4. Devil’s fruit and movement

Ramchandra Ghatal was the oldest amongst his siblings who included four sisters and three bothers. Ramchandra’s father, like most other Warli men was extremely fond of toddy. The Warli community as a whole, has developed sophisticated systems to distill local alcohol from various fruits and flowers like the Mahua, date palms, coconuts, figs, dates or even mangoes, as they would be found in abundance in the nearby forests. There would be a contraption made out of two earthen pots, joined by a hollow bamboo tube, one to put the fruit to be distilled into alcohol, and the other to collect the vapours of the alcohol. The toddy was an essential element within all Warli festivals. It was also used during birth and death ceremonies. There would be no social stigma attached to drinking. Both women and men would enjoy alcohol after their marriage from time to time during festivals and ceremonies. Ramchandra would watch carefully as his father would roll up a beedi from the leaves of a shid tree. He had once seen his father reject the proposal to sell his bullock because the buyer would not smoke any beedi. His father believed that if a person would not smoke or drink, they would load the animal to horrible exertion as they would not know

how to relax. Often in the season after the harvest, there would be very little work on the fields. This was the time to tap alcohol from the date palms. A common Warli saying goes:

मार मासली न पी सूर , पानी आहे घना दूर । (Catch the fish and drink wine, rains are a long time from now)

Right from the collection of the Mahua flowers, to the final alcohol, the whole process would be very time consuming. In times when there would be a marriage ceremony in the household, it would be expected to provide other invitees to the ceremony with alcohol. It would never be possible for a single household to distill so much alcohol all at once. They would therefore have to rely on other smaller wine shops set up by the Irani settlers in the vicinity of the village. The Irani immigrants would start small shops selling bootlegged liquor to the Warli. The Warli families hardly depended on any jobs to provide for any monetary gains. Most of their nutrient requirements would be fulfilled by the virtue of small farms and the forest. This would leave them with no cash at their disposal to buy alcohol from the Irani shopkeepers. This would mean, that the Irani shopkeepers would give out the alcohol on credit to the Warli families. The Warli, with no other asset, would have to mortgage their lands to the Irani shopkeepers. With a failure to payback the money to the shopkeepers, hoards of Warli households would lose their lands, making the Irani the landlords. In return, the families, having lost all the means of production, would have to rely on the new landlords to find work on the fields as bonded labourers. If a Warli household would work on the field, it would eventually end up paying back the loan to the landlords. This would mean that the landlords would have to set the Warli families

free. The landlords would then have to pay much more to employ the same families back on the fields. This would necessitate the landlords to keep the families in continuous debts. A Warli family was patriarchal in nature. The father, being the oldest member of the household would wield the largest influence on any decisions regarding the household. The mother would be consulted sometimes, but the final decision would always rest with the father. The children within the household would have no control over any decision making. This would mean that the father would have access to all the money that would be brought home. The Warli men would be enticed into purchasing more alcohol at cheaper rates than the rate of production by the landlords. In return, they would ask the men to bring their families to the fields to work. As the men would get addicted to alcohol, the families would sink further in debt. Generations of Warli men have been subjected to alcohol addiction to lead their families into colossal indebtedness. The Irani landlords, along with a few other Hindu Brahmin and Muslim landlords formed a powerful lobby in this region. They realised that it would be much more profitable to cultivate and export chikoo instead of rice paddies. They started converting the rice paddies into chikoo1 orchards. According to one local, ”Chikoo came to Indian shores through an Irani foreman working in a thermal power plant in Guatemala, Central America, or through Cawasji Patel, an Irani seth2 , from a nursery in the Hanging Gardens of Bombay, and planted it in his farm in Dahanu.” Irani migration to western India can be traced back to the century when Zoroastrian Iranis fled from Iran to seek refuge from Islamic rule. Parsi migration to India’s western shores during the 20th

1 chikoo or Sapatu/Sepota/Sapodilla - a small brown fruit. 2 seth translates to a landowner

century acted as a precedent for the Iranis, both of whom followed the same faith. Both these communities had come to amass huge wealth in colonial India albeit in different ways and different scales. Although the Iranis had not been able to accumulate as much wealth as the influential Parsis who were shipbuilders and middlemen for the East India Company, they had managed to become seths by amassing land for chikoo cultivation. Thus Irani landowners would employ Warli families such as Ramchandra Ghatal’s to work on their farms. The Warlis would work as daily wage labourers on these fields, in conditions of immense turmoil. Warli women especially, were subjected to tremendous amounts of sexual abuse. At times, when a Warli family would fail to pay back the money taken for a marriage, the landlords would keep the newly married Warli woman as a concubine. They were called lagnagadi, literally meaning a marriage servant. The Warli people could find no voice to lay claim to the lands which belonged to them in the erstwhile times. They were weakened, both physically due to the alcohol abuse and morally due to the continuous subjugation. Every landlord would have a henchman on his farm, who would round up all the Warlis and pay them at the end of the day. 3These henchmen at times were Pathans, tall and hefty people who would incite fear in the Warli. If a Warli man or a woman was caught stealing money or fruits, they would be severely beaten or even killed. The small brown fruit, which led to this ordeal for the Warli would therefore be referred to as the devil’s fruit. Tired of the hardships on the chikoo farms, Ramchandra decided to escape the chikoo farms and migrate to an area, situated faraway in the mountains of Jawhar. Ramchandra Ghatal must have

3 Godavari Parulekar, Jevha Maanoos Jaaga Hoto (Awakening of man), 1970, Popular Prakashan, p. 88

been in his late teens or early twenties when he got married to Sumati, a Warli woman from Dabhlon, a small Warli village to the south of Talasari. How he came to know about this particular patch of land is a mystery. We can only assume that some village elder might have told him about this land. This land had a perennial river flowing around it and a forest in it’s backyard. It was less fertile in comparison to the coastal villages. But it could be worked upon to make paddy farms. Ramchandra was a strong young man. He decided to settle there. Although this region was far from being as developed as the coastal villages or the villages at the foothills of the Sahyadris, there was one remarkable feature. Warli people here suffered from much lesser debts as opposed to the coastal and central counterparts. This was owing to a lesser number of seths and savkars in this region as the region had very poor road connections due to the terrain of the hills. The landlords would hesitate to advance a loan to people from this region because the people here were much poorer. This meant that there would be little debt, but they would starve due to the smaller produce of crop. The land belonged to a Muslim landlord, who had received the land as a gift from the Mukne dynasty of Jawhar. The Jawhar or Jowar (now archaic) state was one of the few states to have a ruler who didn’t hail from a dominant Kshatriya caste. It is believed to have been founded by Dulbarrao Mukne, a Mahadeo Koli by caste, after having captured nearly 22 forts and expanding his patrimony. Sultan Mohammad bin Tughlaq recognised the Jawhar State on the fifth of June of 1343, and conferred the title of Raja Nimshah to him. His father being a Poligar,4 had taken the possession of the fort of Jawhar before

4 Poligar was the feudal title for a class of territorial administrative and military governors appointed by the Nayaka rulers of South India (notably Vijayanagara Empire, Madurai Nayakas and the Kakatiya dynasty) during the 16th–18th centuries.

him. The Mukne dynasty joined hands with the Marathas, but soon also separated from the Maratha rulers. This led to a lot of skirmishes over land leading to political instability. Some stability was resumed within the land after the British administration, as the state of Jawhar became a part of the Bombay Presidency under the British Raj as it was included in the Thana Agency. 5The British government recognised the non-forest lands given as gifts as private property. Ramchandra could cultivate the land as he wished over here without having to worry about the henchmen of the Irani landlords. He got into a contract with the Muslim landlord to cultivate rice on his land as a leaseholder. He had to pay the Muslim landlord in the form of Khandvari. Khandvari was a form of tax collected by the landlord in the form of grain cultivated by the farmer on the field. Ramchandra would have to pay about 2 khands of rice and nagli each, and one khand of other grain he would cultivate on his field. This was roughly half of his entire year’s produce. This khandvari would continue till 1988, when the land titles were shifted in the name of the Ghatal family from the Muslim landlord because of the Tenancy Act of 1957. This was a common trend. The Warlis would cultivate rice corn on lands leased from the landlords. They would not know the area of land under tillage. The unit of measurement to calculate the area under cultivation was to count the number of times it would be ploughed. Agriculture was not a choice for the Warli. It was not even a profit making enterprise either. The Warli have primarily been agriculturists since times immemorial. It is believed however that the Warli folk weren’t the most skilled agriculturists in comparison to the Dhodia and the Kukna tribes living in the same region, who were

5 Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency. Thana District. Parts I and II. Superintendent of Government Printing, Bombay, 1882

supposedly much more industrious and prudent. Being agriculturists, the Warli would hold the soil and the crop in great spiritual reverence. Money wouldn’t exist as we know it. The form of currency would be rice corn. They would exchange rice corn for purchasing salt, dried fish and some such things; things that would not be produced in their lands. The Warli would end up paying much more in proportion to the goods received in return. It was never a cash rich community anyway. The cattle that the Warli would require would be hired from the landlords. Even that would be paid for in terms of rice corn. The bullocks would be hired from the landlords every year in monsoon. Monsoons were times for the tillage. The landlords would impose conditions on the use of the bullocks. The Warli would have to take proper care of the animals. They would have to be well fed and healthy when they would be returned to the landlords. The Warli would also have to give some sundry produce like the vaaluk, a type of locally produced cucumber. They would have to pay upto two maunds6 rice corn to get a single bullock. On the hillier terrains of Jawhar, the soil wouldn’t be so fertile as the soil near the coastal areas. As a result, the produce would be lesser than that on the coastal areas. The water table would be much deeper as well. There was no system for tanks to store water during the harsh summers. This would result in the Warli using varieties of rice that were coarse and rough. They wouldn’t be able to afford using a finer variety of rice gain like the Kolam, which requires more water for its production. They would plant only the ninety day rice varieties.7 A small produce would lead to an exhaustion in the supply for rice seeds

6 1 maund = approximately 37kg 7 Rice is grown in many different ways. The different varieties of rice are based on the number of days it takes for rice corn to mature. So, a variety of rice which takes only ninety days (three months of the peak monsoon-June, July and August) would only be possible to cultivate within this landscape.

for the next year. This would mean that they would have to depend on the landlords for lending them rice seeds. A borrower would have to pay double the rice seeds as interest on the capital borrowed. All this was about to change by the 1940’s with the political mobilisation that would take place against the savkars and the seths to free them from the clutches of the landlords. As the harvest season would come to a closure, the threshing process would begin almost immediately. Each member of the family would be involved in this whole cultivation process. The harvest season would culminate into Dussera, the last day of the nine day festival of the Goddess Himai. It would end in some rituals comprising of music and dances. The Warli would thank the gods for a good yield. The rice would be stored in a cool and dark space in the hearth of the house, in massive barrels made out of cane and bamboo fibres called the kanagi. Generally it would be sealed from top with dried Saagwan leaves for a period of about two years before being used for consumption. By the time it would be around November, as the Warli would finish the threshing, new work opportunities to earn some cash would emerge. Grass growing on the varkas lands8, would mean that it could be used as fodder for the cattle. It was converted to being a commodity by the landlords. They would employ cheap labour to get this grass cut and stack them into bundles. This would be sold to the dairies in Mumbai.9

8 Fallow lands generally found outside villages, on mountain slopes where cultivation is not possible. It is considered as a waste land in the Forest Act of 1878 and is claimed as a property of the Imperial crown. 9 There was a strike organised by the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha (affiliated to the Communist Party of India-Marxist) in 1945 to demand for higher rates from the landlords (about Rs. 2.5/day). The strike led to a shortage of fodder in the dairy. As a result, the Milk commissioner of Bombay had to enter into negotiations with the Grass traders association. The strike was eventually called off with the traders raising the wages.

The grass cutting industry was only developing in areas which were accessible by roads. This would mean that the Warli from Jawhar and Mokhada would have to travel to the coastal areas, which were fairly well connected by roads, to seek out for work during this time of the year.

From December onwards, right upto the outset of monsoons in June, there would hardly be any work. The farmlands would not be tilled or cultivated upon in this time because the cattle would be left to graze on land. People would not keep the cattle in sheds, the bulls and the cows were supposed to move around finding their own food. This would mean that any inter cropping done during this time of the year would be susceptible for the cattle to graze. It has been a customary practice in the tribal communities. Even today, the people refrain from any intercropping because of this reason. Some people would set their bullocks free for weeks. The bullocks would return to their sheds after a while on their own. This time would be the time to level the soil for the cultivation to happen in the subsequent year. The small brushwood would be burnt on the fields along with small branches of timber found from the forests called phaanti. The father would keep himself busy with this work on the field. As the cattle would keep loitering around the landscapes, the mother and the children would go around in the vicinity of the village, collecting cow dung and other materials to mend the house. In rare cases, some families would find work with the landlords as domestic help. But this was extremely rare in the hilly regions of Jawhar. It would only happen in the coastal areas near Dahanu. Today, the conditions of life in this region have changed substantially. Road connections have been developed in most of the remote areas. The men find work as construction labour in Rabale, a

town near Mumbai. They travel to Rabale each year to work on massive construction projects to earn a living. Every year in Diwali, as everyone gathers in Jawhar for the yearly jatra, the men move around the town in groups. Here they get scouted by the contractors who come from Rabale. They approach these contractors who employ them and take them to Rabale in buses on the same day. Some men also find work as wood fellers. The Warli are considered to be excellent wood fellers in the Konkan region. Some contractors take these men (mostly young) with them to areas near Ratnagiri. These areas have been planted with teak forests by the Forest Department. The private contractors work as independent agents having obtained permission to transport the timber extracted from these forests. The women stay back in the villages as they are expected to look after the children within the Warli community.