Assam, India – Makon Kumar’s wrinkled fingers are lined in dried-up clay. She squats on the damp grime outdoors her one-room, bamboo-stilted residence and spins a pottery wheel – a palm-sized gray bowl – together with her left toe.
Contained in the bowl is a lump of newly-bought moist clay, which Kumar slaps, flattens and curves into the pot’s base.
“My grandma and her grandma handed this observe right down to us. We’re not farmers, we now have no land, and that is our work,” 60-year-old Makon stated as she pressed her fist into the clay and carved out the pot’s mouth.
Makon belongs to the Kumar group of about 540 folks, whose girls have been identified for his or her distinctive pottery work for the reason that sixteenth century. These girls keep away from equipment or a potter’s wheel however depend on their toes to spin a plate or bowl with clay.
The Kumars reside on Majuli, an island district between the Subansiri and the mighty Brahmaputra rivers in India’s northeastern state of Assam. Residence to just about 200,000 folks, which incorporates folks from different ethnic teams, Majuli has shrunk from 1,300sq km (502sq miles) to 483sq km (186.5sq miles) in a century attributable to erosion brought on by annual monsoon rains and floods.
In the course of the monsoon season, which may stretch from Could to September, the floodwaters can get greater than 1.5 metres (5 ft) excessive, forcing Makon and the opposite Kumars to both search shelter on the freeway bordering the village or keep trapped inside their properties.
Final week, the Assam State Catastrophe Administration Authority (ASDMA) stated there have been greater than 72,000 folks taking shelter in 355 reduction camps throughout the state as a result of floods, which have additionally killed at the very least 24 folks this yr.
Entry to riverside clay denied
In the course of the floods, the Kumars’ pottery enterprise involves a halt, interrupting their essential supply of earnings. Furthermore, the dearth of flood prevention efforts by the authorities has worsened their situation.
“[Our family] used to get clay from the banks of the Brahmaputra River,” Makon informed Al Jazeera.
Kumar males historically dug 18 to 21 metres (60 to 70 ft) deep on the riverbank to extract a glutinous, darkish gray clay that locals name Kumar “maati” (soil).
The state-run Brahmaputra Board, which supervises the federal government’s response to the floods and soil erosion, started constructing river embankments in 2018, stopping the Kumars from digging the riverbank for clay.
“Whereas the Brahmaputra Board deeply respects this conventional craft [of making pottery], extracting clay instantly from the uncovered riverbanks causes extreme soil erosion, hindering the board’s efforts to guard Majuli island,” a spokesperson for the board informed Al Jazeera.
The spokesperson stated the board supplied an alternative choice to the Kumar potters by making clay out there via designated pits or boreholes that might be accessed after filling an utility kind. The board, nevertheless, didn’t say what number of Kumars utilized.
Makon stated the embankment on the Brahmaputra compelled her to purchase clay from mainland Assam, growing her bills for a enterprise already missing business worth or organised advertising.
November is their finest month when floodwaters recede and international and Indian vacationers take a 90-minute ferry from Jorhat, a metropolis in mainland Assam, to Majuli’s Salmora village, the place the Kumar girls sculpt pots with their arms and ft. The tour brings additional money for Makon’s two daughters learning in a secondary college.
On different days, the Kumars sculpt and promote pots of varied sizes to native distributors. Tekelis, the preferred and smallest pot used for storing milk, is bought for simply 10 rupees ($0.12) to distributors, who resell them for 20 to 100 rupees ($0.23-$1.15) at outlets throughout Majuli and mainland Assam.
Salmora has lengthy, slender grime roads, with rows of bamboo and concrete homes constructed on stilts. When the island is just not flooded, a whole lot of dried tekelis lie stacked on prime of one another on a street bordering the village. The boys bake these pots and promote them available in the market.
‘No cash in it’
Nonetheless, it isn’t only a dying type of pottery that’s beneath menace in flood-prone Majuli.
Virtually 18km (11 miles) from Salmora lies Higher Katoni village, the place the silence of the nights is usually interrupted by younger males and boys singing and thumping hole drums. They carry out a four-hour theatrical manufacturing often called Bhaona, principally carried out previous midnight. Locals come for the efficiency after ending their dinner, sit on the ground, and watch their neighbours, siblings, or pals carry out.
The solely male troupe of actors play characters from the Hindu epic, Ramayana.
“We’ve been rehearsing for the final three weeks,” stated actor Jyoti Bhuyan, who performs a king within the dance drama. “Even within the hotter months, we’re in a position to carry out.”
The Bhaona dates again to the sixteenth century and is carried out at Namghars, open prayer homes distinctive to Assam. The island has greater than 384 Namghars, in keeping with a spokesperson from the Majuli District Workplace.
“I’ve been doing this since I used to be a younger boy,” stated Karunav Bhuyan, a Bhaona actor and political science professor at a school on the island. “What doesn’t change is that anybody from any background can come and watch us carry out.”
Bhaona actors put on particular masks, constructed from bamboo and a mixture of clay and cow dung. The masks sometimes have large, almond-shaped eyes; thick, furrowed brows; and a mouth flaunting a full set of enamel or vibrant purple lips. The masks’s sharp, angular facial options, paired with contrasting eye and hair colors, are sometimes displayed inside the homes of Majuli residents.
“At first, nobody needed to make masks as a result of there was no cash in it,” 67-year-old masks maker Hem Chandra Goswami informed Al Jazeera.
Goswami, who lives in Majuli’s Samaguri village, began making smaller, easy-to-hang masks and has been instructing the artwork to highschool college students since 2012. He was awarded the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian honour, in 2023 for selling the artwork kind.
Historically, solely males made masks and used them for Bhaona performances. However that’s altering.
Brishti Hazarika, a 25-year-old theatre scholar, is studying mask-making at Majuli College of Tradition, an establishment devoted to preserving the native artwork types. “Whether or not we get monetary assist from the federal government or not, it doesn’t cease us from placing on reveals or having fun with our festivals,” Hazarika stated.
The island’s extra well-known vacationer points of interest are the Satras – the cultural and spiritual centres the place celibate male monks, draped in white cotton fabric, reside.
Referred to as Bhakats, these monks be a part of the Satras throughout preadolescence and spend their lives worshipping Lord Krishna, not like the polytheistic pantheon of quite a few gods in mainstream Hinduism.
However annual floods and land erosion have decreased Satras from greater than 65 to simply 35 previously many years, in keeping with the Majuli District Workplace spokesperson. Worse, not each Satra is correctly maintained.
In contrast to Makon, the Samaguri Satra is positioned away from the Brahmaputra River and has, due to this fact, been spared the devastation brought on by annual floods. That explains why Pradip Goswami, one other native masks artist and a cousin of Hem Chandra, needs there have been extra alternatives to provide the masks commercially.
“The best way for masks making to proceed spreading is by having a bridge over the river to attach us to the mainland,” he stated.
‘That is all we all know’
In 2022, the Assam authorities introduced the development of an 8km (5-mile) bridge connecting Majuli to Jorhat. However the $70m challenge was halted in September final yr after Uttar Pradesh State Bridge Company Restricted (UPSBCL), a state-run entity tasked with constructing the bridge, withdrew from the challenge over cost disputes, in keeping with native media stories.
Al Jazeera reached out to the UPSBCL for its response to such speculations, however didn’t obtain any reply.
In Could this yr, the Assam authorities stated it was searching for a brand new contractor to assemble the bridge. However Majuli residents say the federal government has been apathetic in direction of their lives and livelihoods affected by the floods.
The Majuli Cultural Panorama Administration Authority (MCLMA), created in 2006 to supervise the island’s improvement and defend its cultural heritage, has not held a gathering in additional than a decade, alleges MCLMA govt member Sanjib Borkakoti. Even the workplace the place he used to attend conferences twice a yr doesn’t exist any extra, he says.
“There isn’t a [government] supervision,” Borkakoti informed Al Jazeera. He stated the Indian authorities tried at the very least twice – unsuccessfully – for a UNESCO World Heritage Web site standing for Majuli, a tag that may have introduced “worldwide consideration and pushed the native authorities to guard what’s remaining”.
Al Jazeera reached out to a authorities spokesperson and Majuli’s native officers for his or her response to Borkakoti’s allegations, however didn’t get any reply.
In the meantime, for Majuli residents like Makon, artwork goes past simply preserving a cultural identification. It’s rooted in survival.
“We simply don’t know if we could have a house tomorrow,” Makon says as she provides form to a clay pot, utilizing a wood bat. She spins the pot one final time to verify for any bumps and says, “That is all we all know.”
This story was funded by a Reporting Fellowship grant from the South Asian Journalists Affiliation.
