Kolkata
Think of Sabars or Shabars and the name of acclaimed activist Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi, whose works and activism mostly centered around the primitive tribe group, comes to mind.
“Starvation over generations can reduce ordinary-sized human beings to pygmies,” she wrote in her short story Shishu (The Little Ones) in 1979.
Anthropologically linked to the ethnic Munda group, their lives hardly changed and five Sabar people died of hunger at Amlasole, a tiny hamlet in Purulia, in 2004 hitting national headlines. The starvation deaths perforated the claims of the then government of the have-nots and forced the powers that be to take some steady measures.
But the measures that were taken then and being taken now leave a huge gap between what is done and left undone. True, the Amlasole deaths had shocked the world but soon the shock was absorbed and forgotten.
Cut to Fulri village of Bandwan block in Purulia, out of bounds for even the globe-trotting Google Baba (read map). Kalu Sabar (name changed) is a landless labourer who suffers from leprosy and is shy to venture out of his hut. He has been convinced by the Ojha or wizard that he has been carrying the curse of his bad deeds and is destined to die a leper.
When lucky, he earns Rs 150 to Rs 200 a month by doing odd jobs like helping the farmer during harvest. When he earns more than that it is party time, he says, smilingly.
“They go out hunting field rats or Dhamon Saap (a kind of snake) and eat them with rice,” Jaladhar Sabar, a social activist, tells The Indian Tribal.
“They generally eat rats, rat snakes or monitor lizards or rabbits if they find some in the forests and those even poorer often have to survive on tree leaves and roots. They sell ants for the money that these fetch,” says Meghnad Sabar, another activist from Purulia.
“The Sabars are by and large poorest of the poor. They are even poorer than Mundas or Santhals and mostly live on nothing. Sometime they are so poor and government facilities are so scanty that they have to survive on tree leaves and ants which they eat after baking only,” another member of the tribe says adding though that a few Government schemes like Laxmir Bhandar or old-age pension sometimes trickle down. “But that is far and few between”.
Many villages still live without power. And for those that get power there is no money to foot the bills. “We are poor people who earn our daily bread with meagre wages doing odd jobs. How will we pay electricity bills? The Chief Minister is giving a lot of things to Jangalmahal including rice at Rs 2 a kg, she also can give free electricity to us,” says Jamai Sabar, a villager.
A journalist, who has done considerable field work on this tribe, chips in saying, “The landless tribals who live half-clad in their dilapidated huts seem to be a slapping reality in the face of humanitarian and proudly democratic nation. Providing the fundamental human rights like drinking water, walkable roads, livable houses, health and literacy to these wandering tribes is the first urgency to be felt and heeded by the government.”
Shift scene to Bankura district where about 30 villages have Sabar settlements. They mostly live on forest products because they have nowhere else to go. In the monsoon, they collect red ant eggs, called “korkut”, by the tribesmen.
Speak to Babla Sabar and one would know how the villagers love to have the venomous ants in food but are forced to sell them to earn some stray money. “Even if we manage to dig out 500 grams on a good day we have to sell them at Rs 70 a kg because that is great money to us,” he shares. Ant eggs are good for chutneys, a delicacy, but they cannot have them as “our poverty won’t allow us to have them.”
Devoid and deprived of modern cooking means — which are often beyond their reach monetarily — they need three bricks and an iron or earthen pot to cook their food.
“We fall back on the smoky, wood-fired mud hearths because we cannot even have the subsidized gas that comes under the Prime Ministers Ujjwala Yojana,” says Kuku Sabar, adding, “fried meal is a luxury and mostly we have to either boil them with salt or simply roast them dry”.
