The Untouchables – Malana, India

For most of my Indian school life, I was fed on the usual diet of Hindu caste and colour structure. A society made up the four-tier Varna system with the Brahmins at the top and the Shudras (labelled untouchables) at the bottom. And then years later, one quiet evening, I found myself sitting beside a shack in Jari, a small town in northern Himachal Pradesh.

The evening set in. The air turned nippy and the breeze ran down the Parvati river. I was with three friends, sipping at steaming hot glasses of tea and planning the following day’s trek to Malana.

We were told by our Nepalese guide cum porter that Malana was a village populated by descendents of soldiers from Alexander’s army. Our friendly guide warned us that once we reached Malana, we were to ensure that we did not touch anything or anyone and followed a code of conduct set up by ‘their’ elected council of members.

I thought about this with a strange feeling, how it would feel to be an ‘untouchable’ and the fact that I would be looked at as a foreigner in my own country. I assumed that the people of Malana probably trace their origins to the small Greek communities that settled in Punjab and the Northwest frontier after Alexander’s troops invaded the region in 326 BC.

I had never consciously encountered a ‘Greek’ before but the proposition of encountering the people they had left behind was rather appealing, especially so in a land where lines of history, legend and myth are completely blurred.

We were also told the people of Malana do not believe they are a part of the Indian Republic, that they do not follow the laws of the Indian constitution and, as a result, they have their own laws backed by custom and tradition.

Should you also believe ‘Malanese’ folklore, they also claim to be the world’s oldest surviving democracy!

The only way anyone can get to Malana is by foot. Perhaps why Malana has stayed isolated for thousands of years, untouched by the evils and ills of modern civilisation. Two thousand years have apparently not been enough to build a road to help take India’s laws and civilisation to Malana’s people. The village has been in a time warp!

There were other reasons to make the trek to Malana. This tiny hamlet is notoriously popular as being home to some of the world’s best hashish.

The four of us trotted down the valley with the sort of energy that the morning seems to bring out. Our guide led even faster while the riverbank down below lined itself with the fresh green of geometrically terraced rice cultivation. We had descended over a 1,000 meters in the few kilometres we had trekked downhill, finally hopping across the river on a narrow and very creaky wooden suspension bridge. From here on, we would begin our 2,000 meters ascent to Malana.

By late noon we were panting, with our friendly neighbourhood guide telling us at every turn there would be only one more. The frozen craggy peaks melting into glaciers in the distance reminded me of giant mounds of vanilla ice cream melting into patches of brown hot chocolate sauce, leaving me wondering whether Malana had already begun to have its effect on me.

Sunset and we were in Malana. We had to take informal permission from one of the village counsellors before we could enter this antiquated and bizarre village, some 200-odd wooden houses under stone roofs.

People outside of Malana do not understand the Kanashi language spoken in the hamlet. Scholars think it might be a mixture of Sanskrit and several Tibetan dialects. This breakdown in communication, however, also has a number of people thinking the Malanese are descended from demons. I figured that our only channel of communication was our guide, trusted by the Malana folks, and it would be better for us to attempt and route any communication through him.

The villagers stared at us as if they were tourists gaping at a city monument. Meeting our eyes with spontaneous and warm smiles on their handsome faces and then shying away. Both the men and the women were short with sharp noses and fair pink skin. The women wearing noserings studded on both sides in the manner that earrings are. A flamboyantly dressed dwarf in red trousers and black shirt gave us a quick tour of Malana, we being told to follow him on the stone cobbled path without ever straying from the track!

Old village folk watched us, sitting on a stone platform in the village main square, while serenely gurgling on their hookahs.

We headed straight for their main temple. The presiding deity within this wooden temple, veiled behind the façade and adorned by the horns and skeletons of animals sacrificed to him, was finally introduced to us as Jamlu. However it was only the people of Malana who had access to Jamlu. Yet again we were told: touch the temple or a local and pay a Rs 1,000 fine.

Should you not have the money, the entire village gathers the money together to pay for a goat. The goat is sacrificed and served to you as well as the villagers. Once that is done with, you no longer remain an ‘untouchable’!

The village judicial system may seem outdated, but it is novel in its own way. Since the people here do not follow the laws laid down by the Indian constitution, should a villager wish to approach the police, he is made to pay a (you guessed it) Rs 1,000 fine to the village council. And if the village council finds the convicted guilty, they are fined. Anyone defying the decision of the village council is thrown out of the valley. In extreme cases (as the guide mentioned) of crime or misuse of god’s treasures, the culprit is tied to a stone and thrown down the mountain! In case of any dispute over the final judgement the spirit of Jamlu guides the council, which, fortuitously, did not happen while I was there. On the way down, I crossed a Malana porter. As he walked past, the craggy soil beneath his foot, unexpectedly broke loose and he shuffled towards the cliff. I leapt to him, catching him by his sack and reached my hand out. As he gripped my wrist to pull himself to safety, I found myself feeling rather pleased.

I had managed to break through the language barrier and a culture that held everything and everybody from the outside as being untouchable. The porter from Malana said thank you in a language I did not understand but it certainly wasn’t Greek to me!

How to Get There

Air: The airport at Bhuntar is 40-km from Jari. There are connecting flights to Bhuntar from New Delhi. Take a taxi or a bus from Bhuntar and make the trek from Jari to Malana, the road and dam construction on Parvati valley have cut the trek down to less than half a day’s walk.