Did you know that just a few 100 miles out of Mumbai is a kingdom of the indigenous peoples of Maharashtra? Jawhar still boasts of a Palace and the district still abounds with Adivasis or Tribals.

A village called ABJE

Tired and jaded by the modern world, many urban Indians are thinking about farming. Hoping to have a more sustainable lifestyle, they are returning to their roots. Or rather, they are returning to the land. But farming is not easy and the rosy dreams of becoming a self-sufficient happy person can soon remain castles in the air. About 120 km away from the busy metropolis of Mumbai is the sleepy village of Abje. This village, in Palghar district, is a village of Aboriginals or Adivasis. Their land is protected and cannot be sold or bought by non-Adivasis.  There are just a few tracts of land belonging to non-Adivasis.

Non-Adivasi lands command a high price and one has to be really careful to check land titles etc before buying.

My father-in-law bought some land from the village of ABJE and it has been in our family for more than 50 years now.  Despite being so close to Mumbai, progress has come slowly to this village. There is electricity, a local school, and a basic healthcare centre. They also have a woman in the local governing council ( Panchayat). This is not really strange because it is the women of this village who actually wear the pants. The men are too busy fishing in the half-dried river and getting drunk on the local hooch. Much has changed in the village since FIL bought the land but the scenery is much the same as it was when our family first entered it.

A visit to our ‘farm’ in Abje is always a welcome change from our routine Mumbai life. Apart from the regular visits to keep an eye on things, we often have to run to the land to sort out some minor issues.

Like the unscheduled visit in 2010 to sort out a boundary issue.

My father-in-law bought the land from the only non-Adivasi family at that time, Old Man Patil, the designated law officer for the village. For several years it remained wild, with a few 100 teak tree saplings and two paddy fields that we cultivated each year during the rainy season.

Busy with his regular city job, Hubby Dear had little time to devote to this farm project that was actually his father’s dream. It remained so for at least 25 years. But now, with Patil’s sons grown up, we had to ensure that our land was clearly demarcated and the boundaries clearly defined because one fine day our manager called up to inform us that Old Man Patil’s son had overnight encroached into our property and marked off what he claimed was his with some dried thorny branches to mark out ‘his’ land well within our boundary.

Land disputes are common and take years to be solved. It took us quite a few visits to the village for us to negotiate a mutually acceptable solution.

The villagers are simple people but they are not stupid. Television has brought them up to speed with their city cousins and are shrewd negotiators.

From time to time we still visit our farm which now has a dilapidated structure with several trees around it. We have now made a rough motorable road to access it but during the rains it becomes I have a prayer on my lips that the tyres don’t get stuck in the mud.

They have abandoned their traditional bamboo and wattle huts for stone and cement and have discarded their loincloths and scanty clothes for fashionable city wear but the inigenous peoples still retain a certain innocence that distinguishes them from the other inhabitants of the village

Unfortunately during my several changes of blog identity, I have lost the photographs .

But on this day of International Indigenous People, I am glad that we still have a tenuous link to these original inhabitants of the land.

Ciao