My travel itinerary on behalf of CRY is just about set.  Looks like I’ll be heading eastward to Koraput District, in the state of Orissa.  Orissa is known for Odissi, a graceful and intricate classical dance form.  It’s also home to the Konark Sun Temple or “Black Pagoda”, an imposing monument dating back to 1278 A.D., though the racy carvings it is decorated with are pure medieval XXX.    

Unfortunately, as India’s poorest state with half its population below the poverty line, Orissa is also marked by slow development and a growing movement by Naxalites – Maoist insurgents who threaten to destabilize what government exists through armed action.  According to 2004 figures published in the East India Human Development report, 76% of men and 51% of women are literate, thought these means vary across districts.  The HDR calls Orissa “thinly populated, tribal-dominated, and one of the least-urbanized states.”  The national Public Distribution System (PDS), a government scheme contrived to provide food grains to below-poverty line (BPL) cardholders (kind of like welfare in the U.S.), is barely functioning here, with only about 5.2% usage.

And this is off the wall, but stay with me.  I had remembered something I’d read a while back about former Korn guitarist-cum-CCM artist Brian “Head” Welch having traveled to Orissa to start a Christian charity after he found salvation.  In this Rolling Stone interview, he makes the spurious claim that the Lodha, a tribe of cannibals, lives in the state.  Hmmm.

Perhaps if Sri “Head” had done some research past what the local authorites might have told him, he’d have found that this “cannibal” rap was likely fabricated by forces looking to further dehumanize an already marginalized tribal group.  This excerpt from a paper on eco-tourism in Orissa makes no mention of manhunting in its profile of the Lodha people:

LODHA: In Orissa, the Lodhas are concentrated in two areas, namely Morada and Suliapada in the Sadar subdivision of Mayurbhanj district. They are originally a Mundari speaking tribe. Their economy is subsistence oriented and depends upon the collection of minor forest produce, wage-earning and agricultural labour. The Lodha social organisation is characterised by patrilineal and totemistic clans, and most of the families are nuclear. Their marriages are usually post-pubescent and monogamous, although polygynous unions are not totally ruled out. Divorce and remarriage are socially permissible. In the socio-political domain, the Mukhia/Sardar plays the role of headman and the traditional village Panchayat is called Desh. The Lodhas are polytheists. Like other tribes, they have village deities, tutelary deities, ancestral cults, benevolent and malevolent spirits, and all of them constitute the supernatural constellation. The Lodhas observe a number of rituals and festivals throughout the year to gain the favour of spirits and the blessings of deities for their overall well-being.

Moreover, this JSTOR-hosted paper suggests definite villification of the Lodha tribals from a variety of actors, notably the British Administration, who in 1871 declared them to be a criminal tribes.  Hustlers, rustlers, violent criminals? Maybe, but it doesn’t look like they were cannibals.

Why take all the effort to refute these claims?  Because they impede understanding between people and cultures.  From one rock do-gooder to another: Get your facts straight before you go on the record.