The most striking adventure that I have ever had was my visit to Balle, a village in Tulsipur, Dang. I and my colleagues visited this serene place just a few days ago as part of our assignment to conduct a socio-linguistic survey of Raute community under LinSuN, a project under the Central Department of Linguistics at Tribhuwan University. Prof. Chudamani Bandhu was the team leader then, and he was accompanied by two reasearchers Lekhnath S Pathak, who also happened to be the faculty of CDL, and myself.
There is a Nepali saying, “You cannot know heaven before you die” (Namari swarga dekhinna). I had never met any Raute before this visit, and I had only heard just a little about them. To be frank, I had only watched a documentry about them on Nepal Television. I had some other preliminary ideas in my mind, formed on the basis of information from print media. But true to the Nepali adage, the reality was much more fascinating and exciting than my expectation.
PHOTO: REPUBLICA FILE PHOTO
Rautes are of two types: nomadic and settled. Currently, settled Rautes are living in two villages namely Ampani of Jogbudha VDC and Rajouda of Shirsha VDC of Dadeldhura district. We learnt from the chieftains of this communtiy that they had been settling here since 1984, during the regime of late King Birendra. They had been enticed to settle after the governmnt provided them with financial support and housing. They had been allocated one and half bighas of land each. But their settlement did not last long, since they were not able to let go of the urge to roam around the forests. As they still found more pleasure in a wandering life, they sold their lands at lower prices.
Learnng of their recent history from the Rautes reminded me of a saying by Mao: “Don‘t give a child fish, but show him how to fish.” This tenet has proved applicable to this community as well. The settled Rautes depend entirely upon the financial support of the government and the neigbors around them. They need to be trained to be self dependent.
In contrast, nomadic Rautes proved to be very distinct from settled ones.They are still living within their own world view. We could have hardly communicated with the Rautes in Balle suuccessfully without the help of Yagya Bahadur Budha, a social activist from the same village.
I saw the tents they lived in. Some of the men were busy with their work while the females were preparing food. Some of the males had just arrived and others were about to return from hunting. I found that the small children were afraid of us and their eyes became wider upon seeing us. Although the children were small in age, they were found to be wrapped in loin-cloths called ‘gado’.
I was so excited that my heart began galloping. But they proved to be so secretive that they did not want to disclose anything. We met the chieftains of the group, Dil Bahadur Shahi and Surya Narayan Shahi. They were newly elected chieftains of the group after their head Main Bahadur Shahi became inactive due to poor health. The group was divided into two camps: one was in Balle while another was nine kilometers away from there. This split had once been highlighted satirically in the media. It was said that their split came about due to the influence of national power politics. I do not know whether the split was caused by national power interests, and certainly more investigation is needed to get to the truth of this matter. The Rautes‘ version was that they had to split because of their large numbers. They had to live near a village to procure supplies of water, food and other necessities. When these resources became scarce, they were compelled to split.
They are very secretive about their language, and do not want other people learn it. We could hardly collect 210 words of their language for our wordlist. To what extent we met our goals from the visit is a matter of discsussion. But what surprised me the most was that even the children adhered very strongly to their nomadic norms. Pathak sir asked a boy named Kalam, “Do you not want to study? If you want to study, you will get previleges.” The boy showed no inclination to study. Instead, he confidently replied “Which son of Raute has ever studied? The gods preach to us that we should not study. We are the descendants of god, don‘t you know?” We all walked away speechless!
raitaramani@yahoo.com
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