“I don’t feel well, so I’m not drinking today,” said Adi, one of a group of Bonda tribeswomen who had agreed to participate in a short photo shoot at the weekly market in Onukudelli, Odisha.
The Bonda women are immediately recognisable. Only partially dressed, they wear a ringa – a short piece of cloth around their waists, while their torsos are covered in a string of colourful beads, as are their shaved heads. Around their necks hang heavy bead necklaces and aluminium bands called khagla and their arms are lined with bangles. When leaving their villages, some of the women wear simple dresses or wrap themselves in a piece of blue cloth for modesty.
The reason for this unique appearance is found in the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. Some Bonda women are said to have mocked the goddess Sita as she was bathing. Enraged, she cursed them to eternal nakedness and to giving up their hair. When they pleaded for forgiveness, she softened and conceded the waist cloth and beaded jewellery.
The Bonda are one of the oldest and most culturally distinctive tribal communities in India. They live mainly in hilly areas near Lamptaput and in the Malkangiri district of Odisha. They are believed to have come from Africa, possibly as long ago as 60,000 years. Bonda society is matriarchal, and women dominate and are responsible for the tribe’s economic activity. They are also, in all senses, the senior partner in marriage, taking a boy five to ten years younger as a partner. It is then the woman's role to raise him, and his to look after her when she is older.
They practise shifting cultivation, growing paddy, millets and maize as well as gathering forest produce. The Bonda men are known for being skilled marksmen and in the past would visit markets carrying bows and arrows. The women make small items of jewellery, decorative items and some textile items which they offer for sale at Onukudelli.
There are perhaps only 25,000 Bonda in total. Life expectancy is low, and the tribe has been identified as being at risk of extinction. Their unique culture and way of life is also threatened by de-forestation, economic poverty and pressure to assimilate into the Odia language. Several of the tribal communities, including the Bonda, are known to consume significant amount of desi (country) alcohol. At the Onukudelli market, numerous vendors sell mahua, a spirit made from the fermented, sun-dried flowers of the tree of the same name. This mildly sweet alcohol was banned by the British in 1892, but several states have since legalised it and there is even a bottled, premium band nowadays.
Except for Adi, the women involved in the photoshoot drank throughout the time we spent together – some of them from glasses and some from the dried gourd seen in the photograph above.
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