Archive of Reviews
February 3, 2005. Have the Birhor Been Roped into Social Changes? [book review].
Sudhir Kumar examines what he calls the “tribal geography” of the Birhor society in a new book issued recently in India.
Two-thirds of The Birhors of Chotanagpur Region (A Study in Tribal Geography) consists of a review of Birhor society based on the rather extensive literature, which the author cites carefully. He provides the geographical background of the people, who live on the Chotanagpur Plateau, a dissected region of Bihar state with forests, cleared agriculture, roads, industries, and settlements of non-Birhor peoples.
After several chapters of general discussion of the Chotanagpur region, Kumar focuses on the Birhor “primitive subsistence economy,” their settlement patterns, demographic features, and their cultural habits. For instance, we learn from his discussion of their economy—food gathering, hunting, trapping, fishing, and agriculture—that some are making a transition to more settled agricultural practices. Kumar confirms that rope-making is still a major source of funds for this society, as earlier writers had indicated. He also indicates that while some of the Birhor have settled into stable agriculture, others continue their nomadic gathering, hunting, and some shifting cultivation.
Unfortunately, on that point and some others the book was not well edited. On page 58 the author tells us that, “What is important about the Birhors is that the tribe has not carved out its habitat. A very few of them may have been settled but the great majority still servives [sic] on hunting and gathering and which involves movement form [sic] one place to another.” Fifteen pages later he tells us that “A section of the Birhor tribe is still roaming and wandering across the forest but a great majority of them have settled down spontaneously.” How many Birhor have abandoned their nomadic lifestyles and settled into permanent locations? It is still not clear from this book.
The author’s own research consisted of visits to seven Birhor villages in the Ranchi, Gumla, and Hazaribagh districts of Bihar state. The maps that he provides of each village, and the occupational information on each one, show that a large number of Birhor in some of the villages are engaged in agriculture and rope making, while others are primarily engaged in forest-based subsistence and rope-making. He doesn’t really reconcile the figures in his chapter 7 with the statement on page 58 cited above—which he told us applied to those same three districts.
In addition to logical lapses such as that, the author frequently uses very awkward written English. He also has a patronizing attitude toward the Birhor. For instance, he writes (p.59) about the fact that the Birhor prefer to continue their nomadic lifestyle rather than taking jobs in the quarries and mines that have been opened in the region. Their preference “may be attributed to the primitive perception of the Birhors and their close link-up with the flora and fauna of the area they roam across.” To the contrary, it could be argued that people who can live by a nomadic, hunting and gathering economy must have very sophisticated perceptions in order to survive in their natural environments.
Despite these criticisms, the book has a lot of useful information about the Birhor, especially in the sections where Kumar summarizes his own research in the seven villages. Construction materials of homes, peoples’ occupations, their religious beliefs—all of this is important for understanding a society. For example, the author describes briefly the Pentecostal Christianity that is making significant inroads into their society.
This book may offer very little about the conditions that foster peacefulness among the Birhor, but it still could be useful for anyone really interested in their society and culture.
Kumar, Sudhir. The Birhors of Chotanagpur Region (A Study in Tribal Geography). New Delhi : Rajesh Publications, 2004. Available internationally through various book services listed with Bookfinder.com.Back to Headlines, News and Reviews about Peaceful Societies.
January 2, 2005. “Our Souls Live upon the Trees,” Declares Batek Shaman [book review].
Arresting metaphors enrich a Batek shaman’s views of nature: “Our Souls Live upon the Trees. The forest is the veins and tendons of our lives.”
Lye Tuck-Po, in her new book Changing Pathways: Forest Degradation and the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia, describes a lengthy discourse one evening by a Batek shaman whom she calls “Tebu.” His comments, which he clearly hoped the anthropologist would spread to a wider audience, are poetic, eloquent, and profoundly important for understanding the Batek—and, more broadly, the human—dependence on the natural environment. Lye uses his comments as the springboard for her discussion of the Batek relationship with their forest.
Tebu describes the Malay practice of converting the forest into a monoculture of oil palm plantations: “they kill the world.” He adds, “we miss the times of peace. We remember, we miss. We show how.” The healthy environment of the past, he seems to be saying, fostered a state of peace. Furthermore, the Batek, with their continuing ability to live nonviolently in their forests, can show the vastly larger surrounding societies how to live peacefully.
Lye builds upon the Tebu speech, and her own recent observations, to develop an effective analysis of the Batek and their forest world. Many of the Batek patterns described earlier by Kirk and Karen Endicott remain quite valid: the Batek people still tend to retreat into the forest when they feel threatened by potential enemies, such as outside villagers and government agents. The forest is still a refuge that allows them to return to their freedom; it provides a venue for them to withdraw from others as a way of resolving conflicts.
The Batek and the Malay concepts of forest differ. For instance, Batek words for “lean-to” and “house” have very different meanings. Lean-tos are up-river, homes in the forest where Batek live. Houses are downriver where Malay slave raiders use to live. Houses are to be feared as symbols of negative associations and, frequently, misplaced trust. The Malay people clear the land in and around their villages so everything can be neat and ordered, with the forest kept as a boundary in the background. The Batek camps are in the forest, with only patches of vegetation “folded back” (Lye’s term) to make room for their lean-tos. With the lean-tos open on three sides, a Batek person steps out of the dwelling directly into the forest. There is no attempt to clean up the natural environment.
The Batek certainly have closer relations with the forest than they do with outsiders. Until about 100 years ago, Malay slave raiders came up the rivers and decimated their communities. Batek caution towards outsiders, even today, is understandable. While the Batek usually avoided confrontations in the past, Lye says that they “were capable of aggression,” (p.101), though she doesn’t provide further details.
Batek fear of outsiders persisted through the 1960s. They would flee settlements along the rivers at the sound of an approaching motorboat. These attitudes persist: they socialize their children to conflate fears of strangers with their fear of tigers. While barriers and suspicions are gradually diminishing in communities where Batek and Malays live close to one another, the Batek realize that they are always the subordinate people. Periodically tensions will flare up, particularly when the Muslim Malays become intolerant of the animist beliefs of their neighbors, who continue to resist converting to Islam.
Lye explains how the Batek prevent overcrowding and competition for forest resources by spreading out along the different tributaries of the rivers. They discuss their plans for future group movements with relatives among different foraging groups, so everyone is aware of the intentions of others and people can minimize competition for forest resources.
Peace, to the Batek, also means the absence of noise. They are attuned to forest sounds, which may carry signals of danger, so they habitually prefer a quiet environment. If they are congregating in a large group, many people will erect lean-tos off by themselves in the forest a distance away from others, so the dense surrounding vegetation will muffle sounds. Those living in the group campsites will individually leave in the daytime just to find solitude and quiet. Some adults even have a hard time talking with visitors, such as an anthropologist, if their own children are making a lot of noise nearby.
The author, who grew up in Malaysia, lives not too far from the forests of the Batek. She supplements her formal fieldwork nearly a decade ago with frequent return visits to see her friends. Thus, one of the virtues of this book is that it is based on very recent information. Many Batek continue living nomadically in forest camps, hunting and gathering in traditional fashions, and cherishing their peaceful relationships with the forest and each other. While they are very clearly aware of the material culture in the Malay villages that surrounds their forests, they prefer their hunting and gathering lifestyle. Changes continue to occur in Batek society, of course, but this book reassures us that much of the peaceful forest culture of the Batek persists.
This gracefully written, scholarly book deserves a wide readership. Lye’s sensitive, thoughtful analysis of one small society has implications for anyone concerned about human disregard for the environment or for peaceful human relationships. The author has quite effectively lived up to the expectations that the shaman Tebu placed on her. The pathways that she describes for forest life, for environmental sanity, and for peaceful coexistence should entice us all. The major pity is that the publisher is selling the book at a price that will be beyond the means of most private book buyers or libraries. Otherwise, it is a wonderful work.
Lye, Tuck-Po. Changing Pathways: Forest Degradation and the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia. New York: Lexington Books, 2004. $80.00. (Note that some sources list Dr. Lye’s surname incorrectly as “Tuck-Po.”)
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