“These days, our children are not accustomed to hunting and foraging,” he said.

The Kheria Sabars, sometimes identified as the Sabars of Purulia, have been categorised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) – a tribal community that shows a declining or stagnant population. They engage in the use of pre-agrarian technology, suffer due to economic underdevelopment, low rates of literacy, and live in remote and inaccessible regions in the country.

The Kheria Sabars are among 75 existing tribes that are still dependent on forests for their livelihood. But forest laws and worsening environmental degradation over the years have prevented them from practising traditional foraging methods, leading to a gradual loss in indigenous knowledge and source of livelihood.

However, community-led efforts in Purulia district are trying to change that at the village level, with an aim to combat biodiversity loss and malnutrition, and preserve indigenous practices.

This year, indigenous leaders from Sabar villages have come together to create an awareness programme on wild foods found in surrounding forests to combat malnutrition in the community.

“Our research showed that 123 different types of plants, edible fungi, insects and aquatic species are still found in the forests and water bodies of Purulia,” said Prashanta Rakshit, who heads the Paschim Banga Kheria Sabar Kalyan Samity, a grassroots organisation working for over five decades for the Sabars.

This month, in Mirgichami village in Purulia district, the organisation held an open-air exhibit, displaying a diverse collection of seasonal seeds, tubers, fruit, vegetables and other foods that have historically been consumed in the winter months by the Sabar community, to help them identify these foods when foraging in the forest and to generate awareness of their nutritional value.

Some two decades ago, in an attempt to make the community food secure, Sabar leaders associated with the Samity began teaching agricultural practices to villagers so they can grow their own food in small patches of land inside the peripheries of Sabar hamlets. The aim was to teach the community how to survive without relying entirely on forests and other communities who viewed them with disrespect and suspicion.

This work over the years has led to change in the community, with children starting school, and pursuing education and job opportunities outside their villages. But it has also resulted in a loss of indigenous knowledge.

At the open-air exhibit, indigenous varieties of millets, wheat, bajra, barbatti seeds, gourds, fruit, edible flowers, fish, snails, tubers and vegetables have been put on tables for villagers to identify. They are also taught about how various kinds of forest produce can be utilised and how to extract maximum use from each produce.

Fatik Hembram, an educator who began helping the community when he was recruited some two decades ago by Sabar leaders to teach children in their villages, points to the roselle flower – called ‘laal amru’ in the Sabar language – a perennial, hardy flowering shrub that grows in abundance in these forests and is tart in taste. “It’s used to make chutney and its leaves are used to cook vegetables and dals. Its seeds can be used to extract oil,” he said.

Community leaders say that starvation, malnutrition and agricultural illiteracy have been long-standing concerns, in addition to other public health issues. In 2018, West Bengal had witnessed the deaths of at least seven members of the Lodha Sabar community that had been reported to be a result of acute malnutrition. And this was not an isolated incident: over the past two decades, there have been recorded cases of several deaths in the wider Sabar community in the Purulia-Jhargram district belt, which community leaders have linked to starvation.

The community’s reticence to interact with people outside their community, in addition to gaps in the administration of government-run supplementary nutrition schemes due to a lack of paperwork like Aadhaar identification cards, and the distance between remote Sabar villages and distribution centres for the Integrated Child Development Services scheme, mean that the community loses out on government welfare programmes that would have helped combat malnutrition and other public health concerns.

The Sabars have historically been wary of outsiders, having been subjected to persecution over generations. This has meant that the community was unable to pick up skills and employment that would have enabled them to survive without relying on forests.

Currently, in Purulia, approximately 12,000 Sabars are scattered across 168 villages in eight administrative blocks, according to figures provided by the Samity.

The Indian Forest Act brought in by the British colonial rulers in 1878 was a major blow to Sabars, experts said, curbing their access to timber and forest produce. “The legislation completely deprived them. The Sabars never exploited the forest. Their lives, their economy, their society, medicine and healthcare, is fully dependent on forest,” said Sarbajit Ghosh, an independent scholar who has conducted extensive research on the community.

In subsequent years, an influx of zamindars and money lenders came into the Manbhum region – modern-day Purulia district. Their settlement rapidly transformed indigenous lands, and caused displacement of indigenous communities like the Sabars from their ancestral lands. Rapid deforestation of the Rakab forests also took place.

The imposition of the Criminal Tribes Act, 1924, by the British colonial administration brought the community under the purview of this legislation, resulting in the Sabars finding themselves both unable to access forestland and unable to assimilate with other communities who began categorising them as “criminals”.

Changing farming practices and, more recently, the use of fertilisers, chemicals and hybrid crops, have also resulted in severe ecological damage in and around their villages, Sabar leaders said. Factors like climate change have impacted plant and animal populations in the forests.

According to research conducted in 2017 by Dr Biraj Kanti Mondal at Netaji Subhas Open University’s Department of Geography, between 1971 to 2011, Purulia district has lost over 10 per cent of its forest cover. For a community that has been entirely reliant on the forest, this has directly affected the everyday lives of the Sabars.

Over the decades, the Sabar community came to rely on rice and wheat instead of forest produce, making them dependent on ration stores. However, a 5-kg bag of rice at Rs 2 per kg has been too expensive for many in the community, and too little for a family for a month, said Rakshit.

To reach Kendrapara village, with a population of just 18 Sabars, it takes over an hour on foot over the Purulia hills through dried shrubs on unpaved pathways. This week, 46-year-old Shomoli Sabar has been particularly frustrated with the difficulties she has been facing with trying to provide food for her family from the forest behind her semi-permanent home.

“The forest guards don’t allow us to go inside the forest. So how do we eat?… When we try to bring forest produce home, they catch us, and confiscate our forest produce and take it away. Then they take us to the guard office and impose a fine of Rs 5,051. Where will I find this much money?” Shomoli asked. In the past, when caught with forest produce, Shomoli and her family said they have had to borrow money and use their savings to pay off fines imposed by forest officials.

The Sabar community has long battled poverty, social stigma and exclusion. Over the last 15 years, children from the community have been studying and are taking small steps by moving out of their villages to relocate to bigger towns for jobs.

“Village elders are trying to teach the children about indigenous foods. The new generation doesn’t have indigenous knowledge. The children are in a situation where they aren’t fully advanced, but they have also lost indigenous knowledge. If they had learnt indigenous knowledge from the elders, the situation wouldn’t have been so precarious. But it is so because they are in a dangerous middle ground,” Hembram said.