Free sex in Bastar a way of life for Muriyas
- By Kounteya Sinha

Bastar (Chhattisgarh), Oct. 22: It is a primitive practice that is as modern as it can be. Among the Muriya community in Bastar, it is compulsory for single men and women over the age of six to be part of an institution called Ghotul for free sex. The tradition is practiced to train the youth on how to overcome attachments, jealousies and possessiveness and to instill the idea of community love.

"Ghotul is a large hut outside the village where everybody assembles after sunset. The girls and boys pair up after dancing and singing and have sex for five days. After this, if a boy wants to marry the girl, he visits her family and pays her price. If he is unable to do so, he works in her house till the money is raised. If he does not want to marry her after five days, both of them start looking for a different mate. No man can sleep with a woman for more than five days. Meanwhile, if a woman conceives a child, it stays with her. Whoever she marries becomes the father of the child," says Bastar scholar Shiva Bhujan.

He added: "A great part of the unity and happiness of the tribe depends on Ghotul. The songs and dances performed in the evenings are mostly sexually suggestive and provocative. However, the final decision regarding the pairing rests with the leader of the boys, Sirdar, and the leader of the girls, Belosa. In order to impress the girls, the boys give them gifts like combs. A wooden comb is considered a gift of love among this community. A good comb collection is a matter of great prestige and the bigger the collection, the more popular is the woman."

Chattisgarh tourism board MD A. Jayathilak said the tradition of Ghotul is extremely popular among tourists and is the reason why crimes committed due to jealousy have hardly occurred and adultery ever committed. Villagers revealed that the youth of this tribe date from the age of 10, as a result of which children learn about love at an early age. As dating is restricted to Ghotuls, couples who meet outside in the forest or by the river are punished. Although youngsters enjoy free sex, they practice strict monogamy during married life. Those who succumb to weaknesses are sometimes punished even with death. Married people cannot enter Ghotuls. The youngsters strongly protest any meddling in Ghotul’s affairs by their elders.

Verrier Elwin's Kingdom of The Young
by
Ramón Sender Barayón
1987

Born in 1902, the son of a eccentric and impoverished Anglican bishop, Verrier Elwin at twenty-five left behind a budding career as a clerical don in Oxford to join the Christa Seva Sangha in India, a missionary group that allied itself with Gandhi's non-violent reform movement. Five years later he parted paths with the missionaries, unwilling to continue proselytizing the Hindus and having lost faith in the Christianity of his forebears. Instead he 'went native,' living in mud-and-thatch huts in impoverished hill villages of the Gonds and walking barefoot on his journeys. With a few others, he involved himself in building a small ashram based on a mixture of Franciscan and Gandhian ideals.
Becoming more and more interested in what he called 'philanthropology' research, he began a series of moves from village to village, opening schools and dispensaries, treating leprosy and syphilis as well as other ailments. He married a Gond tribal woman. When they divorced after some years, he later married a Pardham woman. He published a series of translations of tribal poetry followed by his first major works, The Baiga, Folk-Tales of Mahakoshal, and Myths Of Middle India. He also wrote numerous monographs as well as two novels. Moving later to Maria tribal territory in Bastar State with the official status of Honorary Ethnographer, he published a detailed study of murder and suicide among the villagers.
His most important work in Bastar was his study of the 'ghotul,' the unique dormitory-club of the boys and girls of the Muria tribe that lived to the north of the Marias on a large wooded plateau with a good climate.
Quoting from his autobiography 'The Tribal World Of Verrier Elwin', Oxford University Press, 1964: "The ghotul was the central focus of Muria life, coming down to modern times from Lingo, the heroic ancestor of the tribe (and founder of the first ghotul)...
"Similar institutions are widely distributed among communities of the Austro-Asiatic cultures, but it seems probable that the Muria ghotul was one of the most highly developed and carefully organized in the world. ; For what was a village guardroom for the Nagas, a boys' club among the Uraons, a refuge for temporary sexual association in Indonesia, was for the Murias the center of social and religious life. Although the ghotul was an independent, autonomous children's republic, it had an all-pervading influence on the grown-ups, who could not manage any social function without its help.
"All the unmarried boys and girls of the tribe had to be members of the ghotul. This membership was elaborately organized; after a period of probation, boys and girls were initiated and given special titles which carried with them graded ranks and social duties. Leaders were appointed to lead and discipline the society... Boy members were known as 'cheliks,' and girls as 'motiaris.'..."The cheliks and motiaris had important duties to perform on all social occasions. The boys acted as acolytes at festivals, the girls as bridesmaids at weddings. They danced together before the clan-gods and ... formed a choir at funerals. Their games and dances enlivened and enriched village life, and redeemed it from that crushing monotony which was its normal characteristic in other parts of India.

"It was natural that the ghotul... should foster every kind of art... The boys made and decorated charming little combs for the girls, and elaborate tobacco-boxes for themselves; the girls made necklaces, pendants and belts of beads and cowries. The boys carved the pillars and doors of their ghotul building, which was often the finest house in the village... And above all they danced.

"But this is common to many cultures. What gave the ghotul its unique interest was the approved and recognized relationship between the boys and girls.

"There were two types of ghotul. In the first, and probably the oldest... the rule was that of fidelity to a single partner during the whole of the pre-marital period. Each chelik was paired off with a motiari; he was formally 'married' to her and she took the feminine form of his title as her own. Divorce was allowed, though 'infidelity' was punished.
"In the second type, any kind of lasting attachment between chelik and motiari was forbidden. No one could say that such and such a motiari was 'his' girl; his attachment was rationed to three days at a time.

"Although outwardly both types of ghotul were the same... the cutoms and atmosphere of the more modern latter type were entirely distinct. Here everything was arranged to prevent long-drawn intense attachments, to eliminate jealousy and possessiveness, to deepen the sense of communal property and action. There was no ghotul marriage, there were no ghotul partners. 'Everyone belonged to everyone else' in the very spirit of Brave New World. A chelik and motiari might sleep together for three nights; after that they were warned; if they persisted they were punished. If a boy showed any sign of possessiveness for a particular girl, if his face fell when he saw her making love to someone else, if he got annoyed at her sleeping with another chelik, should he be offended if she refused to massage him and went to someone else, he was forcibly reminded by his fellows that she was not his wife...

"This was sometimes called the 'changing ring' ghotul; because in it you changed from girl to girl just as you changed your rings from finger to finger.

"...At any time after supper, the cheliks began to assemble. They came one by one, carrying their sleeping mats and perhaps their drums. The little boys brought their daily 'tribute' of wood, 'clocked in' by showing it to the official responsible... The elder boys gathered round the fire; one took a half-smoked leaf-pipe from his turban and ignited it..., another played a few notes on his flute... Then the girls came in with a rush, all together, and gathered round their own fire. After a while they scattered, some sitting with the boys, others singing in a corner.

The others occupied the time in pleasant harmony; sometimes they danced for an hour or two; the smaller children played rampageous games; sometimes they just sat around the fire and talked... Often they sang lying down, two by two, chelik with motiari, or in little groups. A boy told a story; they asked riddles; they reported on the affairs of the day; there was sometimes a ghotul trial; they planned an expedition or allotted duties at a wedding. I shall never forget the sight in some of the larger ghotuls of sixty or seventy youngsters thus engaged.

"After an hour or two of dancing, singing, games or storytelling, certainly not much after ten o'clock, the serious business of the evening began. The little boys went round saluting their elders, a ritual then repeated by the girls. One of them distributed finely-powdered tobacco from the ghotul store, to which all the parents contributed. Then the girls each went to her partner of the day and sat down behind him. First of all, she shook out and arranged his hair and then combed it. When this was done, she massaged him, sometimes with oilseed, sometimes rubbing his back with her comb, and then she cracked his fingers one by one.

By then it was fairly late, and the boys and girls prepared to sleep. The little boys and girls slept in long rows, while those who had a partner lay down with them in each other's arms on their sleeping-mats...

"At least at the time I knew them, the Murias had a simple, innocent and natural attitude to sex. In the ghotul this was strengthened by the absence of any sense of guilt and the general freedom from external interference. The Murias believed that sexual congress was a good thing; it did you good; it was healthy and beautiful; when performed by the right people (such as a chelik and motiari who were not taboo to one another), at the right time (outside the menstrual period and avoiding forbidden days), and in the right place (within the ghotul walls where no 'sin' could be committed), it was the happiest and best thing in life.

"This belief in sex as something good and normal gave the Murias a light touch. Their saying that the young lovers were 'hassi ki nat,' in a 'joking relationship' to each other, expressed their attitude exactly. Sex was great fun; it was the best if ghotul games; it was the dance of enraptured bodies... It ought not to be too intense; it must not be degraded by possessiveness or defiled by jealousy...

"All this was, of course, very shocking to the conventionally-minded. Yet there was much to be said on the Murias' side. In the first place, the cheliks and motiaris were wonderfully happy. Their life was full, interesting, exciting, useful. The ghotul was, as they often said, 'a little school.' The cheliks were 'like Boy Scouts,' as I was told in a village which had a troop in the local school. There was no comparison between these children and the sad-eyed, dirty ragamuffins in villages at a similar cultural level elsewhere. In the ghotul, the children were taught lessons of cleanliness, discipline and hard work that remained with them throughout their lives. They were taught to take pride in their appearance, to respect themselves and their elders; above all, they were taught the spirit of service. These boys and girls worked very hard for the public good. They were immediately available for the service of State officials or for labor on the roads. They had to be ready to work at a wedding or funeral. (In contrast) in most tribal villages of the Central Provinces, the children were slack, dirty, undisciplined and with no sense of public spirit. The Murias were very different.

"With all this, the missionary or social reformer would be in agreement. 'But,' they would say, 'that is not the point. Our complaint is that these boys and girls sleep together.' It was at least one point in their favor that this sleeping together did not seem to do them a great deal of harm. There were no signs of corruption or excess; these bright-eyed, merry-faced boys and girls did not give you the impression of being the victims of debasing lust...

(Elwin then argues that ordinary villages experienced more sexual excess among the children than existed in the ghotuls.)

"Another interesting and curious point is that there were few people with a stronger sense of domestic morality and conjugal fidelity than the Muria. Adultery was very rare, and was visited with supernatural punishment when it did occur. You could not find happier and more united families. One of the reasons for this was that the ghotul system discouraged the custom of child-marriage which was then rapidly spreading though tribal India...

"Now one of the drawbacks of semi-tribal India is domestic infidelity. Divorce is universal, elopement common, adultery an everyday affair. The ghotul villages have a much higher standard in this respect. The incidence of divorce in Bastar was under 3 percent. An examination of 50 marriages in Patangarh (another state) showed 23 divorces or 46 percent.

"We may also consider how the ghotul boys and girls were almost completely free from those furtive and unpleasant vices that so mar our modern civilization. There was hardly any masturbation; where it was practiced, it was due to the mistaken efforts of reformers to improve the ghotul. Prostitution was unknown, unthinkable. No motiari would give her body for money.

"The village dormitory is a symptom of a certain stage of cultural development. We ourselves consider that we have outgrown it; we may grow into it again. In the days when I shared the free and happy life of the Murias, I used sometimes to wonder whether I was a hundred years behind the times or a hundred years ahead. I do not suggest we replace our Public Schools by ghotuls and turn our own children into cheliks and motiaris, but I do suggest that there are elements in ghotul life and teaching which we should do well to ponder, and that an infection of the Muria spirit would do few of us any harm.

"The message of the ghotul -- that youth must be served, that freedom and happiness are more to be treasured than any material gain, that friendliness and sympathy, hospitality and unity are of the first importance, and above all that human love - and its physical expression - is beautiful, clean and precious, is typically Indian."

Elwin published his study of the Muria as a 750-page book entitled 'The Muria And Their Ghotul,' later translated in a abridged edition into French and Italian. In 1968, an abridged English edition was published by Oxford University Press under the title 'The Kingdom Of The Young. He became a citizen of India in 1954, and died in 1964, a few months after finishing his autobiography. Altogether, he was another of those erudite, charming -- and somewhat unusual types that England seems to produce.

The Gotul System of Sex Education

A few Hill Maria practiced the ghotul in a similar manner as the Muria tribes. The description which follows describes the Hill Maria customs as were found by W.V. Grigson in two villages during the early 1930’s. The main difference appeared to have been that the girls of the Hill Maria went home to their parents each evening, while the girls of the Ghotul Muria slept with the boys in boy/girl dormitories.

In the Hill Maria villages, girls assembled every evening by the boys’ dormitory to join in song, dance and games, including sexual games. The girls had gotul names and responsibilities just as the boys did, and the elder boys and girls were charged with teaching the young the elements of tribal culture.

Hill Maria girls associated with boys at an early age. Children were expected to attend the dormitories beginning at the age of eleven or twelve. All boys assembled at the dormitory in the evening for dancing, games and social or sexual training, sleeping on there after the departure of the girls to their homes late in the night. Every girl attended the boy’s dormitory every night and had her boy friend to serve. Each girl paired off with a boy of a clan that was eligible for marriage. The girls combed their boys’ hair and massaged their arms and legs, danced with them, were initiated into the mysteries of sex with them. According to numerous informants, they often had sexual intercourse together and were expected to ultimately marry their mate. Marriage frequently followed these dormitory unions, but by no means always.

Marriage

Pre-puberty marriage rarely occurred amongst the Hill Maria who looked upon it as an abhorrent custom of the Hindus. In the 1920’s some of the Bison-born Maria (3 of 100) were practicing child marriage, but this was thought to be a recently imported custom. No value was set on pre-marital chastity and it is doubtful whether any girl preserved her virginity until marriage.

If the youth and the girl liked each other they would have been free to have sexual intercourse several times to see if they fit together before performing a marriage ceremony. If pre-marital intercourse resulted in pregnancy no formal ceremony was needed or allowed. The girl simply named the man responsible and went to live in his house without any further ado, the union being described as ottur.

Hill Maria parents didn’t try and interfere with their children’s choice of husband or wife. The free choice of a youth and a girl was of utmost importance in choosing marriage partners. When a youth and a girl knew their minds, each told his or her parents. The parents went with the elders of their village without the youth to the girl’s house and left about five bottles of mahua spirit inside the door of the girl’s house. The parents and elders sat outside the girl’s parents’ house. When the parents arrived they told them that the liquor had been brought on the girl’s account and asked if she is willing to go and live with the youth. If the girl agreed, the parties at once drank the liquor and the parents prepared a dinner for the visiting party. If the girl refused, the parents of the youth took the liquor back home with them. The ceremony was called talq-da’ina or ‘going to ask’.

After the ceremony, A year or so passed in which the betrothed did not meet each other. The girl felt shame to look upon her newly betrothed. During this time, the bride-price was prepared. In one example the bride price consisted of a rupee’s worth of new cloth for the bride’s mother, a gelded pig, four pounds of salt, four pounds of ground roselle flowers, one or two pounds of red chilies, two or three pieces of turmeric, as well as baskets of grain, bottles of mahua spirit, and 5-40 rupees of cash. The pig, grain and liquor are eaten and drunk at the wedding. The cash was voided in a cross-cousin marriage.

It was also common for a bridegroom who couldn’t afford the bride price to serve as a servant to the girl’s father for a period of three to seven years. During the first part of this time the bridegroom was expected to not have sexual intercourse with his bride. Provided the girl agreed, and she nearly always did, the couple generally did begin sexual relationships after a period of about a year. If she became pregnant during the time of absistence, the parents were fined a pig, which was eaten by their clansmen. Afterwards, the girl was considered the boy’s wife.

Cross-cousin marriages were very common, especially between a daughter and her mother’s brother’s son. The family, which has given a daughter to another family in one generation thus, was repaid by getting a daughter back as a wife for a son of the next generation. If a cross-cousin marriage had been arranged in this sort of reciprocal agreement, occasionally a father would assert his right to a girl before his son or the girl had reached puberty. He expected to arrange the wedding in the near future, especially if there were rumors that the girl was to be given to someone else. In such cases the girl’s father almost always refused to give the girl until at least both the boy and the girl are mature. Upon maturity the girl’s father gladly agreed to give his daughter in marriage to her cross cousin.

Women were very free to change their attachments, or if unattached, to go to the house of the man of their choice and live with him as wife even if he was already married. Many men had two or three wives, and there was little social difference between them. The beating or ill treatment of wives was strongly condemned by all Marias.

For the Santal living mostly in Bihar and Orissa, reasonably good descriptions of premarital sex were recorded in the 1930s and 1940s, which report of a permissive attitude towards premarital sex (Biswas, 1956[i][1]; Mukherjea, 1962)[ii][2]. Mukherjea (1962:p392-401) states that Santal children, in consequence of a marriage game “play at coitus”. “One Santal narrated to us, “I have seen that during the children’s game called Uku Uku, they play at hide and seek and hunt out others from the bushes. During all these, children throw themselves on one another. They embrace in a childish attempt to get out and this physical contact results in sex-encounters with consequent childish coitus. Old Sandals told us that attempts at coitus indulged in by mere children are very common”. The author cites further examples of games resulting in open displays of “childish coitus”. “We gathered that sex-encounters of children are very common in field were they tend cows or buffaloes, and the minimum age for such children was given as four to five”. Nevertheless, “As regards the age in which boys and girls receive their first sexual experience, the opinion of the Santals questioned on the point varied. Some put it at 14-15 years with boys who attain puberty, while for girls they gave the age at 12-13 “when the breasts ripen”, as they put it. Others put it at 16-17 with males and 13-14 with females. Two educated Santals questioned at different places stated that boys and girls receive their first experience at 10-12 and 9-10 years respectively”. This is supported by communications to Archer, which indicated that boys “start when they are ten or twelve, girls when they are eight or nine” (1974:p55).

Archer (1974:p56)[iii][4] also observed Santal children in their intimacies:

“The scene of a first [sexual] encounter is often the forest. While they are grazing the cattle, boys and girls play “Houses”. They appoint village officials. “You are the manjhi. She is manjhi budhi”. They make little hearths and pretend to cook rice. “It is then that they are yoked. Later, after dark, the boy and girl come together”. “Sometimes a boy and girl play together. The boy goes on all fours. The girl rides on him. Suddenly he turns on his back and holds her. A girl pulls her away. He seizes her legs. If the girl likes it, the boy does it”.

“A common game which is sometimes a prelude to encounters is played in the evening. This is oko oko or “Hide and Seek”. A boy covers his eyes with his hands. All the boys and girls run away. A girl is waiting for him. He rushes to her and while the others are hiding they hurry down the village street. These encounters do not necessarily end in passionate friendships. They are petty, childish introductions to the act of sex and it is not in fact until the ménarche that Santal girls begin to long at all avidly for “the play of boys”. “It is when the flower has blossomed that desire seizes her”.

Archer (1974:p78; 1984:p515)[iv][6] adds the following:

“Among the Pardhans, Shamrao Hivale states, “Before marriage both boys and girls live lives of almost complete freedom. Even little children of four or five years indulge in erotic play together and most boys and girls have had their first experiences long before puberty. Elder people are amused and tolerant of the sexual adventures of their children. They appear to object to any attempt to correct them. They take the line that such adventures did them little harm and that in any case youth is a time for freedom and experiment. […]”.

“There is, however, no conscious organisation of their sexual life. Unlike Uraons, Hos and Mundas who from an early age segregate their boys and girls and bed them down at night in separate houses, Santals keep their children in their families. Until they are six or seven years old, they sleep near their parents. After that, they are put in separate rooms. If their parents sleep on the walled verandah, their sons and daughters go inside. If a boy lies on the verandah, his parents shift to the courtyard or occupy an inner room. It is when the children are asleep and then in the darkness of the house that their parents cohabit and it is only by accident that a child surprises them together” (Archer, p55).

“Flower friendships” between boys or between girls are “strictly nonsexual” (p86-7). Children acquire sexual knowledge early by hearing conversations of their elders and observing parent coitus and coitus of others (Verma, 1970)[v][7]. They tend to attempt coitus at an early age and some of their games involve sexual encounter. First actual cohabitation tends to occur around puberty. Pre-marital sex is well tolerated.