Ritu Sharma

Sanviti Iyer

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Priti David

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Sunita Bhurkute’s mother tongue is Kolami,
but this cotton farmer spends most of her day speaking in Marathi. “To sell our
cotton we have to know the market language,” she says.  



Growing up in
Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district, her Kolam Adivasi family spoke their
language Kolami at home. Sunita recalls how her grandparents at her maher (natal home) in Sur Devi pod (hamlet) struggled to speak the local language, Marathi.
“They never went to school, they would stammer and speak [Marathi] in broken
sentences,” she says. 



But as more members of
the family ventured into local markets to sell cotton, they picked up the
language. Today, everyone in her pod in
Bhulgad village, all Kolam Adivasis, are multilingual: they speak Marathi, a
few sentences of Hindi, and of course, Kolami. 



Kolami
is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh,
Telangana and Chhattisgarh. According to UNESCO’s <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/atlas-of-the-worlds-languages-in-danger/">Atlas of
the World&#39;s Languages in Danger</a>, it is
classified as ‘definitely endangered’ – a categorisation indicating it
is no longer learned as a mother tongue by children. “Pan amchi bhasha kami hot nahi. Amhi wapartat [But our language is not
dying, we use it]!” argues
the 40-year-old Sunita.

The
population of Kolam Adivasis in Maharashtra is 194,671 (Statistical Profile of
Scheduled Tribes in India, <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/statistical-profile-of-scheduled-tribes-in-india-2013/">2013</a>),
but less than half record Kolami as their mother tongue in census data. 



“When
our children go to school, they learn Marathi. It is not a difficult language,
but Kolami is,” says Sunita and adds, “there are no masters [teachers] in
schools who can speak our language.” She too studied in Marathi until Class 2
before she had to drop out after her father’s death. 



PARI met
Sunita on a day she was busy picking cotton on her three-acre farm. “I need to
harvest them before the season ends,” she told us, her hands appearing to move
in harmony as they deftly picked the white cotton from its cover; in minutes
her oddie is half-full. 



“These
are the last two remaining taas [rows in Marathi and Kolami]
of kapas
[cotton in Marathi],” says Sunita. She has thrown a shirt over her clothes
as “the dry recca [calyx in Kolami] and gaddi [weed in Kolami] often stick to my
saree and tear it.” The calyx is the outermost whorl of the cotton that holds
the flower, and gaddi is a common
type of unwanted weed found in cotton fields.



As the afternoon
temperature rises, she pulls out a selanga – a short length of cotton fabric
used as a turban to prevent sunstrokes. But it is the oddie that is the most
important part of her field clothes. A long cloth, usually a cotton saree is
tied over the shoulder and hips to store the cotton she will harvest through
the day, working upto seven hours with a short break, occasionally walking
towards the nearby well to drink some eer (water in Kolami).

By the
end of the season (January 2024), Sunita had harvested 1,500 kilos of cotton –
starting in October 2023: “harvesting cotton was never really a challenge. I
come from a farmer’s family.” 



She was
married when she was around 20 years old, but her husband passed away 15 years
later in 2014. “He had a fever for three days.” When his health deteriorated
further Sunita took him to the district hospital in Yavatmal. “Everything was
sudden. Till today I don’t know the reason for his death.” 



Sunita
was left with their two children: “Arpita
and Akash were barely 10 years old when
manus
[husband] died. There were times when I felt scared going to the farm
alone.” She feels her fluency in Marathi helped her win the trust of farmer
friends from neighbouring fields. “When we are in the field or in the market,
we have to speak their language, right? Will they understand ours?”
she asks.



Although she continued to
farm, she says many people were against her participation in the male-dominated
cotton market, and so she stayed out. “I only harvest the crop, Akash [her son]
sells it.”

The Kolam Adivasi
community is listed as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), one of
three PVTGs in Maharashtra. They also live in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. 



In
Maharashtra, the community call themselves ‘kolavar’
or ‘kola’, which roughly
translates to bamboo or wooden stick. Their traditional occupation was making
baskets, mats, wattles and winnowing fans from bamboo. 



Sunita recalls, &quot;when I was a young child, I saw my grandparents
make different things from vedur [bamboo] for their own use.&quot;
As they started migrating out of the forests toward the plains, the distance
between forest and home grew and, &quot;my parents never learnt the
skills,&quot; and neither did she. 



Farming is her livelihood and “although I have my farm, even today if
the crop fails, I will have to go to someone else’s field for work,” she says,
a sentiment shared by other farmers in her Kolam tribe. A majority work as
agricultural labourers and are struggling to pay their farm loans and clear
debts. Sunita has a loan of Rs. 40,000 taken during the sowing season last June
2023. 



“After selling the cotton,
there is no work until June. May is the most difficult month,” she says. She
has harvested roughly 1,500 kilograms of cotton and says she gets Rs. 62-65 a
kilogram, “that&#39;s roughly 93,000 rupees. After repaying the loan to the sahukar [money lender] with an interest of
20,000, “I am barely left with 35,000 rupees in hand for the entire year.”

Local vendors lend her small amounts but they need to be paid
before the monsoon every year. “Iska 500 do, uska 500 do yeh sab kartey
kartey sab khatam! Kuch bhi nahi milta…saare din kaam karo aur maro!
[Give this one 500, give that one 500…at the end you get nothing. Work all day
and die!],” she laughs nervously and looks away.



Three
years ago, Sunita switched from chemical to organic farming. “I opted for mishra peek
sheti [inter-cropping/mixed
cropping],” she says. She received seeds of moong (green gram), urad (black gram), jowar
(sorghum), bajra (pearl millet), til (sesame), sweetcorn and tur (pigeon peas) from the seed bank set
up by the women farmers in the village. In fact, cultivating tur and moong helped her sustain the months of May and June last year when
she was out of work. 



But just
when one problem was solved, there came another. While the tur turned out well, the other crops did not yield good results:
“Wild pigs destroyed it,” Sunita says.

As the
sun is about to set, Sunita begins wrapping up the harvested cotton into a mudi (round bundle). She has achieved her
target for the day. The last remaining rows have given her roughly six kilos of
cotton. 



But she
already has a target set for tomorrow: Weeding out the kesara (waste in Kolami)
and dry recca from the stored cotton.
And then the target for the next day: to keep it ready for the market.

“There
is no time to think about anything else [other than her farm],” she says about
the status of Kolami as an endangered language. When Sunita and her community
didn’t know fluent Marathi, “everyone would say ‘speak in Marathi! speak in
Marathi!’” And now when the language is endangered, “everyone wants us to speak
in Kolami,” she chuckles.  



“We
speak our language. Our children too,” she asserts. “It&#39;s only when we go out
that we speak in Marathi. When we come back home, we speak our language.”  



“Aapli bhasha aaplich
rahili pahije [Our language should remain ours]. Kolami should be
Kolami and Marathi should be Marathi. That is what matters.”



The reporter would like to thank Madhuri Khadse and Asha Kareva of the Prerna Gram Vikas Sanstha, and Saikiran Tekam for his help interpreting Kolami. 



PARI&#39;s Endangered
Languages Project (ELP) aims to document the vulnerable languages of India
through the voices and lived experiences of people who speak it.

The Kolami-speakers of Yavatmal

کولامی بولنے والے یوَتمال کے آدیواسی

యవత్మళ్‌లో కోలామీ భాషను మాట్లాడేవారు

கொலாமி பேசும் யவத்மால்வாசிகள்

ਰੋਟੀ ਖਾਤਰ ਬਲ਼ੀ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਯਵਤਮਾਲ ਦੀ ਕੋਲਾਮੀ ਬੋਲੀ

ୟବତମାଲର କୋଲାମୀ ଭାଷାଭାଷୀ କପା ଚାଷୀ

യവത്‌മാലിലെ കൊലാമി ഭാഷക്കാർ

ಯವತ್‌ಮಳ್‌ನ ಕೊಲಾಮಿ ಭಾಷಿಗರು

यवतमाल में आजीविका के चलते भाषा से टूटता नाता

યવતમળના કોલામી-ભાષીઓ

यवतमाल के कोलामी बोलेइय्या

भुलगढ़: ‘भाषा के बारे में सोचे के समय केकरा लगे बा’

ইয়াবতমলের বিপন্ন কোলামি ভাষা বেঁচে আছে যাঁদের জবানে

য়াভাতমালৰ ক’লামিভাষী

यवतमाळचे कोलाम आणि कोलामी

Yavatmal

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The Kolami-speakers of Yavatmal

A community of Kolam Adivasi cotton farmers in this district of Maharashtra speak Kolami, a language that is at risk of dying out. PARI’s Endangered Languages Project (ELP) takes a close look at the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), their livelihood and the challenges to their language

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