Vanishing Bhadi

The rains have come and the sowing of crops has begun. This takes me back twenty two years to my first monsoon season among the Bhils of Alirajpur. I was at that time staying with Awalsingh in village Attha to try and learn the Bhili language fast and also understand their daily routine. Awalsingh's wife Khetli packed up her udo - a bamboo basket for keeping seeds dry and safe from the rains, with a variety of seeds including maize, sorghum, various pulses and a millet called bhadi. Bhadi is extremely tasty to eat either cooked in the form of rice or as rotis. It also has a high nutritive value like all the other seeds that she had which were all indigenous varieties. Now of course all these seeds have vanished. Today Awalsingh along with most other Bhils sow only hybrid varieties of maize and sorghum and soyabean. Bhadi and pulses have vanished considerably affecting the Bhils' nutritional intake. Soyabean is cultivated because it gives a good market price while the others do not. This high market price is because soya meal is used as feed for beef cattle in the united states of america and soya oil is used for preparing pre-cooked beef steaks and other food to be sold off store shelves for quick heating in microwave ovens and eating by Americans. Thus the Americans' eating habits which have followed their living habits have led to the destruction of traditional adivasi agriculture and also their nutritional intake. The American's meat is indeed the Bhil Adivasi's poison!