Session 32 summary
The Mundas are an Adivasi community in the south of Ranchi, at the edge of Chotanagpur plateau, mainly in the Khunti district where there is an abundance of untouched Munda Culture. Buru means mountain in the Munda language, but it also means Jatra which mostly occurs in the area of the mountain or the hill. It also refers to worshipping the god. Every village has Burus, where people mostly organise a mela (fair) post-harvest season or post Diwali. It is believed that the first Buruheld in the Munda areas is Marang Buru, which is followed by the other Burus. Usually the Marang Buru is held 30 days after Diwali and after 9 days of Marang Buru Sukaan Buru is held. The first step in organizing a Buru is that the fire is lit on the mountain, burning all the old and dry leaves to indicate that the Buru will be held on that mountain the next day. Sukaan Buru is in the heartland of Munda Tribe, it is a very popular Buru. Anupam and Gunjal had been visiting Sukaan Buru since childhood as its neighbouring village was a relative’s house which they used to visit and attend Sukaan Buruoften. There were some existing challenges in reviving the festival like; people are not interested in visiting villages, blind following of urban culture, naxal conflicts, technology taking people away from the mandar, nagada and making the communities devoid of tradition and there is also lack of indigenous content. So their approach was to get people excited about the festival, especially the youth. The solution they came up with was a kite workshop. Due to the lack of support for other cultural activities like dance, singing, etc. they asked the children to make kites, which was a 3 day process. There are four custodian villages of the Sukaan Buru, so Rumbul decided to hold the workshop in two of them, Totada and Dulmi, there were 100+ participants from these villages. Children were very excited to participate in the workshop, the adults also participated who were showing and sharing the old ways of making kites. There were different sizes and shapes of kites e.g. extra big kites, batman kite and more. There was knowledge sharing together with kite making. The interesting thing was that only paper was shared but the things like knife, bamboo, etc. were brought by the villagers. They even used a natural adhesive to stick the paper on the bamboo. This showed that sharing of techniques was also taking place. Attendance was also taken to track the villagers who were participating in the workshop. Every day post workshop a meal was prepared for all, as it gave a community feeling and the women helped in preparing the food.
The impact of this workshop was seen on 28th December, 3 days after the workshop, where there was more awareness, excitement and attendance during the Sukaan Buru festival. The entire thing was a community led initiative. People were singing loudly while climbing the mountain, on the Sukaan BuruAkhra people danced and were collected for the festival dance performance. The people were gathered from different villages because of their great enthusiasm. The dance group didn’t use the traditional white and red colour for their costume, instead they used a blue uniform as they too had an excitement to do something new. The Rumbul team also decided to hold the Sukaan Buru Kite competition and the attendance was used to give prizes for the kites. It was a spontaneous decision and they gave out prizes for different categories like the biggest kite that can fly, the innovative kite, etc. At the end of everything they held a movie screening of ‘Naachi se Baanchi’, to inspire the people to have confidence and pride in their culture.
The next step is to expand workshop to more villages, bring back cultural activities to the festivals, make screenings a regular feature, encouraging more community leaders from these villages to organise such activities and develop it on the lines of Hornbill Festival of the North.
About the Speaker
Gunjal Ikir Munda & Anupam Purty
Rumbul
Ranchi
Gunjal did his Post Graduation in Folkloristics from Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi. He has been an Assistant Professor of Centre for Endangered Languages, at Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, where he was engaged in documenting Asur, Birjia, Birhor, Turi, Korwa languages of Jharkhand. He has been the Guest Faculty at IGNCA, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Ranchi Regional Centre, teaching topics related to Tribes and Tribal Art to the students of Post Graduate Diploma in Tribal Arts.
Anupam Purty is a Graphic Designer, Photographer and Brand Consultant currently based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He graduated in Graphic Design from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad in 2013. He has been working at Jacobs in UAE for two years now, having worked earlier with firms like Ignite Middle East, Insignia, Alter Ego, Idea Works Design and Strategy.
