Sher Singh Pangti
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The Museum Man of Munsiyari, Uttarakhand
Arpita Chakrabarty, The museum man of Munsyari, May 13, 2017: The Hindu
As Bhotiya culture unravelled, a history professor began collecting everything the community was throwing away
The soaring snow-capped peaks of Panchachuli are everywhere you look in Munsiyari.
At this strange and sublime place that feels like the edge of the earth, is located a delightful museum dedicated to a Himalayan society that no longer exists.
“The artefacts in my museum are not found in Bhotiya homes today,” says Sher Singh Pangti, an octogenarian, as he hands out entrance tickets to a group of Bengali tourists for ₹10 each. “The younger generation wasn’t made aware of its cultural heritage, and there’s no emotional connect with our roots. So we have lost our legacy as a true Bhotiya society.”
Trade bonds
Munsiyari in Johar valley in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district is home to the Bhotiya tribe, also known as Shaukas. For centuries they moved between Munsiyari and upper Himalayan villages, trading grains, jaggery and mishri for salt, borax and wool from Tibet. The trade fed and nurtured generations of Bhotiya families. “There was no money involved; it ran on a barter system. The trade bonded the Bhotiya and Tibetan communities into a family,” says Pangti, who is a Bhotiya himself, from Milam village.
Trade, however, came to a sudden end as borders closed in 1962 after the India-China War. “The death of trade disrupted the economy. The Bhotiya people saw no need for seasonal migration and looked for other means of livelihood in the lower Himalayas. The government notified Bhotiya as a Scheduled Tribe (ST) community in 1967 to help the distressed tribe achieve education and employment,” adds Pangti. Several of the hill State’s Indian Administrative Service officers belong to the Bhotiya tribe.
It was then that Pangti began his journey to record, document and archive the community’s history. He was then a professor of history at a government college in Munsiyari. He travelled to all 14 upper-Himalayan migratory villages of the Johar valley on foot and collected objects that would later be showcased in the Tribal Heritage Museum of Munsiyari.
. “I collected everything that people were disposing—wooden wine bottles, cooking pots, Tibetan butter tea leaves, horses’ bells, bags made of yak skin, jewellery made of leopard and bear nails, and musk deer tooth, wooden pens and ink made of natural dye, woollen clothes, medicinal herbs, handmade paper, musical instruments and stones inscribed with Buddhist sermons. They threw everything out of their house—everything that identified our culture. Bhotiya people slowly imbibed the traditions and language of Kumaoni Hindus.”
Pangti’s museum also has different shapes and sizes of hookahs, which were served to guests along with homemade wine.
The development of the road to Munsiyari in the 1960s also impacted the Johari culture, feels Pangti. “With cars, the road brought a lot of major changes to the lifestyle of the community.”
New lamps for old
“By that time feriwalas too arrived from the plains and knocked on every Bhotiya door to swap steel utensils for wooden ones. Steel was followed by plastic. Today in a Bhotiya kitchen everything is made of either plastic or steel. Even the traditional long wooden vessels with brass designs used for brewing Tibetan butter tea are replaced by plastic brewing jugs.”
It’s past noon now. The large wooden windows of the museum offer a magnificent view of Panchachuli emerging from the clouds. The museum now looks more like a Kumaoni house with intricate woodwork. The vernacular architecture of Kumaon is known for such designs with flowers, birds and images of gods. Pangti says these ornate, wooden doors and windows were also brought from high altitude villages. Many of the old houses fell apart; bushes and shrubs claimed them. “The craftsmen of Almora were known for woodcarving. The more well-to-do Bhotiya would hire them for ek anna (25 paisa); and woodcarvers would take months to chisel a piece of wood into life with floral patterns.”
A few tourists request him to show them the ingenious traditional door locking technique, done with no lock or key or bolt. Pagti obliges: Two parts of a wooden door are fastened with a long piece of wood, with the help of a sickle. Every house had its own shape of sickle and locking wood,” he says.
But the museum man of Kumaon is worried about its future.
Pangti’s museum receives grants, but a small one every two years from the cultural department of Uttarakhand. “But no officer from the department has ever visited the museum.”
