Changes in Personal Practices and Beliefs

Quite apart from adjustments of ritual affecting Gond society in general, such as the abandonment of cow sacrifice under the pressure of Hindu opinion, there are also more spontaneous innovations arising from personal decisions. Thus the katora of the clan deities of the Sirpurkar branch of the Atram clan took the symbols of the persa pen to Parsewara and performed the annual rites there, whereupon the clansmen left behind in the Sirpur area started a rival cult.^[4] In the 1970s the clan priest and a group of supporters in Parsewara joined one of the reform movements which had originated in Maharashtra, and according to the new faith gave up the slaughter of animals and the eating of meat. Consequently, the ritual was altered and the katora broke and offered coconuts instead of sacrificing goats to his persa pen .

Individuals, too, take up new practices even if no other member of their local community shares their beliefs. Thus Atram Bhagwant Rao, the senior member of the raja family of Kanchanpalli, has adopted many Hindu rituals, which he performs as part of his private worship. In the courtyard of his house he grows a tulsi plant, and this he circumambulates every morning reciting prayers and sprinkling water. He also worships every day at the sanctuary outside the village, where an image of Hanuman, a stone Nandi, and a lingam stand on a small platform under a shelter. Apart from performing these rituals, he also observes various prescriptions of high-caste Hindus. Thus he no longer eats any meat and shuns alcoholic drinks, two taboos for which there is no justification in Gond tradition. Though Bhagwant Rao is highly respected and popular, there is no indication that any of the

[4] See The Gonds of Andhra Pradesh , p. 112.

villagers of Kanchanpalli follow his example. His religious views and observances are regarded as his personal affair, and he does not try to convert others to his beliefs, nor does anyone criticize him for what Gonds might easily regard as eccentricities. While the breach of a taboo compulsorily observed by the entire village, such as the taboo on leaving village land on certain days of communal rites, would expose the offender to being fined or at least seriously upbraided, no one cares if a member of the community observes extra restrictions.

A certain laxity in the observance of customary taboos is, however, noticeable. Thus tradition prescribes that before the celebration of Holi, known to the Gonds as Durari, no one should begin ploughing. Yet men who employ farm servants on an annual basis have developed a tendency to make them begin the ploughing even before Holi, allegedly because they do not want to waste labour for which they have paid.

The celebration of Holi itself has changed. Nowadays the young men and the children throw red powder at each other and also squirt coloured water at anyone who comes their way, just as is done in Hindu villages and towns. The younger people do not even know that this is an innovation, but old men confirmed my impression that it is a new practice insofar as Gonds are concerned. Previously they used the red petals of Butea frondosa blossoms to decorate the frames put up for Matral and Matri, then pounded the petals and threw the resulting red paste at each other.^[5]

As long as changes are neither drastic nor rapid, the actors themselves often do not realize that their conduct is altering, and few Gonds are able to say how far religious ideas have diverged from the traditional pattern. Yet one of the old headmen told me how he saw the developments which have taken place in Gond ideas and behaviour:

The worship of the gods remains the same, but now there is less devotion, and the prescribed procedure of the ritual is not observed as rigidly as it was in my youth. The young people do not follow our instruction with sufficient attention. Once tigers used to kill people, but since we are mixed up with Banjaras and Marathas men kill men, and we have to defend ourselves against people. In the old days by sheer force of devotion we could protect ourselves against tigers, but now there is not enough devotion to serve as protection against people.

Some changes in the traditional cult have been made necessary because of the intrusions of non-tribals. Thus in 1970 the immediate vicinity of the famous sanctuary of the goddess Jangu Bai at Parandoli

[5] See The Gonds of Andhra Pradesh , pp. 437, 438.

was forcibly occupied by Hatkars, Mahars, and Mangs, who had come from Udgir and Ahmedpur. As Parandoli lies in Rajura Taluk of Maharashtra, the many devotees of Jangu Bai in Andhra Pradesh could not prevent this defilement of sacred ground. All they could do was to move some of the sacred objects to Dodunda near Chorgaon, and there they set up a subsidiary cult centre which for the time being is safe from pollution.

A cult like that of the Gonds, which is not concentrated in a few great centres, but dispersed over innumerable small shrines and sanctuaries, each of which is of enormous sentimental importance for individual groups, is clearly vulnerable once tribesmen no longer live in compact tracts of country. Non-tribal newcomers, ignorant or even unmindful of the susceptibilities of the Gonds, often interfere by sheer accident with places and objects which appear inconspicuous and ordinary and are yet of vital importance to the religious feelings of the local tribesmen.

Whereas Hindu and Muslim settlers are almost totally ignorant of Gond religion, many Gonds are becoming increasingly familiar with Hindu ideas and practices. This is due not only to the influence of reform movements inspired by Hindu values and even of such concepts as moksa ("salvation"), but also to the Gonds' growing interest in pilgrimages to distant Hindu shrines. Encouraged by local Hindu entrepreneurs, many Gonds of Utnur Taluk have in recent years undertaken journeys to Tirupati, the great Vishnu temple in the extreme south of Andhra Pradesh. These entrepreneurs hire buses for the entire trip and charge the Gonds about Rs 120 per head for the return fare. Two people can visit Tirupati, do some sightseeing on the way, and get the god's blessing for about Rs 250. This is a substantial sum even for a well-to-do Gond, and it is surprising how many people go on such pilgrimages. No doubt the sense of adventure and the desire to gain prestige are motives as powerful as purely religious considerations. As the Gonds have never believed that their fate in the land of the dead depends on merit acquired in this life, the wish to gain merit can hardly rank high among the incentives to incur the expense of such a trip, but there is a belief that a deity as famous and powerful as the god of Tirupati can render his devotees assistance in their difficulties in this life.

The extent of the religious knowledge gained on such a pilgrimage is probably next to zero, but there are other channels through which some information on Hindu deities and mythological figures reaches the Gonds. Wandering sadhus occasionally visit Gond villages, and though they seldom preach, they do tell some stories in exchange for the food which they consume or are given as alms. Thus most Gonds have for some time been vaguely familiar with the main figures of the

Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is only in recent years that extracts from these epics have been translated into Gondi; for example, Atram Ramu and Kotnaka Jalim Shah of Gunjala translated a simplified version of the Ramayana from the Marathi of a printed pamphlet into Gondi and distributed handwritten copies to several villages. The same two Gonds also invented new terms for the numerals above seven, for which no words exist in Gondi, and another Gond of Gunjala, the headman Kumra Gangu, developed a special Gondi alphabet. Yet neither the new numerals nor the alphabet attained currency outside the village where the experiments were made. Far more successful is the Gondi translation of a Marathi folk drama based on the Ramayana, made by a Gond of Mahagaon. The translation is written in Devanagari characters, and sufficient copies, all written by hand, were made to enable actors of an amateur troupe to memorize their parts.

While I stayed in Kanchanpalli in 1976, I saw a performance of this troupe. The courtyard of the ashram school was used as a stage, and the school building as back stage, where the actors dressed and changed when they had to take over different parts. A band of drummers and cymbal players, established on the verandah of the school, accompanied the action throughout the play. At times the musicians sang bhajan -like songs, and the actors often joined in these songs. The musical side of the performance was somewhat repetitive and monotonous; there was no variation in tune or expression whatever episode was being enacted.

The actors were dressed in colourful costumes, and gods and kings wore sparkling headdresses, which in the light of a pressure-lamp looked expensive, though they were made of very cheap, glittering materials. The play lasted without interruption from 9 P.M. to 5 A.M., and the audience, made up of the villagers of Kanchanpalli, persevered in watching, impervious to the chill of the December night. As each actor took the stage, he began by singing a song in a bhajan tune, accompanied by the musicians and a small chorus. The parts of women were invariably taken by young men, and no woman joined in any of the dances which formed part of the drama. A joker who engaged the characters in bantering conversation provided a comic element throughout the play. There were long stretches of dialogue, but the actors never faltered. As it would have been a prodigious feat to memorize completely the parts of a play lasting eight hours, it must be assumed that there was a good deal of improvisation. Gonds are used to improvising, and the skits enacted at the Dandari festivities give them practice in enacting a known scene even if they do not remember the precise text.

Such folk dramas familiarize the Gonds with various themes of

Hindu mythology, but it would seem that the wholesale adoption of the Marathi pattern of a musical play is a mixed blessing. There is little spontaneity in either music or dialogue, and in expressiveness the acting is inferior to that of the actors in the improvised skits enacted at Dandari time. A displacement of the indigenous musical style of the Gonds by Marathi songs must result in an impoverishment of Gond artistic taste, but it is doubtful whether the Gonds themselves are aware of this danger.

As vehicles for the spread of Hindu ideas, such dramatic performances of parts of the Ramayana and Mahabharata certainly have an educational value, for if Gonds want to move as equals in Hindu society they must be able to understand references to figures and events depicted in the great Hindu epics.

Hindu missions, such as the Rama Krishna Mission, do not operate among any tribal societies of Andhra Pradesh, and there is no question of a formal conversion of any of the tribes to Hinduism. In the eyes of the Hindu majority, such a conversion would serve no purpose, for rightly or wrongly it is assumed that without any special effort the tribal populations of the state will in any case be assimilated to Brahminical Hinduism.

Even at the time of Muslim rule, Islam never attempted to proselytize either Gonds or any of the other tribes. Christian missions, on the other hand, particularly the Catholic Kerala Mission, have opened schools in Adilabad, and although so far few converts have been made, it is not unlikely that some of the children now in Christian schools will ultimately be converted and form a small Christian community within the tribal population. So far Gond reaction against such a possibility has been outspokenly negative, and in one case parents whose children had gained free places in a mission school were put under pressure to remove them, under the threat that in the event they did not do so, they and their families would be barred from intermarriage with other Gonds. Such intolerance is not general, but it indicates an anxiety that any prolonged influence of representatives of a foreign religion on Gond children might erode the cohesion of Gond society, already weakened by the economic domination of non-tribals.