For Aradukuttan, a member of the pastoral Toda community, the forests are a source of everything: health, food, water and livelihood. “I really feel that we people exist because of the forests,” he says in a short documentary titled Nilgiris: Customs and Culturescapes, which delves deep into the lives, livelihoods and traditions of the Kurumba, Irula and Toda people, indigenous to the Nilgiri Hills of South India.
It is possibly why he strives so hard to safeguard it. This symbiotic relationship between indigenous communities and the landscapes they inhabit has always existed, says restoration ecologist, researcher and writer Godwin Vasanth Bosco, one of the experts who helped shape this visual series episode, the third and latest of Ashoka University’s InHERIT project. “Indigenous people have always lived in a way that depends on the health and long-term survival of the forest,” says Bosco, who believes that this student-led effort to archive different aspects of India’s heritage visually, made in collaboration with the Helen Hamlyn Trust, an independent grant-making trust based out of the UK, gives voice to those in the margins of society.
A fisher sells dry fish in Karumkulam, Kerala | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
According to Dharani Dhavamani, project leader, InHERIT, the initiative attempts to document what she thinks of as the “actual essence of heritage”. Often, too often, the notion of heritage is tied to relics and monuments, but our daily life, too, is shaped by cultural traditions that we often take for granted, she says. “It’s about ensuring that the rich, diverse knowledge systems that have guided us for centuries continue to inform and inspire future generations.”
Beginnings
The genesis of the project stretches back to February 2023, when some members of the InHERIT team were still a part of the Young India Fellowship (YIF), Ashoka University’s flagship year-long post-graduate leadership programme. “During our fellowship, there were often conversations centred around certain pieces of knowledge which are missing or dying out,” says Dharani, who was part of the 2022-2023 YIF batch.
In the Sundarbans | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
An opportunity to act towards bridging this gap began with research and exploration and led to the creation of InHERIT with the encouragement of the senior members of the Ashoka fraternity. It took them a few months to fine-tune the project and put together the core InHERIT team. The first season of the InHERIT project, which officially kicked off in October 2023, focusses on two central, interwoven themes: culinary and natural heritage. The team travelled across the country, including to places such as the Nilgiris, the Sundarbans, Kaziranga, Mangaluru, Paradip, Ramgarh and Jaisalmer, to document myriad indigenous traditions, practices, flora and fauna. They also consulted various experts like historian Rana Safvi, naturalist Yuvan Aves and author and photographer Arati Kumar-Rao to deepen their understanding of these traditions.
The first season of the project spans 18 months and captures multiple aspects of culinary and natural heritage, including leaf-wrapped cooking, fishing practices in Odisha and stories of people living in the Sundarbans, Thar, Jaisalmer and Kaziranga. It involves three major outputs, says Dharani. These include eight 20-minute-long visual series episodes capturing various aspects of India’s culinary and natural heritage, a podcast series that supplements the visual series and experiential workshops focussed on high school kids that will enable “big conversations about things like food and Nature... to get them to be fascinated about topics of heritage and culture... because this is not something that we were taught in our schools,” she says.
A thali in Kaziranga, Assam | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Beautiful heritage
Dharani hopes that InHERIT will inspire others to document various cultural practices and create a repository where people can come to share, learn and unlearn together.
At Ramgarh, Rajasthan | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Consultant chef, author and podcaster Chef Sadaf Hussain, who participated in the opening podcast series, agrees. “I always think of food as a living museum,” he says. “As much as I like cooking and serving people, I don’t want them to just eat and leave. I want to have a conversation,” he says. According to him, narratives around food are often tinctured with myths and falsehoods, making an initiative like this important because it has “nuance and logic,” he says. “We need to bring in a more educated narrative around food.”
Chef Hussain | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
More importantly, projects like this could play a role in erasing cultural hegemonies and creating a spirit of inclusion. “I feel that it is very important for people from all communities and backgrounds to lay claim to this beautiful heritage that India offers because otherwise only one kind of heritage gets talked about and promoted,” says Annu Jalais, an environmental anthropologist working at KREA University, who was a part of an earlier podcast on the Sundarbans. Currently, a certain group of people, she believes, has hijacked culture and heritage for their purposes. “It is everybody’s heritage, one that is inclusive, and we need to remain true to this heritage of inclusivity.”
Published - October 04, 2024 12:20 pm IST
