Mankirdia

Abstract

In the remote wilderness of Similipal National Park and its periphery one finds small groups of nomads living in an archaic age of hunting and food gathering. They are traditionally skilled in catching monkey and rope making out of the bark of siali fiber. They wander from place to place in small bands in search of rope making materials and monkey. They live in temporary makeshift leaf huts raised in forest clearings and village outskirts. People call them Mankidi or Mankirdia i.e., the people who live on monkey catching but they identify themselves as Birhor (bir Jungle and hor- people) meaning the denizens of forest . In fact they constitute a semi nomadic section of the Birhor tribe. Besides the Similipal forests of Mayurbhanj district, small wandering bands of Mankirdia are also found in neighbouring districts of Keonjhar, Sundergarh, Sambalpur, Dhenkanal, Jajpur and Balasore. The tribe represents a slowly changing primitive society with ancient tribal cultural characteristics. They speak a language of their own that belongs to the Munda branch of Austro-Asiatic language group. Some of them can also speak the local language, Odia. Though few in numbers, the tribe has successfully retained its distinctive cultural features as well as cultural identity.To eke out a living, they shuttle between forests and the local markets for collecting siali fibers and selling or bartering their products such as ropes, slings, oil press baskets etc. In the present times, they lead a life of relative deprivation because their forest dependent subsistence activities have been checked by the injunctions of forest and biosphere rules. The Mankirdia has been identified as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) in Odisha. A Micro Project named Hill-Kharia and Mankirdia Development Agency headquartered at Jashipur in Mayurbhanj district is working for bringing about their all-round development since 1987. It has set up two Mankirdia settlement colonies to rehabilitate the nomads. The community has shown a good response to their development programmes and changes are visible in their life style. Yet there are many other wandering bands left to be covered.This photographic documentation of the tradition and change in the life style of this tribe will be useful to students, academicians, inquisitive tourists, laymen and development functionaries.