Discussion with Guru S. Achon Kom

The Kom tribe belongs to the Mizo-Kuki group and according to the myth of their origin, their forefathers are believed to have emerged from a Khul (cave). As they came out, a tiger was lying in wait to kill them so Karongpa came out wearing a striped cloth to make friends with the tiger, as his cloth resembled its skin.   From then on his descendents refrained from eating or killing a tiger.

Kom settlements are located in Manipur and several villages in Assam and Tripura.

(Guru S. Achon Kom is a farmer and cultural expert from the Kom tribe of Manipur.  He is also the Secretary of the Kom Cultural Dance and Research Centre in Khoirentak, Churachandpur District, Manipur).

In 2005 I was awarded the Guru Shisha Parampara status through a programme by the North East Zone Cultural Centre in Dimapur.  We are working to uplift the Kom community and also the other tribes too.  We have to collect the stories from the old storytellers otherwise in a few decades tribal culture will surely vanish here.  How many people from the tribes are attending your workshop?  None?  This shows that they are neglected.   If Rewben had not phoned us, you would have left and we would not have known anything about your workshop.   How are we going to document our oral traditions?  They are not written down yet.  We were not contacted about this workshop, clearly only the experts knew about it.  We also have a great interest in this, but we don’t know how to go about animating our stories.  For the past two or three years we have been wondering about the possibilities of animating our folktales because times are changing.  Young people are very smart these days and they do not have much interest in sitting around with their elders listening to folktales. 
We are from the backward classes so we know nothing about animation but we are making efforts to document our folktales in written form.  We really don’t know how to promote our culture.  All the tribes here have different stories, cultures and origins. 

In Nagaland the majority is tribal.  They are able to cooperate as they have similar stories, costumes and so on.  Here in Manipur everything is different between the tribes, and it has been occupied by the Meiteis who decide what is good.  Tribal people should be contacted directly not through the Meitei community as they are mostly interested in promoting themselves and because of this, tribal culture will surely vanish. 

In tribal areas you will not find any experts in animation, and for us it takes much longer to collect stories.  The Meiteis on the other hand have plenty of historians and experts.  We Kom are all Christian now.  That goes for nearly all the tribes here, though the Kabui are reviving their indigenous faith.  We don’t have much material artwork we express ourselves mostly in song and dance.  I would say that the population of our tribe is nearly 20,000. 

The benefits need to go to the right people so this is why we have established our Non Government Organisation.  If we approach the Art and Culture Department here in Manipur, they will surely help us but it is difficult when you are based in the village.  Village life is so different from that of Imphal!  It is very difficult too.  We are busy in our fields from morning to night and it is very hard work so we have little time for documentation.  Another factor is that it is easy to move around in the valley but to do proper documentation of the tribes one has to go to all the hill districts.

Most of our folktales are based on themes of magic.  They would really come to life in animation films.  I only studied up to class 8 because then I had family responsibilities and I still work in the fields from May through to August.  I am encouraging my son to become an anthropologist so that he can document our traditions as most scholars are not able to write about the oral traditions of the Kom.  We have our own traditional hut at the Indira Gandhi Manav Sangrahalaya in Bhopal.  In fact, the whole northeast section of the Museum begins at our house. 

In the village it is a very simple life and there is no idea of competition.  Our village is well known in the popular Khamba Thoibi folktale of the Meiteis as it is said to be where the hero Khamba caught a tiger.   So the legend goes.  We made a proposal for a Cultural Interpretation Centre for our village but so far nothing has come of it.   There is a communication gap with the Art and Culture Department here so we need our own research centre, resource people and so on.  The village is the primary source for tribal culture.    Our culture was also much affected when we were converted to Christianity, and it is disappearing.  It would be great to have a workshop in our Kom village as the youth need exposure to understand what we are doing and to support it.  In the city, jeans are the fashion but in the village it is important for the younger generation to know the importance of the cloth that we weave.    If I do not know the customs and traditions of the Kom tribe, how can I be called a Kom?

We need to target the younger generation.  Come to my village and you will get lots of information without even a word because you will see how we really live.