Gopinath Mohanty's Paraja is one of the best novels written about the life of the tribals. In this novel he explores various aspects of the tribals inhabiting the forests and mountaneous regions of Orissa, and he very meticulously charts the various contours of the tribal life. Thus the book offers an authentic account of the tribal life with its purple patches and dark pools.
Parajas are a tribe which lives in the forests of Orissa in Koraput district. They live in close harmony with nature, and depend on cultivating a few patches of land, collecting honey and other forest produce and occasionally hunting animals. As such they live in poverty, and yet not without peace.
Except for a few, most of them are very innocent, gullible and illiterate. For them a small official like a forest guard was demi-god. His visit to the village kept everyone busy and on tenterhooks. They slaughtered a goal for him and made offering of chickens, honey, eggs and vegetables. They fell at his feet and offered prayers for fear and seeking his favours. They were squeezed of their money by these petty government officials. They also tolerate and sometimes offer their women to propitiate them. Because of their innocence and ignorance, they offer themselves as prey to unscrupulous persons like Sahukar. They pay whatever interest the Sahukar charges without a question and sign wherever he asks them to. They won't mind working as `gotis' (bonded labourers) for the paltry sum they take as loans. Many of them also become victims of the Excise officials by brewing illicit liquor. Liquor brewed from Mahua flowers is a part of their life. Because of their illiteracy and ignorance they are exploited by the police and court officials. They are fleeced of ...
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...ials. Being headman his duty was to protect his villagers, the tribals.
The cancer of corruption is spread among the tribals too. Mohanty working in the realistic tradition does not paint a glorious and romantic picture of the tribals. He also exposes the corrupt side of their life. For instance, Naik, the headman himself maintains a `goti' and when the forest guard seeks Jili he tries to permeate Sukra Jani to send his daughter. He knocks away his own share in the bribe given by the tribals to the officials. He plays his role in offering Jili to the Sahukar. Along with him a few more tribals act as stooges off the official and cheat some of their brethren of their money.
Thus Mohanty gives a detached and objective account of the lives of the tribals in Paraja. With his exquisite narrative skills, Mohanty lifts the social `to the level of metaphysical'.
First of all, the Pomo tribe was located in North central California. Another example, the Pomo tribe lived in places that depended on the climate not too hot, not too cold. Pomo tribe lived in small communities of different types. One community was said to have 20 chiefs at a time and the head men lived in one main village. Also, the Pomo tribe lived in several types of shelter. Southeastern pomo used the tule reeds that grew in marshy areas around the Clear Lake to build houses. Last of all, the Pomo spoke 7 Hokan languages including Yakaya, Yokaia, Shanel, Kabinpek, and Gallinmero, and 2 more.
Each one of the Timucua villages was ruled by a chief who exacted tribute in the form of food from the villagers. Village chiefs owed allegiance to a tribal chief who had numerous villages under his control. These chiefs were selected from important clans, and they inherited their title and wealth from their mother’s brother. The chief with the most important village often had the greatest power and influence; power grew out of the respect and prestige afforded that chiefs village (Milanich 151). Timucua villages had several titles for their villages such as holata, utina and paracusi, but the most important received the title utina or paracusi. These titles are really weird, it just seems like they mushed a couple of letters together to make a word that may sound nice. I don’t even know how to pronounce none of these words, I’m so glad we don’t have any hard titles to say for the people that are in charge of our states and country. The Timucua Indians seemed to be very attractive people, with them being over six feet tall with olive or brown colored skin (Thompson 15). They were very sturdy, muscular and athletic because of their way of living and them having to work and make everything that they had. The men had long black hair that they would bound up around their head, it would be
OFFICIAL SITE OF THE CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE YAKAMA NATION. Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, 2010. Web. 16 Dec. 2013.
In an article entitled, Exciting Tales of Exotic Dark India: Aravind Adiga 's The White Tiger, author Ana Cristina Mendes describes the many attributes of the poor proletariat class of India. Mendes shows how “dark India,”
Societies often exercise complicated religious ceremonies and daily services that are seemingly irrational, but define their culture and give them a distinct personality. In “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, author Horace Miner (1956) recalls his studies about a “North American group called the Nacirema, living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Taraumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles” (Miner, 1956). During his expedition, Miner (1956) viewed many outwardly odd Nacirema practices such as “using magical potions and charms to defend against ailments, or drilling holes in their teeth, so they can insert supernatural substances that draw friends” (Miner 1956). In order to better understand a society’s culture, research methods such as the “life course approach”, “role taking”, and “resocialization” should be studied.
Although A Land So Strange focuses on 16th century America and Jacksonland focuses on 19th century America, both works feature men who were willing to sacrifice Indigenous lives for the acquisition of land and resources. However, Indigenous peoples did not simply let this occur. In A Land So Strange, multiple Indigenous groups told Narváez embellished tales about prosperous lands in order to prevent him from intruding on their settlements. In Jacksonland, the Cherokee created their own constitution to participate in American politics. These examples are from the many historical events of Indigenous resistance to colonization. This essay analyzes why some of the efforts of Indigenous resistance succeeded while others failed. By looking at
In the Great Planes of America there was a tribe of Indians known as the Arapaho Indians. There is little documentation as to when or where they came from but it is known they were in many different places in the Midwest including Oklahoma, Wyoming, Kansas and Colorado. The Arapaho Indians were nomadic people who survived on hunting buffalo and gathering. This tribe was greatly changed when they were introduced to horses. The horses provided them a new way to hunt battle and travel. The horse became the symbol and center of Arapaho nomadic life: people traded for them, raided for them, defined wealth in terms of them and made life easier.
When Sripathi and his family receive the news of Maya’s and her husband’s fatal road accident, they experience a dramatic up heaval. For Sripathi, this event functioned as the distressed that inaugurated his cultural and personal process of transformation and was played out on different levels. First, his daughter’s death required him to travel to Canada to arrange for his granddaughter’s reverse journey to India, a move that marked her as doubly diasporic sensibility. Sripathi called his “foreign trip” to Vancouver turned out to be an experience of deep psychic and cultural dislocation, for it completely “unmoors him from the earth after fifty-seven years of being tied to it” (140). Sripathi’s own emerging diasporic sensibility condition. Not only must he faced his own fear of a world that is no longer knowable to him, but, more importantly, he must face his granddaughter. Nandana has been literally silenced by the pain of her parent’s death, and her relocation from Canada to Tamil Nadu initially irritated her psychological condition. To Sripathi, however, Nandana’s presence actsed as a constant reminder of his regret of not having “known his daughter’s inner life” (147) as well as her life in Canada. He now recognizeed that in the past he denied his daughter his love in order to support his
The Lakota tribes environmental wisdom and spirituality grew to stabilize among years of conservation and concern for the earth. All animals were respected like humans and the rivers and trees were cared for because the natural world was well alive like the humans that existed in it. The Lakota tribe lives on the Northern Plains of North America and are often referred to as “Sioux”. The Lakota tribe of the Great Plains are very much rooted to the earth and place a huge emphasis on home. In their culture the world was not savage, nor were the animals wild because on earth all spirits resided in nature. They defined their culture and continue to strengthen their values like kinship, courage, and wisdom in their community through rites of renewal/passage, dancing, and their style of clothing.
Further explained by Boo, “the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained” ( 566). Boos uses a female resident at Annawadi to allow readers to sympathize those who use corruption to advance. When readers encounter Annawadi inhabitants, one of the first citizens, Asha, is described as the slumlord’s wife who yearns to be in a position of power. In her pursuit to establish money and power, Asha creates false schools and nonprofit organizations for government funding. However, Boo turns a normally despicable situation into one of piteous pursuit. Asha yearns to become better than her previous life in a farming village, where laborious work brought death upon the population and gave fruitless results, and will do anything to improve herself. Similar to how others “prospered”, many impoverished residents in India turn to nefarious acts for money, power and a higher status, at the expense of others in similar circumstances. Boo describes this as “...Powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked…[and] tr[y] to destroy each other” (3302). Boo allowed readers to identify with individuals who use fraud, bribery, and other elements of corruption to be liberated from the cycle of poverty. (226
The Indian government is corrupted and makes promises it is unable to keep. In The White Tiger, Balram describes that the government is “...the world’s greatest democracy. What a fucking joke.” (Adiga 145). When Balram lived in Laxmangarh his right to vote for the prime minister was taken from him, due to the fact that running candidates pay the current government to make sure they are elected. The government system also enables the rich to get richer. They do this by immensely taxing the poor and enforcing the caste system on the poor. The caste system is a labeling system you were born into and of what you are expected of in life. For example Balram had the caste of Halwai, which is derived from “sweet-maker”. This meant Balram was expected to work...
For all Annawadians except Asha, corruption ingrained in society prevents the impoverished citizens of a Mumbai slum from being able to become successful in life. Despite working hard, saving money, and only wanting to better the life of their family, the Husains’s story is demonstrative of the fact that an unintentional entanglement in the “great web of corruption” “in which the most wretched tried to punish the slightly less wretched” could easily lead to near ruin (Boo 115). Over the course of her narrative, Boo shows that Annawadians recognize the issues of corruption present in their society, and the fact that they lack the power to change the system. For Annawadians, the courage and aspiration to become more successful in life meant taking a gamble, and Boo shows that their gamble could only be made in a system where the odds were forced against their
Indian society was patriarchal, centered on villages and extended families dominated by males (Connections, Pg. 4). The villages, in which most people lived, were admini...
Even though discrimination against lower castes is illegal in India under its constitution, it does still happen. There is a wide abundance of bribing present in both governmental and non-governmental situations. For example, a person high on the caste system can bribe police officers with money to cover up murders, and rich people have privileges in shopping malls. Balram experiences his first signs of corruption at a young age, when the Great Socialist bribed all votes from the workers of his tea shop. He also becomes the victim of corruption after his master’s girlfriend kills a child in a car accident due to drunk driving. His own master then turns on him to blame him for the murder. After Balram moves to Bangalore, he bribes a police officer in order to help start his own taxi
This total idea of challenging and creating a new identity may seem quite a utopian concept but it is not so impossible. The present paper will illustrate the writings of Mridula Garg and Arundhati Roy. The characters in their work are not extraordinary and utopian but common people like us whom we can come across in our day today life. Here for the purpose of analysis Garg’s three short stories have been chosen. They are: Hari Bindi, Sath Saal Ki Aurat and Wo Dusri.