The White Man's Burden

The White Man’s Burden

Rudyard Kipling by Remigius de Souza

My information about Rudyard Kipling was limited only to:

1. He was born in the campus of Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai, where I was studying architecture;
2. He was a British poet.

I was doing my first year in architecture when I made this portrait. I copied a picture in pencil on handmade paper, taken from some book or magazine. That was years ago. I wanted to sell it. Thankfully it didn’t work.

Later I read a couple of his poems, but couldn’t stick any more. Decades later I saw an animated cartoon series, “Mogali”, or Jungle Book, on TV, once in a while. I was more interested in graphics, not the story.

The story is disappointing because the animals were made to talk and behave like humans; that’s an insult to animals. It was neither a work of imagination nor for the love of animals. Even to abuse any person by a name of any animal is an insult to that animal.

Kipling was an imperialist, that’s known. But whatever I learnt from the textbooks in school that projected Britain is a democratic country, which I could never believe.

Britain and its government and the people may be anything else, which is their right, but to call them democratic is preposterous. Certainly there may be few persons who believed in democracy and lived in democratic spirit and values, but that cannot be generalized.

Any country or society may be a superpower, which doesn’t mean it is superior to any other country or society or people.

How could any democratic society enslave or colonize or invade other people - other countries?
How could any country and its citizens go to the polar uninhabited region, put their flag there, and claim it is their land?
Such a civilization is a curse to the land and waters. Animals are better.

Perhaps, I shouldn’t refer to any country and/or its people in the place of their government – democratic, or fundamentalist, or totalitarian, or monarchy.
Better say, Indian government instead of India or Indian people. Better say Chinese government rather than China or Chinese people. Better say British government, neither Britain nor British people. That’s how I should address an issue if it refers to any government.

It is our present predicament that we are such weaklings.

Is there democracy in true sense anywhere? May be there is. I have heard about Vermont, but I don’t know anything about the place.
Certainly there is democracy: It is among the tribal – adivasi – aborigine communities, which still prevails in spite of onslaught by the civilized societies.
They are in fact the WORLD HERITAGE, which needs to be treated with care and caution.

DEMOCRACY can function only at a community level, small nations at human scale. Then we will not need any governments that exist in present forms, and we will not need cities – the symbol of centralized power.

NOTE: The White Man's Burden, poem by Kipling
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Remigius de Souza | Mumbai

© Remigius de Souza., all rights reserved.

TERRA INCOGNITA INDICA

People Energy

Soil Unknown-Undiscovered Indian

INDICA: I deliberately use the word ‘Indica’, a biological term, instead of ‘India’. It is precisely to indicate a ‘region’ and not political boundaries that associate with the State. In the historical time political boundaries have been subjected to change, anywhere.

 

TERRA: literally ‘soil’, which I refer to ‘Land and Waters and People, and Biotic and Abiotic Nature’. The biotic and abiotic nature is intrinsic in the life, therefore also in their culture, of the people – the daughters and the sons of the soil.

 

INCOGNITA: the literal meaning is ‘unknown – unexplored – unrecognized’ alike the medieval (European) map showed the known world encircled by ‘Terra incognita’ where monsters roam.

Indeed even in the twenty-first century, the ‘soil’, in my way of comprehensive meaning, still remains ‘unknown (to the world) – unexplored (by the pundits) – unrecognized (by the so-called Authority or the State)’, whom I fondly call my ‘anonymous’ kin, from whatever glimpse I have had through my six decade journey in the Third World India and the Fourth World India.

 

Social and Cultural Sub-groups of India

INDIA has almost a continental size. Broadly there are about 50 – 60 cultural and social sub-groups (as illustrated). No. We are not referring to the castes or cults or the creeds. We are not taking of, in American lingo, of the Class or 'the classless society'. We are speaking of the ethnic and adivasi – tribal – communities (that is the cohesive collectives), not the civilized advance societies (that is the fragmented collectives in the modern times).

She indeed is a thousand-petal lotus, our national flower. There have been as many topographic and climatic regions – bio-regions – that have great hand in shaping the culture, expressed in food, clothing, shelter (or architecture!), visual and performing arts and crafts, languages an folklore… and thus as a result a superior quality of sustainable living. I call it a model for the modern world, a world heritage, now facing a wipe-out.

 

Unfortunately in the global race to make India an industrial power by the petty imitators – the ruling minority – comes at cross-purposes with the survival of the agrarian society and the diverse bio-regions. The petty imitators are out to homogenize them with monoculture of industrial civilization. The industrialization here, so far, only helps the power mongers and profiteers through their invisible tentacles.

Indeed one lifetime is not enough to see and to assimilate and to understand this phenomenon for any person or even a group of persons. Any documentation, even a fraction, would reveal great treasures of wisdom and knowledge and skills, across these diverse bio-regions, accumulated over generations of anonymous People of India. 

India is such a vast country with diversity that it is impossible to manage even the welfare of the people (for the lack of understanding) for any centralized power, even with an iron hand. This is true of any region in the world which has been proved time to time. Decentralization of powers, down to earth in practice, (power in the hands of peasants) is the only answer to this malady; M. K. Gandhi came very close to it in his concept of Panchayati Raj – power to village self-rule.

 

(10-05-2009)

Note: Map- Social and cultural sub-groups of India, after the cover page of 'Seminar', Issue 226, 1978, New Delhi.

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© Remigius de Souza., all rights reserved.
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Making clay country roofing tiles: Demo

After I wrote “Clay country roofing tiles” in 1987, I suggested an NGO to conduct a demonstration-come-training programme for their housing project for the tribal in Raigad district. Their target group was Katakari and Thakar tribes.

For this demo I brought two young men, Baliram and Deva, from village Amiyar in Bharuch district in Gujarat. They belong to Bhill tribe called “Vasava Koli”. I had already known them for quite some time. Vasavas are better educated than many tribes.

Vasavas practice their skills of clay tile making at household level. Their technique resembles to one that I had seen, during my childhood, with the potters at my native village in Konkan Region, decades ago.




The illustration 1 shows the hamlet “Navi Fali” – a part of village Amiyar, where Baliram and Deva live. It is evident enough that the houses are built of organic, locally available materials – clay, bamboo and wood. The settlement is built by self-help and community participation.



Illustration 2 shows the cattle sheds, which are suitably built for the purpose.


Baliram and Deva received good facilities of accommodation, food at the mess, travel and to work at the NGO’s campus in a village.

They scouted the surrounding area with the staff of the NGO, found suitable soil, which was transported to the work shed at the campus. They produced about three thousand tiles within three weeks.



Illustration 4 shows the demonstration work in the shed provided for the prepared soil, tile making and drying the raw tiles.


Illustration 4 shows the burnt clay tiles. Persons in the picture (from left to right) are a visitor, a lady office bearer, two staff member (one in the rear), Deva and Baliram.

Observation
1. during the demo the NGO did not invite or bring the adivasis – Katakari and Thakar – either to watch it or for the training.

2. The staff (social workers) occasionally visited the demo. None of them tried their hand at making the tiles.
Knowing the urban ways, Baliram and Deva as well s myself were indifferent about it.

3. I don’t know if the NGO did ever document the whole operation – labour, logistics, and utility – price-value-cost-benefit – of the product, perhaps other than voucher for accounts purpose.
Needless to say, NGO used substandard (i.e. cheaper) Mangalore tiles for the housing.

4. NGOs, either in Gujarat or Maharashtra, are not interested in the tribal skills, knowledge, their self-reliance, and above all their self-respect. One can safely generalise this statement.


Remigius de Souza



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TRIBAL SKILLS: Clay country roofing tiles

TRIBAL SKILLS: Clay country roofing tiles


THE USE of half round country roofing burnt clay tiles with some variation goes back to centuries in several parts of India and other parts of the world. Handmade-burnt country tiles are commonly used in the rural areas of Gujarat and Maharashtra. The author’s house in Konkan (West Coast Region of India) is made of mud walls and covered with country tiles. It is like other houses, many older in age, built similarly in traditional manner. The house is built of mud walls with mud plaster, and mud floor, and roofing of country ti8les on scantling of bullies of secondary wood and split bamboo battens. This region enjoys over hundred inches (2500 mm) average annual rainfall.

In recent years, some individuals and organisations have fortunately become aware of mud building and traditional methods of construction, perhaps because of publicity to mud architecture in foreign countries: West. Most city dwellers in India are migrants from rural areas, their ties severed with rural India. Those connected with the field of construction have no knowledge of traditional ways. Yet it is positive direction in this country of a vast illiterate majority, that some urban elite is becoming aware of MUD ARCHITECTURE. And perhaps in the course of time it may become as popular as, “KHADI” is today, in spite of the fact that in the countryside, the rural population, illiterate as well as educated, poor as well as the rich, are entering into the cult of English Education and Concrete Houses. The rural population is yet to understand how some people in the city though English educated have become aware of the importance of MUD as material for housing.

Many alternatives are being suggested for roofing in low cast housing... from treated thatch to asbestos cement sheets, Mangalore tiles, G.I. sheets, aluminium sheets, precast cement concrete, asphalt sheets, cellulose waste sheets, stone slabs, brick vaults etc. I was surprised to read a remark in one of the publications of National Building Organisation [NBO], which rejected country-roofing tiles as breakable and destructive to timber substructure or supports. In rural low-cost housing undertaken by the outside agencies, the roofing in Mangalore roofing tiles is preferred. The country roofing tiles are rejected by the government and non-government agencies while building low-cost houses. Yet when the people build houses for themselves in rural areas, they continue traditional handmade-burnt clay tiles. Country clay tiles are also called ‘potter’s tiles’. In some parts of India, Kumbhars (potters’ caste) make them, as it is their family tradition.

There are two methods of making half round country tiles. One made on the potter’s wheel in cone shape, cut into halves, and baked in kiln. These are mostly crude – not in uniform shape, size and thickness. The other method is to lay a sheet on flat surface, in a form or mould, or required size, shape and thickness. The sheet then is removed and shaped by placing it on a half-rounded wooden block; dried in the shade and baked in a kiln. The potters in the Konkan region of Maharashtra State practice this method as well as the tribal communities of Gujarat State.

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PRACTICE WITH DIFFERENCE

In the tribal villages of Panchmahal, Sabarkantha, Baroda, Bharuch etc. district of Gujarat state, the method of making is same as described above. However the practice is different. Here the every household makes its own tiles for annual need for replacing broken tiles, as well for building the new houses, or for the making of additions to the old houses. It is a normal practice in the Adivasi [tribal/aborigine] families. Everyone knows the art of tile-making, just as they know the ways of growing crops, building a house, making Roti [bread], rolling Bidis [hand made cigars rolled in leaf for smoking], making cow-dung cakes, manufacturing and playing flutes, and the implements for farming.


They know which mud [clay] to select to make a good tile, without the aid of laboratory. The tiles they make are uniform in sized and colour, sound in strength, are waterproof. There is no room for the sub-standard goods here. The tiles to cover the ridge are larger, and sometimes with decorative motif.

Tile making is a household CRAFT alike the cottage industry such as KHADI sold from the emporiums for the use of elite and which is seldom used by those who produce it.

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PROCESS

Country roofing tile is 100 percent labour intensive product. No machine or any factory product is involved in making the tile. Raw material for the tile is fine clay, taken from the fields, or riverbed. The clay is cleaned of roots, gravel etc., then wetted, tempered by legs, and allowed to season for two days. Fuel required for baking is no threat to forest, as leaves, branches, grass, rice husk, cow dung etc. are used as fuel; the P.W.D. Handbook of Bombay Presidency described the fuel as “rubbish”. Simple equipments consist: (1) a flat wooden base to make a clay sheet; (2) a form made of bamboo or wood strip (¼” x ¼” size) – for a common tile; (3) a larger form for the ridge tile; (4) half round wooden moulds – one for the common tiles and another for the ridge tiles – to shape the clay sheet. The top of base plate is sprinkled with dry ash from “chulah” – hearth – to prevent sticking. Prepared clay is spread, pressed on the base in a frame, compacted by hand and smoothened by spraying little water. The clay sheet is then removed, placed on the mould and shaped. The mould is removed and the raw tile is left for drying for a day or day and a half. The dried tiles are baked by keeping them in rows with gaps in between them, filled and covered with fuel. If the area is windy, then the kiln is formed in a shallow pit, to prevent fuel from burning out fast, resulting in the tiles being half burnt or over burnt.

COST

It takes about four working days for one person to make 1000 tiles. The operation can spread over seven days enabling a person to carry on with other activities in between the whole operation, such as collection of raw material, fuel and water, or household work or farming. The cost is Rs. 80/- to 100/- or more for 1000 tiles, depending upon labour component and cost of equipment.

The Mangalore tile is superior to country tile. It is an industrial product, prepared only where large quantity of specific clay is available to sustain the industry. In addition, the product involves high-energy consumption. The distribution takes place through transport system, which adds to the cost, besides commission of the agencies.


SUBSTRUCTURE FOR ROOFING

There is notion that country tiles require a heavier support structure as compared to Mangalore tiles. The weight of both types of roofing together with battens is equal, which is about 14lbs.per-sq. ft. area. However no well-cut wooden battens are needed to support country tiles as in Mangalore tiles. Bamboo battens are sufficient to support country tiles.

Poor people use even Carvi (Strobi Lanthes Ciliatus) or other material obtained from the brushwood. The uneven level is corrected by inserting a tile over a batten. Lying of country tiles, so also its maintenance can be done even by a twelve year old child. For Mangalore tiles require perfect alignment is essential to prevent leakage. Two man-days are required to cover 100 sq. ft. of roof area.


MAINTENANCE

It is another misguided notion that country-roofing tiles require high maintenance cost. This notion is based on a bias of the urbanites and professionals. It does not take into account the time distribution and occupation round the year of a villager, as well as rural unemployment.

Before the monsoon, people remove the tiles, clean them with brooms and replace them. This action is called ‘turning the tiles’. This operation to cover 100-sq. ft. roof area requires 1.5 person-days. It costs at Rs. 15/- per person per day with no specialised skills, industrial equipment or products. Compare this with the cost of maintenance of a leaking R.C.C. roof slab.

A bamboo sapling or root (offset) planted in the fence grows into 50/10 bamboos and continues to grow and starts giving return in about three to five years’ time. Thus, the household is not dependent on market supply of bamboo or tiles for construction, repairs or additions to the house. For preservation of bamboo from white rot, the tribal follow a simple method of keeping it in the water for three days before fixing it in the roof. In some areas bamboo are kept in salt water.


ECONOMY

Self-reliance, low-cost, conservation, employment, sustainable life-style are some of the aspects of economy in housing. While travelling through tribal areas of Gujarat the author came across several settlements where Government Agencies and Panchayats have distributed Mangalore tiles either free or at subsidised rates. This may be happening in other states also. The government may have noble intentions of giving the poor a good industrial and urban roofing material. It may not be even be a second quality or substandard rejected stuff left-over at the factories. But it is doing a great damage, to the extent of killing the household craft acquired and evolved through generations by the tribal. It is nothing short of weakening their economic independence and skills in such vital areas as roofing their own house. Such an act of charity is making the tribal dependant on factory product and also pushing them even below the poverty line.

The government may achieve popularity by this act of support to the manufacturing industry, but this has perhaps a parallel in Indian history: the death of traditional art of famous “Malmal” [the finest textile] Sarees of Dhaka.

The substructure used for the country is adaptable to take Mangalore tiles when economic situation of the rural poor improves. Self-reliance though is the first step to such improvement.

This roofing product has 100% wage component [self-help], low energy consumption and low cost. The cost works out to Rs 24/- per sq m compared to improved thatch roof, which would have cost in 1986 @ Rs 29/- to 35/- per sq. m. (Ref: BRN - 13 of August 1986 by Central Building Research Institute (CBRI), Roorkee).

Roofing with country tiles may not be adoptable all over the country. Traditional roofing materials are different according to region. The roof in Rajasthan is made of stone slabs, in some parts of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka the roof is flat, made of one meter mud slab provided with skylights and vents, whereas some parts of Karnataka granite stone slabs are used for walls and roofs. Why does the rural population go for Mangalore tiles? The villagers look up to the city as model of good living. The use of Mangalore tiles or R.C.C. roof in rural areas is partly a n urban cult that the relevance or needs or resources. At the beginning they were attracted by the glamour of the city; now it is need for employment. The new generations of potters are moving away from traditional vocations with the advent of education and migrate to urban centres for employment while the city people spend thousands to learn pottery. Unfortunately, the learned and the experts have rejected country tiles as substandard, breakable, and expensive roofing material.
Indeed, with the most welcome programme of housing for the rural poor that has come into force, the aid given should not be an instrument of marketing industrial goods for the housing product, but optimum utilisation of local resources – skills – products. It should not look down upon the rural people as an “untapped rural market”, as popular commercial jargon says, to plough back money to urban centres.

It should be possible for institutions and organisations such as C.B.R.I., N.B.O., HUDCO, CAPART, NGOs, and government agencies, engaged in research, policy making, training, finance and building to save and revive this centuries old craft, through their housing programmes in rural and semi-urban areas.

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Fig. 5. Cost analysis
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Fig. 6. Chinese roof

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Remigius de Souza
1987

Figure 1: My house in Konkan region on the West Coast of India.
Figure 2: Bhill adivasi (aborigine) house in Satpuda Ranges.
Figure 3: TYPICAL TRADITIONAL METHOD OF HALF ROUND COUNTRY TILE ROOFING
Figure 5: Cost Analysis of Half Round Country roofing Tiles
Figure 6: A CHINES METHOD OF USING COUNTRY ROOFING TILES (Source: ‘Conference on Tropical Architecture’, University College, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London.)

(This paper was published under the title, “Country Roofing Tiles for Low Cost Rural Housing” by DESWOS in BRIEF No.3 June 1989 Germany; SHELTER (HUDCO, New Delhi); and Moving Technology[CAPART, New Delhi)


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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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Senses and SenseAbility – 6: Smell

Senses and SenseAbility – 6: Smell


Smell goes with breathing, a vital function. Indic people believe that our life span is measured (or decided) by how we breathe – or the number of inhales and exhales, and not by days or calendar years.

It is a common experience that taste, smell and seeing also goes together when food is seen. Smell of food prompts appetite – attraction, or repulsion, in certain environment, for example when we are hungry. Infant wrapped in mother’s sari, as many people do in India, recognizes her smell, not only when she is physically close by.

How does our sense of smell get diluted when in familiar environment, or after we get familiar? For example, pollution of land and water and air – the three vital links to life – and in urban habitat, is unmistakable to nose, though not for our egocentric or helpless mind – whatever we are in social – political – economic hierarchy.

Plants have aromas, and their company on daily basis can rejuvenate our living. But we go on hacking them to make concrete jungles, to build industrial empires etc. for monetary gains. We don’t spare even the forests to make hill stations for our sensual pleasures.

Isn’t it absurd to destroy trees in the urban neighbourhoods, and travel miles away to enjoy nature, or build holiday houses there? Can’t we (or the experts) plan corridors of woodlands for the neighbourhoods in the new town or existing cities that are under revision every twenty years? Such green corridors would give safe passage to wild life (not necessarily tigers) and neighbourhood people would have company of plants and wild life at a walking distance. Instead we put them both in the compartments of reservations. Indeed we are becoming intolerant to other forms of living beings, consequently other humans, which may belong to other caste, class, religion, language, province or nationality.

The thoughtful technology (science, research, industry and trade hand in hand) is ready with remedies – deodorants, cosmetics, drugs… And when we fall to live a life of vegetable, it offers healthcare. We go on pumping deadly toxins in the soil and waters and air in the name of progress and development and economic gains: We neither think of posterity nor improve living of all the citizens on equitable basis.

Plants are helpless because they can’t move. However nature helps them to move far and wide and to propagate by various means, one of them is other living beings (other than man), whom also we eliminate along with plants.

Our love of plants ends with our love for visual aesthetics and imported exotic species, which at times overpower and destroy indigenous species, just like the firangis who came to India to buy spices. Under the influence of our past colonial masters, anything desi – local or indigenous – is detested, though it is Nature-given. I deliberately don’t use the term God-given. How God has messed up our lives, or to put it other way, how we have messed up our lives in the name of God?

Fragrance of Soil rises from the Earth with first shower/s of monsoon, which I relished for decades. But in this concrete jungle of Mumbai it is rare; I feel homesick when monsoon comes. In one of his stories G. N. Dandekar mentions an ascetic presents a small bottle of the perfume containing fragrance of soil to a passionate collector (“Kuna Ekaachi Bhraman Gatha” (Marathi).

Fragrance of Mahuva flowers have left with me their sweet memories forever, which I enjoyed many times during the Holi festivals among the Bhil tribes. Summer is the bloom time for Mahuva trees; the fields, forests, villages, wherever the trees are, are filled with sweet fragrance. So also the fragrance of its precious liquor, which is used on special occasions such their religious rite. The Mahuva flowers are the part of the Bhil’s staple food: vegetables, rotis and biscuits of maize flour… Indeed palm and Mahuva are inseparable part of tribal people.

Collectors of Fragrance: Like honeybees that collect honey, the orchid bees are ardent collectors of fragrance, various fragrances, all types of fragrances; from flowers to woods, decayed woods, even shit, perhaps to impress the females with their collection.

Humans may boast their superiority over the animal world, but they can’t beat orchid bees. Bijal Trivedi informs, ‘talk to any performer and you will discover that brewing a top-selling fragrance is mostly art and very little science. These olfactory connoisseurs travel the world roaming markets, gardens, jungles and rivers to sniff out exotic new scents – their brains trained to tease apart complex odours and describe them in words” (‘Smells rank’, New Scientist, 17 Nov. 2007, p.48-51). And the urbanites that choose to live in urban jungles must surely envy the tribal folks!

It’s plent! It’s all free!! For decades I enjoyed aroma of paddy farms. When you enter Konkan region you can’t miss it if you are travelling by automobile or by railway. During summer, the aromas of cashew and mango in blossom are distinct. Like Mahuva liquor, aroma of feni – cashew liquor – also spreads in the atmosphere.

The rich biodiversity of Indic region provides pleasant fragrances in the environment through all seasons for us to enjoy. And it comes free for all; you need not bottle it like kings and emperors. We have six seasons; the Chinese have twelve seasons: how keen interest the Chinese people must have in the environment. No, we are not talking about the Chinese government; the governments come and go; the civilisations come and go; the people prevail.

Modern city is a parasite, alienated from the nature. Not only does it devour the nature (in land, waters and living beings), but also denies the citizens their kinship with the nature. It becomes increasingly destructive with its growing size; its reach extends beyond and across the continents and the oceans. The modern city is a by-product of Industrial Revolution and handiwork of the centralised powers.

Remigius de Souza
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