In the midst of her conversation, Shivakanya, 23, stops to take a call from her sister Kushi. The call, punctuated by anguished wails, is all the way from the African nation of Sudan, where Khushi and her husband Bharat are stuck in the midst of fierce fighting between rival military groups.
“Things are getting very bad there (in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan). They have run out of food and water and just want to come home. Khushi has been crying, saying she doesn’t know if she will survive. She said there are shootings and bombings going on right next to the building they are in. The homeowner has already left the place fearing for his life,” says Shivakanya, sitting on the threshold of her house in the tribal hamlet of Pakshirajapura, about 50 km from Mysuru.
Newlyweds Khushi and Bharat are among 30 people from Karnataka’s Hakki Pikki tribe who have been trapped in Sudan since last week. On April 18, former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar got into a heated exchange on Twitter when the senior Congress leader alleged that the government had not intervened to rescue the stranded Hakki Pikki tribals in Sudan. In response, Jaishankar accused the Karnataka leader of politicising the issue.
A few houses from Shivakanya’s, Kranthi, 23, too has been living the same nightmare. “Seven of my family members — my husband, mother, three brothers and two sisters-in-law — are stuck in Khartoum. When we spoke the last time, they said they did not have enough food or water. They said the bombing has not stopped,” cries Kranthi, who has been taking care of her brothers’ children in India since they left for Sudan a year ago.
The Hakki Pikki (‘Hakki’ in Kannada translates as ‘bird’ and ‘Pikki’ as ‘catchers’) are a nomadic tribe of traditional bird catchers and hunters. According to the 2011 Census, there are 11,892 Hakki Pikki people in Karnataka. Members of the tribe are mostly concentrated in Davangere, Mysuru, Kolar, Hassan and Shivmogga districts. They also live in parts of capital Bengaluru, where they reside in slums and unauthorised colonies. Members of the tribe speak Vaghri (an unclassified tribal Indo-Aryan language of south India), Kannada and Hindi.
In the 1950s, after wildlife protection laws banned hunting, the Hakki Pikki people, displaced from the only home they knew — the forest — gradually began turning to their traditional knowledge of plants. Anthropologists and experts say that as a nomadic tribe, the Hakki Pikki people are natural travellers and have for decades been travelling to other nations — earlier, to sell handicrafts, and now to produce and market traditional herbal oils and other plant-based medicines.
They say that sometime in the 1980s, during a visit to Singapore and Thailand to sell handicrafts, a group of Hakki Pikki people from Tamil Nadu realised the huge demand in Africa for alternative medicines and products made from plant extracts. Some members of this group soon moved to Africa to sell their products and later, others of the tribe from Karnataka followed in their footsteps.
M R Gangadhar, Vice Chancellor, Chamarajanagar University, and an established anthropologist who has conducted a study on the tribe, told The Indian Express, “After they were shifted from the forests to villages, the tribe took a long time to adjust to their new life. Initially, they hunted animals and used the skins and bones to make products. They are highly skilled with their hands and soon switched to preparing oils of various kinds.”
P S Nanjunda Swamy, state president of the Karnataka Adivasi Budakattu Hakki Pikki Jananga, an organisation that works for members of the tribe, says they have been travelling to African countries for about 20 years now.
“Until the last 20 years, our community did not receive any benefits from the government. There was also the problem of lack of education. Some of our members continued hunting foxes, birds and other animals, but when the forest department and police started arresting them, they turned to selling herbal oils that heal aches and pains and stimulate hair growth. No one from our tribe goes to hospitals,” says Swamy, who is a gram panchayat member.
“We have lived in the forest for generations. We know all about the uses of plants and trees. Earlier, we made these products for ourselves, but now we sell them all over the world, including Africa. At any point of time, at least 60 people from the community are in Africa selling these products,” he adds.
Videos that 38-year-old S Prabhu, a member of the Hakki Pikki tribe, has been sending from Al Fashir, a town about 1,000 km from Khartoum, show community members stocking up on supplies and borrowing water from Sudanese neighbours. As he spoke, the air resounded with the booms of gunfire and missile strikes.
Speaking to The Indian Express from Sudan on Thursday, Prabhu said, “A government official from Karnataka got in touch with me recently to enquire about our situation. I informed him that 31 of us from Karnataka are stuck in a housing complex since fighting is on 24/7. He promised to stay in touch with the Government in India and told us not to step out. On Wednesday, a local store opened for about 20 minutes. Some of us rushed there to buy food but we were asked to leave. We are losing hope fast.”
Pakshirajapura is a hamlet with about 600 houses, almost all inhabited by the Hakki Pikki people. With a population of over 2,000 people, the village officially came into existence in 1958. However, most people say they were moved here from the forests soon after Independence.
The village boasts of several new and pucca houses. It also has a few supermarkets (that mostly sell groceries) and high-end cars. Some houses have small shops that market traditional oils and other products online, while others make concoctions by boiling plants collected from the forest. The men handle the logistics but it’s mostly the women who market these products, both online and in stores.
Swamy says that the lure of foreign lands and the relatively easy returns meant that most youngsters were happy to continue their parents’ trade. But it worries him that education is still not considered a priority. “I can count on my fingers the number of graduates from our village,” he says, before arriving at a figure — eight.
“Hopefully, that will gradually change soon,” adds Swamy, who runs a supermarket in Pakshirajapura.
The village only has a primary school with classes from 1 to 5, beyond which children have to travel nearly 2 km for middle school and to Hunsur, about 7 km away, after Class 10. While there is a health centre in the village, the Hakki Pikki traditionally do not depend on English medicines as they make their own using herbs.
Now, ahead of the May 10 elections in Karnataka, Swamy says the residents of Pakshirajapura, which falls in the Hunsur Assembly segment, expect their MLA, H P Manjunath from the Congress, to provide better access to education and awareness on government programmes.
Devaraj, 28, whose father is among those stuck in Sudan, says, “I hope to take over from him soon. But it is not as easy as it seems. While the prosperity of our village is undoubtedly because of the business done by our community abroad, each family needs to invest Rs 4-5 lakh to travel to African nations. If the business is good, one can easily recover this money and double it in 3-4 months.”
Swamy adds, “People look at these concrete houses in the village and think that we are rich but we are not. We take loans to go abroad and earn money. Like any other business, sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.”
Explaining how they do business in African countries, Swamy explains, “We usually go to these countries with raw materials that are used to prepare herbal oils. Most people stay there for about 6-12 months. After that, they shuttle between India and Africa. A few of them have chosen to stay there permanently. Most people travel with families, usually leaving the children behind in India, so that they can cover more cities to sell their products.”
Saying Africa is a natural market for their products, he continues, “The rules are a lot more relaxed there than in European countries. Also, they understand our products and have a lot of faith in traditional and alternative medicines.”
Swamy says that this is not the first time members of the community have found themselves in a spot in an African nation. “Many of the countries are troubled and our people have been stuck in the past too. There have been instances where they have had to part with all their earnings just to come back safely.”
Recalling her experience of being trapped in the Central African Republic, Samsayi, 50, says, “I got caught in a similar situation four years ago. Finally, the army came to our rescue and we were evacuated to another country, from where we were sent home. I could have been killed.”
Stating that she had travelled extensively to sell her products in London, Dubai, Qatar, Central Africa and Nigeria, Samsayi said that her lack of schooling never came in the way. Samsayi, who returned to India for good in 2019, says she has no plans to go back to travelling for work.
“I am getting old and I want to stay at home now. Let my children go there to earn a living. Other than Kannada, Hindi and Vaghri, I do not know other languages. I know enough English to sell my products.”
However, the pursuit of the African dream seems to have lost its charm for Shivakanya.
“My sister and brother-in-law don’t have sufficient food, water or even electricity. They are afraid to step out as they fear they will get attacked. I just want them to come back home…,” she says tearfully.
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