History Of Our Tribal Villages

Western Ghats is a unique geological formation. Its uniqueness is in its diversity. Rainfall, geological formations, geographical formations cliffs, grasslands, waterfalls, ravines, flora, fauna; you name it, it has it. No wonder that diversity is reflected in the culture of traditional communities inhabiting Western Ghats. In Maharashtra, Western Ghats is referred as Sahyadri.
Akole taluka of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra is located in the main ranges of Sahyadri. It is bestowed with natural beauty. Traveling through the taluka, one would obviously notice mosaic of landscapes ranging from cliffs to grass lands and paddy fields situated on the slopes. In between you would notice good patches of semi evergreen forests. Sacred Groves are also common in this terrain. Typical villages in mountainous Akole taluka house 50-100 houses with equally typical slopping roofs and thatched walls. Mahadev Koli and Thakar are the traditional communities in Akole taluka.
History of Akole region dates back to Satvahan dynasty (circa 4 B.C) in Maharashtra. There are plenty of Buddhist caves in this region. Akole region has many historic trade routes owing to its location. It is situated on the main Sahyadri ranges as mentioned earlier. You get into Akole region immediately after climbing up main Sahyadri ranges from the Konkan. No wonder that Akole has important historic trade routes and forts that helped the rulers to monitor and regulate the trade. In historic time Akole would have been a flourishing area. In the British regime, pucca roads were made crossing the main Sahyadri ranges to reach Konkan. Due to comparatively more challenging terrain than adjoining regions, Akole remained devoid off such pucca roads. This resulted in Akole gradually fading off to oblivion. Traditional communites that once ruled the region were no exception to this.
Mahadev Koli, one of the two predominant traditional communities in Akole region was known for its warrior spirit. In Maratha history, Mahadev Koli would typically be guardians of the forts located in the main ranges of Sahyadri. While climbing up the fort, one would come across Met, a check post guarded by Mahadev Koli community. There would be a chain of such check posts guarded by Mahadev Kolis. Pucca roads and advent of technology in communication and transportation affected strategic importance of forts and thus of Mahadev Kolis. Thakar, another traditional community in Akole region was a farming community. Its cultivation mainly relied on shifting cultivation, locally called Dali Rann and small farms prepared on the terraced hill slopes.
From eighteenth century onwards, by the time forts had lost their historic relevance and Akole region was pushed off to oblivion, traditional communities in this region survived on seasonal cultivation on less fertile lands of this region and hunting and collection of whatever forests around offered them. In summer traditional communities here would be busy preparing shifting cultivation lands, in rainy season they would cultivate paddy in the farms on the terraced hill slopes and in winter, livelihood would be mostly on hunting small games and honey collection and collection of whatever forests would offer them like gum, resin etc.

Paddy farms needed heavy manure owing to their less fertile nature. This resulted in cattle rearing by the traditional communities. It is very striking in this region that farmers keep cattle in quite large number. Each family would have not less than 40 cattle heads at a time. Also farmers had a range of rice