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Sunday, October 6, 2013

PACT AN ADVENTURE




As part of the People’s Association for Communication and Transformation ( PACT) programme 5 German youth visited a group of primitive tribal groups of Nilgiri Hills, Tamilnadu, India.

PACT, an agency that organises regular cultural exchange programmes from overseas, arranged for a group of German youth to come to India for a cultural exchange programme. This visit mainly consisted of visiting Primitive Tribal Groups in Nilgiris and to understand the cultural practices they follow. “This is a first of its kind that we attend to understand the people of India, especially the traditions, ethos and anthropological backgrounds of a forgotten era,” said Kereen Pletziger from Germany.

They went on to understand the ecological improvement program which the people themselves carryout. A nearly 5 Crore rupee watershed program which they carried out by themselves without any assistance from any NGO, facilitated by PACT, was also reviewed. “We are surprised to see the wealth of information the tribal communities have especially in taking care of the earth and ecology is unbelievable,” said Tina Popina from the group.

They went on to see the ancient rock painting(art) site to understand the past of the tribal communities and of the locality called Karikaiyur in Nilgiri Hills of Tamilnadu, India.

As part of a week long program organized by PACT, a youth team from Germany, visited the ancient rock painting site of the Nilgiris. The team consisted of Tina Popina, Kereen Pletziger, Anne Grothe, Julia and Cheech Neuman who were on a mission to have a cultural exchange program to Nilgiri hills of Tamilnadu, India.

The porivarai Rock Painting Site is said to have a history of between 15,000 years and 6,000 years history with a wide variety of art works done at various periods up to 2nd century BC. The opinion about the age of the rock art varies according to different researchers like Erwin Neumeyor from Austria, Villabruno Aldo from Italy, Christine Gillespie from Australia, Giovanna from Italy, Chandru, Artist and retired principal of College of Fine Arts, Chennai and Gandhirajan an art historian from Chennai.

The team visited and directly interacted with the Irula tribes of Karikaiyur, Mallikoppaiyur and Naduvur or Nilgiri District of Tamilnadu state, India. The trek into the deep forests of Eastern slope of Nilgiri Hills is a distance of about 6kms from Karikaiyur a village that used to find a place in the rout map of Lord Sullivan, the first britisher to find the routes to the Nilgiri Hills.

The rock paintings describe a variety of information about the life style of tribal communities,their life with their animals, their hunting, their celebrations and the depiction of war scenes on the plains. Having many layers of information signifying information of different era, each canvas goes to show the actual life situation of that era. Apart from that the vast canvas of paintings also portray the creativity of the artists who used diffrent forms to portray animals using different painting materials.

The team later went on to visit other places in Tamilnadu where social works were done for the deserving poor youth and children.

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