Jharkhand is not confined only to Santhal Pargana and Chhotanagpur regions
carved out from Bihar on November 15, 2000, to form the new state. It
exists - with all
its shades, colours, music, joys, despair, rice and
hadia - in the tea-producing districts of north Bengal
and Assam too.
The
documentary film, Kora-Raji, proves just that depicting vividly the
life of tribals whose ancestors were taken to the tea gardens of Assam
and north Bengal during the British rule in the 19th century.
It
was the British tea garden owners who took the first lot of tribal
labourers from Gumla, Ranchi and Simdega to Assam and north Bengal
in 1840 opening the floodgate for migration of tribals as "cheap
labourers" to work in tea gardens.
"Kora-Raji",
produced by Meghnath and directed by Biju Toppo, will be screened
at the Regional Film Festival in Kathmandu on September 29. It is
the second documentary film to be made in "Kuruk", a Santhal
language; the first was made in Oraon by Ritwik Ghatak way back in
1955.
Kora-Raji
explicitly shows how over 60 lakh tribals, who migrated to Assam and
north Bengal centuries ago and settled around tea estates, have zealously
guarded their "Jharkhandi" identity in the alien land. Incidentally,
the word Kora-Raji, also happens to be the name of the place or places
where the Kuruk- speaking tribals are settled in the two states.
This
name does not find a place in the official maps of West Bengal and
Assam. The migrated tribal labourers named the places where they settled
and made their homes as "Kora-raji" and they still refer
to their settlements as Kora-raji. The Kuruk word, "Kora-raji",
is made up of kora and raji. Kora means digging and raji means state.
Thus, the word Kora-raji means the state dominated by land-diggers.
Needless to say, these Kuruk-speaking tribal labourers went to Assam
and north Bengal to dig land and prepare them for plantation and,
thus, named these places in their own language.
In
the documentary, Biju Toppo moves within Assam and north Bental tea
estates and settlements inhabited by migrants originally from Simdega,
Gumla and Ranchi and shares their songs sung with the beat of mander,
their rice and hadia, their grief and happiness. Toppo, whose mother
tongue happens to be Kuruk, has successfully captured the subtleties
of "Jharkhandi" life in these tea gardens - a life, which
also became a theme in Bupen Hazarika's popular songs.
The
depots made in Simdega, Gumla and Ranchi block offices by the British
rulers in 1840s and 1850s to hunt and gather the labourers to transport
them to Assam and north Bengal perpetually figure in the songs. The
songs sung in Kuruk, subtitled in English, also painfully depict the
death of hope of returning to their motherland. "Kirahookirrom,
Mala kirrom, Na kirron" (We don't know if at all we will ever
return to our motherland. We may not return ever), one of the songs
says.
India
was the largest exporter of tea till 1980s. But Sri Lanka and Kenya
scored over India in the international market in the subsequent decades
causing loss to the north Bengal and Assam-based tea gardens. Now,
migrant labourers from Jharkhand are suffering the pangs of dying
and decaying tea gardens.
But
they have nothing to fall back on as they have lost their motherland
and they don't enjoy the status of tribals or Scheduled Castes in
Assam. Moreover, the local militants target them. The massacre of
90 migrant labourers at Dalgaon in Assam in November 2003 figure prominently
in the film's songs. If anything, the film justifies why these tea-producing
areas, sustained on tribal labourers from Jharkhand, figured in the
demand for Greater Jharkhand comprising parts of north Bengal and
Chhattisgarh besides Santhal Pargana and Chhotanagpur.
