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How does one define Indian food? Is it defined by the food served at restaurants where waiters flash colourful menu cards with a choice of fare at premium prices to choose from? Or is it the simple dal-rice-sabzi-roti, you eat at home everyday?
Johar – Welcome to the World, the normal form of address by tribals of Jharkhand, answers these questions and raises others for us to ponder on. This is an investigative critique on celluloid spanning 58 minutes produced and directed by Nilanjan Bhattacharya, with support from ActionAid. The film won the Best Narration Award (written) at the National Film Awards. Ranu Ghosh has cinematographed the film; Indrajit Das has edited it and Partha Barman has done the sound mixing. Awadesh Kr. Singh and Niyamat Ansari, two ground-level workers of Gram Swaraj Abhijan in Latehar, gave the film team protection while scouring through the Mao-infested locations in Jharkhand. Niyamat was later killed. "My aim was to question the definition of Indian Food. The film is an attempt to draw attention towards this neglected but very relevant food culture. I wanted to showcase the rich reservoir of food resources and related traditional knowledge of sustainable practices of the tribal.
Rich in this context holds a meaning completely different from the notion of rich in relation to food as we know it. This film tries to draw attention to this neglected but very relevant food culture," says Nilanjan. Their recipes are aimed at making things edible, things that the urban middle-class cannot even begin to imagine such as mahua seeds and flowers. The words delicacy and taste do not exist in their dictionary. These seeds can be extremely poisonous. The film demonstrates how the locals struggle for days to take the poison out and make them edible.
Johar — Welcome to Our World focusses on Jharkhand, the home of 32 tribal communities. These tribals have been entirely dependent on their local forests to source a significant portion of their core nutrition and medicinal material from. Their symbiotic relationship with the forests deeply influences their social, religious and cultural expressions from ancient times. This comes across when the camera captures them in preparation of a festival in celebration of invoking the forest gods and goddesses. It informs us graphically and descriptively, their traditional recipes, the medicinal qualities of various herbs, weeds and fruits and the traditional knowledge of their sustainable management by the Adivasis. It talks about how mindless, aggressive development and the`A0government’s`A0wrongly tilted conservation policies have damaged the tribals’ relationship with their land and pushed them ever deeper into food insecurity eating into what is available for them to rescue their bare sustenance from, availability being the operative word in their struggle for existence. The camera wanders across Jharkhand. Carved out of Bihar, the state of Jharkhand was born on November 15, 2000. But the indigenous people of this state did not achieve what they had fought for. The Forests Right Act, 2006, Gram Sabha, the village administration, now have more control in managing local forests. A forest dweller’s family can own up to four hectares. They have gained unrestricted rights occupation or cultivation and of collection and selling of non-wood forest products. It is a path-breaking Act. But has the implementation of the Act been a transparent, honest process? The film defines through visual and musical authenticity, the lifestyle of a people who, driven to the edge of survival, still draw the last juice of life and never dwell on self-pity. Bhattacharya has painted the picture of the Jharkhandi Adivasis without pitying them but with repeated emphasis on the rights they are being deprived of. The respect and dignity he gives to these people infuses the film with objectivity and empathy. Yet, when we enter this world, it hits home that the people of this land are trapped in a different reality. They are still being chased by the unending fear of hunger.
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