For Jharkhand’s Asurs, the present matters more than a mythic past

For over a decade now, Dadu Asur has had painful lacerations stretching across his chest. His family and locals believe that he has cancer, but Dadu has never received a proper diagnosis.

Dadu is a resident of Polpol Path, a village in Jharkhand’s Gumla district. The nearest medical facility which could offer him a diagnosis is a community health centre in the town of Bishunpur about 60 km away, but nobody has ever taken him there.

When I met Dadu on October 11, he was sitting on the ground outside his mud house, taking in the sun, a light shawl wrapped around him to cover his chest. I asked him if he was in pain. He did not respond. Instead, Vimal Asur, an activist and resident of the area replied, “Medical facilities are far and his family doesn’t have the money or resources to take him there. Many outsiders, including those from the administration, have come here and seen his condition but no action has been taken so far.”

Next to Dadu sat his brother Phaguwa Asur, whose shawl covered his head and his eyes. I asked him why he was sitting that way. He did not reply either. “He was born with good eyesight, but sometime during adulthood he lost his vision and remained that way,” Vimal said. “He was never examined by a medical doctor about his loss of vision.”

Others in the village had similar stories of suffering that resulted from a lack of basic infrastructure and medical facilities.

Laldev Asur, also in his seventies, battled tuberculosis for more than a decade before he got better. Laldev first fell sick in 2007 and went to get treated in Bishunpur’s health centre and then a government hospital in Gumla. After the treatments proved unsuccessful, he went to Itki, a town near Ranchi and stayed at the government hospital there for a month.

By this time, his condition improved, and doctors informed him that he should return to his home. But he faced a conundrum – they could not give him medicines to continue his treatment without supervision. The treatment for tuberculosis usually requires medication for at least six months, but the medicines can only be consumed under supervision. Laldev could not possibly travel more than seven hours a day to the hospital just to take his medicines, and so, he was forced to discontinue his treatment.

Around nine years later, as a last resort, he visited a church in a village near his home. He stayed there for two weeks and prayed continuously – he claims that his condition improved, though he did not recover completely.

“Even today, I feel weak because of the prolonged illness, and I start to get breathless if I take up heavy labour,” Laldev said. “If I had received medicines properly, I would be fit today.”

Laldev says every once in a while, when he has the money, he buys some basic medicine from shops for his illness.

While Laldev has somehow battled with his prolonged illness and survived, his 14-year-old granddaughter was less fortunate. “She too contracted TB,” he said. “She was studying at the school in Netarhat, and we had big hopes for her future.”

Laldev’s family took the girl to the government hospital in Gumla, but they felt she was not getting proper treatment there and so shifted her to a private hospital in the same town. “We stayed there for about a month, but it was expensive, and we soon ran out of money,” he recalled.

Laldev then asked his granddaughter if she wished to visit the same church where he had prayed to recover. The girl consented and they spent a few weeks there, after which, he claims, her health improved significantly. Alongside, she continued taking medicine. After some time, however, she fell seriously ill again and, about a year and a half ago, died at their home.

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Polpol Path is a village populated by members of the Asur community. Most Asur villages are located deep in the interiors of Bishunpur block, more than 160 km from the state’s capital city Ranchi. In the 2011 census, the Asur population in Jharkhand was a little over 22,000.

Among those communities in Jharkhand and its surrounding regions that are classified as particularly vulnerable tribal groups, the Asurs are among the best known. This is chiefly because they share their name with the proverbial “Asuras” from Hindu mythology. In popular discourse today, the Asuras are commonly considered to be demons, but this wasn’t always the case. “In India, historically, the term Asur wasn’t always interpreted in a negative way,” said researcher Gunjal Munda. “It’s in the later Vedas that it came to be associated with demons.”

Nonetheless, the Asurs believe that Mahishasur or Bhainsasur, who in Hindu mythology was slain by the goddess Durga, was their king and ancestor. Thus, every year around the time of Durga Puja, the Asurs, a minority, are remembered for the fact that their beliefs contrast with those of the dominant Hindu culture and population. Over the years, several news organisations have carried stories stating that the festival time is a period of mourning for the Asurs, and that they do so by locking themselves indoors.

But members of the community note that this is a misconception.

“We do believe that Mahishasur was our ancestor, but there’s no special mourning ritual conducted during Navratri,” Sushma Asur, a socio-cultural activist and the first published Asur poet, said over a phone conversation.

“Instead, people celebrate Navakhani as it falls around the same time,” Sushma added. Navakhani is an agricultural festival celebrated in the region after the first yield of rice paddy. Sushma explained that Asur elders performed certain rituals in worship of Bhainsasur during the time of Diwali.

More than this misconception, what has left Sushma troubled for years is the fact that while wider society has long been fascinated by the community’s perspective on this myth, it has shown little concern for the lived realities of those who live in villages like Polpol Path.

She has, for instance, become used to the fact that several researchers and journalists approach her as a source, especially those who are interested in the Mahishasur story, but that publicity of this subject has done little to help the community. “Many people come to me for their work but in so many years nothing much has changed for us,” she said.

Sushma has long tried to work towards the community’s upliftment in various ways, many focused on promoting the Asur language and culture. She noticed that the local culture had come under threat as a result of mines opening in areas such as Gurdari and Amkipani. “As the mines developed here, more roads have opened up,” she said. “So people are switching to other languages, and adopting the cultural practices of dominant communities.”

In 2020, with the support of other Adivasi activists she began the Asur Akhra Mobile Radio, a community-run radio service that is broadcast in weekly markets in the Asur areas in Bishunpur. However, now, funds for the radio project have been exhausted and Sushma and her team are running the show with their own meagre resources. “I had applied for a grant at the Tribal Research Institute in Ranchi a few years ago, but I did not hear back from them,” she said. “We have not figured out funds from elsewhere so we are doing what we can.”

Government help has also been scarce. The particularly vulnerable tribal group category was created in 1973, at the recommendation of the Dhebar Commission, which had been tasked with examining the conditions of Scheduled Tribes across the country. The communities were at first called primitive tribal groups”, before, in 2006, the government changed the category’s name to the present one. According to the ministry of tribal affairs, a community is categorised as such if it has “pre-agricultural level of technology, low level of literacy, economic backwardness and a declining or stagnant population”. At present there are 75 such groups in the country, spread across 18 states and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory.

In 1975, the Indian government launched the “tribal sub plan”– under this plan, funds from various central and state ministries, such as health and education ministries were set aside specifically to be used for the socio-economic development of the Scheduled Tribes. Over the years, particularly vulnerable tribal groups have been allocated some funds from these plans.

These groups have also been the focus of the “Development of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups” scheme. Its objective is to work on their “overall socio-economic development and welfare” through the development of “education, housing, land distribution, land development, agricultural development, animal husbandry, construction of link roads, installation of non-conventional sources of energy for lighting purpose, social security or any other innovative activity”.

Further, the “Pradhan Mantri PVTG mission” was also launched to help these group. On Feb 1, 2023, the union government allocated Rs 15,000 crore for their socioeconomic development over three years, as part of this mission.

But such efforts have changed little on the ground for residents of Bishnupur.

Many of these communities live in remote and inaccessible areas where basic civic infrastructure has not been established. For instance, in order to reach Polpol Path, which is situated atop a plateau, one has to traverse a large valley and a river. The road leading to the village begins as a concrete road but soon winds into a mud road.

While our journey going to the village was relatively smooth, before our return it rained for a short while, and so on the way back the car got stuck in wet mud. Except for a large community centre made of concrete, most houses in the village were made of mud or stone, with clay tiles for the roofs.

There are, however, some signs of impending change. “Recently, around 25 families have made it through the applications for the PM’s housing scheme, so we will hopefully see some concrete houses in a year or so,” said Vimal. As we walked through the village, I noticed fresh concrete drying in certain areas for public taps. “These were made last week, before that we had to walk about a kilometre to the river to fetch water,” he said. In addition, two community health centres are coming up nearby.

Traditionally, the Asurs worked as iron smelters, but the trade slowly died out with the onset of modern iron and steel industries. Today this ancestral knowledge is ritually enacted and celebrated during their festival Sarasi Kutasi, which typically falls in the month of March. But for their livelihoods, the Asurs have largely been confined to agriculture and manual labour. Even as they grapple with the lack of facilities in the villages in which they live, the government and corporations have carried out infrastructural development on their former agricultural lands, now taken over for bauxite mining.

Government documents state that there are 21 bauxite mines in Gumla district, which affect about 50 villages. Most of these are located in Bishunpur. Two corporations have been carrying out mining here, since 1985 – Indal and Hindalco, both subsidiaries under the Aditya Birla Group.

Activists say that mining has left the Asurs in a double-bind. “The Asurs depend on mining for a livelihood, but it’s also destroying their land,” said researcher Gunjal Munda.

In 2016, Adivasi activists from Mahuadanr, a block in neighbouring Latehar district, conducted a study on the impact of mining in the region, for which they interviewed 1,835 people including 50 families from Polpol Path. Along with the Asur community, the report also looked at the Munda and Oraon communities in the area. The report noted that Hindalco had claimed that mining would provide livelihoods to locals, that trade and commercial activities would increase in the region and that roads and means of communication would improve. Alongside, the company promised, efforts would be taken to reduce and combat environmental pollution.

“None of the work mentioned in the mining rules has actually been carried out here,” said Vimal.

Activist Jerom Kujur was one of the authors of the 2016 report. “Take for example the road built to connect Polpol Path to other villages,” he said. “This should have been done by the mining company decades ago but it was finally done around 2020 with funds from the Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana.”

Investment in key sectors like health and education by the mining company, too, was negligible in Polpol Path, locals and activists noted. “It is very common for people to catch tuberculosis and malaria in this area” Kujur said, recalling findings from a decade ago. “The overloaded lorries carrying bauxite from the mines create huge dents on the roads, which fill up with water in the monsoons and become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.”

Vimal noted that the company had set up a health clinic in the village of Gurdari, “but no doctor has been able to stay there for long”. As we drove through villages, we passed many buildings that had information about Hindalco’s healthcare and aid services. The names and phone numbers of their personnel were painted on their walls. This included an ambulance service and a compounder, but not a medical doctor.

Education, too, has hardly benefited in the region, activists said, despite the fact that mining companies promised to work towards improving facilities. Vimal recounted that when Hindalco first proposed to set up mines in the area, locals from Polpol Path and other villages put up fierce protests. As a result, he said, the company signed an agreement with local Adivasis and the administration, in which it made commitments that included investing in healthcare and education in the area.

But these promises remain unfulfilled. Today, children in the village struggle to access quality education. Polpol Path has a government school and an anganwadi centre close to the village.

Praveen Asur, a local teacher, said he had undertaken the responsibility of having the small building constructed when he set up the school with government funds twelve years ago. A few years ago the library was damaged by heavy rain, while other rooms have also sustained damage over time from the elements, and become unusable.

At present, the school has two teachers and around 80 children who study up to the fifth standard. After that, the children go to residential schools further away from the village, or to schools in towns like Gumla or Mahuadanr.

The 2016 study found that not only had mining companies done little to improve education in the area, it had even influenced the paths that some children took – Kujur and the other authors found that many children, after reaching their teenage years, dropped out of school in order to work at the mines and make quick money.

Even today, only a small number of Asurs have pursued a higher education and gone on to obtain white collar jobs. Most young people from the community find that their education standards do not match up to those in towns and cities. Often, they lack the networks and information to study for specific jobs. “Nowadays, most of our children are going to school,” said Praveen Asur. But when asked about how many obtained jobs after studying, he said, sadly, that not many did, and that many returned home even after graduating as a result. “There are a few who were recruited in the military under the Pahadiya battalion which takes in candidates from different PVTG communities,” said Vimal. “Besides that a small number have been able to crack government exams.”

Among the terms of Hindalco’s agreement with local communities and the administration was that it would give locals priority when it came to jobs in the mines. It also committed to setting up a polytechnic college in the area that could train locals to eventually take up important roles in the company.

But the company did not keep these promises, locals said. “Most Asurs from Polpol Path working at the mines today are manual labourers, besides that maybe some twenty odd people work in the offices at the mines and about five-six work as contractors,” said Vimal. “Otherwise it’s mostly non-Adivasi outsiders who have good jobs at the mines. I think they have done this as they don’t want locals to have a say in the operation of the mines.”

The agreement with the mining company also stated that once the mining was completed, the land had to be levelled with mud and soil, and restored so that farming could be taken up once again. Activists said that while in some areas where mining had ceased, the land has been levelled, in others it had been left without being refilled.

Driving through the area, we saw a few refilled land sites, but many others had been left untended, and there were large craters where once there had been fields and forests.

Even when the land is levelled, farming cannot continue like it used to earlier. “Due to mining, the soil fertility has been drastically impacted,” Vimal said. “The land is not able to retain water and so all the water flows away and the crops dry up before they can grow.” Further, he explained, “Not everything can be grown on refilled land, only crops that require less water, like gondli,” a kind of millet.

While many landholders had leased land to the company, activists had doubts over whether all of it would be returned to them in the future. “When I was doing fieldwork for my study, I realised that people have the mentality that they’ve sold off their lands to the company and they will not get them back,” Kujur said. “In most families, I didn’t find a copy of the agreement made between the company and the landowners anywhere.”

Some used the compensation money they obtained for their land to educate their children and buy land in Ghaghra and Chainpur, some distance away from the mines. However, many also quickly spent the money they received and today have to work as labourers in the mines for a livelihood. “I know people who received 20-30 lakh in their bank accounts some twenty years ago, but who will not have more than a few hundred rupees in their bank accounts today,” said Vimal.

Vimal worries for his community in the coming years. He observed that in the neighbouring area of Kujam, where mining began earlier, the minerals would probably finish in a few years’ time. The rest of the areas would follow, sooner or later. “In the future when the mining is finished, we will be in dire straits,” he said, “It’s possible that villages will empty out and people will migrate in large numbers. They will have to seek whatever livelihood they can get, such as the hard work in brick kilns.”