan in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation (2008, vol. 17(13), p. 3119-3131) pointed out that the Chalakudy River is one of India’s premier biodiversity hotspots, particularly for fish species. Out of the 71 species of fish identified in the study, 16 are endangered and 4 are critically endangered. Three of the four species on the critically endangered list are endemic to the Chalakudy River.

The indefinite satyagraha campaign launched in February 2008 by the opponents of the dam to protect the ecosystem and its human inhabitants is apparently still going on. According to Dr. Latha, “for the first time in the history of Kerala a dam project is being opposed not on the grounds of rehabilitation issues or forest loss, but on the cumulative impacts of reservoir operations.” Her group feels that effective reservoir management may help resolve the water problems in Kerala and lead to a resolution of the dam controversy.

The Namibian farmers who invaded Ju/’hoansi lands with their cattle earlier this year are appealing to the High Court of Namibia to reverse the government’s decision to auction off their animals. The New Era, an official Namibian publication, reported last week that government lawyers recently wrote to Patrick Kauta, the attorney for the farmers, to tell him that agency officials will be selling their cattle, which have been impounded at Mangetti since they were rounded up after the invasion.

The Ju/’hoansi live in a large, fenced tract of land known as the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, which is managed by the people themselves for their own long-term best interests: the health of the land and the sustainable extraction of natural resources. Some of the wild animals in the Conservancy, which the people hunt for food, are believed to harbor foot and mouth disease. The fences that surround the area are supposed to keep out the cattle of the neighboring peoples, in order for Namibia to retain its international reputation as being free of the disease. Certification of the national beef industry as being free of the disease is essential to the economy of the country as well as to its farmers.

But in May this year, some farmers in the area of Gam, immediately to the south of the Conservancy, cut the fences and brought their cattle onto the Ju/’hoansi land. They said they were afraid their animals would eat poisonous plants growing in their own territory. They evidently did not count on the immediate outcry about their invasion of Ju/’hoansi property, and they must not have thought about the consequences to their cattle—and themselves—of their animals being possibly exposed to the dread disease.

Once the invasion began, 29 farmers brought more than 1,000 cattle into the reserve, but the government acted fairly quickly. Agency officials removed all of the livestock and they decided to hold them in quarantine, pending their sale for slaughtering. Some of the invaders were arrested, though they are now out of jail on bail.

The government appears to be obfuscating about the current situation. Last week, Andrew Ndishishi, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, confirmed that the cattle are still quarantined at Mangetti, but he would not say anything more about the issue. He said that the matter is being handled by a government attorney, so he couldn’t comment. The acting Attorney General for Namibia also would not comment—his agency is only handling legal matters. The other agency would have to answer questions about what is happening with the cattle.

Separately, the Ju/’hoansi have retained the services of a group called the Legal Assistance Centre to represent them in a lawsuit for damages of N$530,000 (US$70,000) against the farmers who participated in the invasion. The Ju/’hoansi claim that the invaders, or their cattle, harmed their income from trophy hunting, used their water resources, damaged their harvests of an important herbal product, consumed the forage on their lands, and of course infringed on their rights. LAC has admitted to delays in preparing its case, but it intends to press the matter forward for the Ju/’hoansi.

The Geo Quiz on PRI’s “The World,” an hour long radio newsmagazine show, asked listeners to identify a place that is often called “the most remote inhabited island on earth.” Broadcast weekdays by over 250 radio stations in the U.S., “The World,” for Wednesday, October 28, described the mystery island as being 1700 miles off the coast of Africa, about halfway between South Africa and Argentina.

The answer, revealed about five minutes later, is Tristan da Cunha. The announcer tells us that the island is so remote, it is already too late to get a Christmas card there in time for the holiday. The deadline was in September. (She did not mention that Tristan now has Internet service, so an e-card could be send up until the last minute—but that would have disrupted the theme of the story.) Two MP3s narrate the opening quiz part and the closing, more substantial, answer segment.

The substantial part of the program includes an audio postcard sent from Tristan, which contains interviews with two Tristan Islanders. Ches Lavarello is a 66 year old lobster fisherman. It is interesting to hear him speak. He describes the lobsters he catches, his ancestry, and, best of all, what he calls the freedom of the island. “The main thing on Tristan, why the people like it here, is the freedom, because there’s nowhere in the world where you can get freedom like you can on Tristan,” he says.

He goes on to explain that people live without fear; they can go anywhere, day or night, and not worry about danger. “You can go do what you like anytime you like and there’s no problem. And that’s the reason freedom is the main thing,” he concludes. It’s a worthwhile definition.

The other interview was with Iris Green, the postmistress on the island. She indicates that mail may get there in a month, or perhaps three months, depending on the arrival of ships. She describes the scenes portrayed on a recent issue of Tristan stamps, which are very popular with collectors.

The four stamps show the sheep shearing tradition of the Islanders, a holiday during which they kill rats, longboats sailing to the nearby Nightingale Island, and the festival of Old Year’s Night. Ms. Green chuckles as she describes the “okalolies,” men who dress up and celebrate midsummer on the island by trying to scare the women and children.

Andy Isaacson, the correspondent who sent the interviews to PRI, has evidently prepared an article about Tristan da Cunha which will soon appear in the National Geographic Traveler magazine.

The Paliyan, a peaceful society of southern India, sometimes practice pedogamy—marriage between adults and children. A recent journal article by Peter M. Gardner analyzing the practice, based on his field notes from the early 1960s and late 1970s, is freely available in PDF format on the Internet.

Gardner begins by briefly reviewing Paliyan culture, at least as it existed while he was studying them. He points out that, while they have gender biases in some economic tasks, they are not enforced. Both sexes will collect wild foods, fish, hunt for small game, and live alone if they wish. Individuals, and even whole families, can subsist on the collecting and hunting efforts of a single adult.

The basic organizational principle of their lives is that individuals must make their own decisions about what they will do. The Paliyan will not do something because they feel they must, and only at times will they do things because they are customary. Usually they will act based on their own perceptions of what is appropriate at the moment.

A third of all Paliyans who live in the forests form households that include more than nuclear families. Such families might include aged grandparents, young married couples, or younger siblings. Except in cases where an adult is clearly helpless, such as a very elderly person, extra individuals in a household will coordinate their work and play efforts with the rest of the family, but normally they will try to be self-reliant.

Except for toddlers, even young children are expected to make their own decisions. No one acts as head of a household. Spouses have no authority over one another, and adults have virtually none over their children, except when they are very young. “No one ‘owns’ anyone else or has a right to define that person’s behavior,” Gardner writes (p.49).

The heart of the article is a description of Paliyan marriages. While first time marital unions are often celebrated by exchanging betel leaves, all public liaisons are considered to be legitimate marriages. The Paliyan make a clear distinction between publicly-known liaisons—marriages—and furtive affairs that are kept quite private. While some unions are life-long, many are fragile and serial in nature. Whenever conflicts break out, marriages quickly dissolve and the partners separate. Sometimes the unions are resumed after a few days or after a conciliator intervenes.

Plural unions are common among the Paliyan, particularly polygyny. Gardner also writes about instances of polyandry and linear group marriages. One man adopted a young girl and later married her. Some years after that, she brought a man eight years younger than herself into their home, and, though the older man was not happy, he tolerated the situation because he didn’t want to lose her. The woman cooked for the three of them at times and the younger man brought in food for all three. The situation seemed to be stable and to work.

The author describes another family situation where two couples lived side by side, the women and men sleeping with the others’ spouses, the women bearing children by both men. While the men did not cooperate in economic activities, their relationships were all peaceful.

The basic point is that the Paliyan accept these social arrangements, so long as no one is directly offended and the individual rights of all the affected parties have been respected. These kinds of plural unions require diplomacy and conciliatory skills to maintain.

A common feature of many of the pedogamous arrangements was that the young people were raised by much older adults, who then married them when they matured. The young partners remained in the marriages, though they frequently enjoyed liaisons with people more their own ages. The older people may have resented these new arrangements, but they tolerated them in order to retain their marriages with their younger spouses.

Gardner’s sampling of forest Paliyans showed that 18 out of 153 marriages were pedogamous in nature. Of those 18, 13 involved girls and 5, boys. People sometimes raised girls or boys, usually orphans, with the clear intention of someday marrying them. Most of the children were adopted between the ages of five and ten. They normally made gradual transitions from son or daughter into husband or wife. Pedogamous unions also occurred when adults married the children of former spouses.

Gardner compares these pedogamous relationships with the Nabokov novels, but a comparison to Woody Allen’s marriage to Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter might also be appropriate. Morally repulsive to many Westerners, these kinds of relationships appear to be accepted by the Paliyan, as long as the individuals themselves also accept them.

For Paliyan adults, pedogamous marriages were viewed as an appropriate way of building harmonious unions with malleable partners. Gardner’s study shows that the unions lasted longer than many others, and his investigation supports the judgment of the partners themselves—that the unusual nature of their relationships may have had advantages over more normal marriages.

Gardner dismisses any notion that pedogamy among the Paliyan was a way of insuring old age economic security. The Paliyan would never plan to be dependent on anyone else. Instead, he argues, they have pedogamous relationships because they highly value order and stability, which pedogamy seems, to them, to support.

These Paliyan marriages were never forced. The younger partners, even if they had been orphans, had the full authority to deny that a relationship would become sexual. They were entitled to the same full respect as anyone else. Since social relationships were public anyway, abuse or coercion could not be hidden and was absolutely forbidden.

Gardner devotes the second half of his article to reviewing pedogamous relationships in the anthropological literature on nine other societies in order to develop some comparisons and cross-cultural reasons for such marriages.

Gardner, Peter M. 2009. “Quasi-Incestuous Paliyan Marriage in Comparative Perspective.” The Open Anthropology Journal 2: p.48-57

The Supreme Court of Canada has denied a request for a re-hearing by a couple Hutterite colonies, which had requested permission, for religious reasons, to not have their photos on their driver’s licenses. The court did not give any reasons for denying the petition from the Alberta colonies, but it rarely grants requests for re-hearings.

The court had ruled in July that the provincial interest in maintaining a database, with personal photos, of all licensed drivers in the province, was essential for Alberta’s security. That perceived need for security was of higher value than the colony’s argument that taking photos violates the Second Commandment against making, or worshipping, graven images.

Comments about the court decision appear in numerous blogs and editorial opinions in Canada, most of which are negative about the Hutterite cause. An article in the Lethbridge Herald, the nearest city to the Wilson Colony which initiated the court suit early in 2006, apparently commented in detail on the final failure of the court appeals process, but the article does not appear on the newspaper’s website. A blog post quotes the attorney for the colony, Greg Senda of Lethbridge, which appeared in the printed version of the Herald article: “Now they’ll have to decide how they can continue to adhere to their faith….They now have to [reach] down deep in their souls and decide what to do.”

Prof. B.K. Roy Burman, referred to 10 years ago as the “grand old man of Indian anthropology,” has just published a critical analysis of the roots of the Naxalite movement. His lengthy essay, over 11,000 words, appeared in the October 17th issue of Mainstream, an Indian current affairs weekly.

The author has been a member of, or chaired, several important, high-level commissions that have investigated the nation’s rural social problems. He has visited and studied the Birhor, and numerous other groups, during his work. A retired professor who has published important works on Indian tribal societies, he makes it clear that many issues contribute to rural social unrest and Naxalism, but depriving people of their lands is quite a significant one. The Naxalite violence, and the counter-violence of the police, devastate many communities in rural central India.

He opens his article by condemning a statement by the central government on August 18, 2009, about the Naxalite issue. The government described its solution to the problem as a combination of development and police action. He feels that policy is “an utterly unrealistic approach.” The single most significant issue, he argues, is “the systematic dispossession of the tribal people from land resources, which they have been holding for generations.”

He does not condemn legitimate land taking for development projects so long as the people are properly compensated for properties that are being confiscated. Instead, he is concerned about the ways tribal peoples have lost their lands through deliberate, meticulous, government planning and finagling, when they get nothing in return. He categorizes the ways the dispossessions have happened and he gives examples of each. In other words, he describes in detail the approaches that government agencies have developed for cheating people out of their property.

The first issue that galls him has been governmental definitions of hilly landscape. If rural land slopes more than 10 percent, it is defined as a public forest. By that definition, hilly land cannot be owned by a tribal society, even if the people have lived there for centuries. Burman provides example after example of tribal groups who have received title to less than one percent of their traditional lands—because the rest had greater than a 10 percent slope. “It should not cause any surprise that today some of these areas are hotbeds of political extremism,” he writes.

One example will give a flavor for his detailed analysis. One year, Orissa approached the International Fund for Agricultural Development for assistance in the Kalahandi district of the state during a drought. In response, the IFAD required the state to allow tribal peoples to practice cultivation on their traditional lands with slopes up to 30 percent. The state government, faced with the need for the funding, backed down and permitted the cultivation. But, it turned out later, the state only permitted this exception to the rules in that one district, for which the IFAD funds were requested. Otherwise, the state maintained its discriminatory policies against tribal people.

Burman investigated the possible scientific rationale for the 10 percent slope restriction, and found out that it was an attempt by the state government to discourage shifting cultivation. He maintains that the policy has no basis in scientific evidence. It was “like a modern-day witch-hunt,” he says.

The author describes two different approaches to land holdings in India: the Common Property Resources System (CPR), which is the basis for most land laws in India, and the Communal Land Holding System (CLHS), the approach taken by many of the tribal societies. The CLHS patterns that he describes are complex, but basically they secure the undifferentiated economic rights for whole communities, with rights provided for individuals within the purview of those communities.

Government bodies have often ignored the fact that individual rights in many tribal societies may be subsumed within community rights, though Burman notes a report from one expert group a few years ago that did acknowledge the existence of community land ownership. Rights for special functions and groups are often part of these communal systems. For instance, the Birhor have traditional rights to rope-making materials on lands owned by other communities, which derive economic benefits from different uses of their lands.

Tribal people have been deprived of their lands in many ways. One is through categorizing some of them as “primitive tribes,” a term that suggests that they have lower levels of intelligence. The term, he argues, implies that when people resist the development efforts of the state, they are basically doing so due to their own fault—because of their failings as “primitives.” Stigmatizing people as lesser beings—primitives—serves as a rationale for dominating them and taking away their property.

The author visited a Birhor community in Orissa in 2004 where the people had been removed from their forest and resettled in a hamlet on the edge of an agricultural area. Their new houses were, as he describes them, ramshackle leaf structures, somewhat similar to the leaf huts they had occupied in their homes in the forest. But in their homes in the woods they had fit harmoniously into the natural rhythms—“the whisper of the silence, the muse of the cosmos,” as he puts it. Their homes on the fringes of the fields emphasize their deprivation, their lack of status.

Burman asked one Birhor elder why their houses were not comparable to those of the nearby farmers. The man responded, “we cannot have it, because we are a primitive tribe.” An official accompanying the author explained that the Birhor could not have the better structures because they would have to apply to a separate official, a Primitive Tribes Development Officer, who had a special fund earmarked for helping the primitive tribes.

However, his office was 30 km away, so the Birhor in this village had no real way to access the benefits that might be available to them. Another of the many ways the government takes to deprive the tribal peoples of their rights. Burman does not indicate if the Birhor are in any way involved with the Naxalite violence.

Gertrude Enders Huntington, a prominent writer about the Anabaptist societies, will be speaking next Thursday afternoon in State College, Pennsylvania, as part of the community’s monthly First Thursday celebration. Her talk will be titled “My Amish Education: From Yale to Hired Girl to Grandmother.”

Huntington received her PhD from Yale and she is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. She has been doing research in Anabaptist communities—Amish, Hutterite, and Mennonite—since the 1950s. She is the author of numerous books that are landmark works in Anabaptist studies, including two that she co-authored with John A. Hostetler.

The Archives of the Penn State University Library acquired her papers in 2008. They include her published works, field notes, audiotapes, community histories, and other research materials. When they were combined with the John Hostetler papers that the Archives already owns, Penn State became an important center for research on Anabaptist studies. In addition, Huntington has investigated communal and intentional societies.

Her talk will be at 4:00 P.M. on November 5 in the Foster Auditorium of the Pattee Library on campus. The presentation will be free and open to the public.

Last week, the Chief Minister of Sikkim, Pawan Kumar Chamling, defended his decision to proceed with the construction of power dams in the northern part of his state, despite the opposition of many Lepcha people. The activist organization spearheading the agitation, Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), had agreed to stop protesting the dams with its relay hunger strikes only a few weeks before, at the instigation of the state government. But government representatives greeted ACT at the opening meeting by justifying the power projects.

Chamling said that the dams were essential for the broader needs of the people. His government wants to proceed with building the dams in order to ensure proper economic development and to generate revenues for Sikkim. He maintained that his government is taking into consideration concerns about the natural ecology of the affected region of northern Sikkim, the Dzongu, a sacred area for the Lepcha.

He argued that the Lepchas had elected a member of his party, the Sikkim Democratic Front, as their representative to the state legislature. But, he said, he has a lot of respect for the views of opponents, so he has invited ACT to work with members of his government to see if their differences can be ironed out. For its part, ACT is saying it is keeping its options open if the negotiations fail.

The Chief Minister said he had never intended to cause problems for the Lepcha, though the meeting last week was the first time he had met with ACT since their hunger strikes began more than two years ago. He asked the organization to forget what has happened and start negotiations afresh. “Whatever the State government can do to pacify your concerns, we will do,” he told the ACT representatives.

He asked ACT to place all of its concerns and grievances before the Chief Secretary so the negotiating committee can consider all options. He emphasized that the government is actively working to develop North Sikkim. Athup Lepcha, the president of ACT, said he hopes the state government will be willing to address the issues that the organization, and the Lepcha people in the Dzongu, are concerned about.

Ladakhis have gotten into making films, about their own society of course, and everyone seems to be getting into the act. Buddhist monks are writing screenplays, cops and taxi drivers are playing key roles, and crowds are pouring into opening night showings in Leh, the district capital. Bollywood is being banished.

Ladakhis are determined to use current technology to preserve and enrich their culture as best they can. A news story that appeared in the printed edition of the Christian Science Monitor two weeks ago—and posted to their website last week—quoted Dorjay Khanang, a founder of the original film studio in the region, Ladakhi Vision Group, on the need to preserve their culture. “The young generation nowadays [is] influenced by the Western people—what they eat, how they dress. Through these films, we are saying we have our own culture and tradition from ancient times in Ladakh.”

He defines traditional films as those that show people dressed in native costumes and speaking the Ladakhi language. But making films of gorgeous scenery can be challenging, since modern amenities such as telephone poles often seem to get in the way. In one film, Khanang explains, a phone pole eyesore was covered with Buddhist prayer flags so it would not be obvious to viewers. After openings in Leh, the movies are then shown in the villages using portable LCD projectors and speakers. The audiences love the films—they can understand them.

The Monitor indicates that the violence in Hollywood films does not resonate in Ladakh, with its primarily pacifist Buddhist culture. Similarly, the Indian films from Bollywood are about people from other parts of the country, who look, act and speak differently. The article does indicate that there are similarities to Bollywood films. Audiences shed tears over thwarted lovers due to their caste or ethnic divisions and stars sing many songs.

The mostly unpaid, amateur actors are learning to dance, sing, and help make fairly professional looking films, though the director of one film under production now, Tundup Dorjay, says he has a lot of work to do. He steps into one scene to show the lead actress how to dance properly. “She’s got a pretty face, and she’s interested in acting, and if someone is interested in something, we have to get them involved.” The films apparently seek to challenge accepted Ladakhi mores, to get the people to evaluate the ways they view family and human relationships.

The nascent Ladakhi film industry has its costs, but it also may be making profits soon. Not everything is free. One farmer charged a film company US$20 to do some filming in his fields, but then hit the company up again for the same amount if they wanted to continue to work. Many of the filmmakers are using old PCs and manuals they download from the Internet. They are evidently committed to their cause.

One documentary filmmaker was deeply inspired by amateur film makers who are starting to make movies. “We were very inspired by them,” he said. “And now people who watch [our] film say, ‘If they can do it, we can do it.’”

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Lepcha Organization Congratulates Itself

New Studies of the Chalakudy River

Legal Negotiations in Namibia over Invasion of Ju/’hoansi Territory

Tristan Islanders Featured on a Major American Radio Program

Paliyan Child Marriages [journal article review]

Hutterites Suffer Final Defeat in Photo ID Issue

Cheating Tribal Peoples in India

Prominent Writer on Anabaptist Societies to Speak Next Thursday

Negotiations Begin in Sikkim

Ladakhi Movies

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