Saving Dharma

[Andre Cramblit]

Saving Darma

A dying language brings a UT scholar to India and the edge of the
inhabited world

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-01-23/pols_feature.html

[photo inset]
The Panchachuli Range, forming the western boundary of the Darma Valley
photo by Dan Oko

The goats were the first sign that the spring migration had started once
again for the Darma people of the Indian Himalayas. All along the
winding mountain road that runs alongside the Kali River, separating
India from Nepal, families on their way to their summer homes tended
herds of shaggy, curly-horned goats, wooly sheep, and supplely laden
donkeys. The Darma have followed this route for generations. If modern
life in the form of racing jeeps, motor scooters, and garishly painted
"Public Carriers" -- India's ubiquitous trucking fleet -- steadily
encroach on this annual resettlement, the vehicles have no choice but
to idle at pedestrian speeds until the livestock can be herded to the
shoulder.

For most of last year, Christina Willis and I lived among the Darma in
the remote town of Dharchula in northern India. Unlike Hindi, the
dominant language of the area, the Darma language remains strictly
oral, with no writing system, and in linguistics circles is considered
endangered. Christina is a doctoral candidate in linguistics at
UT-Austin, and her research work focuses on helping this ethnically
distinct indigenous people record their language. We would follow the
migrating Darma to their villages in the high basins of the Darma
Valley on the border of Chinese-occupied Tibet.

Even to a casual observer, Darma appears in serious trouble. Of an
estimated population of 4,000 individuals in the community, less than
half speak Darma, a Tibeto-Burman dialect, and linguists say generally
that any language with so few speakers is likely to vanish within two
generations. Darma children are educated in Hindi, an Indo-Aryan
language -- and the young adults we've met are more concerned with
picking up some English and job prospects in the West than with
maintaining the culture of their grandparents. "Development is coming"
is a favorite refrain in Dharchula. Hardly anyone considers the
potential costs of that progress.

Christina first learned Hindi for conversation and now, using tapes and
direct observation, has been transcribing spoken Darma into the
international phonetic alphabet, with the goal of producing a
dictionary and written grammar. Her research focuses primarily on
recording songs, stories, and ceremonies as windows into both the
speech and traditions of the Darma people. She has been attending
weddings and funerals, observing ritual activities, and hanging around
with a digital recorder to capture day-to-day conversations. "There's
no way to do the research I do without getting into peoples homes to
record conversations and stories," she says. "So even though it's
sometimes been difficult to meet just the right people, I'm feeling
pretty lucky to have chosen the topic."

Language documentation often deals with languages that are, like Darma,
on the verge of extinction. It's work that many linguists at UT pursue,
with a particular emphasis on Latin America. Contact with foreign
cultures -- Europeans in the Americas, for instance -- and economic
pressure are two of the most likely culprits for this phenomenon,
although as with all living things, the death of some languages is to
be expected. As globalization continues to take effect, some linguists
fear as many as 90% of the world's languages could be eliminated over
the next 50 years, with potentially unprecedented cultural impacts.
Beyond language-preservation efforts, language documentation provides
linguists with the ability to look at the interaction and development
of languages worldwide.

For members of the Darma community, there's a growing interest in
creating a permanent record of their language and culture. "I've wanted
to make a project like this happen for some time," says tribal member
B.S. Bonal, director of the National Zoo in Delhi. "But we're happy to
have outside help if that's what it takes to get this job done."

Peace, Charm, and Poverty

The haul to Dharchula from the Indian capital of New Delhi takes 24
hours of straight travel, although only the desperate or insane attempt
it in less than two days. Heading out from the New Delhi Train Station,
we catch an overnight coach and then schlep 15 or so hours in local
"share taxis," bare-tired, diesel jeeps crowded with as many as 15
passengers. The drivers are poor young Indian men paid about 100 Indian
rupees (roughly $2) per day to negotiate the roads carved into the
mountainsides, navigating switchbacks overlooking drops of a thousand
feet or more. I suppose this hair-raising trip -- along with the
constant blare of bootleg Bollywood film music tapes -- could be
considered part and parcel of the charm of relocating to the Himalayas.

[photo inset]
Scenes from a Darma-Hindu wedding outside Dharchula
photo by Dan Oko

Living in this remote corner of the world, Christina and I have had to
reckon with all sorts of new rules for the road. From the crushing
poverty of India's megacities to the ringing temple bells in our back
yard at evening prayer time, it's always obvious we're not in Texas
anymore. The sound of people breaking rock to eke out a few extra
rupees each day provides the rhythm of our mornings. The hourly bellow
of cows in the alley reminds us that whatever industrial development
has come to this nation of a billion people, we have landed in a
predominantly agrarian community where ancient traditions continue to
echo throughout daily life.

Following the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the Indian government classified
Darma and two closely related tribes -- the Byans and Chaudangs -- as
descendents of Tibetan ancestors. Prior to that time, local people say,
the Indian government hadn't even recognized the territory as part of
the country. Today the region's three indigenous groups, including the
Darma, resist their official categorization, noting that their
religious practices are an amalgam of animism and Hinduism,
emphatically not Buddhist as in Tibet. They also reject the Indian
government's tribal label of "Bhotia," derived from the Hindu words for
Buddhist and Tibetan. They prefer to call themselves "Rang"; the Darma
are believed to be the largest of the Rang tribes.

With about 30,000 residents, Dharchula forms the business and population
center along our stretch of the Kali River. In addition to the Rang
people, Dharchula's population includes Indian army and paramilitary
squads stationed to protect the international borders and scores of
workers, including a handful of Europeans and Koreans, employed by the
hydroelectric dam being built at the base of the Darma Valley. The rest
of the Kali River corridor is dotted with small communities where the
main highway remains the only street in town. Small storefront
groceries provide necessities, such as laundry soap, rice, beans, and
fresh fruit trucked up from the plains, as well as an array of consumer
items such as plastic furniture and Chinese-made handbags and sneakers.

Away from the road, villages persist where locals tend small farms and
orchards on terraced hillsides, growing citrus, potatoes, and grains.
In Dharchula proper, you'll find some semblance of indoor plumbing, but
throughout the area most people rely on public spigots and natural
springs for their water. Open sewers run through town, while on the
outskirts public latrines remain the norm. Our water flows only for a
couple of hours twice a day, when we fill buckets for everything from
washing dishes to taking showers. Electricity is also sporadic, but we
have enough energy to keep the laptop charged, and many families have
satellite television.

A Slower Place in Time

Despite the availability of Coca Cola, Levi's, and even popular American
TV shows such as Friends and Alias, the cultural divide persists
between East and West, especially beyond such metropolises as Delhi,
Madras, and Bombay. I have had to give up longnecks and cheeseburgers,
but there are many compensations. Christina and I have come to
appreciate the joys of a fine cup of well-spiced chai -- sweet tea with
cardamom, ginger, and black pepper -- not to mention well-seasoned
plates of rice and lentils, served with heaping side orders of
cauliflower, potatoes, eggplant, and okra, known in these parts as
"subzi masala."

[photo inset]
The Darma Valley, Kali River, and Dharchula -- across the river is
western Nepal
photo by Dan Oko

Not only the food but also the pace of life, social niceties, and
religious practices never once let you forget this is an exotic
destination. We find a certain quietude lost in many Indian and foreign
cities (not to mention modern-day Austin), but day-to-day living can be
a real challenge. Thankfully, our Byans landlady operates by a Rang
social code called "nocksum": treating most strangers as guests and
guests -- even paying ones -- as family.

Our shared house is made of brick and cement, a thoroughly modern
dwelling by Dharchula standards with its marble floors and indoor
toilet, nestled between several houses made of stone and wood. These
older homes beyond our glassless windows give a feel for what this
place must have been like before development began in earnest. The
two-story structures are not much taller than our single-story abode.
Most of the neighbors' living areas are accessed via a narrow wooden
ladder-type staircase. The lower rooms once housed cattle, but now are
most often used for storage. Fewer of these traditional houses linger
as brick-and-cement structures replace them, but they are infinitely
more charming to our eyes.

As befits a community barely a generation removed from village life,
hollering for your neighbors is still more common than ringing them on
the phone. In our crowded back-alley neighborhood, nearly everyone is
related to our landlady, and she has frequent visitors, often before we
are even out of bed. Their calls -- somewhat intelligible to Christina
but totally opaque to me -- often wake us up. A notable consolation is
that we happily receive our daily quotient of "bed tea" while still
drowsy and indeed still in bed. It's a ritual we will miss when we
return to Texas.

While some old ways still linger, other traditions have been mingled
with Hindu practices. Within our first few weeks of arriving in
Dharchula, I had discovered a trail off the main road, and along the
path there stood a small whitewashed, open-air temple. Similar
structures dot the hillsides near and far. One day we were taking our
daily walk when we noticed we were being trailed by a group of local
men leading a goat. We stopped to watch as they entered the temple.
When they reached the interior shrine, the men threw some rice in the
air, said a prayer, and then chopped the goat's head off with a single
blow from a sickle, capturing its blood in a cup. They waved when they
noticed us watching, shouldered the wooly carcass, and headed home
again.

Darma Nocksum

After a winter in Dharchula, we were more than ready to explore the
Darma Valley, the tribe's historic summer home. After spending a month
watching idly while friends and neighbors packed their bags and saddled
their livestock, we finally hoisted our own backpacks, loaded with
camping gear, dehydrated noodles, and Christina's high tech recording
equipment. It takes us two days of hard walking to reach the open
plateau where we spent most of our time in the Darma Valley.

There are 14 villages in the valley, located at altitudes of 8,000 to
14,000 feet (everything isn't bigger in Texas). They have no roads, no
power lines, no phones, and are occupied only from May to October. To
get there, we follow the path of the roiling Dhauli River that helped
carve the valley, skirting massive granite cliffs, and inch our way
across icy glaciers, crossing wobbly bridges over rushing white water.
We pass through broadleaf forests where oak, Himalayan walnut, and
rhododendron trees provide plenty of shade, eventually ascending to
subalpine evergreen forests where the air smells like vanilla. We share
the trail with goatherds, military patrols keeping a wary eye on China,
and families joining the migration. Many want to know where we've been;
our time in Dharchula has made us a little famous.

[photo inset]
Scenes from a Darma-Hindu wedding outside Dharchula
photo by Dan Oko

We establish a five-day base in the village of Baun. Across the valley
stand the five massive peaks of the Panchachuli Range, towering to
heights of about 25,000 feet. It's the season of offerings, sacrifice,
and feasting, and we join the Darma as they visit temples and shrines,
wolfing down goat meat and rice. At each stop, they share sweets and a
fried flatbread called "puri." The hills are sprinkled with blooming
wildflowers, and every morning we make our way to the river and bathe
in the brisk snowmelt.

Christina carries her digital recorder everywhere, taping Darma folk
songs, old men telling stories, and housewives gossiping. She takes
time to learn the local name for mountain iris and forget-me-nots, as
well as wild strawberries and various medicinal plants. By the end of
our stay, she has collected a dictionary of nearly 1,000 words and has
begun to parse the grammatical rules of Darma. After leaving the
valley, she will sit down with consultants to transcribe more tapes and
translate more words into Hindi and English. It's work that will
continue this winter, when we return. The record will form the basis
for future generations to learn their language, if it comes to that.

In the meantime, we enjoy the Darma nocksum in this astoundingly rural
setting. Many of the descendents of Baun have been away for 15 to 20
years, and this is the first time they've had a chance to come back.
Most children don't speak much Darma. We trade stories and snack on
blood sausage, made from goat intestine, and other delicacies. I'm
invited to participate in a strength contest involving a small boulder,
and when I muscle it onto a platform, I'm offered a sweet local
alcoholic brew that tastes a little like Mexican mescal. Again and
again, people tell us they're so happy Christina has taken an interest
in their language and culture.

When we've had our fill, we take the recording equipment a little
further into the backcountry -- to the last village in the valley,
about 15 miles away. Past Baun, the villages are more sparsely
populated and many of the small stone houses have been abandoned. The
schoolyards boast volleyball nets, but the schools themselves have no
teachers. In some cases the roofs have caved in, evidence of heavy
winter snows. Those who spend the summer there farm small plots of
land, and a lucky few supervise workers who have been brought in to
help with this subsistence-level agriculture. In the fall, they will
carry the grain to trade depots and collect their pay. I take these
images home with me, when Christina's work returns us to Austin.

We're heading back to India this month, so that she can complete the
dictionary and continue her work studying the grammar of Darma. "It's a
never-ending project really," she says. "I mean, I can keep doing this
for the rest of my life, and probably there will still be a lot that
escapes me. So my goal is to get enough that somebody in the community
can eventually take over."

Dan Oko writes frequently for the Chronicle.
He has a weblog devoted to his travels in India and invites readers to
visit www.danoko2.blogspot.com. An earlier version of this story was
published in the Montanan magazine.


--


André Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org is the Operations
Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC
(http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development needs
of American Indians

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