Tribes of Gujarat: The Pardhans of the Upper Narmada Valley

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The name of Shamrao Hivale is not unknown to social anthro pology. He is the author of some excellent articles and notes in Man in India, his name appears on the title page of two consider. able collections of Indian folk-songs; above all, his labour for fourteen years among the Gonds and Pardhans of the Dindori Tahsil has won him the affection and respect of a large circle of friends, both in India and Europe.

In the present monograph Shamrao Hivale has given us the fruit of many years of study. It is over a decade since I suggested to him that the Pardhans among whom we lived were worthy of investigation. On this book therefore he has spent nearly twelve years and what years! Shamrao Hivale is not, it is true, a Pardhan, but he is an Indian. There are no artificial barriers of colour, language or manners to divide him from the people. He has been able to spend his whole time among them and give them his entire attention. Wisely he has not hurried. He has approached his task with the most becoming humility. He is not a trained anthropologist; he lays no claim to extensive reading (though he has had access all these years to an excellent library and has made good use of it); he has no theories to exploit. He has lived with the people as their doctor, teacher, magistrate, champion, above all as their friend. They love him. He is their Chhota Bhai (little brother). His house is always thronged with visitors. Villagers sometimes come a hundred miles for his advice. When he goes out he finds it hard to get along the road, so many people want to see him. He has always had a special relationship with the Pardhans, of whom he is very fond. He has thus had a unique opportunity to obtain the facts about them. I will not say that nothing is hidden from him but I do say that few investi-gators have entered more fully into the life of their people.

The great Gond race has thrown out many cadet branches, but none to my mind is more delightful or fascinating (except possibly the Muria) than the Pardhan. The Pardhan is the youngest brother and every student of folk-lore knows how the youngest brother is privileged. He is the pet of the family. He has his bad moments, but he always wins in the end. He has all the best adventures. Everybody likes him. Where the elder brothers are stupid or wicked, the youngest is filled with an almost super-human intelligence. The Pardhan is, in fact, the professional younger brother. Amid the weary decline of a great race he still stands out jovial, original and witty. While the Gond now thinks the sum of human ambition is to be a railway clerk, an Excise Inspector, or an E. A. C., the Pardhan still believes that life itself matters more than life's achievements, that a poem is more important than a file that to know how to make love to your wife is a much more important bit of knowledge than how to read or write. The Pardhan is always poor because at heart he does not care about riches. It is an extraordinary sign of the deep-rooted Puritanism still surviving among us that most writers, even European writers. refer to the Pardhans as an inferior branch of the Gonds. They are inferior because they are poets and musicians. Few people would consciously allot a lower social position to the man of arts or letters but, particularly in Indian society, there can be no doubt that the professional musician has not yet established himself. This is particularly true of the attitude of the Gond to the Pardhan. It is a very ungrateful and dishonest attitude, for the Pardhan is the brain of the tribe, its heart and its voice. Through the Pardhan the dull bovine Gond finds self-expression. The Pardhan alone has preserved the memory of the heroic past of the Gond Rajas. In his songs and epics he does not recount the glories of his own tribe but always that of the Gond, though it must be confessed that these Gond heroes are in character and wit much more like Pardhans than Gonds. Through the Pardhans alone for all the Educational Department can teach Gond students is of such heroes of Indian history as Lord Linlithgow or some good loyal Rao Bahadur-are the grand and moving legends of the past preserved Hirakhan, the great bull of the princely herd; Mara, the tempestuous lover; the exquisite Kamal Hiro; the princess Machhal Rano. In these tales also is the great reserve of humour that nothing can destroy. This is how cultural India has survived.

The Pardhan are a subgroup of the Dravidian, tribal Gond people who live in central India. The traditional occupation of the Pardhan is that of being singers and musicians at festivals and important life ceremonies. Most Pardhan today are agricultural workers who cultivate wheat, sorghum, vegetables and fruit. Some also make their living by weaving and producing bamboo articles. When the Aryans migrated into the Gond lands, some Gonds submitted to their rule while other groups fought them only to be defeated by superior Aryan military technology. The Pardhan became the servants and slaves of the Aryans. As a tribal people, they were considered outside the Hindu system and therefore outcastes. The Pardhan are a Scheduled Casted meaning they receive special treatment in public jobs and university admission. Many Pardhan possess only a minimum of education so the Indian government is working to alleviate the problem.

THE PARDHANS are a branch of the great Gond tribe now some three million in number, and although they are only four per cent in numerical strength of the whole tribe, they have always made an important contribution to its life. In the old days they were probably the official genealogists of the Gond courts. They acted as priests and diviners. They were the musicians of the tribe, retaining in their memories and constantly recounting the glorious history of the ancient Gond kingdoms. Their women acted as midwives to the Gonds, and tattooed Gond girls. With the collapse of the Gond kingdoms, the Pardhans shared the failing fortunes of the race. Always dependent on the senior tribe, they now found the Gonds unable to support them properly. They were driven to crime and sank in the social scale. Later they recovered themselves and today the Pardhans remain, what apparently they always have been, a tribe of witty, charming, intelligent people, whose fundamental interest is in music and song. Their connection with the Gonds, which I study in a later chapter, is of an intimate and peculiar kind. Through their relation as ritual beggars, they stand in a position of economic dependence upon them. It is unthinkable that the Pardhans should exist apart from the Gonds. It is equally impossible for Gond life and culture to find its full expression without the Pardhans. The Pardhans are known by a number of different names. The word Pardhan itself comes from the Sanskrit and means a Minis-ter, sometimes a Prime Minister. The Gondi word seems to be Pana. A very common name, but one which the Pardhans them-selves sometimes resent, is Pathari. They are also called Desai, a relic from Maratha days, and Parganiha. In Balaghat they are called Mokasi or Bhau. For all these words the Pardhans have fantastic derivations. Pana is traced to pahuna, a visitor. Pardhan is said to mean 'one who eats other people's rice para: others' and dhan: 'rice'. Another derivation is from par: embankment' and dhan: 'rice', and refers to a tradition that the first Pardhan was born on the embankment of a rice-field.