Bastar Village Celebrates First Wedding In 2 Decades As Maoist Shadow Lifts

The tribal village greeted the groom and his party, hailing from the village of Gongpal in the district, with traditional tribal music and dance and rituals.

“This is the first time after two decades, the wedding is being celebrated with colourful tribal tradition with both bride and groom parties dancing to the beats of drums, singing local folk songs and drinking ‘Mahula’ (forest produce) liquor”, Chottu Nag, belonging to the bridegroom party says.

The wedding celebration will go on for three days as per the tribal tradition.

Several other remote villages in south Bastar, once called the liberated zone of Maoists, are witnessing such colourful and vibrant traditional tribal weddings with the fear of Naxal threats no longer casting its shadow over Bastar in the post-Maoist period.

The social functions such as weddings usually remained low key when Maoists were ruling the roost in the rural Bastar particularly in south Bastar.

Each wedding, celebrated in the remote villages of Bastar, used to come under intense scrutiny of Naxals to ascertain the identity of each and every guest in the functions, police said.

This apart, the lack of basic infrastructure such as road and electricity in the remote villages in Bastar, a consequence of the Leftwing Extremism, have forced the tribals to make their functions a low-key affair, police said.

“Now, remote villages in the Bastar are connected with good roads and other infrastructures like electricity and telecommunication facilities also reached in these villages. The tribals were earlier forced to make their wedding and other social functions low-key affairs due to fear of Naxals and lack of basic infrastructure in these areas”, Bastar range inspector general of police P Sunderraj told this newspaper.

According to him, the hosts as well as the guests in such functions sometimes were scared of attacks from Naxals.

Several instances of attack on guests on such occasions were reported in the past.

Boys and girls in Naxal-affected villages were usually not getting marriage proposals due to the Maoist menace, police said.

The situation has changed radically in Bastar post-Maoist period, he said.