Birds, Booze and Bandits: my time at the Las Vegas of Old India

Tribal women making maulwa, a liquor made from a flower

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to stay a night with an Adivasi (tribal) family while in the Bastar region, part of the eastern state of Chhattisgarh. Chhattisgarh, hewn from the giant state of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, only makes fleeting appearances in national news – typically because of an ambush of government troops by the Maoist rebels, commonly known as Naxalites (or ‘human wildlife’ by our guide) who inhabit the region’s labyrinthine forests. Thanks partly to this ongoing conflict, as well as a lack of any obvious man-made or natural attractions, international tourists are few and far between; indeed, I did not see a single white face during my time there. My reason for coming to this forgotten corner was to try to observe, and experience if possible, some Adivasi culture. 

Adivasis are the descendants of the original inhabitants of India, and are some of its poorest and most marginalised communities – an impressive, if dubious, accolade in its own way, given how rampant poverty is in India. Despite these problems, they remain proud guardians of their unique culture and way of life, steadfastly refusing, according to my pre-conceptions, to be assimilated and absorbed into modern, ‘New India’. 

A tribal women going to a haat (market)

Since independence in 1947, visions of a brighter future for India, unshackled from the ghosts of its colonial past, have been interminably bandied about by politicians, academics, rich and poor alike. John F.Kennedy’s ‘New Frontier’ of the early 60s might as easily have been conceived in the sub-continent; a 2004 election campaign slogan by the BJP, ‘India Shining’, while scorned by many, is just one of many recent examples of this aspiration. This ‘New India’ is envisioned as a nation which, having reluctantly welcomed capitalism and globalisation in the 1990s, finally manages to punch its weight on the international stage. Providing a brilliant example to the world of how to manage a culturally, ethnically and religiously disparate population of millions and millions, it can send missions into space while caring for its legions of poor and needy, while its acting and cricketing superstars are watched and adored around the globe. From my fleeting time in the village, it seemed that traditional tribal life was thankfully holding its own against the onslaught of New India, in all its globalising, modernising, homogenising glory. 

As the sun set on the arid Bastar plateau, the cockerel reeled away from the fight, its blood already mixing with the red earth of the arena. Vainly trying to maintain its balance, it slumped to the ground. Within a few moments it was dead, its stint as gladiator having provided rich entertainment to the hundreds of adivasis who had come to this illegal cockfight. As we watched this macabre yet enthralling spectacle, yet more cockerels were sent in to do battle. Feathers soon littered the arena, and crimson spots darkened the earth. Cockfighting is a brutal affair; a further three birds were to die during our time at the ‘Las Vegas’ of Bastar, as our guide Awesh succinctly put it. With the reek of mahuwa (the local tipple of choice), the sound of rolling dice and the yells of ecstatic and despondent punters rending the air, it was a fair description. 

Returning from the cockfight to the village where we would stay the night as guests of the ‘Nag’ (Snake) family, I started to take a look. The home of our hosts was, as expected, one-storied, its walls constructed from mud yet painted an eye-catching blue-green. Our host’s cockerel, which had lost its bout but thankfully not its life, strutted around unconcernedly, accompanied by a chicken and her flock of chicks. Goats wandered freely, except when threatening to graze on the dinner being cooked in the kitchen, its walls blackened by smoke. All of this tallied with my pre-conceptions. The satellite dish, perched atop the slanting tile roof, did not. 

The home of the Nag family

Later that evening, after a hearty dinner of rice, chicken and chutney (which I later understood to be made from the ants we had bought at a local market and gifted to our hosts), I talked to the eldest son in the family. Wearing torn jeans, a Tommy Hilfiger shirt and wielding a phone substantially better than my budget Nokia, Viru represented, in my hasty judgement, the imminent destruction of tribal culture in Bastar. The older generation, brought up on cockfights and mahuwa, probably viewed the local town of Jagdalpur, 40 minutes’ drive away, as their Mumbai. But if this man of nineteen had already shunned the traditional dress of his tribe, the limits to his world, broadened by the Internet and Bollywood film music on his phone, must have surely extended far beyond this small corner of Chhattisgarh.

Having introduced ourselves, I began to steer the conversation towards contemporary, popular Indian culture. It soon turned out that Viru was a keen fan of Shah Rukh Khan, the smoulderingly handsome veteran of many a camp, cheesy Bollywood flick. Cricket was undoubtedly the sport of choice. 

‘Do you like the IPL?’ [The Indian Premier League, an annual multi-billion dollar cricket tournament played in the Twenty20 format, featuring both emerging domestic talent and established Indian and overseas superstars, and watched around the world by millions.]

‘Of course’ replied Viru, who then proceeded to reel off each of the eight regional teams. When I asked which was his favourite side, he chooses the Delhi, Punjab and Rajasthan franchises. So far, despite his environment, Viru seemed very much a child of New India. Yet when I asked him what he wanted to do in the future, the response startled me. He said he wanted to become a bell-metal craftsman, like his father, creating representations of tribal deities and animals from scrap metal. His limited English and my non-existent knowledge of his language meant I was unable to find out whether Viru wanted to practice this traditional tribal craft for life. 

Although fascinating from my perspective as an outsider, tribal living should not be romanticised. Data released last month by the Socio-Economic and Caste Census revealed that the main breadwinner in over 90% of households in rural India earns less than 10,000 rupees a month, or £100. Dependence on subsistence agriculture, characterised by inefficient methods and rudimentary technology, and casual manual labour is the norm. Tribal households returned the worst data, with Chhattisgarh being one of the states with the greatest indicators of poverty. I wouldn’t have begrudged Viru, aware of the world out there beyond the wooden fence of his village, if he had wanted to leave his home and, like millions of other rural Indians, try to find a place for himself in New India. Yet I was encouraged that he identified in this crucial way with his heritage; whether this was out of respect for his father or because his ambitions did not amount to making the fateful plunge into New India I did not know. The well-maintained Honda motorbike he owned suggested that money might not have been the impediment. 

This aim of emulating his father, and the fact that his cockerel, a regular competitor in the arena, seemed to be his proudest possession showed for me, that although Viru might wear the garb of New India and indulge in its culture, his tribal heritage hadn’t been erased by any means. India is not a land frozen in time, contrary to the preconceptions of many foreigners who have and have not visited this ever-changing land. But, as V.S. Naipaul – the Trinidadian writer whose grandparents came to the Caribbean from India in the 1880s as indentured servants – put it in 1977 (and I think his words still hold true), ‘Sometimes Old India, the old, eternal India many Indians like to talk about, does seem just to go on.’