Pujitha Wijetunge, in http://www.lankalibrary.com/cul/gypsy.htm ….where the title is “Ahikuntika: Roaming Gypsy Clan”………. alas, no date given
Clad in a sari and with a red mouth that showed signs that she was chewing beetle, Lili didn’t look any different from those fortune-tellers or palm readers who were a common sight in the streets few years back. But the next generation, Lucki, looked very much like those village boys, wearing a sarong and a gold painted wristwatch.
 Lakshman with his dancing cobra. |
When we entered their camp, there were plastic, coloured buckets and pots and pans scattered on one side. A monkey all dressed up, was looking at a little girl who started poking a stick at him. There were only three tents covered with black plastic sheeting, which looked hardly enough for the more than 30 people who gathered around us.
Beside Lili and the huge cobra which started moving to the tune of gypsy Lakshman’s flute, was a rather untidy environment around them.
Although Lili was very happy to talk about herself as a member of the so-called gypsy clan in the country known as ‘Ahikuntika’, a very reluctant Lucki said, “We are living like this because we have no place to live.”
“I make a living by selling joss sticks. People used to call us donkeys just because we had no place to live. We speak proper Sinhala. There is another group that speaks Telugu. We were born in Sri Lanka. We are also people and we have a right to live. No one gives us land,” he said angrily.
Kanmali, who looked very much a teenager, said that she doesn’t go around palm reading anymore. “I look after my children. I don’t go out anymore,” she said, carrying an infant in her arms.
Gypsies or Ahikuntikas, are among the few isolated communities in the country like Veddahs and Rodiyas, say experts. Prof. J. B. Dissanayake is of the view that the Ahikuntikas are also changing slowly as a result of economic and social factors. “This cannot be called a radical change. Just like the Rodiyas, who were later absorbed into the Sinhala community, some day the Ahikuntikas will also be provided the opportunity. There is a section of these people who would prefer to remain in the clan while others want to join the Sinhala comminity like the Veddhas and Rodiyas did,” he said.
According to Prof. Dissanayake, Ahikuntikas are believed to have come to Sri Lanka from Andra Pradesh in India. “We don’t know when they came. They are called nomads since they travel from place to place. ‘Ahi’ means serpents. This name must have been adopted be cause they made a living by using snakes, monkeys and palm reading or fortune telling,” he said.
“It is believed that they can’t stay at one place for more than seven days. This may be true because of their unhygienic lifestyle. A group of Ahikuntikas were given houses in the North Central in a village called Kuda Wewa. Since they cannot be living continually as a group of nomads this may be a good move,” he said.
Anthropologist Prof. S. Hettige observed that the constant movement keeps Ahikuntikas aloof from mainstream society. “If they settle down in one place, integration and assimilation may have taken place.
They do not participate in economic activities and social practices as others when they move around. It depends on their contact with others and the media, education etc. All will help change their identity and they will tend to identify with other youth and will no longer want to engage in work that is not accorded same kind of recognition,” he said.
Prof. Hettige said that it is difficult to say whether it is good or bad for them to change their lifestyle and identity. “It depends on what they want. What we do not want is their marginalisation and stigmatisation in society. In that sense, it is good that they have the same opportunities as others if they wish to make use of them. Some of their cultural practices may not disappear even if they are integrated, at least not soon.
Some may continue to engage in livelihood activities so long as there is a demand and they are not considered lowly,” Prof. Hettige.
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A NOTE:
I found this item as a result of an inquiry from Kalani Abeywickrema, a lass from Galle Fort who is now a first-year Arts student at Sri Jayawardenapura University. It would be helpful if knowledgeable personnel indicate (A) in what regions these Ahikuntika tend to move around and if they have a home locality; and (B) how their children are not embraced by the school system. I note here that when travelling by car along the Galle-Matara road I spotted a cluster of lo- pitched tents in an empty plot of ground on the land side. In what can be termed an educated guess I claim that these were the temporary abodes of Ahikuntika. Speculatively, then, I suggest that they have chosen to avoid absorption in the formal governmental schooling order and do so by movement – possibly patterned movement directed by the tourist sites. However, then, another question arises: do they have a’lair” – locale in some relatively isolated valley or jungle area to which they retreat seasonally? …. Michael Roberts
Note that the American anthropologist/linguist STEVE BONTA has published an article this year in the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics (June 2020 issue).
EMAIL COMMENT from Professor Sudharshan Seneviratne, archaeologist, 24 September 2020: “They were largely identified as Andhra ahikuntika. Little attention has been given as to how people from India crossed over and led a nomadic life. They seem to have come from an area between Andhra and Tamilnadu and spoke a mixed dialect. We often used the word andara-demala as some garbled speech one cannot comprehend.”
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My name is Punya Pujitha Wijetunge Kuruwita. I wrote this article about the Ahikuntikas or the snake charmers and palm readers or the nomads. I happened to be returning to Colombo from reporting on the road having been in our media van after touring Southern Expressway the first highway. The construction has first started against the whips and protests from social acvits and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) the trade union afflicted party. We visited the sites to report on people who have lost their livelihood due to the new highway. And how they were doing after being relocated and the government have acquired their land for the much needed construction and to see if they were properly compansated for their losses. My photographer was the first to spot the tribe. As Harsh the good sport he is said let’s do an article. The thought of it disgusted the very being of me. Because if my phobia towards reptiles except turtles. I wanted to do the article.
But one very important person was left out from the article. That is my Great Grand Uncle Dr. A..T. Ariyaratne who started the first Non Governmental organization in Sri Lanka known as Sarvodaya having his first village constructed for the nomads with his first .Shramadhana movement. At that time I wrote this article. I felt I shouldn’t give publicity to my relative though he did not need such fanfare considering he is a well known personality through out the world. My Grate Grand Uncle is the one who rescued this trible group hence giving them a normal livelihood. I have testimony to that because the village in Kanaholuwa, Kuliyapitiya is where he started his social services having the high school students getting involved in a an act of shramadhana, (a collective voluntary social service ) By building a village for these people he started the first giant step in the NGO and to the social services.
When I got married and moved to Kuliyapitiya to be with my in-laws. Which is tradition. An older man came with weaving baskets. He was selling them. That was his trade. He told me us he was a snake charmer but no longer one thanks to Sur Ari. I bought one basket from him. And addressed him as “Seeya” back in Sri Lanka we respect our adults. We respect our elderly. It’s a practice that we do that we don’t call them by their names. So he was as old to be my Grandpa -so I addressed him “Seeya” meaning Grand pa. As I would any person at his age. After my mothe-In- law introduced me as I am a grand neice of Dr. Ari. The man wanted to go down on his knees to worship me. I smiled and said he is older than me. I will buy a weaving basket. No need to worship me. You are at the age of my grandpa. I gave him Rs 50.00 for the basket.. He blessed me. I still have the weaving basket. Tone item I didn’t part with and it’s twenty two years since I got it.
The article is not complete without my “Like Seeya’s” ( My great Grand Pa’s) comment. I will get him to talk to me. And rewrite the article.
The caste system is no longer there in Sri Lanka. Which is great. The Rodiya’s or the Weddha’s [Vaddas] or the people who does laundry are no longer there. So are those who pluck coconut from trees. It’s hard to find these people anymore. Thanks to people like Loku Seeya they have better lives. Again, seeing the Ahikuntika tribe I found on the road that day were a very rare occurrence even then. That was also the first time I saw a live cobra. Thank you for reading my article.
Betel leaves are a kind of leaf older people munch on …. back in those days. They munch the leaves and then they spit out the leaves to a vase like small vessel called “Padikkama.” But people no longer do these practices. Because it’s been found that chewing betel leaves can cause oral cancer. But my grandma who was famous for her betel chewing lived for one hundred and two months. We also use betel leaves for worshipping our husbands during the sun festival on April 14th. And 15th. The children worship their parents and we also worship our elderly with betel leaves on that day.
Thank you for posting my article.in your web page. I worked as a journalist at the time for Daily Mirror Sri Lanka when I wrote this piece. At present I am in the US. Out if curiosity I searched my name. And Thank you. The digital media was not as popular then.
A lot our articles were not digitized. But it is happy to know some of my humble beginnings were still in print. I no longer write. But I think I should start again to write again. Thank you again. Take care. May god bless you and your families.
Thank you PUNYA. As it happens I interacted with Sarvodaya and dr Ariyaratne and his son in the 1980s and recollect placing some of their work on some web site then (but which site?). Be that as it may, the Sarvodaya Press in Ratmalana was the outfit I turned to when publishing the book PEOPLE INBETWEEN, with Percy Colin-Thome & Ismeth Raheem as aides and co-authors in the year 1989. (It is no longer in print.
Indeed, the term thuppahiyaa and/or thuppahi came into my frame of thought in the course of work on ths book and during a period of research on sabbatical leave from Adelaide in the late 1980s.
Thank you so much for your good work. Glad to know humanity is still intact in this fast paced world. You have a job to do make a difference in society. People are embracing unwanted trashy practices in Sri Lanka due to social media. They are forgetting the roots. Forgetting their mother young. They talk Singlish ir Tamglish. And they don’t respect their adults anymore. Doesn’t love one another.