Beeconomy: What Women and Bees Can Teach Us about Local Trade and the Global Market

India: The Heart of the World

India The Heart of the World Behold! The kwehhrshy flowers have lit up the thickets. Look! The queen bees are sucking their nectar. —Toda chant India’s plethora of honey bees, its honey-hunting history, and its diverse faith-based religions have imprinted women primarily through artistic, literary, and femininity rituals such as bridal and maternal rites of passage. There are four overlapping areas in which women have been shaped by or are in the process of shaping India’s contemporary bee culture: the honey-hunting cultures; the Hindu and Buddhist religious rituals; the British practices and assumptions under colonialism; and emerging opportunities for India’s women beekeepers in a new global economy. Adivasi Customs A number of adivasi native populations, such as the Badaga, Kurumba , Kota, and Toda peoples, still practice traditional honey-gathering techniques. Their literature documents how women celebrate femininity using honey. The Toda women are known for their embroidery. In an excellent book by Kunal Sharma and Snehlata Nath, Honey Trails 37 Beeconomy 38 in the Blue Mountains, the authors report that “one of the oldest motifs is the Kwudrkorr pukhoor or the honey comb pattern. This depicts the inside of the honeycomb and is sometimes even embroidered with the brood shown within! Its importance lies in the fact that this was done traditionally only on the cloak of the departed so as to ensure a safe passage to the after world.”1 Unlike other honey-hunting cultures in Nepal, the Wynaad indigenous communities of India collect honey as a group. According to Sharma and Nath, “During the honey season all people of the village go for honey collection—men, women, and the young.” It seems the Wynaad children are like mischievous children everywhere: Sharma and Nath write, almost as an aside, “Children are strictly monitored as they may eat lots of honey leading to low amounts for sale.”2 Even though most activities of traditional honey collection are male oriented, it would be a mistake to see all the native peoples as paternalistic. The Kurichiars people “are widely considered as one of the earliest inhabitants of the Wynaad hills. They have a vibrant history and had revolted against the British with the forces of the Pazzhasi Raja.” They are exceptional honey hunters. More to the point, Sharma and Nath explain, “they are the only matrilinear society in South India. The women participate in agricultural operations, fishing, animal husbandry, fuel collection, etc. Most land is owned by lineages, whereas there are few individual owners in present times.”3 The Badaga people also have deep roots in the Nilgiri region, their language being the lingua franca there before the arrival of the British. “They were supposed to have come to the Nilgiris after the break up of the Vijaynagar Empire in 1565,” according to Sharma and Nath.4 When the empire was taken over by Muslim forces, the Badagas settled in the area for nearly two hundred years, becoming agriculturists. When the British arrived in the Nilgiri territory in the early 1800s, a medical doctor and botanist, Francis Buchanan, meticulously recorded daily practices and habits in his journal. He had been assigned by Marquess Wellesley, the governor general, to investigate the state of agriculture, commerce, and development India: The Heart of the World 39 in the dominions of the rajah of Mysore acquired by the East India Company. In Buchanan’s journal, which began in 1800, he referred to the Badaga people as “honey and wax gatherers.” Buchanan did not seem to realize that for a long time before the British arrival, the Badagas had been called the madhura (honey) or maanthakula people.5 The Badagas had a honey goddess called Kunnimaara. “She was initially a Kurumba goddess,” Sharma told me in correspondence, “but was later initiated into the Badaga pantheon.”6 The Kurumba people also attach maternal privilege to the rocks that provide shelter for Apis dorsata. Sharma and Nath explain, “They believe that the rock is their ‘mother,’ the rope is their ‘father’ and the tree on top of the cliff is their anna, or elder brother. After honey is harvested, they keep some on the rock, and under the tree first, before eating it themselves.”7 Hinduism and Buddhism The more conventional cultures in India—Hinduism and Buddhism —have clearly defined maternal and bridal rituals using honey. Even the Hindu god Kama, the Indian god of love, flies with a bow...