Culture – Page 2 – Le Dragon Déchaîné

The Garo: People of the Hills

by Gemma Tabet

Today, the Garo, also known as the A’chiks Mande (hill people) (Marsing, 2019), are one of the better-known matrilineal communities of the world. Currently living in India and Bangladesh around the Garo Hills region, these peoples have matrilineal traditions that stretch back centuries, such as inheritance through the mother’s line (ma’chong). Because of the specific environmental conditions of the Garo Hills region, the Garos are also known for their jhum cultivation (District Administration, East Garo Hills). Their unique society can be symbolised by the Wangala festival after the October harvest, in which food, music, and dance is prepared to honour the gods of their Songsarek religion, organised by the headman of a village’s dominant family (Roy, 1992). Yet, this ethnic community faces modern challenges brought by cultural assimilation, political marginalisation, and climate change that threaten to end the Garos’ centuries-old way of life.

The Garos originated from the Tibetan Plateau and migrated in the Prehistoric Period to North East India (Marsing, 2019), where today they mainly live in the Meghalaya and Assam regions, as well as in areas of Bangladesh like Mymensingh (District Administration, East Garo Hills), where they are known as lowland Garos (Bal, 2007). The Garo language is part of the Tibetan-Bruman linguistic family, although a large variety of dialects exist (Roy, 1992). Being a matrilineal society, property passes from mother to a chosen daughter known as the Nokna, who also inherits the property of her husband or Nokrom, both coming to live with the Nokna’s parents (Ahmed, 2021). Yet, the Garos are not considered a matriarchal society, as it is the man’s responsibility to manage the property and agricultural affairs (District Administration, South Garo Hills). In fact, the Garo society revolves around agriculture, traditionally practising jhum or shifting cultivation, in which an area is cleared by burning vegetation and cultivated for a few years, then abandoned to allow fertility restoration (Oxford Languages). Both men and women are involved in agricultural and labour processes, with men in charge of jungle-clearing, house-building, and basketry, while women are in-charge of crop plantation, weaving, and cooking (District Administration, South Garo Hills).

However, the modern world has brought harsh challenges to the Garo peoples, linked to cultural assimilation caused by Christian missionary movements (Marak, 2023) and patriarchal communities (Ahmed, 2021), political marginationalisation particularly for the Bangladesh Garos (Bal, 2007), and environmental degradation triggered by deforestation and climate change (Sarma, 2013).

The Garos traditionally follow a faith called Songsarek (Marsing, 2019), with a variety of deities like Saljong, the sun and fertility god (honoured during Wangala) or Chorabudi, the god of crops (District Administration, East Garo Hills). Moreover, they believe in a variety of spirits called mites, as well as reincarnation, in which one can be reborn in lower or higher forms of life (ibid). Yet, today, this religion is less and less practised as more Garos convert to Christiniaty, which is seen as helping to develop “identities that are… profoundly modern” (Maaker, 2007). This act of cultural assimilation began in the early 19th century, when the British Empire took over the Garo Hills, paving the way for religious conversion primarily led by American missionaries (Marak, 2023). Today, more than 80% of Garo peoples are Christian (Maaker, 2007). The Garos not only face religious cultural assimilation, but also loss of their traditional matrilineal society due to the rising presence of patrilineal values in neighbouring Hindu and Muslim communities (Ahmed, 2021). A study by Sirajuddin Ahmed and Upala Barua in 2021 found that the Nokrom system, in which the husband goes to live with his wife, is becoming rarer, due to the changing attitudes of younger generations, who are exposed through schools to patrilineal values. The traditional Garo way of life is under serious threat of permanent loss due to these acts of cultural assimilation.

Moreover, the Garos, particularly those of the lowland or Bangladesh regions, face political marginalisation through exclusion policies and historic discrimination (Bal, 2007). The lowland Garos have particularly been affected by external politics between India and Pakistan, beginning with Partition in 1947 (when Britain created a Muslim majority in Pakistan and a Hindu majority in India). This event saw these Garos become citizens of Pakistan, despite demands to join the other Garos in the Meghalaya region of India (ibid). In 1964, the lowland Garos were forced to flee to refugee camps in India, after an influx of more than a million Muslim refugees brought thievery, intimidation, and illegal settlements, as well as active suppression by state agencies (ibid). When the Garos returned, they faced aggressive state attitudes, particularly through the Enemy Property Ordinance, which led to Garos losing lands to the Pakistan government (ibid). Further, despite the lowland Garos fighting for the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the new government did not provide any rehabilitation aid and stressed the dominance of the Bengali ethnicity (ibid). This historic political exclusion and even suppression of Garos has had profound effects not only on their identity, which now includes major distinctions between the Garos in Bangladesh and India, but also modern socio-economic challenges. The Garos, in both areas, face land ownership issues, which leads to a lack of access to basic necessities such as modern medical facilities, educational institutions, and employment opportunities (Kabir, 2022).

Further, the Garos face political, social, and economic insecurity as a result of environmental degradation. According to the Global Forest Watch, since 2000, India has lost 6% of its total tree cover, primarily due to deforestation, and in 5 key regions including Assam and Nagaland. For the Garos, the consequential rise of temperatures and changing precipitation patterns threaten their access to sustenance and their livelihoods (Sarma, 2013). Particularly, subsurface coal mining and deforestation has caused biodiversity loss, flash floods, and decrease in supply of drinking water (Sarma, 2013). Moreover, due to rising Garo populations (Hazarika, 2013), the Garos have begun transitioning from traditional jhum cultivation to permanent cash crop cultivation (crops sold on markets for profit), which increases levels of deforestation (Sarma, 2013). In Bangladesh, the Garos are also threatened by the government’s lack of effort to preserve their environment and culture (Rozario, 2024). The Bangladesh Forest Department launched in 2000 a World Bank funded Sustainable Forest and Livelihood Project, involving the construction of gardens, guesthouses, and an artificial lake that negatively affects the hundreds of Garos in the Madhupur forest of the Mymensingh region. Deforestation and uncompensated land loss (Rozario, 2024) will have huge repercussions on the socioeconomic status of this community. Yet, despite Garo activism and demands for better forest policies, they have not only been the victims of police violence and shootings, but also of eviction threats by the government (Rozario, 2024). Thus, the Garos risk not only loss of land, but also heightened climate vulnerability.

In conclusion, it is evident the Garos face a multitude of challenges arising from efforts of cultural assimilation, political discrimination and marginalisation, and environmental degradation, all of which is not being properly addressed by governments in India nor Bangladesh. Although in India the Garo lands and culture are more protected than in Bangladesh (e.g., 92% of the Garo Hills forested area is owned by local communities under the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council), they still remain a highly vulnerable community. As seen, Garo culture is still at risk due to the climate crisis, as well as external religious and patrilineal influences, which requires greater adaptation planning and policy from high levels of governance. Governments should listen and work alongside indigenous-led projects, such as the Meghalaya region Hill State People’s Democratic Party’s recent initiative to urge official recognition of the Garo language, in order to ensure better employment opportunities (India Today NE, 2024). Particularly in Bangladesh, the Garo minority has faced severe political and socio-economic insecurity, requiring urgent governmental initiative to better protect and respect these peoples. Governmental policies, particularly those involving forest cover and cultural preservation, need to be created alongside the Garo communities, such as the Joyenshahi Adivasi Development Council, a leading group protesting the Madhupur land loss. The Garos possess a unique culture intrinsically linked to nature that must be safeguarded not only for its wealth of knowledge, but also to ensure the continued existence of a vulnerable population.

Disclaimer: As a student, I don’t have the full capacity nor time to delve into the complexities of each ethnic community. My intention is to create a space dedicated to introducing readers to different minorities and their plights, to raise awareness and to encourage further readings into such topics. My art piece of each ethnic community is not an accurate representation of the culture as a whole, but an artistic interpretation based on primary photographs and references of historical traditions.

The artwork by Gemma Tabet is inspired by Garo culture, and was created using mixed media: alcohol markers with digital art. The work takes direct inspiration from photographs and texts of Garo traditions and peoples, and thus the art serves as a glimpse into this rich and unique history. Inspiration came from photographers like David Talukdar, Cintu Thakuria, and F. Widjaja on Shutterstock, as well as Himdipta for the Wildlife Trust of India. In the artwork I have depicted a boranq, which are tree-top bamboo houses that also serve as watchouses to protect crops from wild animals like elephants. The Garo woman is wearing a dakmanda, a ceremonial, colourful two-piece dress woven with floral patterns, wide stripes, and diamond symbols known as mikron or “eye”. She also has bangles or sangong on her wrists, a white waist band known as sengki, and earrings called natapsi. The Garo man is wearing a pandra, which is a ceremonial cloth going across the chest. Both are wearing thin glass necklaces known as rigitok, a headband decorated with beads known as kotip, and a headdress made of feathers from bhimraj birds or roosters, known as do·me. These terms are derived from a variety of sources: Sankar Kumar Roy for eHRAF World Cultures, the District Administration in the South and East Garo Hills, and the Indian Ministry of Culture.

Why Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 Anti-Fascist Film May Be More Relevant Than Ever

By Tyler Jaewon Kim

Chaplin in The Great Dictator. Photo credit: Public Domain.

In partnership with Le Havrealisation.

The modern film landscape is, sometimes unfairly, oft-maligned as being increasingly political. Simply put, a common criticism of movies today is that they are “too woke.” Be it the two largest Hollywood blockbuster films of last summer – “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” – or other contemporary international films such as “Parasite” (2020), many critically acclaimed films of the last decade have had this low-hanging criticism levied against them.

But this is simply not true. Art is inherently political, and film is an artistic medium. Films have, from the very beginning, been used as the conduit through which directors can convey their personal political messages. Nowhere can this be seen more than in Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film “The Great Dictator.”

Chaplin’s first full talkie (sound film) tells the story of two men at opposite ends of the fictional European nation of Tomainia: its fascist dictator Adenoid Hynkel (a less-than subtle stand-in for Adolf Hitler) and a lowly unnamed Jewish barber readapting to life after World War I in the ghetto. The catch? Both men are played by Chaplin and thus look exactly the same.

Chaplin’s combination of wry humor with social commentary extends beyond the simple premise of the movie. Chaplin, whose name is synonymous with the golden age of silent-era comedies, frequently lampoons the follies of totalitarianism with his signature slapstick comedy.

Hynkel’s runtime is filled with farcical acts such as having an extended “ballet” sequence with an inflated globe or by getting in a food fight with Benzino Napaloni of Bacteria (a parody of Benito Mussolini). On the other hand, the Jewish barber’s continuous optimism and perseverance in the face of extreme adversity serves as the crux of the film’s emotional center. His friendships and relationships develop (albeit sometimes a bit too slowly) over the two hour runtime and culminate in one of the most rousing monologues in film history.

It is important, however, to remember the context in which this film was made. Writing began shortly after Hitler had recently received the Time Person of the Year award, prior to the German invasion of Poland and before the full extent of Nazi Germany’s crimes throughout the Holocaust was generally known (Chaplin himself later stated that the film would not have been made had he known).

Ultimately, “The Great Dictator” has aged surprisingly well in an era where its fundamentally anti-fascist message is, unfortunately, much-needed. Though it may poke fun at one of the darkest moments of human history, Chaplin’s appeal for humanity shines through and enshrines the final product as a testament to the power of film as both an artistic and political tool.

The Eerie, Awful Longing of Polly Jean, and Me Without Even a Record Player

On saints, spinsters, and solitude in PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire? (1998)

Image credit: Polly Jean Harvey, Maria Mochnacz, Rob Crane.

Many a pensive winter night have I spent immersed in the labyrinthine vortex that is my Spotify library. And in exchange for the $0.005 that I gift my musical heroes with each song of whose I stream, I receive the very stuff that has animated my girlhood for the better part of a decade. The pythia of my adolescence is none other than the raven-haired English maestra that is Polly Jean Harvey. Her tales of vengeance, loneliness, desire, and the sacred have filled my aural cavities and inner recesses during my most impressionable years. It would seem that her musical genius was touched by the holy ghost of gnosis itself, and on no work of hers is this more evident than on her fourth full length LP, 1998’s Is This Desire?.

The album is to my mind Harvey’s most compelling. What I seek to contemplate is why. It eschews the sexual mania of her first two albums (1992’s Dry and 1993’s Rid of Me), and is not plagued by the romantic platitudes of 2000’s Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea. Ambitious yet sincere, the album is challenging enough of a listen to ward off the posers, and inviting enough to beguile the faithful. By means of deftly applied imagery and allegory, the album envelopes the listener in a gothic cosmos of storms, saints, and spinsterhood. It tells of heartbroken harlots and is illuminated throughout by the tenuous strand of hope that binds together body and soul. “It was a very very difficult, difficult to make,” said Harvey of the album in 2004, “[…] but probably my favourite record that I’ve made because it had a lot of guts.” In Desire, Harvey manages, with the magic of a mediaeval chronicler and the timelessness of a poet, to cut to the bone of hope, isolation, the sacrosanct, and the prosaic – matters of concern to all in the pursuit of meaning in this life.

Is This Desire? was a creature that took its toll on its creator. Its creation took place after Harvey’s break up with the vampiric Australian poet-cum-alt-rock-god Nick Cave, who was so shocked when she dumped him on the telephone in 1997 that he “almost dropped [his] syringe.” She began therapy while recording the album. She even got micro-bangs. Her tumultuous emotional state found a natural home in the tragic poetry and haunted soundscapes of her subsequent musical release.

The album was recorded during two marathon sessions separated temporally by almost a year. Harvey herself authored all the lyrics and produced a great part of the music, with instrumental contributions from Mick Harvey, Eric Drew Feldman, Rob Ellis, and her long-time collaborator and musical soulmate John Parish. Like most of Harvey’s albums, the album was released on Island Records and was met with critical acclaim in the alternative music press. Although the album did not mirror the commercial success of its predecessor (1995’s To Bring You My Love), Harvey was able to score her greatest charting success in the UK with the album’s lead single A Perfect Day Elise.

Regarding approach and genre, the album finds its niche within the introspective rumblings of trip-hop and industrial that emerged from the British alternative music scene in the mid to late 1990s. During this period, the British music charts were dominated by the manufactured quirk of Britpop, the sickly sweet bubblegum pop of the Spice Girls, and the American soul of the Fugees and Toni Braxton. Grunge was dead (or at least Kurt Cobain was) and alternative music, at least in Britain, succumbed to the developing undercurrents of electronic music, industrial, and trip-hop, pioneered by such acts as Massive Attack and Portishead. The dark electronic experimentation of the mid-90s alternative scene crept its way onto To Bring You My Love, giving way to the grating electronica of Down by the Water and head-nodding trip-hop of Working For The Man. The most thorough exploration of these sounds in her body of work, however, is to be found in the electric soundstorms that rage all throughout Is This Desire?.

Sonically, the album oscillates wildly between moments of aching beauty and caustic assault. Besides electronically engineered instrumentals and drum machines, Is This Desire? also honours Harvey’s rock roots through the presence of sober guitar work (electric and acoustic) on the album’s title track, The Sky Lit Up, and the ballads Angelene and The River. Forever a fan of harsh instrumentation, Harvey ensures that the electrically charged sonic onslaughts on Is This Desire? are just as abrasive as the violent guitar work on Dry and Rid of Me. The techno-brutalism of the album is explored fully on the tracks My Beautiful Leah, A Perfect Day Elise, and, particularly, Joy. Trip-hop influences are palpable on the tracks The Wind, My Beautiful Leah, and The Garden. The album’s quieter moments include the subdued Catherine, and ghostly Electric Light. Eric Drew Feldman’s piano work is a notable highlight on the album opener Angelene, The Garden, and The River.

Musical technicalities aside, the absorbing chronicles and emotion that characterise Is This Desire? are further communicated by Harvey’s lyricism, in which she explores the themes of spirituality, sainthood, prostitution, and spinsterhood. The album is deliciously gothic in its ensemble, rich in its elemental motifs of water and electricity, of nature at its most supernatural. Harvey adopts the voices and relates the histories of several key female characters – the prostitutes, Angeline and Elise, the ghostly Leah, the saint, Catherine, and the physically crippled spinster, Joy. Harvey’s lyricism draws liberally from the short stories of J. D. Salinger and Flannery O’Connor, as well as, to a lesser extent, the poetry of William Butler Yeats, and the Bible.

I’ve heard there’s joy untold

It lays open like a road in front of me

Central to the album’s grappling with the human condition, and expressed most clearly in its first track, are the questions of hope, faith, and agency in the realisation of the “joy untold” that exists in the material world. In Angelene, Harvey adopts the voice of a prostitute who states that “love for money is [her] sin,” yet holds dear the idea of real love, that some day some man will “collect her soul” and come to her. She pictures him two thousand miles away. The road to this man lays open before Angelene, yet she treadeth not. Perhaps the chimaera of joy is a beast too daunting, too elusive to hunt. Angelene lives in the hope that her love will come to her. Here, Harvey grapples with the centrality of the notion of luck in the question of human happiness. She questions whether joy belongs to a lucky few among us, or if it is something sought by the courageous, those willing to journey two thousand miles to the man who walks upon the coast. Is the myth of joy, as opposed to its materialisation, what sustains one after all?

After picturing herself as an urban earth witch with the elements at her command in The Sky Lit Up, Harvey brings to the listener’s attention one of the most important figures in the album, that of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in The Wind.

Oh mother, can’t we give

A husband to our Catherine?

Here, Harvey brings forth another salient theme of the album: spinsterhood. Catherine of Alexandria is the patron saint of unmarried girls, the dying, lacemakers, and scholars, among other things. She was martyred in the fourth century CE by the Roman emperor Maxentius, the last emperor to reside in Rome. The symbols associated with Catherine include the breaking wheel, the sword, and the bridal veil. It is worth noting here that near PJ Harvey’s birthplace of Dorset, England, there stands in Abbotsbury a 14th century chapel dedicated to St. Catherine. Harvey is said to have visited the chapel while writing Is This Desire?. In The Wind Harvey sings in little more than a whisper of Catherine’s having liked “high places,” of her dreams of “children’s voices / And torture on the wheel.” In France of old, women who were still unmarried at age 25 and older were referred to as catherinettes. Could Harvey be reflecting on her own post-breakup fears at the prospect of never being able to find the one?

Perhaps it is not Harvey’s own personal history that is important here, but the theme of spinsterhood goes hand in hand with that other salient theme in Is This Desire? – loneliness. The theme of total isolation is fleshed out in the album’s next track, My Beautiful Leah, whose “needing” subject claims to “have no one” and is plagued by nightmares. Leah, with its Nine Inch Nails-esque industrial instrumentals is perhaps one of the grimmest tracks Harvey has ever recorded. The intensity of the instrumentals and dreariness of Harvey’s vocal delivery make the song’s expression of longing and dismal disorientation ever more palpable.

Oh, my Catherine

Within while, I’d have won you

On Catherine, one of the simplest and most moving songs on the album, Harvey adopts the voice of a lover of a certain Catherine, who is haunted by her memory and jealous of her even as she lies cold in the grave. She could be speaking as the aforementioned Roman emperor Maxentius, who asked for Catherine of Alexandria’s hand in marriage before condemning her to death on the wheel. However, she could also be speaking as Heathcliff, the male hero of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The lyrical content of the song hints directly at the unfulfilled love that existed between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and at Heathcliff’s being haunted by Catherine’s memory long after her death (in a famous speech, he laments: You said I killed you – haunt me then! […] only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!) The reference to Wuthering Heights also makes sense given the gothic current that runs throughout the album, with images of violent natural phenomena and chapels atop hills. The track deals with the corrosive bitterness (I damn to hell every second you breathe), the attraction and repulsion towards another that infect the soul as a result of a dream deferred, a love left unrealised.

Harvey brings the theme of spinsterhood to the fore again in Joy which makes direct reference to the disabled atheist recluse in Flannery O’Connor’s short story Good Country People. In Harvey’s song, the listener is told of how Joy, who is thirty years old, has lived a life unwed, has “never danced a step.” “No hope for Joy,” sings or, rather, howls Harvey regarding the predicament of her protagonist. Joy is trapped, physically, because of her disability, and mentally because of her lack of faith. Anguish is the most palpable emotion here. Harvey’s dramatisation here is so good that one is left with the impression that she might have a thing or two in common with Joy.

How much more can you take from me?

I’d like to take you inside my head

Harvey expands further upon the themes of relationships and isolation all throughout Is This Desire?. She explores the theme of the used woman in A Perfect Day Elise (referencing Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish) and in Electric Light. The former is a song about a man who kills himself after the woman with whom he has had a one-night-stand spurns him, and in the latter she invokes the image of a prostitute illuminated under streetlights. In No Girl So Sweet she references another Salinger short story in which a man marries a woman for her property only to leave her in the end. She sings of leaving pain in the river in The River, referencing another short story, The River, by Flannery O’Connor. Harvey touches upon the Biblical in The Garden, which is a kind of same-sex Adam and Eve (or Adam and Steve) tale of one lover’s “thinking of his sins” and there being “trouble taking place” in what transpires between them.

Hour long by hour, may we two stand

When we’re dead, between these lands

The opus comes together definitively at its conclusion, with its title track. On Is This Desire?, Harvey begins by singing along to an unaccompanied drum beat, which then swells into a beautiful tuned down guitar chord progression of F major, F minor and A flat major. Harvey’s voice, low and lovely, relates a dialogue between two characters, Joseph and Dawn, who are lovers. The two wonder if the desire that connects them is enough to transcend earthly concerns and keep them together. The dialogue between Dawn and Joseph echoes William Butler Yeats’s Anashuya and Vijaya, and Harvey quotes the poem directly in the lines that precede this paragraph. This final literary reference is perhaps the album’s most potent, as it reinforces the centrality of the album’s ultimate questions regarding love, desire, and spiritual transcendence. In Anashuya and Vijaya, Yeats tells the story of Anashuya, a priestess, and Vijaya, the man she loves. The two cannot be together, yet Anashuya is obsessively jealous of Vijaya’s love. The question that Joseph and Dawn grapple with is not just “is this desire?” but “is this desire enough?” Is desire for a person, for happiness, for fulfilment, enough to merit and yield the fruit thereof? Or, is true love, true contentment, the product of a deeper process of endogenous reflection and exogenous action?

What makes Is This Desire? PJ Harvey’s most compelling album is her courage in exploring the mortal fears – of loneliness, of hopelessness, of breakdown – that lurk in the shadows of all our lives. The outer sleeve of the album’s LP bears a photographic diptych of Harvey herself, standing beside a river, hugging herself like a child whilst staring blankly into the lens of the camera. To my way of thinking, this image communicates the gist of the album – it is Harvey at her most vulnerable. She is an amalgam of all the characters she sings of; she is Joy, Catherine, Angeline, Leah, etc. Their hopes and struggles are her own.

Harvey’s music will continue to be a mainstay in the ever-developing soundtrack of my life, accompanying me during rides on the tram, walks through the city, and evenings spent alone in my student flat, with little else but the hum of the refrigerator for company. And one day, when I eventually do procure for myself a shiny new record player, perhaps I will be able finally to sit down on the floor, cross-legged beside the speakers, and discover in the groves of her LPs the secrets that the digital remasters of her albums have not yet betrayed. For now, I am content to ponder the questions of love and loss that she confronts me with by opening the Spotify app on my phone, popping my earphones into my ears, and going about my day.

By Rita Zeefal

Qui de mieux qu’un ami pour raconter sa propre mort (et aussi un peu sa vie) ?

Où vont tous ces visages dont pas un seul ne rit ? Ces doux êtres pensifs que le
remord maigrit ?

L’opium, arme de guerre.

Par Pr. Sophie Rochefort-Guillouet

On connaît mieux les résultats militaires et diplomatiques des guerres de l’Opium, qui opposèrent la Chine à la Grande Bretagne, que les raisons profondes de leur déclenchement.