MOUNTAINS
8. Rajman (45) a Gota and village shaman and siyan Brother-in-law
of Joli. Rajman considered to be potentially the voluntary
or involuntary agent of malign individuals wishing to use his powers for sorcery purposes.
A meeting was held at the Ghotul, at the instigation of the Patel’s group, to apprehend the murderers of the Patel’s father,
an event which happened fifteen years previously. The ostensible
reason for holding the meeting was that the head man’s ghost (hanal) had communicated through a shaman a desire to be
avenged. Accused were Bali Ram and Joli, and the Koramis
turned up in force to denounce them, the attack being led by
Panku Ram. Both men are in a weak position in the village, but
their association with the former Patel’s death has a circumstantial
basis. Bali Ram had been drinking with the Patel’s father in
Palli on the night he died, but had stayed in Palli that night, while the Patel’s father had set out to walk back to the
village. The next morning he was found dead beside the
track from Palli to Manjapur and the police arrived to investigate. No signs of violence were found on the body, and it is quite likely that he died naturally in an alcoholic stupor from cold,
inhalation of vomit, or snakebite. However, when last seen, he
was being led along the path in an inebriated state, by Joli. Bali Ram was arrested on suspicion, but was cleared when he
established his alibi, and Joli was never even questioned.
The accusations were levelled at both men, by Panku Ram and his brothers, and the rest of the villagers present took little part. Tiri did not speak for his father - and indeed is never so
reticent on any occasion as when his father is involved, nor did Kopa, Joli’s elder brother, speak up in Joli’s defence (later
Kopa joined in the sorcery accusations against Joli). Joli was in
more serious trouble in that it was alleged that he had
cajoled a shaman into ’arousing' a village goddess in the temple (raur) - it is a heinous matter to invoke the pen in secret for private ends - which goddess Joli then bribed with promises of gifts to prevent him falling into the hands of the police over
the affair of the Patel's father’s death. This had a certain
verisimilitude as Joli, though an obvious suspect, had been
ignored in the police investigation. But Panku Ram, the main
accuser, intensified his attack by widening the scope of interest in the meeting so as to draw in everybody who had suffered a death in the family in the ensuing fourteen years - in other words more
or less every adult present. He suggested that Joli's bargain with
the pen goddess consisted of his allowing the goddess to
live in his house where he had become its slave, committed to
satisfying the goddess’ insatiable cannibalistic lust for
human flesh. Having no longer been able to promise the
conventional ’good’ offerings of gold and silver ornaments
to the goddess, he was compelled to provide victims
instead. Thus Joli was plausibly represented as the scape
goat for everybody’s subsequent bereavements, and his evil doing the rational explanation for the inexplicable chances
of death. Voices were raised, decrying the alarming rate at
which little children had been dying of late, and (ironically perhaps) no better instance of this was to hand than the
deaths, within a month of each other, of Joli’s elder brother’s
two young sons. The goddess had ’eaten’ his brother’s
children, and had blighted every house in the village. Kopa,
responding as excitedly as everybody else to the image of the cannabilistic goddess, devourer of his children, turned on his
younger brother Joli and bitterly denounced him. Besides
threats and abuse, the question most insistently directed at
Joli was ’’will you mix with us or won’t you” (nima mava sung
milay maiki ki maivi). The question related both to village
membership in general, and to Joli’s adherence to the Baba
Bihari sect as well. His refusal to admit guilt in the affair
of the Patel’s father was seen by his accusers as evidence of
his not ’mixing’ with the village, but on the other hand
Joli’s refusal to budge in the face of his accusers was simple
self-preservation. Eventually Rajman (biased in the matter
because his sister is married to Joli) took on the mediating role and said that compromise could not be reached while the Patel’s side refused to accept anything short of a clear
confession of guilt from the accused pair. Joli and Bali Ram
- the latter more diffidently - denied their guilt, but were fined Rs. 30 by the bhumkal which fine they were obliged to
accept. The money was to be used to finance a feast for the
village siyan to signify their repentance or their willingness to accept village authority.
I left the meeting at this point, but as I was walking back to our house I heard a commotion coming from the direction of the Ghotul, and I learned that both men had been beaten, though not at all seriously, by certain of Panku Ram's brothers, including Urakal, whose proneness to assaulting people was the starting point for the next stage of the affair.
That afternoon the men busied themselves preparing for a feast to be held with the money, and a group of them,
Pele, Panku Ram and a few others, came over to Tiri’s house
to collect cooking pots. As I watched, Pele jokingly
thumped Panku Ram on the back with his closed fist, and Panku Ram immediately returned it; both ended up wrestling with each other, and although they reassured me that it was
just ’horseplay’ (kovna vahchar) it did seem to me that there
was an element of real aggression involved as well. I did not
go to the feast attended by all the village men, but I heard the next morning that a quarrel had broken out between
Panku Ram and Pele.
The cause of the quarrel was an altercation between Pele
and Umkal. Pele had seen Umkal leaving the feast with two
parcels of meat instead of one (the meat is distributed on the basis of one share per cooking hearth or per nuclear
family). On being questioned by Pele, Umkal had replied that
the parcels were "for the siyan.” This was insulting, because it contained the suggestion that the true siyan of Manjapur were the Koramis of the Patel-Panku Ram group, casting
aspersion on the rest of the village at the feast. Pele
said that ’’the 3iyan were present at the feast and could
help themselves” turning Umkal’s remark around whereupon Umkal struck Pele on the back, and he was supported in the ensuing melee by his brothers and the Patel.
The next morning, Tiri was paid a visit by Daula, who though a Hallami and no kin of Pele, sided with him as he had lived in Pele’s house as a kamiyaal and was loyal to his
old patron. Sitting around the embers of the fire he
discussed this new development with Tiri and his family in
hushed, conspiratorial tones. He voiced the concern of the
rest of the villagers about the bellicose posture of the
Patel and Panku Ram’s group (the ’old’ Koramis), and said
that he thought that they had overstepped the bounds of decent behaviour by showing aggression against Pele, one of the most generally liked and respected siyan of the village. It was clear that it was now no longer a question of retribution, directed at marginal individuals such as Joli or
Bali Ram, for supposed acts of sorcery in the distant past, but had become a factional confrontation between the Patel’s
Korami group who regarded it as their right to have dominion
over Manjapur, versus the remainder of the village. It was
a question of jealousy (kaeer) , which Daula diagnosed as
resentment arising because of the relative poverty of the Patel's group, who could not tolerate the fact that Pele's
father had started off being much poorer than them, while
Pele was now much richer than they were. This was a message
very close to Tiri’s deepest concerns, since his family history is identical to Pele's in this respect, even though Pele was himself a Korami and an ’old* Korami at that, but from the rival lineage to the Patel’s; while Tiri is an Usendi.
Daula asked rhetorically whether the ’immigrant’ families were
truly to be held responsible for the misfortunes of the Korami lineage of the Patel’s in Manjapur "if there is to be less rice in our houses, does that necessarily mean that there will be more in theirs?" The immigrant families, he protested were not "weighing down upon the ground they stood on" (mat
nel tey boj antorom) . Tiri’s mother, architect of the family
fortunes, added philosophically that "everybody in the village is of one blood and will end up being buried in the same earth"
(mamat undi natur, undi kodra tey koitor antorom). The
references to "the earth" in these speeches are basic to the rhetoric of village factional quarrels, since they evoke
the common physical substance which unites villagers of whatever clan or lineage (undi natur) as a consequence of deriving
their substance from the same earth. Daula left after urging
Tiri to support a move by all the villagers to ostracise the Patel’s group as a counter-attack to what was perceived as a threat by the Patel’s group to mete out the same kind of
treatment to them. Everyone in the village should refuse to eat
or drink in their company until they changed their attitude and
behaved as co-villagers should. When Daula had left, Tiri and
his mother spoke recklessly of leaving the village altogether,
fearing that their position would become intolerable. Later that
day, I visited Panku Ram’s mother, who was glumly contemplating the same prospect, fearing that Panku Ram’s aggressiveness would
lead to them being ejected from the village. However, Panku
Ram’s mother, who was, as an in-marrying wife born elsewhere, invoked the same idea as Tiri’s and rejected the idea of a move at her advanced age: through long residence she said "she is now of one village only" (undi narta antonan) ,
rooted to the spot, so to speak, and incapable of moving howsoever bad things became.
Meanwhile Tiri and Joli decided to hold an exorcism so as to dissipate the ill-feeling which had been aroused by the
implicit allocation of responsibility on their households for
the death of the Patel's father. This exorcism (katar) was
in Joli’s house and the cause of the deaths of the children (Tiri’s own daughter had died about a year before these events, and his son had been ill, both occurrences which he
privately held Joli responsible for). The question of Joli’s
responsibility for the presence of the vengeful goddess in his house was left unclarified: Joli could have been in debt to the goddess for allowing him to escape over the affair of the
Patel’s father’s death; or alternatively the goddess could
have come unbidden (Joli’s own version). Tiri’s mother
maintained that Joli’s troubles with the goddess arose from
the fact that, because he was a member of the teetotal, vegetarian Baba sect, he had withheld the customary offerings of
goat’s meat and liquor at village festivals, and that in return the goddess was persecuting him, and Tiri as well. Tiri and Joli both complained of vague maladies as well, which they attributed to the goddess likewise.
Tiri and Joli, therefore, both had good reason to hold the exorcism: they were both conscious of the threat from the Patel’s group, and they had both lost family members; but they had different views as to which shaman should perform the
exorcism ritual. Joli wanted the rite to be performed by the
shaman Rajman, but Tiri feared that this individual was too closely identified with Joli, and might, while in trance, try to explicate his affine from all blame by throwing responsibility for the death of the Patel's father wholly on Bali Ram, Tiri's father, so that he would have to bear the whole brunt of the
Koramis anger. Tiri’s mother thought that Joli was desirous
of having Rajman go into trance because he was confident that the shaman’s divine counterpart (by whom he would be possessed)
would be sufficiently reticent about the failings of his own brother-in-law not to speak only of his past crimes and ritual
shortcomings. Tiri wanted the ceremony to be conducted by a
neighbouring village’s shaman whose patron he was.
The exorcism was the occasion for a general demonstration of village solidarity, made public and legitimized by the sending of invitations to important saga groups from
neighbouring villages, and by the participation of shamans from different localities as well as the village shaman
Rajman. The ritual cannot be described in detail here; the
sagas spoke to the shamans on behalf of Tiri and Joli,
negotiated with the divinities possessing them so as to ensure the removal of the resident goddess at Joli’s place, and
confirming the absence of any malign divinities at Tiri’s
house. The role of ritual go-betweens between Tiri, Joli and the gods was played by Bajju and another man from the Hallami clan who were not identified with either side in the conflict. Following the exorcism, Tiri and Joli gave a feast to the whole village (which was also a cause of dissension between them, since Tiri felt he had to contribute more than his
fair share). Panku Ram continued his vendetta even at the
feast, complaining to Tiri that there was insufficient rice to go round.
Despite these incidental arguments, the effect of the feast and the exorcism was to take the pressure off Tiri and Joli: the role of sagas as mediators in intra-village disputes is crucial here since every village has a certain collective interest in showing up well, as united and harmonious in the
presence of important men from outside. The exorcism provided
ritual catharsis for the various tensions which had been building up in the village (a device which has obvious affinities to the analogous rituals of social re-adjustment analysed in Turner’s classic study of Ndembu village politics
Turner 1957). After a few weeks the strained relations between
the Patel and Pele were also formally restored. A special
ritual form is followed in such cases (it is also used, for example to heal the breach between a woman’s ex-husband and her new husband in the case of divorce, once the latter has
agreed to the terms of compensation to the former). Both men
place their feet on a stone, between their feet is held a knife, and, with the help of their sagas they pour wine around the stone as a placatory offering to the gods and a sign of their
mutual peace. The same rite was performed by Pele and Panku
Ram, and subsequently by the Patel and Tiri’s father, Bali
Ram. In this way the disaffected Patel group were bought
back into solidarity with the rest of the village.
Tiri’s view, which he confided in me, was that there was no substance, to the original claim that the Patel’s father’s
spirit (hanal) had demanded vengeance. The old man had not
been killed by anybody, and the whole affair was the outcome of the Patel’s group’s feeling of resentment against the
recent rise in fortunes of himself and Pele. Tiri was not
personally implicated in his father’s crimes, if he had committed any, but Tiri was convinced that it was he who was
the real target, and that an attempt had been made to drive him from the village by underhand means.
between two overriding themes: on the one hand, the
feelings of ’victimage’ (Burke 1945), of being singled out for covert
attacks, felt by the siyan heading households and jostling for power, respect, and prestige; and on the other hand, the idea of the village as a unity established by the mere
fact of co-residence and sharing the same earth. The Patel’s
group expressed their victimage by resurrecting the issue of the Patel’s father’s death, and Tiri, in his paranoid conviction that the dispute had been concocted in order to
destroy his position in the village. ”We have not violated
(nashamaina) the Manjapur earth” , said his mother, using the same term - nashamaina - used to refer to girls made
illegitimately pregnant in the Ghotul. The image is one of
the village as a living being, and this is the second
overriding theme in village politics, which is reaffirmed in the peace-making between siyan at the conclusion of the quarrel.
It would require a separate, detailed, study to pursue the theme of village politics and the ways in which ritual reconciliation takes place between factions. The case history related above is designed simply to convey the general feeling inherent in Muria village politics. The important point to stress, so far as the main theme of this thesis is concerned is the constant struggle to reaffirm village unity in the face of the conflicting interests and ambitions of particular families and households. Village unity is a paramount value, politically, for Murias, but it is one which is continually under threat. There is considerable movement between villages, and considerable social heterogeneity within them. This makes for sectional interests and accusation against newcomers of being disruptive interlopers.
This chapter has mainly been devoted to detailed description of one particular village and its sectional interests and conflicts. But there is an important general point which needs to be stressed because it is crucial to the analysis of the place of the Ghotul in Muria society - the