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Sunday, Apr 26, 2009
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Where politicians are strangers

R.Krishna Kumar

The Jenu Kurubas of Nagarhole National Park are unaware of their candidates but lean towards the Congress

The tribals cherish their voting rights and most have Electoral Photo Identity Cards

The heat and dust of an election are missing here. No convoys, no loudspeakers, and — even — no candidates. The deafening silence is only broken by the occasional trumpeting of a wild tusker, the bark of a chital or the roar of a tiger.

The 640-sq km are of Nagarhole National Park, which falls under the Mysore parliamentary constituency, is home to about 6,000 adivasis. Their numbers are too small and the terrain too difficult for candidates to bother to visit. However, canvassing agents and local leaders do the rounds of tribal haadis or hamlets at least once during election time. Of the 1,200 tribal families, the majority are Jenu Kurubas.

The tribals are not even aware of the contestants. The names of H. Vishwanath of the Congress or C.H. Vijayashankar of the BJP, or even Manmohan Singh and L.K. Advani do not ring a bell with a majority of the tribal people. “We only deal with forest guards and department officers,” say the tribals. However, the Jenu Kurubas are aware of the three major political parties. Says Manju, an SSLC dropout from the Nagapura settlement: “We have preferred the Congress and not many have voted for the BJP or the ‘Dala party’ (colloquially, the Janata Dal-S).

His is among the few families which preferred to leave the forest in exchange for a government resettlement programme adjoining Nagarhole.

Said to be among the most primitive tribal communities, most of the Jenu Kurubas are labourers in coffee plantations in the nearby Coorg or work as daily labourers. Despite their social and economic backwardness, they cherish their voting rights. Most have been provided Electoral Photo Identity Cards. “We don’t know who the candidate is but we know voting is our right,” says Appu of Kollangere.

They lead a frugal life and their demands from the government are not many. A few are prepared to relocate and accept the government’s rehabilitation package. But for elderly tribals such as Appu, the elephant proof trench is the boundary that marks the end of their world.

Appu does not know his age; he believes he is “around 50 years old” though he looks well past 70. But a majority of the Jenu Kurubas born as late as the 1980s do not know their date of birth.

In an attempt to determine his age, Linga of Moorkal in Kalahall range says: “I was about this height when Abhimanyu [an elephant calf] was captured in the last khedda operation.” (Khedda operations were those in which wild elephants were captured and then tamed.) Since the last khedda took place in 1972, Linga thinks he is in his early forties, more or less the same age as Abhimanyu.

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