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| Tharu people थारू |
The Tharu people live in the Tarai, a narrow strip of land which
extends across 550 miles of the southern border of Nepal, next to
northeast India. The land is forested and fertile. The Tharu people are
divided into several subgroups; the Rana Tharu live in the southwestern
corner of Nepal. The Tharus are recognized as an official nationality by
the Government of Nepal. Ethnically, their background is Rajput,
members of a high caste in Rajasthan. Legend has it that after the
Moguls invaded India in the 16th century, a Mogul king wanted to marry
one of their women. The women and children fled east and settled in this
forested region while their men stayed behind to fight the Moguls. When
the women heard that all their men had been killed, they married the
slaves who had attended them in their travels, and settled permanently
in their new home. The forests of the Tarai are full of tigers and
snakes and malarial swamps. The swamps kept outsiders away, and the Rana
Tharu developed resistance to the malaria. Over the next four centuries
their own unique culture and language emerged.
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| Tharu village |
What are their lives like?
The Rana Tharu have lived quiet,
simple lives for four centuries. They are a gentle people. They live in
villages in houses plastered inside and out with mud and cow dung, so
fine it feels like silky skin. They make almost everything they use
themselves, with a touch of art in everything. Their walls are decorated
with relief plaster sculpture and windows in geometric patterns. Their
houses are large and communal; a family group lives together, and the
women cook together, care jointly for their children and pass on their
culture and traditions to the next generation. Their clothes are
colorful and beautifully embroidered; they buy scraps of left-over
fabric from the fabric merchant and each woman puts her own dress
together in a unique and gorgeous fashion. They wear beautiful jewelry.
They make their own clay pots cook stoves, woven baskets and fishing
nets that look like butterfly wings. Rice is their staple crop; they
also grow corn. The men plow, plant and weave the nets that the women
use to fish. They also hunt in the forest that is the backdrop to their
neat fields and villages. The women plaster their houses and make the
pots and baskets.
What are their beliefs?
They have their own gods and follow a
Bharra (shaman). Their religion is animist. Besides the Bharra, who
treats their diseases, the village headman, bhalamansa, and the
Desi-Mahajan - an Indian moneylender, are important people within the
village.
What are their needs?
Foreigners brought DDT in the 1950's
and sprayed the swamps to get rid of the mosquitoes. Ironically, with
the malarial pests gone, the culture has come under increasing pressure
from the outside. Unscrupulous moneylenders have been able to get
control of their land because of their illiteracy, and now many have to
pay rent for land that they once owned. People from the hill country to
the north are moving in and cutting down the protective forests. The
large animals, the tigers and elephants, are becoming increasingly
scarce. There is increasing pressure to speak Nepali instead of Rana
Tharu, and many of the children and men are wearing more western dress.
Even their houses are beginning to change, and brick houses are starting
to be built. They are becoming more aware of outside issues and
fireside chat in the evenings is becoming more outward focused,
reflecting these changes. Their traditional houses have no doors, but
the new ones do. This is symbolic of the whole pressure to change coming
to bear on these people. New schools are coming to the villages, but
the classes are taught in Nepali rather than Rana Tharu, and the parents
are afraid their children will lose their language and culture.
Similarly, more and more people are adopting the Hindu religion rather
than their native animist beliefs.
Source:
wikipedia.org
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