Tags

  • Published on

    The multiplicity of heritage

    preserving-our-heritage-blog


    Working on three primary projects:

    Currently I am working on three main projects simultaneously: Heritage Hospital History, Colaborate Digital Archiving of Adivasi oral literature, and the history of the GEL (Gossner Evangelical Lutheran) churches. Each project might seem unrelated to the other since they bring me into the medical world, the digital world and the christian world, but they actually in many ways overlap. What I learned so far in my research about these hospitals is that each generation worked alongside Adivasis from Chotanagpur, even in western Odisha and central Chhatisgarh. My writing in this blog and elsewhere, though it be about my heritage, will always focus on the story of the people and their role in India. My ancestors were merely catalysts and I continue to play that role to feature the voices and interests of those people whom my ancestors devoted their lives to.


    Heritage Hospital History


    Ferdinand Hahn was the first of four generations of missionaries to India. Following him was his daughter, Louise who married KW Nottrott; then her daughter, Marie, married Herman Feierabend, and their son, my father, married Jane Hein. What I learned was that they all encountered the needs of the people in health. Ferdinand Hahn encountered those suffering from Hansens Disease (Leprosy) that was widely spreading, often due to famine. He contacted the Leprosy Mission (then known as the Mission to Lepers) based in Britain and through their funding the Leprosy Asylum, as it was called, was founded in Purulia (West Bengal) in 1888. It became one of the largest leprosy hospitals in Asia. He was living in Lohardaga (Jharkhand) at the time, and also provided shelter for those suffering from the disease there. His wife, Doris, was also keenly interested in helping people with Epilepsy and so they also ran a small clinic for  them.


    Those medical facilities in Lohardaga no longer exist, but the legacy of hospital work continued. After her marriage to KW Nottrott, Louise contacted her father for assistance to start a leprosy hospital in Chandkuri Chhattisgarh in 1895. Their daughter, Marie, wanted to become a doctor for this reason, but was only able to go to attend Deaconess Nursing School in St Louis, MO. When they opened a mission station in Khariar, Odisha they came realised that there were doctors in the area for the Raja, but nothing for the people. When my grandfather toured the area preaching, he always had to address the physical needs of the people. Not knowing anything about medicine, Marie set up a trunk for him that had all the medicines they were able to get at the time, labeled by the ailment that they would relieve. Soon their little dispensary was established as a hospital in 1930.  My father would go with his father to visit the villages, and saw how his father treated people; he thought this is no way to treat people. So at a young age he decided to become a doctor. He returned immediately after medical school to run a mission hospital in Tilda, Chhatisgarh. In the 1960s the India government said they would only renew his visa, if he had a specialty to offer the country. So my father returned to the US to do a plastic surgery residency and then returned to Ludhiana, Punjab wher he started the first plastic surgery department in north India at CMC Hospital.


    During my Fulbright (2023-2024) I visited all these hospitals and for the first time it struck me that this was indeed a great legacy. I never wanted to go into medicine, and I never became a missionary. But I could carry on the legacy by writing about how their endeavors have survived the test of time, and these hospitals continue to be critical to providing much needed health care to the poor in rural areas.


    Colaborative Digital Archiving (CoDA): preserving Adivasi oral literature


    Another thing that I learned during my Fulbright, was that Adivasi (tribal) cultures and languages were under great threat. Ferdinand Hahn had done much towards preservation by writing the Kurukh Grammar and Kurukh Folklore. I was humbled and honored that so many recognized him still for these efforts. My research into Adivasi folklore also revealed a pressing need: while local youth were actively recording their traditions on mobile devices, they lacked a formal system to store and protect these digital assets.  Adivasi students and community organizers wanted resources to continue pursuing their efforts to preserve their language, culture and wisdom. So upon returning to the US I began working with Dr. Shobhana Chelliah of CoRSAL (at Indiana University), on how to bridge the gap between digital documentation and cultural preservation by and for Adivasi communities. CoRSAL had already done training on digital archiving in the Northeast and other parts of India. So now we are organizing to spread that effort to Jharkhand (and surrounding areas) and Tamil Nadu. The Colaborative Digital Archiving (CoDA) initiative will begin in Fall 2026 in Ranchi.


    History of the Gossner Evangelical Church


    From the time I began researching the life of Ferdinand Hahn, I have cultivated a close relationship with the Gossner Evangelical Lutheran churches that are across India (though it all began in Ranchi in 1945). I have been invited to provide the history of the contributions of the missionaries to the establishment of the first Autonomous church in India (1919 - well before Independence from the British). It is still a predominantly Adivasi church. In May 2026 a book entitled Threads of Indigeneity in Central India edited by Joseph Bara and Anjana Singh. I have contributed a chapter "Revitalization of Adivasi Language and Culture: Missionary Grammars" that describes how Ferdinand Hahn and my great great uncle, Alfred Nottrott, contributed to the preservation of Adivasi languages.


  • Published on

    stories Of Trauma

    preserving-our-heritage-blog
    Image description
    Once again I am participating in the Himalayan First Draft Club, an online opportunity to just help me get writing again. Here is today's writing: a review of the first story in Mahasweta Devi's "After Kurukshetra" (2018 Seagull Books) and its cross section with a conference I attended this weekend on Trauma Informed Narrative Theory (trauma counseling with a story-telling focus). Both are informing my approach to the story I Intend to eventually write that explores a cross-cultural relationship between women.

    Mahasweta Devi’s short story Panchakanya was first published in 2000 in Bengali. The 2018 Seagull Books translation into English, by Anjum Katyal, of After Kurukshetra is a compilation of three short stories portraying the time of the Mahabharata (3137 BC) in the aftermath of the epic Kurukshetra war.  from the perspective of the women.. The story of “The Five Women '' is a poetic and moving femenist portrayal of the difference of moral, economic, psychological, and spiritual values of women of royalty and tribal women. 

    The Kurukshetra, as described in the ancient Sanskrit epic, The Mahabharata, has been considered a “righteous war” fought between two royal cousins (the Kaurava and Pandava princes). Historically it may have been only a small dispute that was written down as a gigantic epic to illustrate the four main values of Hinduism, the puruṣārthas: Dharma (righteousness, moral values), Artha (prosperity, economic values), Kama (pleasure, love, psychological values) and Moksha (liberation, spiritual values, self-actualization). 

    Mahasweta Devi, illustrates how war between cousins, war of greed of men, created a whole class of widowed women. Widows of  the princes who died in “valor” and widows of the foot soldiers who died by the droves, senselessly are brought together for a short period of time, while “the earth of Kurukshetra was scorched rock hard by the funeral fires” (p2). Her understanding of tribal culture is apparent as she illustrates how Adivasi women, connected to nature, face a dramatically different reality from that of the stifling, silently, decaying widowhood of the Hindu queens and princesses. Though both cultures are subject to patriarchal power structures that seem to perpetually lead to senseless wars, the Adivasi widows’ future is more vibrant and alive than that of the royal women, who are destined to continue their lives as if they were dead and decaying.

    Ironically I attended a conference on trauma just after I had read “The Five Women”, that characterized three types of trauma in every human life. The Christian Counseling perspective of the conference had so many parallel conceptions, in some of the details. It spoke of human trauma that leaves us like: the Orphan (betrayed and abandoned), the Stranger (broken and powerless), the Widow (love lost and abuse). The spiritual lesson is how to move past suffering and have it reveal one’s true calling as: Priest (to manage the rituals of grieving)t, Prophet (to tell the truth and be creative), and Queen/King (to lead and make space for flourishing). 

    The parallels to how Mahasweta Devi exposes the differences between Hindu and Adivasi approaches to trauma may not be immediately apparent. I am only just beginning to ponder the similarities. But through the telling of stories we often are exploring the process of trauma and the prospects of hope. It would be a most interesting debate to have with those of these particular various persuasions, that I will continue to ruminate over and hope to someday tell a story that brings these world views together in discourse through my next book (a novel- anticipated title: “Lives We Cannot Keep”)

    There is certainly so much more for me to write about both the conference and the short story, but I wanted to simply capture how my many worlds that I navigate through sometimes intersect. How all our worlds and our worldviews are constantly moving away from and towards each other. If you have the opportunity to read “After Kurukshetra” please join me. There remain two more stories in the collection of 54 pages, that I trust will bring more commentary on the Mahabharata and inspire more thoughts on Trauma Informed Narrative Theory.
  • Published on

    REImagining the Tales of Hazaribagh

    preserving-our-heritage-blog
    What world have I stepped into?
    Picture
    Mihir Vatsa in Tales of Hazaribagh (Speaking Tiger 2021) invited us on his journey into the world around his hometown; a small town of man-made lakes and elevated climate that wooed visitors over the last couple of centuries. A few settled there, like his family, and so it became his hometown. In his poetic prose, he says little of the people of the town or the traditions of his family. His return to his hometown is not to go back into his childhood and the place of his ancestors. Instead he is in search of refreshment and relaxation in the setting: the surrounding forests, hills, plateaus, valleys, rivers and waterfalls. He finds healing here after becoming overwhelmed by the stress of urban life. 

    What follows is not so much a review of his writing, as a pondering of what we might be missing from seeing only this perspective. His perspective is valid, genuine, and authentic. We end the book knowing he has found the peace he has been looking for and in that we also find comfort. 

    While he observes and articulates the power, energy, control, and the preservation/conservation/beautification of this forest world, it is from his position of privilege and his license to easily take the time to explore, move around with relative ease, and articulate how it impacts him. So even though he is returning to his “hometown” he is still primarily observing it as an outsider.

    This is not a criticism, for my first attempt to be an author began also as a journey of returning. In so doing, I discovered myself and my roots, as recorded in the biography of my great great grandfather: Among the Original Dwellers: Remembering Ferdinand Hahn (Lulu: 2019). I embarked on this journey to rediscover the first generation that connected my family to India in the late 19th century. I was born into an American medical missionary family, my father was the fourth generation missionary and the third generation born in India. I spent most of my formative years in India. With that kind of background it is hard not to feel a little Indian,  though my passport says I am American. To further complicate my identity, the ancestors who lived in Chota Nagpur from 1869-1915 were Germans living in British India.

    Researching their interesting lives brought me into contact with Christian Adivasis, many were educated and urban, but all longed to stay connected to their cultural heritage and know their history. I now hope to write a novel that explores the relationship of a German missionary wife of the 19th century (ie. my great great grandmother) and an Adivasi woman. It is clear that I cannot do that until  I have done so much more research and have more experience to understand the Adivasi perspective.

    Taking on this challenge I try to read whatever I can about the Adivasi. I look for how they are portrayed not only in books but other mediums, and I gravitate towards whatever they themselves have written. However, Adivasi literature is only an emerging genre. Historically non-Adivasis write about Adivasis. True Adivasi literature, by Adivasis, is immersed in the tangle of translation. I, for example. Write in English, while working on improving my Hindi, and Adivasi culture remains predominantly an oral tradition. Each tribe has their own language with regional variations. When an Adivasi writer manages to write of their own culture, often it must be translated into multiple languages to be understood by their own people.

    Presently I gravitate to writers who have perhaps six degrees of separation from my primary subject. A great example is Mihir Vatsa’s Tales of Hazaribagh: An Intimate Exploration of Chhotanagpur Plateau.(Tiger Books: 2021). I truly enjoyed the read, for I also long to return to my childhood home (Mussoorie UK) to explore its beautiful landscape and landmarks and fascinating history. But he, like me, will perpetually be the outside observer, even in our own hometowns. 

    As he wandered through the Sal forests, hills and plateaus, in pursuit of finding a little known waterfall, he often crossed the paths of the people who lived there. Often they looked at him puzzled and gave vague directions. Sometimes they dropped whatever they were doing and led him to the very spot he was looking for. I keenly read those parts, because that was the connection I was looking for. Vatsa was looking for the healing power of nature. I wanted to know more about the perspective of the people he met, and what wisdom they might have of this world.

    I still mostly have questions:
    Were they Adivasi?
    Did they live there since their ancestors had cleared the land?
    How were they impacted by the “development” that encroached their habitat, and visitors like Vatsa?

    Where is that story? And can an outsider ever really tell it?

    What, if any, significance was this waterfall, the rivers, the forest, the hills, the land? Or as Adivasi say "jal, jungal, jamin".

    I began with: What world did I step into? That is really all we do as outsiders. Many worlds have been created that millions have stepped into and feel that it is familiar enough to be "home". The Star Wars series took us to “a long time ago, to a galaxy far away…” 

    How do we step into a real world, not of our making, but certainly of our (generically speaking) curiosity, meddling, exploring, and even exploiting?
    How do we step into that world and truly see it and know it?

    I am grateful for Tales of Hazaribagh, because it moved me into the setting of Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. Into the sal forests and rocky rivers that I have only had the privilege to glimpse briefly on my periodical visits to Jharkhand from 2016 - 2019. I've been jotting down my perspective in this blog and the journey has been transformational.

    My ancestors also wrote down what they perceived, explored, discovered, settled, etc. I found that they made a remarkable attempt to understand the Adivasi, who they lived among. And found they are still remembered: Ferdinand Hahn, wrote down Oraon folklore and created a Kurukh grammar that is still used today. In remembering his life, I became truly intrigued with the place and people and times that he lived in. 

    I long to step into that world and rediscover it, not just for myself but for all of us to truly appreciate the landscapes, landmarks, and stories. It is not just a world that heals, it is a world that teaches and perseveres. It is a world, if we only could step into it, that could heal, like Mihir Vatsa in the beauty of Hazaribagh.

    I was just reminded that when I first went to Jharkhand I told an Adivasi elder that I have come to find my roots. He replied "That is good, from the root comes great trees."

    ​
  • Published on

    Sanskriti

    preserving-our-heritage-blog
    Upon completing an incredible 50 year study of  and relationship with the Sora tribe of southern Odisha by Piers Vitebsky in “Living Without the Dead: Loss and Redemption in a Jungle Cosmos”(Chicago University Press: 2017), I wish to share a portion of his conclusion that describes the importance of preserving Adivasi culture. How literature, language, social well being and relations and even ecology are all tied together with our past, present and future.

    ​
    Picture
    "By the 1990s there was a growing awareness of the worldwide threat of the extinction of plants, animals, and ecosystems. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UN:1992) was closely followed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species (www.iucnredlist.org), which established a grading of endangerment (Moseley: 2012.2) This approach was soon extended to the idea of endangered languages (UNESCO 2010). Though languages are not simple entities, and their boundaries are debatable, linguists reckon that there are only 6,000 languages surviving in the world today, and that half of these are endangered (Evans:2019; Moseley:2012). The greatest threat to a minority language world-wide is schooling in a dominant language. Whatever the benefits of residential schools, they are also a notorious medium of alienation, separating children not only from their parents bu also from their cultural and linguistic milieu. However, many people speak a language now, if i is not spoken by the children and carried forward into their adult life it can become extinct in a generation. Sora may be reaching this point.

    At stake are not only language themselves but “entire worldviews, religious beliefs, creation myths, observations about life, technologies for how to domesticate animals and cultivate plants, histories of migration and settlement….” (Harrison:2007.159). Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine (2000) argue that “the extinction of languages is part of the larger picture of near-total collapse of the worldwide ecosystem… and that the causes of language death, like that of ecological destruction, lie at the intersection of ecology and politics.” My research points to a further endangerment, that of untold thousands of religions that have formed most of human history (Rappaport:1999) for hundreds of thousands of years. Almost all of these religions (themselves worldviews in fluxx rather than static or bounded entities) have been unwritten and undocumented, and as they disappear they leave little race. The analogy with endangered species is not complete , and that with languages is closer, since religions can rapidly transform themselves, split, amalgamate, and make compromises in ways that species cannot. 

    My experience with the Sora suggests that each religious form may be highly adapted to local social and historical situations, which are like ecological niches. Until the missionary hospital, this was a society total without medication. In earlier times there may have been more healing plants than I saw, but these were probably worn rather than ingested. The Sora lived and reproduced themselves in a situation of extreme survival, in which a high mortality rate reflected a process of extreme natural selection and extreme antibody production, experienced culturally as an extreme level of sonum (ancestral spirits) activity. By the 1970s, the government was following the missionaries in providing medicine locally, but there were many obstacles to its availability, not least embezzlement by medical personnel (and there was also one large scandal in the mission hospital), and I still had to watch helplessly as people of all ages dropped dead around me. Yet the Sora did not have a concept of a lack of medical facilities; rather, their attention was focused on a different understanding of survival and flourishing, based on familial relationships. Today the person has become more individual and less relational, and this has combined with the greater availability of medicine to narrow the chains of reasoning about misfortune." (Vetebsky:2017.330-332)

    I respect Vitebsky’s integrity as an anthropologist to grasp the nature of the radical transformation of the Sora from what he calls animism to Baptist Christianity (and other religious expressions) during those 5 decades of experience in “Soraland”. Since I am looking at the forty odd years that my ancestors lived with and related to the Oroan in Lohardaga district, this was a contemporary example of the nature of cultural transformation (sanskriti parivartan) and to explore what was lost and what has, sometimes ironically, survived. I respect that he also was forced to rethink what the role of the missionary was and even admitted: "An anthropologist may not be so different from a missionary after all, since we both draw out personal narratives that go beyond those that people are used to articulating, show them new perspectives, and change their lives." (p 327)

    I would add: in a changing world that would impact them eventually but gives them some agency to transform on their own terms. Yes, for the Christian converts had an initial impetus to throw away the old and embrace something new, but always there is memory or nostalgia that calls back to an older narrative that does not escape, something about food, social interactions, family and kinship relationship, moral sense, and I think most of all, their folk tales and music (the literature of the illiterate), or their ability to tell their stories and hear their own stories in their own voice.

    Their stories and culture are not simply beneficial for the identity of the people themselves, but there is a growing global awareness that in the mad rush towards development relations to each other, to nature and both the physical and spiritual realities has become distorted and corrupted. Those surviving traditions may become a helpline to regain new ways to develop and progress that is actually sustainable, with agency in the hands of the people themselves to write their own stories, and to form a collective memory based on forgotten relationships and knowledge.
  • Published on

    Contributing to Adivasi Literature

    preserving-our-heritage-blog
    Image description
    My prayer goes out to all who are in lockdown, quarantine, or self-isolation during this Covid-19 pandemic. We are all challenged by this and some are most devastated by these developments while others are simply inconvenienced. We have an opportunity to be there for each other, even across the seas. It can also be an opportunity for us to resort to talents and tools that may have laid dormant in our normal life. Life for a while will not be "normal" so we must be resourceful.

    It is for this reason that I am calling for people to send me Adivasi stories that I will then post on this blog. Please submit short stories to maribeti2004@gmail.com.

    This is a continuation of the Preserving Our Heritage Writing Workshops that I conducted in 2018 and 2019 in India. To learn more click on this button.
    Here is an initial sample just sent to me by Cyril Hans in Ranchi
    Friday 27 March 2020 
    Sarhul (Flower Festival), Ba/ Baha Portob (in Mundari, Santhali, Ho). Celebrated today. Owing to lockdown no usual processions of revellers in town this year. 
     
    Sher Shah Suri in 1538 stormed the fort of Rohtasgarh in Behar on the day of Sarhul festival. Milkmaid going in and out of Fort told the Afghan soldiers a secret. That Oraon men are usually drunk on this day. So the soldiers attacked the fort to capture it from the Kurukh speaking  Oraons on Sarhul day. It was Singi Dai (सिंगी दाई), D to be pronounced as in (the), who along with her friends, Champa and Kaili led the fight, dressed as men. Mighty Afghans did not believe until told by the milkmaid to watch the Kurukh women fighters washing their faces by both the hands in the stream, as against men who normally use one hand to wash their faces. 

    Another example is this lovely article I found published in The Hindu in 2015.
    Please, click botton to read:
     (by Cyril Hans)Here is yet another example of recording a story that is told and retold of an elderly Ho couple: 
    One day there was no rice at home and no food was being cooked. But the household help boy found the leaves of the tree at the back of their house. It is eaten by all tribals in Chota Nagpur, and is known by various names, as Munga, Sajna, Sooti, (drumsticks) etc. and is considered a medicinal plant and tree. Because its leaves, flowers and long green fruits are eaten as vegetable and its barks and even roots are medicinal. Leaves are considered good for controlling blood pressure. When it was served to the old couple after boiling it, either a visitor or his helper boy was said to have declared, ‘this old man said such a long prayer even for a small portion of this green leaves as a whole meal!’​
    ​------------------------------
    Also see what Ferdinand Hahn wrote early in the 1900s about the Oraon celebration of the Sarhul Festival:
    https://www.amongtheoriginaldwellers.com/selected-readings/sarhul-festival
  • Published on

    Merry Christmas

    preserving-our-heritage-blog
    Picture

    Nativity Scene: Fank Wesley

    December 2019: Christmas thoughts from Mary Girard
    (also posted www.amongtheoriginaldwellers.com)
    I was so blessed when Joy shared this picture on Facebook. Though I had studied art under the Christian Indian artist, Frank Wesley, and have a book of his work, I had never seen this one. It clearly is his work; incorporating the message of God among us (Emmanuel) in the classical Kangra Valley style with Indian symbolism. I just love the fact that there are hardly ever nativity scenes where baby Jesus is in the arms of Joseph. As I care for my aging father I am more and more aware of the important role of the active father in a child’s life (from infancy to the end). 

    Enjoy meditating on this picture and reading the comparative birth stories in Matthew and Luke this Christmas season. May new insights of love, joy, peace and hope be birthed in you in the midst of a world; that is on one hand as beautiful as this, but on the other hand  is just as cruel and oppressive as it was in the time of Jesus.

    This past year has been so rich. I published my first book (through Lulu.com) and have had a few opportunities to promote it in the US and India. As I await efforts to get the book published in India (after a careful edit) I will continue to promote the publication in the US and Europe this coming year (starting in Florida in January) For those of you who have had a chance to read it I would appreciate if you posted your candid reviews on Amazon, Lulu, GoodBooks, Barnes&Noble or where you might have purchased your copy. My goal is to increase sales of the book in the West by 3 fold.

    And when I say “candid”, I mean that. This was a challenging book to write. There were so many varied readers who I wrote for: academics, Christians of various ilk, those concerned with social justice, history, psychology and culture, as well as the Adivasi themselves and the general Indian population that see afresh their own history. I’m bound to step on a few toes or to confound others. I already know that some readers have found the book has spoken to them on an emotional or mental level. My main hope is that it ignites thought and even conversation about our complex world and histories and that the cause of the Adivasi and Christian minorities in India will be known.

    I was very happy to attend the Jubilee Centennial year of the Autonomy of the Gossner Church (Evangelical Lutheran and 90% Adivasi). It was wonderful to join the churches in celebrating their culture, community, history and their Lord.

    Celebration of NWGEL in Malar July 2019
    Celebration of GEL in Ranchi November 2019
    Glad to have shared joy                                      Met my cousin, Klaus Roeber
    and adventure with Delia                             whose ancestor was Alfred Nottrott
    I also enjoyed speaking to many groups in India about the process and reasons for preserving and learning about and from their heritage and the unique Adivasi history. It must be documented or written down as the oral agriculture-based culture is perpetually diminished. On my next blog post I will share more details about the writing workshops that I have done and plan for the future.

    In October I also enjoyed visiting Chhattisgarh for the first time since 1976. Since the monsoon was lingering everything was so green and fresh. Though I have little personal memory of my childhood home (ages 1-5) there are many family memories that were revived by my visit.
    Arriving at the house that where our family lived from 1951-1964 in Tilda
    Meeting Alfred (90 years old) our Kansama (cook)
    Now I have returned home in Madison and have to concentrate on caring for my 95 year old father, who is finally feeling his age. He has been an indispensable research assistant and translator for me. His work is not yet done as I begin to research my next book, a novel about the relationship between a missionary wife and an adivasi woman. Two bible study groups have been so key to reviving my soul and imagination this past year. My heart is filled with blessings. 

    My son Joel is still living in Chicago and so we try to meet up every month. Renee is farther away in Miami but always near my heart. They are both finding their way in this world and I couldn’t be prouder of them both.

    Much love to all friends and family, and even those who I have not as yet met. 
    Mary Girard (Madison, WI)

    ​