| « Previous | Home | Next » | the honey gatherer 11 July, 2006 |
 photo: david lindley pretty well at the bottom of the social ladder in kerala; and in much of india as a whole are the indigenous tribes who make up around 8% of the country's total population. historically confined to the more remote regions of the country, in the past 200 years their traditional culture has been squeezed by the encroaching majority, their livelihoods and the areas that sustain them ever more threatened by the advances of the moderen era. in kerala there are just 350,000 tribal members (adivasis) out of a total population of 31m, so their political clout is fairly minimal. most adivasis work on the tea plantations in the hills, or in other such low paid jobs. in the national park though we crossed paths with a small group of tribal members - the only humans allowed free access into the park - who were in the process of going about their daily work; that of collecting wild honey from the forest. they came armed only with some very long poles and a huge glass bottle two-thirds full of a cloudy brown liquid that turned out to be the wild honey. as is the way of the world, these people in near-rags who had nothing were only too happy to smile into our cameras and to let us taste the fruits of their labour. | |
|
Posted by davidlindley Archived under: a few favourites, india, people |
Permalink | Comment (27) |
