Kol Kathayen

In the Indian story telling tradition, stories from the far edge of the Indian Plateau, a dry rocky land called Patha, a home to the Kol tribe. The Kols were « assimilated » to the Hindu fold, at the lowest rung, and have lived out generations bonded to their upper caste masters, the Dadus. The Kol women have borne the brunt of this indignity, both on their bodies and souls. Then came the land reforms. The names of the Kols appear on papers as land owners, but little infact changed. The Kols were ignorant of the truth, for years. When they discovered it, they were put firmly in their place, by the guns of the Dadus, and by the gangs of dacoits, with the help of a well-bribed brothers-in-caste bureaucracy and the police. These are tales of everyday lives, of an India which lives-in despair or hope, protesting or preserving, this curious grafting of feudalism onto democracy, in the fiftieth year of Indian independence.