“Our hunting, our economy and even our festivities were interlinked to iron smelting”: The Asur community’s last custodians of a traditional technique – Jharkhand

Laldeo Asur passes his days basking in the mellow winter sun, his 70-year-old body now too frail for the rigours of village life.
But it is not his advancing age he is too concerned about but the advance of modernity on his tribe, the Asurs.
Laldeo knows that after him there will be none to practice a traditional technology for iron smelting, a craft perfected by his forefathers but grown obsolete and economically unviable in an age of modern steel plants.
As a matter of fact, Laldeo is among the 22,000-odd left of the Asurs, one of the eight particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) in Jharkhand. The Unesco has listed the Asur language as “definitely endangered” with only 7,000 speakers left.
“Our hunting, our economy and even our festivities were interlinked to iron smelting. Today, everything is gone,” Laldeo said, his weather-beaten face contorting in anguish. […]
The Asurs were once hunter-gatherers whose life was closely linked to the forests they lived in. However, when the British enacted the Indian Forest Act in 1865, several tribes like the Asurs were cut off from their roots as the legislation restricted the use of forest-based products.
After independence, the Indian government too virtually forced these nomadic tribes to settle down and adopt an agrarian lifestyle. […]
Laldeo explained that their smelting method included putting crushed stones rich in iron ore and charcoal in a cylindrical furnace which is then fanned by deer-skin bellows. The iron was then used to make farming tools and household items and sold in nearby rural markets.
But today none of the tribesmen earn a living by making iron products and the younger Asurs have started working in the numerous bauxite mines in the hills of the Pat region. Some have even turned cultivators and agricultural labourers. […]
The Asurs still live in mud houses with roofs made of paddy straw and baked, curved mud tiles known as khapras. Power supply is restricted to a few hours in the day but there is no mobile phone network.
The nearest community health centre is 50km away while villagers have to trudge for more than four km up and down a steep, narrow route to get potable water.
According to the Asurs – who worship the forests as a life-giving force – the big mining companies have been exploiting resources from their land but never bothered to give anything back. […]

Source: “Jharkhand’s Asur tribe losing traditional skills in modern times” by Abhishek Saha, Hindustan Times, Polpol Path (Jharkhand), 2 January 2015
Address : https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/jharkhand-s-asur-tribe-losing-traditional-skills-to-modern-times/article1-1302356.aspx#
Date Visited: 28 January 2022

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