DECCAN HERALD (Bangalore, India) 14 September 08 Twist in the tail... Snakes play a vital role in the Irula way of life. When Dr Revathi lets her camera zoom in on the Irula world, what we get are rare insights into a tribe that has remained on the fringes of urban society (Hema Vijay)
What do snakes mean to the urban world? Mysterious creatures to be feared? Admired? Or perhaps protected? But for the Irulas, snakes are destiny. This mysterious tribe’s path has always been intertwined with snakes.
Their economic status has been in tandem with snakes, dipping or peaking depending on the policy of the land to snakes.
The Irula is a primitive and extremely introverted tribe scattered over northern Tamil Nadu and the border regions of Karnataka and Kerala. Their customs and rituals have been largely unknown to the outside world, and the tribe has remained on the fringes of contemporary urban society. It is this unknown quality that seems to have inspired ‘Kutti’ Revathi to focus on the Irulas. Revathi’s photographs, patiently clicked over a period of four years, give us glimpses into the beliefs and customs of this reclusive tribe.
Kutti Revathi, (Dr S Revathi is her real name), is a Chennai-based Tamil poet and doctor of Siddha medicine. Incidentally, it was her doctoral research in medical anthropology and ethno-medicine that brought her into the world of Irulas. She has spent a good part of the last few years at their settlements, chronicling snake trails and Irula festivals, and even accompanying them to their annual congregation celebrating the power of the sea goddess on the shores of Mahabalipuram.
It started off with a research visit to Irula settlements in northern Tamil Nadu to understand their indigenous medical knowledge system. “My study evolved into an ethnographic study, and I started documenting their lives visually too,” she explains.
For long, the Irulas helped farmers destroy rats that ravage agricultural crops and grains hoarded in their granaries. But once agriculture became an industry and farmers started using mouse traps, the Irulas were robbed of their livelihoods and fell into poverty.
Their fortunes changed a little when German traders coming to Tamil Nadu bought snake skins from them. But, the scales tilted against their favour, when in 1972, the government banned catching of snakes. This pushed them back into poverty again. Now, while many Irulas still grapple with poverty, some of them have managed to survive, thanks to the Snake Venom Co-operative Society, established in Tamil Nadu, under the guidance of Romulus Whitaker.
However, not every Irula has been so lucky and thousands of them have been stranded by the wheels of change. “Many of them are forced to live as bonded labourers,” Kutti Revathi observes, and adds, “These people don’t have basic amenities. They are still fighting to get their community certificates.”
There is indeed an irony here. For the Irulas to get tribal status, the government asks them to display their skill in snake-catching. But because the practice has been banned for nearly four decades now (since 1972), most of the present generation of Irulas are as much in dread of snakes as anybody else. This leaves them neither here, nor there, and they work as bonded labourers in rice mills and stone quarries in the districts of Chengelpet and Kanchipuram.
All Irulas, wherever they might remain scattered, worship the virgin goddess Kanniamman. There are two important festivals in their calendar. One is for their goddess Kanniamman; the other is the spectacular Maasi festival that is celebrated on a full moon day by the sea. Visit Mahabalipuram around this time and you will see lakhs of Irulas celebrating the sea goddess Kadalkanni there, against the backdrop of seven steps carved into the wet beach sands. Kutti Revathi’s photographs have frozen all this for our eyes.
A serious post-modern Tamil writer, Revathi has been in the limelight for her evocative and sometimes controversial feminist poetry.
She went on to receive Sigaram 15: Faces of Future award for literature from India Today, besides a travel grant in 2005 by the Sahitya Akademi to meet leading litterateurs from various parts of the country. Both her photographs and writing challenge you. On her Irula experience, Revathi says, “We always think we are more civilised than any other human being, but we live a monotonous, boring and clichéd life. They (the Irulas) celebrate life with the richness of their music, dance, songs and divine belief.”
Twist in the tail