Journal of Tribal Intellectual Collective India

ISSN 2321-5437

JTICI Vol.4, Issue 3, No.4, pp. 38 to 46, October 2017

Redefining Knowledge from an Adivasi Standpoint

Kanchan Thomasina Ekka

Introduction

Tribal peoples have traditionally been understood by western thinkers as the last fragments of a stage of cultural evolution and this is so called the primitive stage of human development. Indeed the tribals are stereotyped as primitive people in western social thought. May be they do so to compare and congratulate themselves to the progress they have made. The British conceived themselves as being in the echelon of civilization and situated the “tribes” as one who is at the beginning phase of evolution. ( bodhi s.r, 2016). In many western anthropological writings the word Primitive is used to define Tribes which itself is a colonial construct. Tribes have been and still remain passive recipients of British and now upper caste anthropological constructions. (bodhi .s.r 2016).

The word Primitive segregates the Tribes from being in contemporary times and shows them as people from different time or era. Many western anthropologists do not treat tribes as contemporaries. The primitive is further conceived as having a pre-scientific perspective. Thus the attitude of many philosophers is that tribes must represent the stage of human development in which superstition and ignorance reigned supreme. According to them tribes have no language but dialects, no religion but superstition, no culture but folklore, no name but numbers. Hence tribes for long have been excluded from the process of knowledge production and treated as case studies in different studies.

What Western Thinkers thinks about Knowledge:

“Knowledge is power. That commonplace applies to anthropology as much as to any other field of knowledge. But commonplaces usually cover up for not so common truths. Anthropology’s claim to power originated at its roots. Nowhere is this more clearly visible, at least once we look for it, than in the uses of Time anthropology makes when it strives to constitute its own object-the savage, the primitive, the other.”(Fabian, 2014)

These are the meta narratives of modernity ( Englund and Leach 2000) that deftly encompass and naturalize many western notions commonly conceptualized with capital letters, the relentless search for truth, the inevitable triumph of reason over superstition, the rise of the modern and demise of tradition. Yet no longer can we correctly suppose indeed we never could that the “primitive” is one step behind “the modern”. (Todd Sanders, 2003) For being within modernity and being about modernity are not after all logical equivalent ( Englund, 2000).

The western form of knowledge is expressed in a formula. The one most used is knowledge = `justified true belief. In western philosophy the study of knowledge “epistemology“, which derives from the Greek word episteme which means knowledge and logos, means reason or account. This account purports to lay out the defining features of knowledge, the substantive conditions of knowledge as well as the limits of knowledge. In large part it is in these areas alone that the western philosophical debate regarding knowledge arises the analysis of knowledge the source of knowledge and the viability of skepticism. Western philosophy has always had skeptics in one form or another who claim that certain things cannot be known. In this way many issues regarding knowledge are generally left unquestioned

Now in western philosophy it is generally thought that truth and knowledge are not contributing to our ends but rather are ends in themselves. Truth and knowledge are capable of guiding and shaping our actions rather than being guided and shaped by it. But for Tribal knowledge this is clearly not the case. Knowledge is not a thing in the world that we can discover. Knowledge is not such that if we just peer into the world long enough or just sit and think long enough it will come to us in all of its unabated glory.( Anne Waters, 2004) Knowledge is shaped and guided by human actions, endeavors, desires, and goals. Knowledge is what we put to use. Knowledge can never be divorced from human actions and experience.

Lived Knowledge:

For Indigenous people knowledge is knowledge in experience, or if knowledge does not simply amount to this it is at least the most important knowledge. Knowledge in experience is the kind of knowledge tribes carry with them. This is the kind of knowledge that allows us to function in the world to carry on their daily tasks to live their lives. This knowledge is embodied knowledge. And best we can call this knowledge “lived knowledge”.

In order to get clear about the nature of such knowledge let us look at a rather simple example. Suppose a person learned to play a song on a Mander (musical instrument of Jharkhand)without the ability to read music. He practiced the song many times after hearing it played by someone else until he reached the point where he could play it himself. He plays the song perfectly but could not say the first thing about the notes, the key, the time and many other propositions regarding the song itself. If his desire were to play the song then as playing the Mander is concerned his knowledge is complete. For indigenous community knowledge is just like this it is gained from experience and used in it.

Indigenous Philosophy is quite simple that we Human Beings are the integral part of entire universe including our Earth. But the study of Genesis of the Bible is stark contrary to the Indigenous Philosophy. If we examine the particular text of the Bible, we find that a person before his/her conversion to Christianity does not believe in the Dominion Philosophy in which human beings are superior to other animals, living creature and the earth. Genesis 1:26 says”….and let them have dominion over fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air and over all wild animals….”.

Here is one story which Mundas believe to be true. In the beginning of Time, the face of the Earth was covered over with water. SingBonga, the Sun God, brooded over the waters and the first beings that were born were a Kachu or tortoise, a Karakom or crab, and a Lendad or leech. Sing-Bonga commanded these first-born of all animals to bring Him a lump of clay (hasa) from out of the depths of the primeval Ocean. The tortoise and the crab by turns tried their skill, but in vein. The persistent leech, however, met with better success. It succeeded in finishing out a bit of clay from underneath the deep. And with this clay, Sing-Bonga made this Ote-Disum, this beatiful earth of ours. And, at His bidding, the Earth brought forth trees and plants, herbs and creepers, of manifold varieties. Sing-Bonga next filled the earth with birds and beasts of all sorts and sizes. And now happened the most memorable incident of all. The bird Hur or swan laid an egg. And out of this egg came forth a boy and a girl, the first human beings. These were the progenitors of the HoroHonko-the sons of men, as the Mundas still style themselves. Singbonga first fashioned two clay figures, one meant to represent a man and the other a woman. But before he could endow the figures with life, the horse apprehensive of future trouble from them trampled them under its hoofs. In those days the horse had wings and could move about much faster than now. When Singbonga found that the horse had destroyed his earthen figuresof men, he first created a spider and then fashioned two more clay figures like those destroyed by the horse. He then ordered the spider to guard the figures against the horse. The spider wove its net round the two clay figures in such a way that the horse could not destroy them again. Then Singbonga imparted life to the figures which thus became the first human beings. They were called respectively Lutkum Haram and LutkumBurhi. (Narration from field).

Handiya or rice beer is one such drink that is common among all the tribes living in Jharkhand. The term Handiya probably originates from the term “ Handi” meaning an earthen pot in which hadiya is fermented. While some have argued this drink to be the major causes of the backwardness of Adivasis it holds deep cultural significance within the community and is consumed during all festivals and considered auspicious. (http://www.adivasiresurgence.com/handiya-an-adivasi-delicacy/) It is customary to offer Handiya during certain rituals. Legends has it that Lutkumbudha ( ancestors of Munda tribe) was tired after a day’s work. Seeing him tired Singhbonga( God) gave the herb and asked him to mix it with rice which would become handiya. The drink would help him get rid of tiredness from everyday work, later he handed over this herb to his clan. At first handiya was consumed during festivals and if someone fell sick. During festivals like Sarhul and Karma priest would sanctify it and then distribute it to important people.

It is in this way that stories ceremonies and prayers speak the truth. “The pre historic experiences are generally found captured in varied narratives of people. They are orally expressed and communicated as knowledge from one generation to another through songs and stories.” ( Alex Akhup, 2015). All aspects of human expression have something to tell us about the best way for us to live. In this way they are all philosophy. And just as indigenous medicine is best described as magic, philosophy is describe as poetry.

The passing of every old man or woman means the passing of some tradition, some knowledge of sacred rites possessed by no other. “ Each of these processes is manifested in the lived struggles of these identities and in every phase, as they come into contact with external forces that are colonial in nature, there is an interplay of processes especially in the domain of knowledge, power, politics and ethics”.( Alex Akhup 2015) Consequently the information that is to be gathered, for the benefit of future generations, respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost for all time.

Tribal stories ceremonies and prayers at once speak and create a moral universe, or practical lived knowledge. This claim is not to romanticize but rather to articulate a theory of knowing through synthetic processes. All knowledge comes from the life world and must return to it.

Experiences in a natural attitude daily concern are understood by reflection and description of how we are directed to the world. Thus the way we get at knowledge and the techniques we use to collect evidence are directly related to our image of reality and the way we think we can know it.(N. Jayram 1989). Tribes have the ability to refer to the natural attitude in order to understand the world and their place in it. Tribal epistemology would retain the natural attitude in all of their affairs. “It is not “I think, therefore I am,” but rather “we are therefore I am”. An understanding of all that we see and experience is accounted for and passed down through generations in the art of story and ceremony. Tribal philosophy teaches us that life and knowing are not permanent. To step out of this circle of life is to forget our relations what our elders teach us in the stories of our ancestors”.(Anne Waters, 2004, )

Tribal philosophy is concerned with the right road for humans to walk in relations to all that is around them. “Indigenous nations of the world sit on much of the planet’s remaining natural resources. In itself this is a clear expression of the long term viability of their traditional values and practices of stewardship, reciprocity and integration with nature. It also confirms a highly advanced knowledge of how to be in this world the rules, limits and practices of sustainability.”(Mander J, 2004). Tribal Philosophy is from the concrete actions of people in a well defined physical setting. Tribal elders and holy people did a great deal of speculation but it was regarded as a pastime, reflecting on experience and did not substitute for the experience itself. They received a hearing and their counsel was more often than not heeded primarily because people recognized that if nothing else they had a lifetime experience during which they were presumed to have understood what their various experiences meant. Long before the word “conservation” was coined, tribal peoples developed highly effective measures for maintaining the richness of their environment. They have sophisticated codes of conservation to stop over hunting and preserve biodiversity.

Yet it’s often wrongly claimed their lands are wildernesses even though tribal communities have been dependent on, and managed them for millennia. Even the world’s famous “wildernesses” including Yellowstone, the Amazon and the Serengeti are the ancestral homelands of millions of tribes people, who nurtured and protected their environment for many generations. The lives of tribal people across India are being destroyed by tiger conservation. Communities which have coexisted with tigers for generations are threatened and bullied into giving up their land. This is ill legal, and thousands of families are being left in abject squalor.

The Baiga Tribes who have evicted in the name of tiger conservation, don’t hunt tigers, but consider them their “little brothers”. Before, everything was the jungle. We were the jungle, the jungle gave us everything. We were happy. We were strong, we were fit. Now its all closed and we don’t get anything. We’re not strong anymore. We are not healthy anymore. It’s our jungle. We should be protecting it.( Sakru Dhurway, Baiga Man).

Indigenous community deeply rooted in their culture and history in which these natural resources become the part of their narratives. Dominic Leo (2016) says that when his indigenous identity and spirituality, which constitutes the core part of our human’ness’ is forcibly and violently snatched away, the question of ‘who am I’ or ‘who are we’ becomes the question.

Tribal Philosophy vs Western Knowledge:

Deloria (2004) in the Philosophy and The Tribal Peoples queries whether the discipline of philosophy could keep the equality and respect of two parallel ethical systems or whether tribal philosophy is so much of threat to the status quo. A western concepts wants to subsume the experiences rough off the edges and verify the general propositions. The situations which exist everywhere are that tribal group of philosophers when tries to speak is with that of western philosophical traditions. What then are the necessary requirements or ideological context in which a Tribal philosophy can be created. First in considerations must be the deeply held belief that there is something of value in any tribal tradition that transcends mere belief and ethnic pride. Instead of developing an idea of cultural movement that has primitive at one end of the spectrum and modern at the other great care must be taken to identify tribal societies and western thinking as being different in their approach to the world but equal in their conclusions about the world. In other words Tribal philosophy must examine some of the same phenomenon as do western thinkers and must demonstrate that their perspectives and conclusions make sense. Western science and philosophy have generally worked with syllogisms in the belief that some kind of knowledge can be derived from this kind of thinking. For example this process works as: Socrates is a man; all men are mortal: Socrates is mortal. The tribal philosophy would be since

they have not met all men but infer from the limited number they have observed hence the statement is true. Once they met Socrates and verified that he was a man like them hence Socrates is mortal. But for Vine Deloria, (2004) the question of all men’s mortality is still open for the indigenous philosophy on the possibility that some men are immortal but have not yet been encountered.

How we see the world defines how we act. In indigenous philosophy we all are related as individual as a part of kinship based community and as part of nature as balance. In most western thought society is seen as aggravated self interested individual connected by competition with each other over limited resources creating fear, insecurities, hopelessness, scarcity of spirit. Indigenous society sees prosperity in nature resources are abundant shared collaboration foster environmental stewardship and balance with nature.In the western worldview nature is feared and its value based on hierarchy in which everything on earth ranked mineral plant animal with human on top dominating everything below. In the indigenous worldview humans are of equal part vibrant interconnected whole. No communities of peoples on this earth have been more negatively impacted by the current global economic system than the world’s remaining 350 million indigenous peoples. And no peoples are so strenuously and, lately, successfully resisting these invasions and inroads.

Both the world view has very different economic system. The dominant western market economy is driven by assumption of scarce resources, intensive centralised production, and individuals’ greedy appetite of accumulating. By this standard market economy works i.e 40% of the world’s resources are owned by only 1% of population. Concepts like “productivity,” “competitiveness,” “efficiency,” and “engineering” dominate the discourse and practice of global economics and science.

The indigenous economy likes it worldview interdependent decentralised production extensive use of resources promoting responsible management of resources. Abundance kinship belief in a enoughness encourages sharing and collaboration. Kinship and reciprocal obligation insures everybody needs are met fairly and equitably prerequisites for sustainability. The health of the economy is measured by the health of the whole .the health of the market economy is measured by GDP, the more we produce and consume the better the economy. The impact of GDP brings the physical and notional cost of warfare, pollution threatening one third of the world animal species, irrelevant externalities outside the system not even making it under the balance sheet and unsustainable balance of system where scarcity of resources is self fulfilling prophecy. There is an alternative, indigenous people territory expands 24% of the earth land surface but it is home of 80% of earth’s biodiversity. It is not a coincidence that in indigenous culture balance and harmony exists together. Very few studies like that of Prof Xaxa,( 2008) says that lands and tribes are inseparable. He argues that land, forest, village, community and territory are integral to indigenous community. For them Nature is essentials for survival, production and protection together and economic success in sustainability creating well being for all. Traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples concerning medicinal plants, aspects of biodiversity, and other cultural domains is increasingly targeted by corporations seeking to appropriate that knowledge for commercial purposes, usually without the informed consent of the indigenous communities, and without them receiving any benefits.

Indigenous people’s life models and traditional practices offer insights to create alternative economy which promotes balance with nature and communal harmony. They have different worldview and approaches to understand society. They are the owners of natural resources sit around the oil wealth, have homes in expensive timber forests, so their everyday lives is a struggle the way they want to live it. Everybody on earth has a different world view and different understanding of being human. Indigenous societies have achieved this and the point is true of native peoples in all parts of the world, even those who are otherwise quite different from one another by tending toward a formula that includes such shared primary values as reciprocal relationships with nature, economies of limits and balance, the central importance of community values and collective ownership, and their integration into and equality with the natural world. These values are mostly opposite to those of the dominant society. So even after millennia of living in a place, the resources are still there, though they call like sirens to voracious corporate actors, whose existence depends upon maximizing short-term growth and profit. Faced with these aggressions, native peoples are now actively resisting. The mainstream society and thinking is trapped in the narrative that it’s based on the model of humanity which is actually leading to the end of the world. “ This is where indigenous worldview, the meaning and value it holds for land takes a position of prime importance at a time when our earth is heading towards ecological disasters and crises”(bodhi,s.r 2014). Indigenous approaches should be taken seriously as their so many practical knowledge they offer us. Its not about taking their whole life world into our lives but to have sense and eyes and ears open to understand their different strategies.

The world is not empty and meaningless, bearing only truth and facts. People participate in meaning making of the world. It arises in the intersection between human and all that is around him. How he behaves with it gives different shapes to the world.

Tribes propose different model of humanity in which they treat earth not as commodity but as social agents. Unlike mainstream society they don’t treat nature and culture as different. The nature environment resources are not outside their interactions it is like any other social interactions for them and hence it leads to different kind of intervention with the nature. This can be scientifically proven that the areas with greater diversity in the world are also the places where indigenous groups of people stay.

Conclusion:

The fundamental confusion about knowing and collecting information is that to know is to synthesize the information in living. The task of indigenous philosophy might be to integrate the past with the present in looking and planning towards future collective action. This philosophy can only be kept alive by oral methods yet through these methods we can help make connections with traditional academic philosophy and philosophers. Indigenous traditions necessarily “personify the conflicts of modernity, the ways in which foreign forces invade local worlds, turning ordinary people into monsters, and endangering established lifeways”.( Comaroff 1994)

Colonial and postcolonial governments and their institutions of churches, schools, and media tried to teach us to despise ourselves and our cosmologies, traditions, customary laws, and life ways. They trained indigenous peoples, including academician, researchers and myself, to look at the world through the eyes of the colonizers. Today, the promoters of economic globalization, the neocolonizers, use the overwhelming pressure of homogenization to teach us that indigenous political, economic, cultural, and knowledge systems are obstacles to their “progress.” Industrialized peoples look upon the principles that guide indigenous peoples’ daily lives as backward, unrealistic, or hopelessly romantic. In response, we have had to consciously reclaim and relearn our traditional worldviews and religions to strengthen our bid for our rights to our identity, our culture, and our territories. What is crucial in this process of knowledge production along this framework is not to be platonic rather pave ways for emancipation act as a process of decolonization, transformation process challenge the existing narratives, mobilization, reclaiming the lost space and knowledge towards social justice.( Raily.R.Ziipao, 2015).

What we can know about the world and ourselves as part of that world has not yet came as dissertation on tribal philosophy. When Tribal academician come before professional philosophers and request entrance into this professional field, the vast majority of them will have virtually no experiences of the old traditional kind. The majority of them would begin in the same place as western thinkers wishing to write on Tribes. bodhi s.r (2016) opines that till such time that there is collective realization that epistemological emancipation requires epistemic disobedience, it is impossible to reconstruct tribal epistemology and engage in any process that can qualify as emancipator. R.Kamei (2016) states “the role of academicians from indigenous communities, is to bring out narratives, and define their worldviews, history, experiences by taking into account issues concerning our land, forest, resources, culture, tradition, feminism, sexual identity, religion etc”. The major difference would come in the degree to which indigenous philosophers would take their own tradition seriously and literally. If tribes themselves give their own heritage the respect it deserves there would be amazing work on knowledge which western philosophy have not even touch.

References:

• Alex Akhup,2015, Identities and their struggles in North East, Kolkata, Adivani Publications
• bodhi,s.r, 2014, Laying the concept and frame : Philosophical Foundations of Constitutional Guarantees address at the International seminar on Indian State and Indigenous/Tribal peoples: Revisiting philosophical foundations of constitutional guarantes. ( unpublished)
• bodhi.s.r, 2016, . In bodhi s.r. (ed.), Social Work in India . Kolkata: Adivaani Publications.
• Comaroff, Jean, 1993, Introduction in Modernity and its malcontents: Rituals and power in postcolonial Africa, Chicago, University of Chicago press.
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• Jayaram, N, 1989, Sociology: Methods and theories, Madras, Macmillian India Limited.
• Kamei, Richard, 2016, Community Dialogue: Towards an Organic Tribal/ Adivasi Theory, In bodhi s.r. (ed.), Social Work in India. Kolkata: Adivaani Publications.
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• Mander J; Tauli Victoria, 2006; Paradigm Wars, University of California Press, London.
• Smith Linda, 2012; Decolonizing Methodologies, Zed Books Limited.
• Todd Sanders, 2003, Reconsidering Witchcrafts: Postcolonial Africa and Analytic Uncertainties, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol.105, No2 ( Jun,2003),pp 338- 352
• Vine Deloria, Jr ,2004, in Anne waters, edt; American Indian Thought, Blackwell Publishing.
• Xaxa, Virginius 2008, State, Society and Tribes : Issues in Post Colonial India , New Delhi, Pearson Longman
• Ziipao, Raily Rocky, 2015, in Identities and their struggles in North East, edit Alex Akhup Tribes and Tribal Studies in North East Deconstructing Colonial Epistemology from a Naga Perspective, in Identities and their struggles in North East, edit Alex Akhup , Adivaani publication.

JTICI Vol.4, Issue 3, No.4, pp. 38 to 46, October 2017

Kanchan Thomasina Ekka is Doctoral Scholar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Copyright @ 2017 adivaani, kolkata