For the members of the Raj Gond and Thotti tribes, it was an occasion to flip the pages of history back 36 years - where they could see images of themselves.
The three-and-a-half decade old documentary on the Adivasi way of life enthralled those who had gathered from the remote Ginnedhari and Edulapahad villages in Tiryani mandal of Telangana’s Kumram Bheem Asifabad district.
Photographs and a documentary by British anthropologist and documentary film-maker for BBC, Michael Yorke, took them down memory lane.
All India Radio, Adilabad, Station Director Sumanaspathi Reddy and his team facilitated the screening of the film and the photographs on January 24. Mr. Reddy, who came to know Mr. Yorke during his research on the tribes, got the material from the London based anthropologist.
Mr. Yorke was a student of legendary anthropologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf and had assisted him in his studies on Raj Gonds of Adilabad during the 1970s. In 1980, he joined the BBC’s Anthropology Division as a documentary maker and made a film on the Dandari festival. He clicked photographs of almost every individual in the village.
Pristine culture
That was the time Naxalites got a foothold in the area and the tribal culture in Ginnedhari and its surroundings was mostly untouched. The sleepy village was thought to have got over the killing of its Patel or headman Athram Lachu by Naxalites in 1971.
“I now know how I looked as a young man,” said a beaming Ada Jalpati Rao, Patel of Rompalli village, who taught the Gondi dialect to Mr. Yorke.
“I am happy to see my wife as was several years back,” added old Valka Damu as he watched the images roll, projected on a classroom wall in the local school.
