Re-thinking Heritage through Everyday Life: Exploring the Magic of Ancestral Adivasi Folk Songs

Abstract

Everyday life, which encompasses the quotidian experiences of individuals, plays a crucial role in the dynamic process of heritage creation, evolution, and preservation. In addition to shaping cultural practices, everyday life can also influence the preservation and conservation of heritage, leading to the creation of new forms of heritage such as music genres, fashion styles, or artistic movements that emerge from everyday cultural expressions and over time, become part of a community’s cultural heritage. Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s book White as Milk and Rice: Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes deals with the ethnographic study of the oral narratives and adivasi history of the Halakki Vokkaliga tribe of north Karnataka, India. Nidhi brings the eco-feminist voice of the marginalized adivasi woman, Sukri, to the center stage to challenge the colonial and neo-liberal narrative of ‘development’ that has always harmed the adivasis - either by robbing them of their indigenous ancestral knowledge or by pushing them out of their lands for development’s sake. Instead of treating the Halakkis only as a community or tribe, Nidhi’s narrative employs ‘focalisation’ (theorized by Gérard Genette) to bring out an individual’s life journey - from a tribal child Sukki to Padma Shri Sukri Bommagowda. My paper explores how the mundanity of quotidian adivasi life gets a transcendental touch with the inclusion of the ancestral folk songs which complement their everyday life experiences. Nidhi beautifully integrates the heritage of the Halakkis through everyday life experiences, such as, their escapades in the jungle, the role of men and women in their society, their deep bond with nature, problems of patriarchy and alcoholism, and most importantly, the significance of orally transmitted ancestral folk songs in the mundane life of the Halakkis.