Adivasi histrorian and folkore researcher..by G.Vishnu

BUNDU, JHARKHAND
ETWA MUNDA, 28

ETWA MUNDA
PHOTO: RAJESH KUMAR SEN

Adivasi historian and folklore researcher
ETWA MUNDA is a waiter in a tea shop. This is no ordinary tea shop, though. It is run by the fiery activist Dayamani Barla who runs three of the oldest and most successful people’s movements — the Koel Karo movement, the movement against Heavy Engineering Corporation and the anti-Arcelor movement. And Etwa is no ordinary waiter. He has many lives.
For the past few years, this Munda Adivasi from Garudpidi, a village 15 km inside the jungles in Bundu block in Ranchi district, Jharkhand, has been documenting the history of these movements. He is a cultural historian and increasingly a commentator in Hindi newspapers and Mundari little magazines.
About 300 years ago, Garudpidi was a forest feared by even the bravest of warriors. Champa Munda, an ordinary but adventurous man from the nearby Kocha Tolla village, wanted to build a village. But a deer crossed his path, signalling bad luck. Years passed before Jhata Munda of Lali village accidentally achieved what Champa Munda had envisioned. Since Jhata’s buffaloes used to wander deep into the forest, he was the one who eventually created a village where there was a river and magic soil. Since the biggest tree in the village had been made home by an old eagle that gave out strange cries in the night, they named it Garudpidi.
This seemingly random sequence of events is the history of a village. This is the kind of history that Etwa Munda documents and the kind of history that has no place in textbooks.
Munda started his project by speaking to all the village elders, bringing to life all the ritualistic hymns that had been orally passed on from one generation to the other. Munda structured a linear narrative based on different accounts and then wrote them in Mundari and Hindi.
Bundu has been witnessing large-scale migration of youth to cities for jobs. Munda himself worked for a stretch as a labourer in a textile mill in Chandigarh. He knows firsthand the alienation of that life and the easy, almost unthinking brushes with Maoists. Bundu has a significant Naxal presence today and houses one of the largest CRPF camps in the country. It is in this blood-smeared battlefield that Munda has begun documenting the history of the village and publishing them for a larger audience in local newspapers and little magazines in Ranchi. After recording the history of his village, he has begun documenting the history of neighbouring villages.
‘There are five people in Garudpidi who can read and write in Mundari. ‘Maoists are human beings I’m one of them’

“There are five people in Garudpidi who can read and write in Mundari. I’m one of them. The rest of my people are busy working to survive,” he says. Dayamani, the biggest influence on Munda, says, “His work is defence against forces that would have Adivasis be anything other than Adivasi. He’s set a precedent for the youth — know your roots.”
The village elders, anxious about loss of their culture, heritage and language, say Munda’s commitment to their history has morphed him into a hermit-like figure with all the chronicles of the village in his bag.
G VISHNU