TheDaak review

Book: White as Milk and Rice: Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes by Nidhi Dugar Kundalia, Penguin Random  House, Published 2020, 241 pages, ISBN 97801432429470  

By Ashwini Balu

With an academician bias, flipping through the last few pages to glance through the references has become my second interaction with a book, the first being reflecting through the blurb. Surprisingly, Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s White as Milk and Rice: Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes (2020), though, had references, most of them were before independence, with only a handful from recent decades. This scattered chronology of pre-existing works immediately highlights the absence of scholarship on the tribal communities. A journalist by profession, Kundalia situates her second book precisely within this silence, documenting the lives of various tribes and their dynamic relationship with a social and economic environment that is transforming faster than they can adapt. The author’s core thesis is that, besides bringing the margin to the centre, what is actually needed is an understanding of their distinct value in all of their vulnerability. These values, their cultural identities, social structures and needs should be understood and acknowledged for taking steps that truly benefit them.

The book, divided into six chapters, narrates the stories of six individuals from six tribes. Through a first-hand narrative of their daily life and activities in the villages, the book presents an intriguing comment on the nuanced ways in which the rural customs, stories, and identities persist amid unfortunate marginalisation.  

Sukri, from the Halakkis of Ankola, a Padmashri awardee, treasures her inherited songs that were passed on to her mother and grandmother. These songs, performed across villages and national stages in cities, become technologies of survival in rural contexts. Interwoven with her story are instances of neglect, gendered roles in their Halakki community, and their vanishing livelihoods.  

Hoonkar, an ex-dacoit from the Kanjar tribe of Chambal, inherits not songs, but stigma. Believed to be Rajputs, the Kanjars have been pushed to the margins by many throughout history, their social and historical significance denied. Kundalia highlights how the several colonial acts proposed as a means to improve their lives ended up re-stigmatising them. This illustrates why a genuine understanding of their distinct identities and needs is vital, as simply shifting them to the centre risks reproducing the same hierarchies and stigmas that first displaced them. The instances of violence and ill-treatment toward tribal communities become a “common” consequence of the land acquisition process (Negi & Azeez, 2022).

While restigmatisation becomes the focus of Hoonkar’s story, another story revolves around breaking stereotypes through striving for one’s rights. After Indian Independence, the government’s environmental policies have pushed the Kurumbas of Nilgiri to the edges of the forest, where Mani, a teenager, faces bullying and exclusion from his teacher and classmates alike. Through Mani, the author brings to the light the way in which the label of being a tribe of sorcerers has isolated  Kurumbas socially, accompanied by the endless perpetuation of negative stereotypes.  

In a different geographical setting, but marking a similar negotiation of survival, Birsu, a Maria of Bastar, navigates her life in the backdrop of escalating tensions between the army and Naxals in her husband’s village. She often reflects on her life in her native village in Usili, and the ghotuls– a community space for youngsters where premarital sex is not a taboo, but a part of navigating through life. The ghotuls embody how rural social spaces structure cooperation, community cohesion and indigenous social order. By contrasting her native village with the militarised landscape of her husband’s, “the greenness burst here in thickets, unlike the tame trees of her hometown” (Kundalia, 2020, p.130), she highlights how rural lifescapes are not static, but sites where tradition, territory, and power intersect. 

Among the six stories, the story of two sisters- Wansuk and Syrpai Rynjah, both in their 80s, belonging to the Khasi tribe of Shillong, stands out the most.  In their matrilineal system, the younger sister, the khadduh, inherits the ancestral home, highlighting how property and kinship customs are tied to the rural household as a social and spatial institution within the village landscape. Nevertheless, the life of the two sisters sails through the rough seas of an estranged father, an irresponsible uncle, and a husband alienated by the custom, amid broader tensions between rising evangelism and the family’s struggle to preserve tradition. 

This negotiation of identity as indigenous culture faces modernisation is the dilemma also at the foundation of the final story. City-bred Pangshong, a Konyak, returns to his village in Nagaland to visit his granduncle,  who was once a headhunter. As expected, many of the practices have been abandoned under the influence of the church. Christian missionary interventions have adversely impacted the age-old practices in the rural areas, deeming any conversations on the past or war a taboo. Kundalia comments, “Christianity filled the void left by the fall of anachronistic traditions” (Kundalia, 2020, p. 201). Thus, the chapter discusses how the rural becomes a site of contestation between belief and belonging, tradition and transformation. 

Kundalia’s journalistic approach, rather than an ethnographic one, sets the limitations and strengths here. This allows for an intimacy, which helps her capture the humour,  pain, and the rich account of everyday life, which academic writing often presents as formal analysis and theory. There are a few recurring and significant themes in the book, such as oppression of the marginalised, the debate against changing identities, and the colonial (continuing post-independence) displacement of the tribes, deeply entwined with the rural lifescapes in which they unfold. She also puts forth uncomfortable questions, challenging the limits of government laws and policies. To simply ask, can forests be at all preserved by excluding those who have always lived in harmony with them?  

Additionally, the author is to be appreciated for subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) pointing out the need for the preservation of cultural memory that is at risk of erasure. These social concerns are reflected in the power structures within the village, as in the scene where a havaldar inattentively nods while a sarpanch reports a robbery in the village. Absorbed in his kachoris, he recalls an earlier incident where a sower was whipped by the sarpanch for being slow. This captures the layered power dynamics within rural governance. The sarpanch, who wields power locally among the sowers, becomes subordinate to the indifferent officer. This vignette reveals the systemic neglect that exists in a rural context. 

Notwithstanding, the author, using oral histories as primary evidence, substantiated with historical records and books, foregrounds the communities that are often pushed to the margins of mainstream historical narratives. Thus, her work makes a significant contribution to the ongoing debates on identity, displacement, and cultural erasure. Kundalia gives them a voice throughout the book, supplemented by her graphic descriptions of their everyday existence. This way of walking the readers through their life stories helps the readers relate to the characters in a sort of shared interconnectedness and, in the process, provoke empathy in them.  Thus, the writing style makes the book accessible and easily comprehensible for a wider readership.     

Yet, the very qualities that keep the narrative hooked mark its limits. These stories are strong as fragments with themes such as indigenous knowledge, rural life, but the structural debates, continuity versus change in rural lifescapes, tradition versus modernity, and intersections of caste, capital and religion remain implicit. Thus, bringing in the larger question: does her work democratise knowledge by reaching a wider audience, such as showing their daily life, customs, or their knowledge systems? Or is she simplifying complex histories to fit into a journalistic form, focusing on individual stories without connecting them to the broader political and social context?   

White as Milk and Rice succeeds in many ways through its immersive storytelling, while keeping the agency of the protagonists intact. At the same time, the work leaves space for further exploration. The book may not be read in one sitting, as each chapter addresses different themes and possibilities. But the book compels the readers to pause and register a pang of empathy, or a lingering sense of unease at the injustice faced by the characters.

Beyond its emotional resonance, the book prompts questions about who gets to record the past and in what form it is recorded. While not attempting an overt theoretical or historical argument, Kundalia’s work remains significant for the way it brings the rural lives and marginalised voices into focus. Her work contributes to a larger discourse on representation, rural identity and the politics of visibility. Therefore, the book’s relevance lies in how it makes the complex realities accessible without its emotional truth. In a globalised world, White as Milk and Rice ultimately compels the readers to rethink what development, progress, and continuity mean for those communities whose ways of life modernity seeks to overwrite.  

References:

1. Negi, Dandub Palzor and Azeez, E. P. Abdul (2022) “Impacts of Development Induced Displacement on the Tribal Communities of India: An Integrative Review,” Asia-Pacific Social Science Review: Vol. 22: Iss. 2, Article 5.

2. Kundalia, N. D. (2020). White as Milk and Rice: Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes. Penguin Books