Baigas Of Shivtarai: Dhatri Matas And Tamil Cinema At The Heart Of Baiga Territory

Shivtarai is a quiet village within the untamed buffer zone of the Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in western Chhattisgarh. As a town reconciling opposites, Shivtarai is remote yet accessible. Modern concrete roads pave the town but buses and autos are infrequent yet occasionally available. Children flood into the schools and Anganwadis but the town balances a certain wildness along with its conventional structure. More remote towns further into the reserve are more complicated to access by road and fewer modes of transport are available to them. This also means that access to public welfare goods such as hospitals are scarce across Shivtarai and its neighbouring towns.

Shivtarai and its neighbouring villages are home to a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) called the Baigas. This tattoo-bearing, forest-dwelling tribal community is considered endangered due to its low levels of literacy and steadily declining population. Despite this distressing statistic, these women are incredibly alive. They walk, unafraid, through the uncharted forest, following tiger trails, climbing hills barefoot to reach their destination while sharing terrifying stories of their last encounter with a bear or a leopard cub. They also have a deep sense of camaraderie amongst them. Some might say they have a drinking problem, but I’ll neither confirm nor deny. Consider me conveniently ill informed.

Read more: Who Are The Baigas?

The Tattooed Women Of Shivtarai

During an amusing conversation with Amrika (America, in English), a Baiga Dhaitri Mata, about the origins of her name, she revealed that where she came from had nothing to do with this elusive foreign land. This tall, lanky, tattooed woman dressed in a Midnight Blue saree and an emerald blouse had heard about America from others who have visited Shivtarai, but what could possibly incentivise her to leave her home to visit this place. She seemed to have no concept of visas, passports, flights, immigration. Even the fact that it costed money to go somewhere was elusive to her. This is the kind of blissful ignorance I would pay money to participate in.

Her playfulness, combined with a subtle sense of self assurance, induced a deeper curiosity within me. I wanted to know more. So, I asked about her tattoos. She was tattooed all over in ravishing, vibrant black ink; sharp geometrical patterns swept and whirled around her arms, forehead and ankles, engulfing her like an unrelenting snake. Unlike the snake, I relented to my curiosity.

“Does everyone have the same markings?”

Amrika told me that each village has their own unique markings. I could see sharp, jagged tattoos spread across her body while other women had softer, more flowing markings on other areas of their body. She had more tattoos than she initially divulged: on her back and chest, neck and spread across her entire body. It seemed like these tattoos were a rite of passage. The younger women seemed to have fewer tattoos with more vibrant ink, likely due to the newness of them. In contrast, a shower of fading black ink engulfed the older Baiga women.

So, How Did I Meet The Baigas?

I visited Shivtarai to observe the Dhatri Matas training run by my organization, Jan Swasthya Sahyog. Dhatri Matas are traditional midwives who are appointed in each village within the Achanakmar Tiger Reserve. These women are crucial intermediaries in the birthing process. They advocate for safer institutional deliveries while deeply empathising with the challenges faced by their local communities.

Often, it is not possible for a mother to deliver in the hospital due to a lack of safe passage. Not all roads are cemented and transport is scarce. Sometimes, the mother chooses not the deliver her baby in the hospital. During these times, the Dhatri matas are trained to conduct home births under sanitary conditions. Their work is critical to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates within this region. The statistics are grim here: 61.3% of Baiga women have lost at least one child during pregnancy or shortly after birth.

Despite the training they receive, children often die. Mothers die as well, but it is a slightly rarer event. The training sessions for the Dhatri Matas are a blend of modern medical practices and traditional knowledge; these sessions aim to equip the midwives with skills to handle childbirth complications and ensure maternal and infant health. Dhatri Matas also provide the names of the pregnant women and children to our team at JSS to assist in postnatal follow-ups. In return for enabling safe deliveries in the region, they receive compensation for each child they help deliver.  

Structured Training And The Forest People

Despite this training occurring once a month, the concept of structured training is foreign and amusing to many of these women. Never having participated in any formal setup prior to these sessions, many either do not show up or leave midway. During the session I attended, the women spent the first hour doing high-intensity yoga by themselves. They seemed genuinely invested in their exercise and completely unbothered by the fact that the trainers had arrived and were waiting to start the session.

Shortly after the session began, one by one, the women laid down and fell asleep. Curious to understand what was happening, I asked one of the trainers. She said they fell asleep every session and that the trainers were used to it at this point. The Baiga Daitri Matas were now fast asleep, not a care in the world, with a lot of work ahead of them.

Initially, this behaviour confused me but I soon started enjoying the chaos of the group and relaxed into their pace. They even invited me to sleep next to them but I was a combination of shocked, in awe and amused by their very overt nonchalance. No meeting I had ever been to had evolved this way. Neither was napping in the middle of a meeting social acceptable in the places I had navigated prior to this. The trainers, however, unfazed by this scene unfolding in front of them, calmly paused the training and took a break as well. 

The Awakening

As the women awoke, things only got more interesting. Curious about my origin from Chennai and surprised by the lack of song and dance at our weddings as compared to theirs, they demanded to know more. The trainers promised them a Tamil movie if they would watch in a short presentation about preventing heat waves. After this 15-minute presentation, the trainers screened a Tamil film, dubbed in Hindi, as promised, called ‘Raatchasi,’ starring Jyotika. This film, which translates to ‘demoness,’ captivated the Baiga women.

In the movie, Jyotika is appointed as the headmistress of a government school in rural Tamil Nadu. She learns of misbehaving students, inefficient teachers, corruption entrenched within the system and she advocates for extensive reform and transforms the system from the inside out. The Baiga women, as they watched the scenes unfold, cheered and shouted ‘naari shakti’ or women empowerment, every time the protagonist took a stand educational reform or eliminating corruption from the school system for the rural children of Tamil Nadu. These chants gave me the idea that Baiga women likely experience similar themes in their lives despite how remote many of their towns are.

Watching this film with the Baiga women was a surreal experience. Regional variations in experiences aside, the themes of equality for rural communities seemed to resonate very deeply with this group; they seemed particularly enthusiastic when issues around lack of resources in rural communities, discrimination in schools, institutional corruption and similar experiences as women working within their communities were depicted within the movie. As a Tamil woman working in Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, it was a moment of profound connection transcending cultural boundaries.

In Conclusion

Remnants of Shivtarai will stay with me for a long time. From the tattoos inked across every inch of their bodies to their tales of animal encounters to their warmth and fire for life and their nonchalance in places where I have always followed rules have given me news eyes to view my life through. It underscores the importance of preserving such unique cultures while fostering understanding and respect for their ways of life.