Gustav Imam: Birhor Tribe

A Birhor Kumba (leaf house)

One of the most threatened objects of material heritage in Jharkhand – the only state in

India

having the nomadic Birhor Tribe – is the temporary leaf shelter known as the Kumba constructed from the branches and leaves of the Saal tree (Shorea robusta). Ever since the last twenty odd years the government has been trying to sedentarize and make this shy tribe live in cement houses with concrete roofs but they have attributed every ill attacking the tribe to these cement houses and have left one settlement after another to revert to their traditional leaf housing. It is even today not an uncommon sight to find a Birhor living in a leaf Kumba adjacent to, or even inside a cement building ! The word Kumbha means earthen pot, and was used traditionally in Indian scripture for the burial urn, and being made of earth was believed to contain the female principle (Satapata Brahmana, vi.3.I.39). It is obvious that the term was borrowed by Sanskritic cultures from prehistoric cultures like the Birhor.

The major problem of the Kumba is that it is of flimsy construction of leaves and twigs and does not have a long life and requires a regular renewal tradition to keep it going, and this is a very real problem if it is taken out of the socio-economic context of the tribe’s hunting and gathering economy which the sedentarization of the Birhor will destroy. After all the tribe’s socio-economy will change after sedentarization and the Kumba must also become redundant. The only way in which such a tradition may be kept alive is by fostering in the Birhor pride for their cultural heritage. We must not make them feel their old way of life was foolish since it sustained them for so many thousands of years. After all, even a post-agricultural society needs agriculture and a post hunter-gatherer society requires the genius of the hunter-gatherer.