Questions and Answers about Irular

The Irulars are indigenous people in the south of India!

            Why is that so?

The Irulars have lived in primeval forests and tree savannahs for millennia. They collected wood and fruits, hunted for snakes and other animals, searched for wild honey. The pristine regions were their collective land borrowed from heaven.

Their suffering started in the colony time. The lwilderness they originally lived on was more and more colonised by strangers. After India’s independence, the woods shrivelled. In 1976, the forest management enjoined them from entering their territories.

Unlike other indigenous people, the Irulars do not live in cohesive settlement areas, as other tribes do, especially in East India. The individual groups are rather scattered over many small hamlets and village sections all over Tamil Nadu and other states of South India. Mostly they live in low mud huts covered with branches.

            Why is that so?    

Today the Irulars work as unskilled employees in households, brickyards and quarries. Exploited by people seeing themselves as members of higher classes, the Irular cannot live on the proceeds of their work. They are undernourished and ill. Many of them live in debt peonage.  

Their children cannot go to school. At public schools, they are treated in a degrading and bad way. Not having an education and being able to follow their ancestral way of living, they now lack in potential earnings, insufficient nutrition as well as acknowledgement in the society.

            Why is that so?                                      

The Irular’s strengths include:

+   Strong cohesion of the groups

+   Preservation of their real humane religion, traditions and pronounced social life as well as the flexibility of their culture

+   Rejection of any kind of mission

Therefore, many Irular groups are not yet uprooted and therefore their culture is still alive.

            Why is that so?                                      

There are a lot of different reasons:

+   As other Adivasi groups too, the Irular are seen as in a position below all other castes. They are the last within the strong hierarchical structured Indian caste system. The surrounding masses of Non-Irulars are looking down on them.

The lower caste people are priding upon having one group, that is seeming below them.

+     Fanatical Christianistic fundamentalists try them to indoctrinate, to dominate and to do missionary work. (It is hard to imagine, how crude and insistent they are pestering the people.)

+       Adherents of the political Hinduism try to make the tribal people to join them and to change them to Dalits

+     The relative prosperity of the surrounding people is attracting the poor and seducing the tribe people to change their culture. The Adivasi are endangered to become a victim of a heartless commercialism. The Cocacola-Religion appears as the most influential.

            Why is that so?                                      

The Irular’s intellectual and social attitude is sustainable! The Irulars have pronounced ethics: Women and men are nearly equal. They love their children. They do not use force, they do not beat their children nor their wives. They deal with each other in a caring way.

Due to their ethics and social life they do not only fit into a modern society, but are actually absolutely ideal for it.

On the one hand, the Irular’s culture should be sustained, because the preservation of a multitude of cultures is as important as the protection of plants and animals. On the other hand, the Irular’s culture plays an important role for the design of mankind’s future due to their exceptional high ethical and social standards – provided that we really want a humane and therefore a liveable future.

My good cooperation with the Irular started 1995. During all these years I learned one thing: Even the poorest children starving because of lack of food, sick and neglected, without clothing – even these children have bee able to recover in a very short time. They took heart and did a real good performance at school. The preconditions: Good food and regular lessons. Than the children will like to go to school and will have, moreover, an excellent apprehension

Here we can do a lot with a minimum of funds.

As soon as the Irular come up, they will be able to look after themselves and to develop optimism and a good humour.

            How can we achieve that?

The Irular and the NGO  Zukunft Irular (Future for  Irular) are willing to develop good chances for the future.

By all means, we want to prevent the Irular’s culture from being destroyed. On the other hand, we also want to explore possibilities together, how they can design their life independently on the basis of a good education, how they can ensure a balanced nutrition, how they can provide health care – in short, how everyone can stand up for himself as well as his community.

I have held extensive conversations with the Irulars about their future. And we all agree:

The Irulars want to learn and they want to acquire the ability to live in two worlds – at the same time, in their very own world of their traditional culture and in the world of modern India as loyal citizens of this big country.  

            What else is to be done?

The Irular are really able to free themselves from misery. What they need is only a push. And that is what we, the NGO Zukunft Irular, is doing.  

It includes a trustworthy female Social-Specialist, who helps them to find the right way for the education of their children. However she has to care for school meals to prevent the children from malnutrition There is really to do a lot against starving. Malnutrition spoils the perception abilities of the children and that means that there it is not at all possible to realise any sustainable development.  

It is not enough, that we want to help. We should additional have the opportunity to do it. Concerning the Irular there we have a good requisite they will come up and embrace independence.

The Irulars are absolutely aware of the fact that they need teachers, doctors, merchants, lawyers as well as agricultural and water specialists from their own ranks. This is the only way their culture can survive and they can live equally in the Indian and in the international environment.

            How can we achieve that?

We can realise it with your support!.

Your comments!  Please join our discussion >>> HERE

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