This is a well-researched and carefully detailed work on an endangered indigenous foraging Raute community living in the monsoon rainforests of western Nepal. This work concentrates on a band of some one hundred and forty hunter-gatherers, who even these days subsist on langur and macaque monkeys (whom they call “little brothers”), edible plants, wild yams, and the rice traded from the local farmers and lead their nomadic existence in makeshift camps. It is written from the perspective of the Rautes themselves, and it primarily deals with these people's strategies for “cultural resiliency” in the face of constant pressures from the Nepali state for assimilation, primarily through the abandonment of forest life and adoption of education and farming. The book also raises the current problems of deforestation, population encroachment, language domination, and political hegemony of the dominant Nepalese societies on the Rautes (“kings of the forest”) and emphasizes the need for the indigenous groups’ right for their cultural identity and their own way of survival. The text equally pays attention to the symbiotic relationships between the Rautes and surrounding farmers and explores how the Rautes’ ways of living can provide us with significant insights into the bio-cultural diversity that exists between the world of nature and human beings.
The text is divided into nine chapters, with each chapter describing, and making assessment of, an aspect of Raute sociality. It discusses the issues such as the Rautes’ foraging life-styles and alternative ways of living; differences between this band of Raute community and the other Rautes currently living in different parts of Nepal; their history, worldview, and the daily round of work as roving forest-dwellers; their regular diets and material culture; the types of interactions they have with the dominant society; their status in the larger Nepali society and their economic aspects; and, most importantly, their cultural resilience. The text also includes the Appendix, giving lists of the common prey species and the edible plants the Rautes depend on and various woodenwares they use for themselves and for exchange with the surrounding villagers. The writer has systematically and impartially examined all these topics and impressively handled the narratives with interesting ethnographic details.
One of the most important aspects of Raute sociality is their cultural resilience, which the writer defines as “the ability of a system or society to undergo change while still maintaining its basic elements or relationships” (p. 8). As nomadic people, the Rautes do not own houses, land or livestock, do not register as Nepalese, and do not carry citizenship certificates. They have maintained this resilience through their foraging lifestyle which they regard in the spirit of their deity embodied in the sun (berh), who is considered as being responsible for making the monkeys available for them, and through specific survival strategies such as silence, posturing, “bond friendship,” and refashioning certain Hindu stories into their own. Also important to note are the Rautes’ egalitarian ethics of sharing; their sense of equality of all the animate and inanimate beings; and their stress on the cosmo-ecological balance by regarding all natural phenomena as belonging to the same ontological relational family with stars regarded as sisters-in-law, monkeys as little-brothers, and yam honored as mother. While addressing this issue of cultural resiliency, the text distinguishes the Rautes from the surrounding Hindu villagers on varied levels. Also, it points out how the Rautes are caught in an interplay between the old and the new eras and how the resiliency is not just a matter of maintaining the cultural past but adaptation of themselves in the dynamic present: “Some Rautes adopt villager objects while others favor maintaining the old ways: some welcome tennis shoes, jewelry, and tobacco available from farmers; others keep as distant from villagers as possible and eschew village accoutrements” (p. 169). Further, the Rauteness also varies according to many factors, such as degree of interaction with non-Raute communities, political pressures, historical territories, economic situation, and the availability of forest resources (p. 29).
The study of this unique community opens up other research possibilities on the remaining Rautes residing in Nepal and India. The writer's assumptions that Rautes’ cultural practices closely match with those of Austro-Asiatic-speaking forest foragers from northern India but their language is much more closely related to Tibeto-Burmese-derived vocabulary and syntax require further studies. It is also important to make a well-grounded comparative study of their language with those of other communities who tried to maintain similar lifestyles and to analyze their linguistic and cultural variations for charting out the possible trajectory of the history of migration, or co-existence of several indigenous communities, in South Asia. Finally, this study also inspires one for further research on such areas as Rautes’ songs, stories, dances, verbal art forms, and healing practices which form important aspects of their living culture.
