Friday, October 5, 2007

Plethora of the positive in personal space



"Everyone of us needs a sanctuary to get away from the rigours of everyday routine. Neera Gulati describes how a bedroom can be converted into a haven with some planning, imagination and resourcefulness. One of the few certainties in life is the need to sleep. Since it is critical to our physical and emotional well-being, sleep is something all of us need- regardless of who we are, where we reside and how we live. And it is something we spend a considerable amount of time doing. The average eight hours a night amounts to a third of our lives. Every home needs a sanctuary where one can escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life or a secluded spot to just relax and revitalise. But to create this space needs planning, imagination, resourcefulness and most likely, work. Today, research supports the notion that a bedroom or any other space that accommodates sleep and its related activities, should be more than just a randomly arrayed place to sleep. They must be functional, comfortable, nurturing, appealing to the eye, above all else, restful and serene. To endow the bedroom with a serene and nurturing aura, opt for simplicity. A bed can tempt without all the fussy attire. Elegance and ease can meet head-on, by choosing the right elements. For instance, a plank bed frame elicits a rustic or provincial era. Polished metal or glossed wood may impart a modern or minimal aesthetic look.

Bedclothes are just as evocative. Frothy linens turn a bed sweet and romantic; crisp textiles lend it an air of tailored elegance and rich trappings give a bed a lavish look.

Thanks to its powerful presence, changing the bed can also change the very nature of the room. And making those changes can be as easy and inexpensive as dressing and draping the bed to evoke a new mood.

Drenching it with colour and pattern can offer definition by establishing a specific decorative style. Tenting the bed in various ways establishes a certain tone, be it historic, exotic, fanciful or romantic.

And changing the look of your bed need not be a big production. For example, you can create the look of a canopy bed without building a new structure. Simply hang fabric from a central point over the head of the bed.

Then, drape lengths of lightweight cotton over looks in the ceiling placed at either side of the head of the bed for a contemporary effect or at all four corners for a very dramatic effect. Whatever types a textiles are employed, it is important to consider the cleaning process.

Sheet, pillowcases, quilt covers need frequent laundering, so they should be able to withstand regular washings.
They must be colourfast, shrink-resistant, and require little or no special care such as hand washing or air drying. However valances and tents do not need to be washed frequently.

Headboard solutions

White linen is perhaps the easiest way to implement a quick change in the bedroom, and don’t forget the headboard. Colour and pattern, no matter how subtle, boost the perceived comfort quotient to the bed. Creamy tones of maize spiked with touches of green can make a simple iron bed alluring.

A bed that faces the door can give its occupants a sense of security when they are most vulnerable, since they can easily see who is entering the room.

Add built-in shelves around the bed to suggest a headboard where there is none while at the same time providing great open storage offering an arresting framework for a dramatic work of art, which can be placed behind the bed. By painting the shelves black, the decorative process can increase as they seem to cocoon the bed.

Maximising your mattresses: The average life of most mattresses is about 10 years. But quality of the mattresses and its use also matter. Deterioration inside a mattress can often go unnoticed until your body starts feeling it.

The stiffness and pain from tossing and turning are good indications of an old mattress. Do keep a check for the peaks, valleys, lumps, bumps and surface wear and tear in your mattress.

To be fair, looks aren’t everything, nor are they ever the most critical part of the equation in this instance. We all need our bedrooms to be hardworking spaces that meet a range of wants and needs.

This room must be extremely serviceable since it usually must harbour some of our most treasured possessions and contains all our accessories and clothes.

And there is also much to do in this space on a daily basis, such as grooming ourselves, selecting our clothes or getting dressed. If we are sharing the bedroom with a partner, the room must accommodate twice as many effects and double the action. Thus it is just as important to plan a bedroom as it is to plan any other space in a home.

A sense of separation from other activities in the home is critical for a bedroom. Achieving this will involve where you place the bed and how you dress it. Light and sound controls are also critical issues. If there are many windows in the room, hang thick curtains or blinds to block outside lights.

On the other hand, morning light is a powerful wake-up tool. If the room is noisy, introduce plush carpets, thick drapes or wall hangings to muffle loud sounds.

Sleep secrets

A low temperature promotes better sleep, while a warm bedroom can actually interfere with the same. This is because our body temperature drops during sleep and rises as our waking hour draws near. According to experts, the ideal bedroom temperature is 18 and 20 degree celcius, but that will not suit everyone. Women usually prefer a slightly warmer room temperature then men.

Buying linen: All cotton sheets soften with washing, while blends wrinkle less but aren’t soft. Egyptian cottons are extra lustrous and retain this sheen through repeated washings.

Mix and match to make a bed great by combining prints. The best principle to remember is that opposites attract. Curves should be balanced with straighter edges. For example, some perfect paving are lush floral with simple stripes or linear geometrics with curvy designs.

Accentuate the foot of the bed with a bench, a trunk or low bureau, or even a stack of antique luggage. Depending on the piece, it can assume any decorative style. It will also serve as a place to sit while dressing, to drop clothes on or for storage.

Colour:

Colour is a powerful tool in decorating the bedroom as it can be expensive, versatile and inspiring. Furthermore its effects have been scientifically proven to affect physical, psychological and emotional well-being. Colours can be used to create a range of moods that enhances the way we function in a specific room. Also, take the size and shape of the bedroom into consideration. Choose colours that you are comfortable with and that make you feel good.

Special space

Everybody needs a place to put up his or her feet and relax, whether it is to sit quietly and read, gaze at the scenery outside (if there is one), or grab a short nap, in essence, somewhere to escape the stresses of daily life.

While a whole room devoted to this pursuit would be ideal, it is often unrealistic, give the space constraints most of us have. This sort of space can be carved out of the corner of a room, be it a bedroom, study, family room or home - office. Furnish this space with sensuous pieces, such as a cushy recliner on a chaise or a hammock or a swing hung inside to brings the outdoors in.

Don’t ignore the spaces outside your home. In good weather, transform a corner of a balcony into a spot for peaceful repose. Set a deck chair under an awning or tree, spread a blanket on the grass or hang a hammock somewhere.

Creating your bedroom retreat: Be creative and bold with decorating elements. Don’t hesitate to try daring colour combinations, over the top patterns or unusual textures into the mix.

Add all amenities you love. If you love music, invest a superior sound system; if you want to eat or drink in the space, consider a mini refrigerator, expresso machine or a bar. Use lighting as a tool. Vital to the atmosphere of the room, lighting can be used to create different effects at different times.

It can be targeted to accent a certain feature in the room, such as a coveted collection or to create a mood. Don’t forget the basics: function must still be a priority.

No matter how singular, eclectic, elegant the furnishings, they still must be practical and offer all the comfort you need. Make sure you have a comfortable, supportive bed, adequate lighting and ventilation and enough storage to accommodate your possessions.

The spaces we use for sleeping should be shrines to our personal needs and preferences and places where we can create a secret world. And we can learn how to design the spaces to fulfill these needs with forethought, planning and action."

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Bengalooru on run

"The city is home to Infosys, Google's Research and Development Center, and some of the world's most talented (and inexpensive) software engineers,' said a report published by global media giant CNN-Time Warner group. India's growing presence in the global economic arena has received a boost with Bangalore emerging as one of the best places to do business in the world, joining the league of cities like London, Shanghai and Singapore, a latest study says. Bangalore, known as the world's back office, is among the 12 cities named in the 'Best places to do business in the wired world' list recently compiled by Business 2.0, a magazine published by global media giant CNN-Time Warner group. Other cities which find a place on the list are -- Tokyo , Hong Kong, Barcelona (Spain), Helsinki (Finland), Seoul, Stockholm (Sweden), Tallinn (Estonia) and Tel Aviv (Israel). 'The city is home to Infosys, Google's Research and Development Center, and some of the world's most talented (and inexpensive) software engineers,' the report said while describing Bangalore. Each place is described along with the availability of free Wi-Fi points, best place to get down to business, best place to celebrate closing the deal and move on"

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

What BJP Rule Meant - Coalition politics is greatest legacy of Vajpayee government


"What BJP Rule Meant Coalition politics is greatest legacy of Vajpayee government Christophe Jaffrelot For the first time in post-independence India, Hindu nationalists were in a position to rule the country between 1998 and 2004. The impact of this unique phase has not been assessed yet. The BJP had been voted to power to make a change after decades of Congress rule and two years of the Third Front. The Vajpayee government did make a change a few weeks after taking over by deciding on nuclear tests. Previous Congress governments had contemplated this move, but no prime minister after Indira Gandhi had gone ahead with it. This strategic shift may remain the only irreversible innovation of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Certainly the Vajpayee government introduced new measures but most of them have been undone by the UPA after 2004. Education is a case in point. M M Joshi, as HRD minister, tried hard to saffronise the textbooks and appointed Hindutva-minded ideologues in key committees. But all this is history today. In the economic domain, the real change had started before, with the Narasimha Rao government. The NDA simply made the evolution deeper and quicker, as evident from the “strategic sales” regarding a few PSUs which amounted to their privatisation. No significant reform of the labour laws took place, for instance. In the realm of diplomacy, the Vajpayee government accelerated the rapprochement with the US and Israel, but they were already on the Congress agenda, as the opening of an Indian embassy in Tel Aviv and an Israeli one in New Delhi showed in 1991.
Six years in office, in fact, might have changed BJP as much as BJP has changed Indian politics. The party was supposed to be allergic to caste politics because it divided India (and the Hindus), but Vajpayee toyed with the reservation issue the same way as his predecessors did — granting quotas to the Jats of Rajasthan who overnight became OBCs and a BJP votebank. The BJP was also supposed to be clean, but party president Bangaru Laxman himself — not to speak of the rest — was caught receiving bribe.
The real gift BJP gave to India was political stability through the setting up of a coalition pattern. Between 1989 and 1999, India had had five general elections and six PMs. Obviously, the old Congress system had gone, and nothing had replaced it. The BJP displayed remarkable flexibility by admitting that it would not be in a position to govern India alone and that it would have to dilute its ideology to make alliances. The creation of the NDA in 1998 will perhaps turn out to be a real milestone in Indian politics.
The BJP then made three major concessions
by putting on the back burner Ayodhya, Article 370 and a Uniform Civil Code. As a result, the NDA was in a position to prepare a common election manifesto in 1999 and the Vajpayee government lasted five years, something a non-Congress government had never achieved so far.
The Congress, though reluctantly, has emulated this strategy by shaping the United Progressive Alliance in 2004. Certainly it was not easy for Congress to admit that its decline was irreversible — at least in the short run — but BJP had set a pattern the party had to imitate if it wanted to compete successfully. The BJP, therefore, has helped Indian democracy to cope with the growing fragmentation of the party system — because of regional, communal and caste identities — which might have perpetuated instability at the Centre had not India entered the era of coalitions. Today, India looks like a more modern democracy because of a growing bipolarisation of politics which offers a rather clear choice to voters.
Each time Hindu nationalist leaders have been in office at the Centre, the sangh parivar has, however, been under strain. In 1977-79, ‘dual membership’ had been a key reason for the abortion of the Janata experiment. During 1999-2004, similar issues resurfaced. On one hand, the BJP was made of swayamsevaks who were supposed to pay allegiance to the RSS and its agenda; on the other, they were partners in the NDA framework who did not share their Hindutva-based ideology.
The RSS acknowledged what came to be known as the compulsions of coalition politics — so long as the organisation found reasons to rejoice in some of the decisions of Vajpayee’s government like the nuclear tests and the education policy. Things changed when some of the reforms contradicted the programme of RSS and of some of its other offshoots. Economic liberalisation, for instance, was harshly criticised by staunch advocates of swadeshi.
More importantly, the VHP never understood that no progress could be made regarding its plan to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya though its friends were in office. Gradually, the idea took shape that BJP had used the organisation to mobilise voters, but once in office, it was not willing to pay its debt. The relations between BJP and RSS — as well as VHP — turned really sour after the 2004 defeat that the latter attributed to the dilution of the party’s ideology.
Such tensions need not be overemphasised though. The sangh parivar survived similar drama in the late 1970s-early 1980s. It proved then that it was truly resilient and it is showing the same kind of quality today. However, the tenure of the Vajpayee government reconfirmed the deeply ambivalent nature of this movement: it cannot win power alone, but it refuses to share power either.
The writer is director of CERI, Paris.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

The new India: Bangalore The making of a miracle


In 1947 it was a provincial outpost. Today it's the most globalised city in India. Ian Jack reports from the boom town of Bangalore .
One early morning in Bangalore - at about six, before the traffic thickened and made the timing of any cross-town journey the subject of doubting speculation - an enterprising young man called Arun Pai took me in his car to the edge of the Karnataka Golf Association course, where he asked his driver to stop. On one side, greens and bunkers. On the other, big new buildings coated in glass and occupied by IBM, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs. 'I always take my foreign clients here,' Pai said, 'and ask them to tell me which famous author stood almost in the same position.' Article continues Many people have no difficulty. The answer is Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and author of The World is Flat, and this is the setting of his book's first sentence, when Friedman is about to swing from the first tee and his partner tells him: "Aim at either Microsoft or IBM." As a first sentence it hardly ranks with "The past is a foreign country ...", but Friedman's book, the world's most popular gospel of globalisation, has sold 3m copies. It takes its several heroes from the IT business; one of them is Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of the Indian software company Infosys, who gets the credit for inspiring the title by insisting to Friedman in 2004: "Tom, the playing field is being levelled." But you might say that its real hero is Bangalore, or Bangalore as Friedman sees it: the leading example of how a city populated by clever, ambitious, English-speaking technicians in what is still known as the developing world can use the tools of the new information age to abolish geography - to undercut European and American costs so much, with no (or better) effect on quality, that it destroys the historic advantages of adjacency, when the counting house was best placed next to the warehouse and the warehouse next to the factory.

The 600 pages of Friedman's book radiate a gung-ho optimism, and perhaps for that reason it is more widely read in India, a country that for most of the 20th century suffered the pessimistic prognoses of the outside world, than in Britain. To look for a British equivalent you might have to go back to Samuel Smiles and his Victorian testaments to hard work and self-help and his glorification of the great engineers. As I went around Bangalore this month I often thought of Smiles and the first industrial revolution - of its ruthlessness and chaos, its model factories and choked sewers, its slums and philanthropists, yet running through its new kind of people, freshly urbanised and adapting to the factory clock, the thread of a belief that they were at the centre of a new kind of world.

Arun Pai, my guide that morning, is an example of this new kind of person, or new at least in India. Inspired by the walking tours of London, he created a small company, bangalorewalks.com, and every Sunday he leads groups of people through the history of the city as manifested in its monuments, churches, parks and barracks. At this, he is quite brilliant; from plain and obscure objects he can draw stories that take you to Napoleon and the conquest of Everest. To listen to him, Bangalore has been affecting the course of global history ever since Lord Cornwallis took it from Tipu Sultan in 1791.

But walking tours aren't how Pai makes his real money. That comes when a software company, usually American, asks him to introduce one of its newly arrived executives to India: the bewildering totality of it. Pai has a one-day course. He takes them in his car to the famous Friedman site, to the ancient Hindu temple behind the new Marks & Spencer's, to the new suburbs and shopping malls. He may recall a few recent cultural references, such as the American passive verb, to be "Bangalored", meaning to lose one's job to cheaper competition overseas. He can do Hinduism in five minutes. Most of the questions are about cows, but beggars and caste are also popular topics. He has persuasive answers for the innocent from Kansas, and to demonstrate and sharpen his skills he asked me to ask him any question at all about noticeable aspects of India. I asked why it was that Indian advertising never depicted any human being with a skin shade darker than olive, when so many of the population, especially in the south, were by no means so light. Pai said that it was just a local edition of a universal fact: the enduring appeal of whiteness. But he agreed that this answer might not satisfy an American executive who happened to be black, or indeed anyone from a society that has adjusted to multiculturalism in way that India, for all its divisions of religion, language and caste, has not.

Later that Sunday morning, Pai took a group of us along the city's main thoroughfare, MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road, in search of bungalows. The Victorian bungalow and its shady garden were once the trademarks of Bangalore - "India's garden city". Only a few survive. Land is too valuable and its price increases every week. "Take pictures, take pictures," Pai said when we stood in front of one. "It may not be here when you next come." In 10 years, people say (and perhaps hope), the city will look like Dubai or Singapore. Some of it already does.

Go back 60 years. Does the story of Bangalore's rise symbolise the larger history of independent India? Yes and no. In 1947, Bangalore contained about 500,000 people and has about six million now; the fifth largest city in India. In the same period, India's population, now 1.12 billion, has multiplied by a factor of three rather than Bangalore's 12, but urban growth rates that are much higher than the national average aren't unusual. When I first came to Bangalore in 1976, I didn't feel I'd left India behind. The same restrictions on consumption, the same brakes to aspiration, applied as much here as anywhere else in the country. Under the regime of Indira Gandhi (and of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, before her), the Indian middle class grew to a kind of noble austerity in the cause of national self-reliance. On the other hand, even then, Bangalore was clearly exceptional. It was tidier, neater, greener, English was more readily spoken, a striking number of church towers poked above the trees in a country where, outside the far south, Christianity had made very little impact. Above all, there was (and is) the climate. Bangalore is 3,000ft above sea level, protected by its height from the enervating heat; the British called it a "no-fan station". When I asked Nandan Nilekani of Infosys how he explained the IT industry's attraction to Bangalore he made all these points - "It's the most middle-class, Anglicised, cosmopolitan city in India, with a better quality of life" - and added another: that a scientific and technical tradition already existed in the city, thanks to the aircraft and electrical instruments businesses that the government of India located there in the 1950s and 60s, militarily strategic factories that were as far away as possible from the borders of Pakistan and China, India's potential enemies. During the 1980s, even before economic liberalisation, it became known as the fastest-growing city in Asia.

It is also, as the historian Ramachandra Guha says, a mongrel kind of town: the only place in India where you can watch films in six Indian languages. Partly, this is British doing. After Cornwallis dethroned Tipu Sultan and restored the kingdom of Mysore to its former Hindu rulers, the British built an army cantonment on the high ground outside the gates of Bengaluru, which in the local language, Kannada, was the name of the town they had captured. The cantonment grew in size to become a "civil and military station" which drew thousands of Tamil craftsmen, tradesmen and servants, as well as Persian horse traders and British civil servants and brewers. A large Anglo-Indian population became established. Missionaries opened schools, a great park was laid out, exotic trees imported, courts and administrative offices built. The lingua franca of this new town, Bangalore, was English; just down the road in the narrow lanes of Bengaluru they continued to speak in Kannada.

The two towns became one municipality in 1949, but the differences between them persist. In Bangalore, I met men in their early middle-age, raised in the old city, who said that until their late teens they had never travelled the mile to the cantonment; and who had been warned by their parents that, when they did, they had better avoid the temptations of bars and hotels.

Bangalore became the capital of the new state of Mysore (since 1973, Karnataka) when the Indian state boundaries were redrawn in 1956. The official language of Karnataka is Kannada. But thanks to the successive flows of migrants from other Indian states, only about 30% of Bangalore's inhabitants claim it as their first language. That means the city has no dominant majority, a welcoming absence as far as new migrants and businesses are concerned but a fretful one for the native Kannada speaker, who, if he lacks English, may feel excluded from the new consumer culture of his own capital city.

Consequently, in what some Bangaloreans consider a political sop to the natives, Bangalore will be renamed Bengaluru within the next year or two. When it appears in airline timetables and on departure boards, a stranger might imagine that the new, more Indian name reflects a new, more Indian reality on the ground. But the opposite will be the case.

A good way to understand what has happened to Bangalore is to look at a street map. In the old city, the Kannada names, many centuries old, come from castes and occupations and bazaars. In the cantonment, the source of the names is obvious enough: Brigade Road, Infantry Road, Church Street. Then, to judge from the parentheses, a burst of patriotic renaming took place - Sir Mirza Ismail Nagar (Richmond Town), Field Marshall Cariappa Road (Residency Road) - though to no effect on how people think and speak of these places. In the suburban spread of the 1960s and 70s, the streets renounce any claim to history or romance, as though Stalin was in charge of the naming department. In Indiranagar, named after Indira Gandhi, the main street is One Hundred Feet Road: that is its width. Many streets are simply numbered, as are localities: a visitor can spend many hours in an auto-rickshaw looking for 597, 15th Cross Road, JPNagar Phase Two. But now that anonymity, these plain square houses in their numbered streets, no longer satisfies new money. The names and architecture of the most recent settlements, high-rises and gated communities could be described as postmodern or pre-post-colonial: Buckingham Court, Windsor Residency, Palm Meadows, 10 Downing Street. Some quite small houses have castellated battlements. The word "Residency", the title the British gave to the homes of senior imperial administrators, is very popular.

"People here speak of 'get-up'," an architect told me as we had dinner in a hotel. "They say to each other, 'What kind of get-up is your new house going to have? Mediterranean? English Castle?' They think they can do anything - anything! - and they want to shove it in your face." In the hotel bar, young Bangalorean men were braying and drinking - the sound carried across the hotel gardens. They weren't poor; this was an expensive hotel. A phrase that the former Sunday Telegraph editor Peregrine Worsthorne coined in the red-braces 1980s came to me: bourgeois triumphalism.

I came to Bangalore a few times in the 1980s and stayed in the homes of my then father-in-law, first in Indiranagar and then in the old Anglo-Indian colony of Whitefield. The sights and sounds I associate with these places were, and in most places still are, common to all India. You would go to sleep to the sound of the chowkidar, the night watchman, tapping his stick and blowing his pea whistle. In the morning there would be the cawing of crows and the cries of an early street pedlar, selling vegetables from a stall on wheels. Sometimes an occasional car would honk. The Whitefield house is now a restaurant, the Eurochine, and in Indiranagar they are tearing down 30-year-old houses all the way down the Hundred Feet Road to make way for the stores of the global brands: Benetton, Nike, Levis. Cars queue impatiently down every street and turning.

It does no good to be wistful. A bright young science graduate can expect a starting salary of at least 270,000 rupees (about £3,400) a year as a software engineer, and within a year or two will be earning far more than the professor who taught him. Between 200,000 and 300,000 people work in Bangalore's IT industry and not all of them will be so prosperous; call-centres, now referred to dismissively as IT's "low-hanging fruit", pay far less. The great majority, however, will earn far more than their parents. Rent and property are expensive - at the top end, a Bangalore flat can cost £1m - but credit is cheap. This new middle class has cars and takes holidays abroad (eight days in Singapore for £150). The very rich have servants and a manager to manage them. A servant - a driver, a cook - can double his salary by learning English. If the new recruit joins Infosys, which has become India's most applauded company, he or she will travel each day to a "campus" at Electronic City, which has a putting green, an orchard, a swimming pool, free bikes to get around, and a canteen that serves 14 different cuisines (one of them Jain, which omits garlic and onions). In recent years, more foreign chief executives and heads of state have visited this campus than the Taj Mahal, or so it is said, and "the Infosys tour" has become a cliche of books and TV documentaries. And of course, after getting out of your golf buggy and ascending one of the taller buildings, you can look out through the plate glass and see the slums beyond the fence, where a small boy is defecating next to a stray dog and the ditch runs black. India: land of contrasts. But supposing this replica of Silicon Valley were to disappear? The slum, the stray dog, the black ditch, the defecating child - all these would still be there.

Philanthropy is popular. Infosys has a foundation devoted to good works. Quite separately, Nandan Nilekani's wife, Rohini, estimates she has spent about $40m (£20m) of their money on children's educational and water projects, mainly in village India, over the past few years. This is a lot. Then again, her husband is one of Infosys's seven founders. When the company went public in 1993, 100 shares cost 9,500 rupees. The same shares today would be worth 24,440,000 rupees, 3,000 times their flotation value. (Many more people have benefited than the founders; stock options were once given to all employees, who now number about 80,000.) "It's just no use being an island of prosperity in this country, it isn't going to work," Rohini Nilekani said when I went to see her in her charity's office, and in that statement hover two large black clouds.

The first is inadequate, sometimes collapsing, infrastructure: roads, railways, sewers, drinking water, schools, electricity. The second is the growing divide between urban and rural India. Despite increasing urbanisation, about 70% of the population still live in agricultural villages. The reverse side of the economic liberalisation that made India's software industry possible is the crisis of Indian agriculture. Poor crop prices, exhausted soil, expensive fertiliser, falling water tables, and land that needs to sustain too many livelihoods: so far this year 1,000 Karnataka farmers are said to have killed themselves. And yet the odd thing, the thing that a more curious American executive might ask their guide, Arun Pai, is: given that the price (80 rupees, about £1) of a six-minute local call from my grand hotel surpasses the daily wage of the sugar-cane cutter in a field a few miles away, how come there is so little anger and unrest in Bangalore? The best answer to this question came from another software entrepreneur, Subroto Bagchi, who runs MindTree Consulting (its clients include Avis and Royal Mail). I went to see him at his house. He offered tea and when I said yes, went away to make it and brought it on a tray himself - striking behaviour; never before, in 30 years' experience of India, have I ever seen any Indian man of above average wealth do anything so humbly domestic.

Bagchi, like many other Indian IT success stories, likes to stress his middle-class origins, a term that has a more egalitarian implication in India than in Britain. Indian businesses in the past tended to be run by caste-based dynasties, with money and trading (as well as political) know-how inherited by succeeding generations. Bagchi's father, on the other hand, worked as a government officer in a remote, un-electrified district of Orissa State; Nilekani's father managed a textile mill; village postmen, teachers and railway ticket-collectors appear proudly in the biographies of others. According to Bagchi, it demonstrates the truth of the saying that the Indian IT business succeeded "not because who we knew but because what we knew" and having to compete in a global market without political protection.

I asked about the prospects of discontent, given the disparities of wealth in Bangalore. Bagchi said: "Tell me, where is the angst, where is the senseless killing? They're not even restless. They're not just content, they're quite grateful. Most people, labourers, maidservants, are making a better living. It doesn't occur to my driver that he has every right to be as well-dressed as I am. Just doesn't occur to him. You have to understand, we don't have a sense of urgency, our civilisation is 3,600 years old. For most Indians, it's been an upgrade from coach to business class. They're grateful to be where they are".

· Ian Jack began writing about India as a foreign correspondent in 1977 and lived for a time in Delhi and Calcutta. He edited the Independent on Sunday and then Granta magazine and now writes a Saturday column for the Guardian.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Behind the Name: Message: "meaning of the name Somaiah"

This is mostly for those who need to know the meaning of name Somaiah:

When I was a kid, I asked my dad what my name meant - most Indian names have a meaning. He replied that Somaiah meant 'Chandra' or moon god, as 'Som' meant moon, and 'aiah' meant master or god.

However, after doing some research on my own, I have come to a different conclusion. My family comes from an Aryan tribe, as most Indians do. Aryans drank a hallucigenic drink made from a mushroom called 'Soma' (Amanita muscaria or the Fly Agaric ). This hallucinogen gave Aryans an edge over their enemies in battle because they went beserk and fought better, as they did not feel the pain of their wounds until the effects of their drink wore off, which was usually after the battle was over. One of the Aryan kings was especially fierce after taking this drug, and is referred in the Rig Veda as a master of 'Soma'.

Eventually this king became so accomplished that he was deified permanently into the hindu pantheon of gods as Indra.

So essentially the name Somaiah refers to Indra the king who got intoxicated and got into fights, which sounds a lot like the Coorgs of today!

Interestingly Indra, the Greek Apollo and the Norsk Thor all have the same root."

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Kodava Speech Community: An Ethnolinguistic Study


1.INTRODUCTION


This paper presents a global ethnolinguistic view of the Kodavas, a minority community in south India. It deals with the ethnolinguistic aspects of the language spoken by this community from the point of view of communication, identity, and social reality. The paper presents certain problems that the language and the linguistic community face, and the future prospects for the development of the language.

The Kodavas or Coorgis are a minority community with a population of 97,011 persons according to the 1991 census. (There were 79,172 persons who claimed Kodava to be their mother tongue in the 1961 census.) The majority of the Kodavas live in the Kodagu (Coorg) district situated on the Western Ghats in Karnataka, India. The Kodavas have maintained a distinct identity in terms of customs, rituals, dress, food, and language from the neighbouring peoples for a very long time.

2. HISTORICAL AFFINITY

Some historians suggest that the Kodavas might have migrated into their present area in the Coorg district around the 3rd century A.D. The Yeravas, Kurubas, Male-Kudiyas and Holayas also are found in this area (Richter, 1987).

There are different theories about the origin of Kodavas. One view is that the Kodava culture resembles the culture of the ancient trading stock of Araba (Moeling 1855). Another view is that the Kodavas are descendants of Scythians (Connor 1870, Rice 1878). According to yet another view, the Kodavas belong to the Indo-Scythian race. Kodavas have no resemblance to any other people group of South India since their average cephalic index is 80.6 and the nasal index is 65.2. This may prove that the Kodavas are the descendants of the Brachycephalic stock who entered into the Indus Valley during the Mohenjodaro period and migrated to the Coorg region (Hutton, as quoted in Balakrishnan 1976). These are all theories, and we do not have any definite clue or evidence to prefer one theory over another.

3. KODAVA LANGUAGE

The origin or the root of the Kodava language, however, is easily traceable. Comparative Dravidian studies have shown that Kodava belongs to the South Dravidian Language group. The following figure shows the family tree:

Pre-South Dravidian group

Kodava Lineage

(Krishnamurti 1969).

Though Kodava language belongs to the Dravidian family, some have claimed that the Kodava people themselves may not be of Dravidian origin. If this theory or belief is accepted, then we need to explain how the Kodava people group has a language that clearly belongs to the Dravidian family of languages. We do notice that people groups could give up their language over a period of time and adopt another language as their own. Kodavas might have given up their language and shifted to a new language. Such a language shift is a common phenomenon throughout the world. In India, Khasis belong to the Mangoloid group physically, but their language belongs to the Austro-Asiatic group. The Gonds are a Dravidian tribe, but a section among them has shifted to the Indo-Aryan language, Chatti-gadhi. While the Bhils have been considered sometimes as belonging to the Dravidian family and sometimes belonging to the Munda stock, they speak an Indo-Aryan language called Bhili. These cases of the entire ethnic group switching to another language show that there is no inherent or necessary link between the language group and its ethnicity. It also clearly shows that no group can ever claim to be belonging to a pure race. In a sense, the entire Indian demography is one of racial admixture. It is only the language that may be used to distinguish one group from another.

Linguistically, Kodava shows some deviations from the rest of the Dravidian languages. To cite one example, Dravidian languages have 5 short and 5 long vowels. In addition to these vowels, Kodava has two more vowels, namely, /ï/ high central unrounded vowel and /ë/ mid central unrounded vowel which are also distinguished as short and long. (Balakrishnan, 1976).

These peculiarities and distinctness of Kodava had attracted the attention of the scholars even in the sixteenth century. However, they did not consider Kodava as an independent language. It was always considered as a dialect of Kannada, closer to Tulu (Ellis 1816), or closely related to Malayalam and Tamil (Moegling 1855). It was in early 20th century that the philologists and linguists recognized Kodava as an independent language.

Kodava/Coorgi is also the mother tongue of some other communities such as Airi, Male-Kudiya, Meda, Kembatti, Kapal, Maringi, Heggade, Kavadi, Kolla, Thatta, Koleya, Koyava, Banna, Golla, Kanya, Ganiga, and Malaya, living mainly in the Coorg region. Many of these communities have migrated into Coorg from Malabar during the period of Haleri Dynasty. There is no research done so far to find out the variation in Kodava language in terms of these communities.

4. NO MARKED VARIATION AT THE SOCIAL LEVEL

An important aspect of Kodava language behavior is the role played by the speech variety used by the speakers in conveying information about the background of the speaker. People from different social and geographic backgrounds use different varieties of the Kodava language. These varieties could be regional variations, namely, Mendale takka (North Coorg Variety), and Kiggaati takka (south Coorg variety) (Rajyashree 1972).

Kodava does not show a marked variation at the social level. However, the social differences can be observed through code-mixing and code-switching. Code-mixing is observed while speaking/writing one code or language, mixing vocabulary of another code/language. Code-switching is resorted to by the speakers when they switch to another code or language, while speaking/writing one code. In the case of Kodava population, the code mixed or switched is often English, though the use of Kannada, Hindi or Malayalam is also seen rarely. The Kodavas residing outside Coorg show more code-mixing and code-switching than those who live in Coorg. The Kodavas from the higher middle class, and those who are highly educated show more mixing of English or code-switching to English, while those belonging to the lower middle class show more mixing of other languages. However, there are no marked social variations in Kodava.

5. SIGNS OF STANDARDIZATION

Kodava also shows the phenomenon of standardization. The speakers of Kodava from the South Coorg area switch over to the north Coorg variety for inter-group communication. The socio-cultural reason behind it may be that the administrative center of Coorg, Mercara (Madikeri) is situated in north Coorg. Apart from being the Center or seat of the district administration, Mercara has been the capital of Haleri Kings (17th century) and has been the center of education in the Coorg district since the British period. The emergence and acceptance of a standard variety of Kodava has been stabilized by the use of that variety in the Kodava literature.

Even today, after having considerable written literature and two newspapers published in Kodava, the issue of a suitable script for the Kodava language is still being debated. At present the Kannada script is used to write Kodava.

6. KODAVA LANGUAGE - A SYMBOL OF IDENTITY

The Kodava people have a very strong affinity with their language 'Kodava'. Wherever they happen to meet in the world, they speak in their mother tongue only among themselves. They resent if a Kodava speaks to another Kodava in a language other than Kodava. Kodava has the status of a written minority language, but its use is restricted to the domain of home and for informal and formal community gatherings. It is generally recognized that their language function as a symbol, a rallying point for the community, and that it continues to be used for the special functions and in specific domains.

Indeed, the loyalty a people group feels and exhibits toward their language that is spoken only in the restricted domain of home makes that language an integral part of its ethnicity. Such a language becomes more resistant to change, since its restricted use makes it the least visible entity in the mainstream society. Moreover, the restricted home use of this language does not hinder the participation of its users in the mainstream society. Although this language has lost its function in a wider communicative context in the mainstream society, sentimental attachment to that language may survive for a long time and this sentimental attachment will ensure the continuity of that language. Kodava is a fine example of this situation. If a language can survive in this fashion, it can also be resuscitated to its original instrumental communicative function in their society when appropriate socio-political and economic conditions arise.

The restricted use of Kodava language for intra-group communication under the conditions of contact and acculturation for many generations indicates that the community has strong commitment to maintain its language. The strength of this commitment should be seen in the fact that the Kodava language is so much associated with tradition, community life, rituals, and religion that it has come to be perceived as an essential determinant of group solidarity and group identity. It is the carrier of a cultural heritage and a religious tradition.

7. COMMUNICATION AND CONTACT WITH OTHER LINGUISTIC COMMUNITIES

In domains other than home and community gatherings, Kodavas use other languages. Like most minorities, Kodavas show a high percentage of bilingualism. All along history, Kodavas have been in constant contact with Malayalam and Kannada. Kodavas had trading contacts with the Malayalam speakers for a very long time. Coorg has a common boundary with Kerala in the southwest and even today majority of the plantation labourers, artisans like carpenters and masons, and Mapilla cloth traders come to Coorg from Kerala.

The contact of Kodava language with Kannada is also of equally long duration. Kannada became the court language of Coorg with the ascendancy of the Haleri Dynasty from the beginning of 17th Century to 1834. In 1834, after the establishment of the British rule, schools were established in Coorg with Kannada as a medium of instruction (Mysore State Gazetteer 1965 pp. 403).

In 1955, the States Reorganization Commission in its recommendation for the merger of Coorg with Karnataka stated that, "Kannada-speaking people form the largest linguistic group in the Coorg, accounting for 35 per cent of its population; Coorgi or Kodagu, which is spoken by about 29 per cent of its people is akin to Kannada and is regarded by some authorities as a dialect of Kannada" (Mysore state Gazetteer 1965:82).

Apart from these facts, Census also shows that Kannada speaking population has been numerically dominant in Coorg.

Distribution of various mothertongue speakers in Kodagu 1971-1991
Language Census 1951 Census 1971 Census 1981 Census 1991
Kannada 80,410 1,55,838 1,65,345 1,70.000
Kodava 66,642 64,461 81,564 97,011

Muslim cloth merchants from Bhatkal and Honnavar and other tradesmen from Mangalore speaking Konkani/Tulu have also settled in Coorg. For all of them Kannada is a link language. However, most of them speak Kodava also for communication across the communities.

The contact with Kannada is qualitatively different from the contact with Malayalam. Malayalam is mostly the language of the plantation labour and of trade. Kannada, on the other hand, is not only a language used for trade, apart from being the language of the numerically dominant people, it is also the language of education and administration.

8. LINGUISTIC ACCULTURATION

The contact of Kodava with Kannada and Malayalam speaking communities has led to acculturation. Religious domain is a case in point. Kodavas do not owe allegiance to any religious head. Their language of religion is Kodava and the family/community members perform all the rituals. However, having come under the Lingayat regime, some of the Saivite practices are absorbed by the Kodava people. Along with the temples of local deities like Aiyappa, Povvadi and Kallamma, every village has temples for Mahadeva or Bhagavati. The interesting thing is that the temples of local deities do not have Kannadiga priests, while the sorcerers who perform black magic are invariably Malayalam speakers. Thus, in the religious domain Kodava shows acculturation. The distribution of the languages according to the rituals performed and the deities worshipped makes it clear that the Kodavas are conscious of what constitute the native elements in their culture and what constitute the outside traits. They have absorbed the outside traits and elements into a co-existing system which is essentially separate and distinct from the native system. The same phenomenon is found in the linguistic acculturation process. In the core vocabulary of Kodava culture there is no influence of outside language.

Another language that has some contact with the Kodava language is Hindi or Hindustani. Most of the Kodavas prefer jobs in the defence establishments and almost one person from each Kodava home gets a job in the military. Hindi or Hindustani is the language of non-formal gatherings in the Indian defence establishments. Kodavas acquire it as part of their careers and socialization in the armed forces. Apart from this, Hindi is taught in the schools and also in Military education, which has led to elite bilingualism in Hindi.

Another language, which is learnt by the Kodavas, is English. English is acquired through schooling. Thus Kodavas show a high degree of bilingualism of both types, bilingualism through socialization and bilingualism through schooling or elite bilingualism. English is an example of total elite bilingualism; Kannada and Hindi are acquired partly through schooling and partly through socialization and Malayalam exclusively through socialization. The mode of acquiring languages seems to have reflected in the attitudes of the Kodavas towards these languages, and the use of these languages. Kodavas attach prestige to the use of English and have positive attitude towards the acquisition of English. Code mixing and code switching are observed more in English. Kannada has considerable positive value but comes only second on the scale for choice of learning. It is viewed more as a functional choice as Coorg is a part of Karnataka state with Kannada as the state official language. The acquisition of Malayalam has no prestige. No Kodava would like to adopt Malayalam as a language of education or would like to learn it formally or would use it in formal conversations. It is always considered a language of the labourers since the Kodavas often learn it from them and use it exclusively with them. Thus the attitudes of Kodavas towards English, the state language- Kannada, and Malayalam show the general trend of the minority language speakers in India towards other Indian languages.

After examining the language use and attitudes among the Kodavas, two aspects, namely, language as the means of communication and language as a symbol of identity, are seen most clearly. Language defined from the point of view of the ethnicity experience is much more than 'a means of communication'. The third aspect of language is equally important, i.e. 'language as a reflection of society'.

9. KODAVA LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY

Language and society have an interesting relation. Both reflect each other. Society gets reflected in its language in many ways. Firstly, there are many examples of the physical environment of a society being reflected in its language, normally in the structure of its lexicon - the way in which the distinctions are made by means of single words. For example, whereas English has only one word for snow, the Eskimos have several. The reasons are obvious. The Eskimo people have to be able to distinguish efficiently between different types of snow. Kodavas live in thick forests where varieties of snakes are found. Most Indian languages distinguish snakes by two or three names, but the Kodavas distinguish at least twenty different varieties of snakes, such as bale muriya, kati murki, kere pambu, volle kidiyi, billandi murki, pilli pambu, pave pambu, etc.

Secondly, the social environment can also be reflected in the language and can often have an effect on the structure of the lexicon. For example, a society's kinship system is generally reflected in its kinship vocabulary and this is one reason why anthropologists tend to be interested in this particular aspect of language. For example, in Kodava language mava could be father-in-law, mother's brother or father's sister's husband; mayi could be mother-in-law, father's sister or mother's brother's wife; and bava could be husband's elder brother, wife's elder brother, sister's husband, father's sister's son or mother's brother's son. These kinship terms throw light on the marriage system of the community. Kodavas show a slight variation from the other Dravidian communities. In Kodava, cross-cousin marriage is possible, but uncle-niece marriage is not possible.

Thirdly, in addition to the environment and social structure, the values of a society can also have an effect on its language. The most interesting way in which it happens is through the phenomenon known as taboo. Taboo is associated with things that are not said and, in particular, with words and expressions that are not used. In practice, of course this simply means that there are inhibitions about the normal use of the items of this kind - if they were not used at all they could hardly remain in the language. Generally, the type of word that is tabooed in a particular language will be a good reflection of at least a part of the system of values and beliefs of the society in question. For example, expressing sorrow for killed animal is a taboo in Kodava culture. It being a martial community and hunting being one of the most respected activity of the community, killing an animal is considered a bravery, an act to be rewarded. Because of these values, expressing any feeling for the killed animal is considered to be a bad omen.

10. LEXICON AND CULTURE

Apart from taboo words, total absence of certain words from the lexicon of a language shows that the practices meant by these words are not culturally important in the particular community. For example, there are no words for dowry and prostitution in the Kodava language. In the folk songs and folk tales of Kodavas these words are not found. The report in the gazetteer (Graeter 1870) supports this point. It says, " among the Kodava, there is neither dowry nor bride-price. However, the bridegroom presents the bride a small bag containing silver or gold coins according to his wish and capacity before he taker her to his house." (Mysore State Gazetteer 1965, pp.111). It further says, "Social evils like prostitution are not in evidence in Coorg. There has not been any community of prostitutes in Coorg at anytime. As the general level of culture and education among women of Coorg was higher than that in the neighbouring districts and as the people were economically well off, women knew their rights and were treated well in the family" (ibid pp. 120).

To understand some particular words and phrases, the knowledge of the culture of a society is necessary. For example, to understand the word mangala in Kodava, one has to be well versed with the norms, values, customs and traditions of Kodava culture. There are ten types of "mangala" - auspicious occasions - in the Kodava community. These mangalas can be categorized in five major groups.

  1. First category: when "mangala" is used in the regular sense of "conjugal relationship," which is called kanni mangala. Another mangala which comes under this category is ku:davali mangala or widow marriage.
  2. Second category: when mangala ceremony takes place to reward a person or in the sense of felicitation. For example, Nari mangala "tiger marriage." A marriage ceremony is performed for a tiger killer, may it be a man or a woman. Another mangala under this category is payta:ndki alapi mangala which is performed to honor a woman who gives birth to ten children.
  3. Third category: when mangala is celebration. Kodi mangala is celebrated when a child is born after long longing, or kemikutti mangala is the ear-boring ceremony of a male child.
  4. Fourth category: This mangala is a ritual to ward off the evil. Bale mangala is performed after the consecutive death of wives, when the widower is married to a plantain tree before he marries again.
  5. Fifth category: This mangala is performed for the sanction of rights - either of inheritance, legitimacy or changing the family. These mangalas are called parije. For example, Okka parije is conducted when the only heir of the family is a woman. According to this marriage, the man ceases to be a member of his natal family and becomes a member of his wife's family and their children become the members of the mother's natal family. Another marriage in this category is makka parije. By this marriage, the husband does not become a member of the wife's family as in Okka parijekutta parije, which is performed when an unmarried girl becomes pregnant and her partner refuses to marry her. In such cases, the marriage of the girl is performed and the child can take the mother's family name, and the rights of inheritance. This shows that to understand a word mangala one has to understand the whole gamut of values and norms of Kodava society. but their children have rights of inheritance only in their mother's family. The third marriage in this category is

11. TRANSMISSION OF HERITAGE

It is clear from the above discussion that, apart from being a strong token of identity, the Kodava language is a valuable means for transmitting cultural heritage to successive generations. In the last decade with a strong wave of resurgence of culture, the Kodavas felt a strong need to unite and preserve their identity. Such a need for the resurgence of culture is seen throughout the country. For example, after the linguistic reorganization of states and the declaration of a state language as the language of administration, etc., the minorities in almost every state have started to revive their culture and linguistic identities. After the declaration of Assamese as the state language of administration, etc., the Bodo movement gained momentum. Even Mizoram was formed as a separate state, which formerly was a part of Assam state. Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya were formed, when the identity of minorities was perceived to be threatened by the dominant state language speakers. Konkani speakers felt a need to preserve their identity with the fear of the imposition of Marathi.

Among the Kodavas, this movement did not focus on achieving a separate political identity because it is a very small community. It did give a strong direction towards preserving the community's separate cultural identity. But a political struggle by a few groups to achieve a distinct political identity for the community through the restoration of the autonomy they enjoyed before the linguistic re-organization of the states continues even today. As a result, 'Kodava takka parishad' - Kodava Language Committee was established in 1978. Two Kodava weeklies Jamma nangada and Brahmagiri were launched. This Parishad conducts elocution and written competitions in Kodava and distributes awards. This patronage has motivated Kodavas to a great extent and a lot of creative writing is published. Last decade has seen accelerated pace of development of Kodava language. Now, there are two weeklies in Kodava, many amateur groups perform Kodava plays, a movie was made in Kodava, and many audio cassettes are brought out on Kodava folk songs and folk tales. The Kodavas are enthusiastic about the development of Kodava. What is needed is a proper understanding of the language planning processes.

12. FUTURE PROSPECTS

There are two major issues in the development of any minority language, namely, the selection of a standard variety, and the selection of a script. I have dealt with these two issues already. The third issue concerns the vocabulary expansion and the development of suitable forms of discourse. There has to be extreme caution while undertaking this task. There has to be a balance between borrowed vocabulary, coinage, and preservation of native items. There is likely to be an influx of borrowings in Kodava, from Kannada, Hindi and English. If Kodava heavily relies on borrowing in the expansion of the lexical stock, it may create a feeling of inferiority and inadequacy among the speakers. This may also hasten the process called "alloglottisation" which involves the influx of vocabulary from the dominant language (Dua 1985). On the other hand, if Kodava places too much emphasis on the native resources for lexical expansion, it may widen the gap between Kodava and the majority languages. Taking all these factors into account, preparation of a dictionary of Kodava language needs to be undertaken.

Another important aspect of language development is the expansion of its domains of use. The use of minority languages in education, mass communication and administration poses serious ideological and practical problems.

One of the major problems of use of Kodava in education is the attitude of Kodavas. Majority of Kodavas consider Kodava as a language of culture rather than education. They feel that Kodava is not adequate enough to be a medium of education even at the primary level. Majority of Kodavas prefer English as the medium of education, and those who can afford it, send their children to English medium schools.

People with a positive attitude towards Kodava language, also do not advocate for Kodava medium as they feel that it will not be feasible economically. Financial resources, textbooks, availability of the teachers, etc., are the major problems according to them.

It should be made clear first that learning through a language other than the mother tongue creates interpretative thinking while the education through the mothertongue develops creative thinking (Shrivastava et al 1984). It also helps the preservation of minority language and culture, which adds its colour to the linguistic and cultural mosaic of India and ensures economic and political viability of the nation by the democratic participation of every community, irrespective of their numerical strength and status. Therefore, education through the Kodava medium at least for pre-primary education and with a bilingual transfer model is the best alternative.

However, the years of education through the mothertongue, textbook preparation, etc., are technical problems, and research in these areas suggests that the Bilingual transfer model, which is based on the sound educational principle of knowing the unknown through known is best suited for the minorities (Annamalai 1973).

We should make the selection of topics, values, and norms with great care when we wish to prepare materials in the minority language in order to use it as the medium of instruction. It is essential for the minority communities to strike a suitable balance between the selection and transmission of the contents of the two cultures when conflicting demands are made on it (Dua 1985).

For the use of Kodava in mass media, already launching two weeklies in it has made a beginning. Feature films in Kodava are produced. Kodava is one of the languages in which broadcasting takes place from the All India Radio Mercara and Mysore stations, and some programmes in Kodava are telecast through the television. It is likely, that the programmes in minority languages may be overshadowed by the quality and range of the programmes broadcast or telecast in the majority languages (Dua 1985). However, if planned with care, these media could be used more effectively in promoting the use and development of Kodava, in transmitting the knowledge and values of the Kodava culture, in strengthening the cultural identity and literary creativeness, and in developing political awareness and group solidarity.

One of the most significant contributions of the Government of Karnataka in this context is the establishment of Kodava Akademi to help the development of Kodava language, People and culture.

A scientific sociolinguistic survey and an ethnolinguistic survey of the Kodava speech community or communities will help us in the preparation of dictionaries, textbooks, and other materials to be used in education and mass communication .

Thus, in order to further strengthen its identity and make a contribution to the multilingual, multicultural, and multiethnic fabric of the country, a careful planning for developing the complementary roles of both Kodava and majority languages in various domains is necessary. Also given the right conditions and commitment on the part of Kodavas, they would be able to meet their aspirations for the development of Kodava language and the preservation of Kodava culture



Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Kodava of India Ethnic People Profile


The Kodagu (also known as the Coorg) live in the Coorg district of Karnataka State, southwestern India. The word kodagu literally means "situated to the west," and their district, Coorg, stands in the ridges of the Western Ghat Mountains. The forested area is rugged and hilly with a high annual rainfall. They speak a South Dravidian language that is also called Kodagu. The Kodagu, known as a "little nation of warriors," have been praised for their courageous nature, honor, and loyalty. They have always been involved in political movements and fought bravely on the battle fields, gaining much respect for these efforts. It is said that war and agriculture are their twin occupations. For their bravery, the Kodagu have been honored with medals, swords, land, and money, both by the Indians and by the British. They are rugged, athletic, war-like people, who are proud of their lands and their ancestry. What Are Their Lives Like? In times past, every Kodagu village was self-sufficient. They had workers in many occupations, such as potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, goldsmiths, and barbers. Their prosperity waned, however, and they have since sought other jobs, such as working on coffee plantations or doing other types of agricultural labor. Both men and women are industrious and disciplined. In addition to their work in the home, the ladies also bear the brunt of the labor on the farms. Modern individualism is adversely affecting the unity that was once found in Kodagu families. Traditionally, families were led by the fathers. However, today the discontented younger generation is continuing to breakdown this system by becoming more individualistic. It is also becoming more common for families to sub-divide their property in order to help maintain the land and pay the land taxes. In an effort to restore the "community spirit" that once existed, the Indian government has sponsored many community development projects. Kodagu houses are typically situated beside the rice paddy fields and are surrounded by plantain, orange, and other trees. Their homes are raised off the ground and are always built facing the East. Large "family houses," where families gather for rituals, are built of stone and mortar, with solid, carved wood work. High-walled lanes lead up to these buildings. The Kodagu traditionally wear long coats with silk sashes tied around their waists, sheathed swords at their sides, and turbans on their head. On ceremonial occasions, knives are also worn at their waists. The women wear scarves on their heads. Kodagu women have a reputation for being industrious and hospitable. There are innumerable castes within the Indian society, of which the Kodagu are a part. There are different families and ethnic tribal groups in every village that have formed strong ties with one another. Nonetheless, the Kodagu strictly observe the caste hierarchy and do not form relationships with those of other castes. Even food that has been cooked by someone of a lower caste is considered untouchable. What are their beliefs? The Kodagu, like all Hindus, believe in the law karma, which states that every action influences how the soul will be born in the next reincarnation. If one is born into a higher caste, it is believed to have been caused by his good works in a past life. They also practice ancestor worship, particularly the first member of their family who is known as the Karanova. They believe that the Karanova is God himself and that by worshipping him, they are worshipping God directly. In addition, each village has a presiding god to which animal sacrifices are offered. What are their needs? There only a few known Christians among the Kodagu. Prayer is the key to reaching these people with the Gospel. Prayer Points Ask God to speed the completion of the Jesus film and other evangelistic materials into the Kodagu language. Pray that God will reveal Himself to these precious people through dreams and visions. Ask God to encourage and protect the few known Kodagu Christians. Ask the Holy Spirit to soften the hearts of the Kodagu towards the Gospel. Take authority over the principalities and powers that have kept the Kodagu bound for many generations. Pray that God will raise up prayer teams who will begin breaking up the soil through worship and intercession. Pray that the Lord will raise up long term workers to join the few who have already responded.