KNOWLEDGE CONSORTIUM

By Samir Kumar Hui

A collection of research articles of 25 in numbers by Dr Samir Kumar Hui.

KNOWLEDGE CONSORTIUM: Mitigating the inquisitiveness of Being

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Rose Publishers
• Release date: Dec 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9789354728969

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CHILD AS A FIGURE OF RESISTANCE IN SALWA BAKR'S STORY DOTTY NOONA

ABSTRACT

A closer reading of Salwa Bakr'S story Dotty Noona focuses the role of a girl child named Naima, Nauma - in short Noona, who features prominently in the text. In this paper, I intend to highlight the two worlds of the protagonist - the inner and the surface world which is in sharp contrast. The inner word is calm and surrendering as against the former. Further, this paper throws light on girl child sufferings, her hopes and aspirations, her ordeals in a patriarchal society and finally her escape. The very escape is a break from the dominance of adult and desire for freedom.

KEYWORDS:

Patriarchal Impositions, Inner and surface world of the protagonist, Therapy - The protagonist accepts the theory by running away from the adult'S world and finally escapes into freedom.

One is not born a man or woman but rather becomes one. All the adults have experienced and progressed through childhood. But they forget to respect and understand their world, the world of innocence, passion and carefree life. They observed a distorted image of childhood when they grow into the world of adults. They fail to understand the inner world of child, the world of their own creation where they live happily inspite of outward sufferings. As projected in the story Noona is confronted with th two worlds of her own self. The one is inner world which is challenging and revolting. The other is surface word which is accepting and surrendering. Noona is born in poor rural family in Egypt. She comes to serve as a servant in the house of the officer living in Cairo belonging to a privileged class. Despite Noona'S adversity, she is happy in her surface world. In the officer'S house she has to stay with the employer, his wife and their only son, a boy of her own age. The boy enjoyed all facilities required for the upbringing of a child, good school, home tuition and everything that delight a child. But Noona is the deprived of all these. However, her adversity does not make her feel sad and neglected. Noona is aware that any reaction or opposition will simply deprived her position, she is placed in and thereby she will be again put into adversity and uncertainty on the surface she creates the impression that she is happy outwardly, though the case is not so. Her happiness lies in her proximity to children and the teacher of the girl'S school nearby. She ideally identifies herself with the teacher whose voice she hears very often through the kitchen window. As a child she imagines to be a teacher in future. In her passion to imitate the activities of the students learning the school, she also utters with them from the kitchen flanks of antelope, legs of ostrich and leaps like a fox. In the way Noona creates a world of her own. Her curiosity comes to surface when asks Hasanein, the bread-seller about ‘flanks’. But he had just winked at her and raised his eyes obscenely and did not answered. Being disappointed in getting the answered she silently reacts to the situation.

The patriarchal attitude of the adults is revealed in the very title of the story. It finds its expression when the officer'S wife considers Noona ‘dotty’ and ‘weird’. Noona'S desires to imitate the students of the girl'S school jumping around in the kitchen, raising her legs up high and extending them forward make the officer'S wife think her dotty. On another occasion Noona is caught by her mistress stirring onions in a strange way she never reveals the truth that she is searching hydrogen sulpher in onion as told by the teacher to her students in the class. In this way the natural behavior of a child is considered abnormal and weird by the officer'S wife.

The incident of physical assault and Noona'S answer to the question of square root are worthy to discuss here. Once, while serving tea she overhears the tuition teacher asking the square root of twenty five to the officer'S son. The stupid boy answers wrongly as ‘four’. Noona looses her control and speaks out abruptly imitating the school teacher Five you idiot. The answer surprises the teacher but angers the boy who runs towards her to beat her. However, the officer'S wife who is concerned about the crystal glasses breaking: gets there fast and slaps Noona. Noona seems not to react on the surface and surrenders.

However, so far her ‘inner self is concerned, she never surrenders to such an inhuman act. She wonders how adults are devoid of sympathy and reason. The narrator never forgets to bring out Noona'S emotion, her delight with family members and nature. Noona'S carefree life is presented here. As a child she longs for her mother and her brother and sisters and wants to run about with children in the fields, to breathe in the odour of greenness, to hear the voice of her mother calling her.

Arrival of Noona'S father Abu Sarie is a turning point in the life of Noona. Noona is viewed as a commodity. For father remarks her would-be husband had returned from the land of the Prophet bearing with him enough money to furnish the whole of a room in his mother'S house, and more be-sides. This indifferent remark of Abu Sarie strikes Noona. She is on the point of bursting into tears. Father consoles her saying nothing to be frightened, for this was something that happened to all girls. Noona realizes the adult'S imposition and their highhandedness. She is in confusion. Her inner world revolts. She is suffocated from three angles. One is the pressure of the father to get her married, other is the fear to leave the officer'S house and last one is to get married and suffer like her sisters. On the crossroad she is sand-witched between what to do and what not to do. Noona spends the night in her bed in the kitchen without having a wink of sleep, staring up at the dark ceiling and gazing towards the window behind where stood the towering school building. Her child mind decides to escape into her desired world. She wants to escape from the injustice and the mental torture upon her. The decision to run away from her father as well as from the officer'S house is neither accidental nor unjudging. This act of escaping is a ventilation of resistance. Such escape is an emotional releasing in the way of therapy occurs in Ibsean'S play The Doll'S House where Nora Helmer leaves her family bondage on the same perspective, Noona'S running away is a challenge. The white sky and the Towering School Building offer her courage to be free from all bondage. It is unique on the part of the narrator to end the story with Noona'S escape. Only a progressive women author can conceive of such a twist of the story. The narrator is silent about the protagonist'S fate afterwards.

The narrator'S conscious attempt to bring up and construct Noona in her image is really superb. The girl children during her age are often conceived of as timid, helpless, immature and indecisive. Bakr wants to oppose this idea of the adults of her age against child marriage, poverty and class distinction. Obviously, bakr'S story offers a new orientation towards understanding the girl child and her resistance.

WORKS CITED:

1. Arries Philippe Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life New York: vintage, 1962.

2. Bakr Salwa, The wiles of man and other stories University of Texas Press, 1993.

3. Carolin Seymar Jorn, A new language, Salwa Bakr on depicting Egyptian Women'S world, Critique, Fall, 2009.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE LODHAS: A PRIMITIVE TRIBAL GROUP OF ODISHA.

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the detail about the Lodhas - a rare primitive tribe of Odisha who have a distinct life of their own. More specifically this paper aims to provide an empirical analysis of their socio-economic life i.e. their physical features, principal food, their marriages, their settlement, their house types, their political organization, their agriculture, customs, traditions and so on.

KEY WORDS:

Primitive Tribal Group, Mesoprosopic Face, Patriarchal, Political Organization, Work Participation, Plausible Panacea, Indigenous Ethnic Group , Anthropological.

Odisha is one of the most fascinating states of India from anthropological point of view. It is the second largest tribal dominated state in the country with the largest number of tribal communities(sahoo-L.K-2001,P-63).In 1956the president of India declared sixty two (62)different tribal communities in Odisha to be scheduled tribes (STs) out of sixty two notified scheduled tribes, only (08)are declared as primitive tribes groups (PTGs) by the govt, of India (Nayak A.N. ,2010, P-203).Those tribes are namely the juang, the Bondoparaja, the Lodha, the Didayi, the Mankidia, the Birhor, the Kharia and the Soura. This paper aims to discuss about the Lodha a primitive tribal group among the eight notified PTGS. It is noteworthy to mention that the PGTS constitute 22.13 percentage population of Odisha and almost 44.25 percent of the total land of Odisha is scheduled area.

Lodha means a piece of fish named after their ancestor. It is a small tribe having a total population of 8905 as per census 2011. They are mainly found in the Suliapada and Morada Blocks of Mayurbhanj district. They claim that they are the descendants of Zara Sabara who are the only worshipers of Lord jagannath and till today they have been performing important role in the religio-cultural norms of jagannath temple. So it is justified to say that the jagannath cult of Odisha is interwoven with the tribal religion especially the Lodha community. Based on these beliefs the Lodha regard themselves superior in social status than any other tribes in Odisha. It is therefore they identify themselves as Lodha Sabara. The Lodhas belong to the north Munda group speaking Mundari languages their mother tongue. By virtue of their long association and contact with the Hindi neighbors, they have forgotten their Mundari speech. Now they are speaking a dialect which is mixture of Bengali ,Odia and Mundari.

Lodhas have been in the focus of anthropologists and social activists. If any that revolted against the British in India first, it was the tribal and the Lodha communities who were on the front ranking.They were ruthlessly suppressed by the British and branded by them as criminals. It is sad to note that the Govt of India, even after independence continues to brand them as criminal tribe instead of honoring them for the revolt they had pioneered against the foreign invaders. In India Lodhas are known as criminal tribes until the revocation of the criminal tribal Act 1962.Such attempt of the Govt.in free India left the Lodhas having no alternatives to earn their bread as they have no landed property. So the Lodhas are forced to become pretty thieves and earn their bread by stealing. As a result they are not accepted in the society to live with dignity.

In the present contest it is important to discuss the physical features of the Lodhas. Of course their physical characteristics are accepted only by observation and so we observe a little variation in their characteristics. The Lodhas are coming from Austro-Asiaticgroup but they have exhibited a rare characteristic in general. The colour of their skin and hair are brown dark brown. They exhibit a medium (mesoprosopic) face and medium to flat nose. Both the male and the female of the Lodha group have normal height. The approximate height of both the male and female are 5’6 and 5’1 respectively. They normally possess good health.

As special attempt has been initiated to discuss both the social and economic life of the Lodhas in this paper, it is pertinent to focus on the same in detail.

Social life: The Lodhas stand separate from all other tribal groups. Therefore their social life is interesting to reveal. Their social life include their settlement , their house types, their literacy and education , their social organisation , food habits , social customs , work participation , their love for art, their political organisation and so on . It is imperative to discuss these one after another.

Settlement: The Lodhas settle in villages either separately or with other communities. It is obvious that most of the Lodhas villages are situated far away from the human reach inside the dense forest separately. However some of them are found living within multi caste villages. In such cases even they have their houses far away from the villages dominated by other castes.

House Types: The Lodhas build their house here and there in scattered manner. These houses appear as a shapeless cluster. They build single roomed house made of mud and straw -thatched. Some well to do Lodha families, of course, have multi roomed houses with country yards and gardens fenced with bamboo poles and twigs.(Dash and Mohanty 2012,P-100 ). They live with their pet animals. They never mind to spare a portion of their single room to keep the goats and cattle. In one corner of the house on a raised platform near the hearth, the seat of the ancestral spirits is located. The Lodha families in the past did not know the use of modern utensils. They used mud pots, leaf plates and cups as their utensils. But today they are using steel plates, plastic bags and aluminium.

Literacy and Education: The social life of the Lodhas is reflected through their discouraging literacy position. The following datas prove the point. The literacy situation of the Lodhas is below the state average in case of both males and females. The literacy rate of the Lodha as reported in 2001 census is 27.0%. The percentage of matriculates among the Lodhas is below 3% in case of males and below 1% among the females. (Nayak A.N., 2010, P-204).The number of graduates and diploma holders are negligible among the Lodhas till today.

Social Organization: The Lodhas tribal group emerges out of clan organisation. These are nine different clan groups having totemic origin each who start living as a community under one chief. Afterwards they are known as Lodha tribal group. After clan, the Lodha tribe becomes the largest social unit.

Family: Family is the smallest social unit in the Lodha society. The family comprise of parents and their children. The Lodhas prefer to live in joint and extended families. The father being the senior most male member is regarded as the head of the family .The family property is inherited along the male line. After marriage, a daughter leaves her parental house and joins the family of her parents -in -laws. The custom shows that the Lodhas family is patriarchal.

Observance of social customs: Like Hindus, the Lodhas observe certain customs during birth and death. Goats and fowls are offered to the local God to ensure smooth birth and welfare of both the mother and baby. Birth prohibition is observed for twenty one days and during this period the mother and the baby remain confined to the house. The baby is breast fed by the mother upto the age of six months. After six months two ceremonies namely the hair cutting and rice feeding are observed. As per custom the Lodhas used to burry or cremated the dead body. Death prohibition lasts for ten days. Purificatory rituals are observed on the tenth day as well as on the eleventh day. On the day of purification, the relatives and the co-villages are given with a feast arranged by the members of the family of the dead.

The custom of marriage in Lodha society is another important social event. Adult marriage is common among the Lodhas and mostly it is performed by negotiations. A mediator is engaged by both the bride and grooms sides to carry on negotiation and settle the bride price. Cases of child marriage, love marriage and marriage by exchange of sisters are also found in the Lodha society. Window re marriage is prevalent among the Lodhas and divorce is allowed.

Observance of religious rituals and festivals: Like other communities the Lodhas observe certain religious rituals and festivals. They worship many Gods and Goddesses. Among them Dharam Devta is supreme. They worship Basumata, the mother earth. Goddess Sitala is worshipped as Goddess of epidemics. Lodhas observe a number of magico religious festivals and rituals round the year. The important festivals are Sitala Puja and Chandi Puja. These festivals are observed to ward off the evil spirits. Besides every year ancestor worship is performed in the month of Chaitra (March-April).

Food, drinking and smoking: The principal food of the Lodhas is rice. They take meals twice and thrice a day. In the morning they eat soaked water rice of the previous night. They take it with burnt potatoes and tomato with mustard oil, roasted drum stick leaf. During lunch they take boiled rice with different vegetable items. Sometimes they take roasted fish with mustard oil. In the night they eat the same food prepared for the lunch. They prefer to eat vegetables they grow from their land like potato, tomato, drum stick leaf, chilly, cauliflower, cabbage, bitter guard, ladies finger, radish arum and brinjal etc. (