An article written 1972 by Gordon Troeller & Claude Deffarge
The German original of the article can be found here.
We are sitting in a small hut in the Indian jungle. Around us is a group consisting only of children from five to seventeen. It is evening. While the little ones play in the corner, the older children assign their roles for the night.
"Do you want to share your bed with Mukwab today?" the chief of the group asks a girl who is perhaps fourteen.
She shakes her head vigorously.
"Then I suggest Defedar," the boy says.
"I don’t want him either."
"Who, then?"
"Halvaldar," she shouts, and her eyes glow.
Silence falls. Small groups form. They seem to be consulting. From the corner where the youngest children are playing a voice suddenly breaks out: "That is impossible," shouts a nine-year-old boy, "you’ve already shared your bed with him three times. Tonight I want to sleep with you. Please ……
The girl smiles and goes to the little boy. "Agreed," she says and begins to comb his hair. But stop! We must tip-toe into paradise. Softly, lovingly, quietly. Unburdened by our judgments. Like man before the Fall. Innocent and uncorrupted. Prepare yourself to assume for fifteen minutes that your world and morality are not absolutely the only correct ones
Perhaps we needn’t go as far as Verrier Elwin, a famous theologian and anthropologist. When he came to convert the Muria people he laid aside his cassock and declared: "There is no god but truth." He thought he was closer to this god among the Murias and could serve him better there than by strict conformity to Christian doctrines and the spreading of Western civilization.
On Elwin’s track we reached the territory of the Murias, a people numbering 200,000, living south of New Delhi in the territory of Bastar, in the heart of India, surrounded by tigers, snakes, and Indians who, convinced of the doctrine of Hinduism, suspect the devil to be at work among the heathen Murias.
We met the first "devil" on a narrow forest path. A boy of perhaps ten. Alone. Happy. Singing. Since we have been traveling in India, this is the first time we have heard a song. Except in the houses reserved for music-making prostitutes, singing is never heard. In the villages people don’t even smile. And here suddenly is a little person who sings contentedly at the top of his lungs – and who is startled with fright when he sees us, although the bush is thick and the territory dangerous.
In his hair are four red flowers. Around his neck he wears a necklace of carved wood. Boldly he approaches Claude Deffarge and offers her a flower.
"Are you a motiari (unmarried girl)?" he asks.
Claude nods.
"Then take this flower. It is a token of love."
Now we feel captured by this gallant child of the jungle. Out of sheer embarrassment I ask the little cavalier who gave him the flowers.
"My motiari," he says, and a tender light gleams in his eyes.
"And how old is she?"
The boy raises his hand to the level of his chest and opens them as though cautiously clasping two small rounded objects. "No older than that," he explains. "Her breasts are still as small as lemons. But she is the most beautiful in the whole village!"
When we meet the first girls we practice guessing their ages. This is not at all difficult. Over their backs and breasts they wear a folded cloth that reveals their "birth certificates" with every lively movement.
The little one who tells us that the oldest man of the village of Chilputi cannot receive us is – according to the "scale" of our young friend – already of grapefruit age. She offers us salfi, a palm wine, which tastes better than champagne. But that cannot comfort us. Without the permission of the mayor we cannot do anything here.
An older boy explains: "The village elder is only a little drunk. He thinks he will offend you if he doesn’t appear before you sober. Have patience."
A wise man! That comforts us. But we want more than the permission to stay here. We want to study the life of, the Murias. They belong to the 30 million natives whose forefathers already inhabited India before the Aryan conquerors overran the subcontinent.
The Murias live, as they always have, by agriculture, hunting, and fishing and they have hardly been touched by Hinduism. They have also preserved an institution to which they owe the privilege of being called the happiest people on earth: the ghotul – the children’s house.
Every village has such a children’s house. Usually it is set apart, at the edge of the jungle. The parents keep only the infants with them, and all other children of the village community live together in this house, which they have built themselves. Alone. Without adult supervision. It is an independent republic of minors, in which they live according to their own laws.
We are concerned above all with this ghotul. To gain entrance is very difficult. Up to now few have succeeded.
We are lucky. The polite young man who asked us to pardon the inebriated village elder, is the chief of the local ghotul. He has even been to school. We can therefore easily convince him that we are not – like Indian travelers and loiterers – lasciviously on the lookout for vice. What interests us is that even European sociologists call the children’s house of the Murias the "world’s healthiest education."
We exchange a few gifts. In the evening we are already permitted to observe the daily dances of the children. Two days later we are officially named relatives. From now on I am the brother of the chief. Yes, in spite of my age I receive a noble title. Claude Deffarge, also. She becomes "Balosa," I "Divan." These titles designate important functions in the republic of children.
But our noble titles do not protect us from the strict command to stay in the ghotul only until midnight. What happens after that is exclusively a matter for the children and must remain hidden from adult eyes.
So there we sit in the circle of these young people who are assigning their roles for the night. It is eleven o’clock.
The fourteen-year-old girl who earlier declined vigorously to share her bed with the partners suggested for her is finished with the combing. Now she takes off the shirt of the little boy who pleaded so loudly for her nocturnal companionship, and massages his back and arms. She is a head taller than he. A woman, in comparison to this child.
It is difficult to remain calm and not to judge according to our standards. Our Indian interpreter doesn’t succeed. He is breathing heavily. "They are reincarnated devils," he whispers. "Shameless creatures. Why doesn’t our government forbid such a thing?"
I can imagine what is going on in his head. But only there. For there is no hint here of sex or perverse games. The massage in no tender stroking. I have tried it out. One’s skin ends up in tatters, but one’s muscles are relaxed after the day’s work.
The children are doing everything with great seriousness. I would almost compare them with European Scouts who are discussing the next day’s tasks around the camp fire. While five girls are combing their partners’ hair, a group of older boys is discussing the harvest. The jobs are assigned and the little children must report what they have done during the day.
The chief, called "Sirdar," and the mistress, the Belosa, oversee the order in the ghotul. Punishments are handed out when necessary and no one objects. Authority is embodied in the whole group and accepted by everyone. Rights and duties are continually reborn out of the inner needs of the children -and exclusively administered and strictly observed by them: for these rights and duties correspond to their world.
The parents have nothing to say in the ghotul. They may at no time interfere. Their authority is limited to the administration of the community, The council of elders regulates the relationships with neighboring tribes and the Indian government offices. It also oversees the schools, which many voluntarily attend nowadays.
Naturally the parents provide their children’s meals – in return for which the children do a large part of the farming work. During the day the young people are in school or in the fields. But punctually at six the time at the ghotul begins.
The children’s house does not by any means serve only for sexual education. It is the center of village activity. Its members organize the harvest. the hunt, and marriage and burial ceremonies. Without the ghotul the Muria community could not function.
At the moment the Belosa is asking who will take over the tiger watch tonight. Four boys volunteer. Two are appointed. A big boy and a little one.
Commands are never given. Everything is decided in common. Sirdar and Belosa are not tyrants. Nor do they get their posts because their parents, say, are rich and therefore have more influence, perhaps, than others. There is nothing like that here. The best one automatically rises to the highest rank and there is unanimity about it.
My brother, the Sirdar of this ghotul, is the son of a simple smith. Now he is smiling at me, because an eight-year-old girl has taken possession of him and is almost tearing his hair out. The little girl wants to show that she too can already comb the way she should.
"Have you chosen her for yourself?" I ask.
"No, the little girl wants to share my bed tonight, and I cannot say no," he answers, his face distorted by pain. Tufts of hair are stuck in the girl’s comb.
Tonight, also, a fourteen-year-old girl will share her mat with a nine-year-old boy, and the sixteen-year-old Sirdar must sleep with the wildly combing child.
What will happen? Probably nothing at all. Or very little. Here there is no repressed sexual curiosity suddenly aware of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For the occasion is not unique. It belongs to life like eating and drinking. The fourteenyear-old will take her little comrade into her arms and then peacefully go to sleep with him. Other couples may exchange a few caresses before sleepiness overcomes them -and older children perhaps steal softly out of the house in order to make love outside.
Meanwhile a few boys have spread out their mats. Next to them stand the girls. They have combed and massaged them. Now they wait until we have left the ghotul so that they can lie down to rest in the arms of the boys.
Belosa bends over Claude Deffarge. "Only ten minutes more," she says, "then unfortunately, you must leave us." They are not sending us away because we might be witnesses to some love games. Whoever caresses or loves here must do it unobserved. Discretion and considerateness are very strict rules. And in general nothing forbidden ever happens. Here everyone holds very exactly to the prescribed laws of the children’s republic.
This concept is hardly understandable for a European. In the ghotul, caresses and sexuality are just as harmoniously included in life as work and dancing in the day’s events. The Murias are convinced that sexuality is the chief problem of man and that a society can only maintain its equilibrium if this primordial power is given a place that corresponds to its importance. Instead of damming it up – as we, the Indians, and many others do – with prohibitions, the Murias have made an attempt to tame sexuality in the ghotul and even to sublimate it: and in fact sexual harmony and inner peace reign in their paradise.
The proofs are not lacking: other peoples of India and even the modern Indians must attest to a real inflation of crimes, suicides, and sexual offences. But among the Murias there is no criminality, no prostitution, no homosexuality – not even petty thefts. Here, according to Indian statistics which are certainly not exactly friendly to the Murias – live the most harmonious people in the world. And if we had not visited them ourselves in many villages, I would not have believed it either.
In the ghotul, besides, there is no learning, instruction, or drilling. The basic attitude toward sexuality is simply the complete opposite of ours. We learn for instance from the thirteen-year-old girl on my right, who will share her bed today with a fifteen-year-old boy, that she is still a virgin. Not because her parents want it or a particular moral code dictates it. She has quite simply not yet found anyone with whom she will take the last step together – although she has been sleeping for five years with a different boy every night.
When we must leave the ghotul, the hour of sleep or caresses – or love – begins. It may even happen that the fourteenyear-old girl tonight will initiate her nine-year-old comrade into love. Perhaps, too, a sixteen-year-old boy will cautiously show a twelve-year-old girl what it means to be man and wife.
It is a part of the essential wisdom of the ghotul that it is bettor to be led by an older child than to be seduced or taken by surprise by an inexperienced one – without conscience pangs, without difficulty, but also without any obligation. And if a boy does try to force a girl or even to be tender with her against her will. then he is strictly punished.
At the beginning of the evening we were shown how that happens: a boy was hung by his thumbs with a rope. He stood it for a few seconds. In a serious case the punishment lasts three minutes. And in case the person who is punished this way tries again to overpower a girl’s will, he is excluded from the society of the children for a considerable time. Here that is almost as serious as death.
Sirdar gives us the sign. It is just midnight. Each of the children touches our left shoulders briefly and wishes us, good night.
At the door I ask the Sirdar how old a child must be to enter the ghotul. "When he no longer goes in his pants at night and is big enough to gather wood for our fire."
"Is that the only standard?"
"Certainly not," he says, seriously now. "The children come into the ghotul as soon as they understand what happens at night between their fathers and mothers. That is bad for a child. You understand? When a child suddenly sees that his father is taking his mother away from him, it is high time to send him to the ghotul.
The Murias know what a mental burden it can be for a child when he is half asleep to witness his parents’ love. They also seem to suspect that the awakening sexuality of a child usually is transferred to his mother or father and can lead to pathological complexes. They escape this danger by sending the child from his parents’ house into the ghotul, where his sexuality can be directed at the proper time to others of his own age. The unconscious and often deranging sexual rivalry with the father, which psychoanalysis has made famous under the name of the Oedipus complex, is thus avoided.
Also. the collision between the child’s need for activity and parental authority does not exist here. Father and mother are soon replaced by another "orderer": the community of all the children. Their rules and laws are never questioned – because they bind everyone. They are not, as at home, the sum of privileges – often arbitrarily administered -by two adults with all their weaknesses, moods, and pedagogical bumbling, but the self-chosen duties of a republic of children.
In short: Among the Murias there is no unavoidable conflict between parent and child – either in the unconscious sexual or in the conscious authoritarian realm. Consequently, love for parents is much greater than elsewhere, and lasts the whole life long.
That sounds almost too beautiful to be true. But in a singular way, this observation agrees essentially with the discoveries of European psychiatry: The ghotul of the Murias is, so to speak, the psychoanalytic ideal of education. Naturally, it contradicts our traditional family order and sexual morality. But many sociologists and even the Swedish parliament are seriously considering today whether the experiences of the Murias might not show us too a way out of our threatening sexual anarchy.
Be that as it may, we at any rate have never seen so many lighthearted people as in this "paradise." And we have rarely met people who are as sexually fulfilled as the Muzias.
But what happens when one of these girls falls in love? When she prefers one special boy and wants to have him for herself? The laws of the ghotul forbid that. A girl may be with the same boy three times. Then she must change, or she will be punished. Later she may make love with him again three times. but she must always give some other boy the opportunity in between.
"In this way love is preserved," an old Muria says to us. "If the children attach themselves to one partner early, their love is lost."
We try to convince him he is wrong and tell him of Europe and America, where it is believed that young love can last beyond the grave.
He only shakes his head. "Where there is too much love before marriage, there is less and less afterward."
"In this way, too, it is easier for a person to remain faithful later," adds another Muria. "Someone who has already learned everything as a child is no longer curious later on."
But what happens when a girl is in love and later is married to another?
"That happens," the old man explains. "If the love is really great, then the couple separate from their spouses, whom they love less, and marry each other. We have three such cases in the village. Everyone finds that normal. And no one would protest. Least of all the unloved spouse."
We ask many young men for their opinion. They all answer unanimously: "In the ghotul there must not be any firm pairs, or jealousy and competition would creep in. Society could no longer function justly. And what would happen in such a case to the ugly ones? Should they be thrown out or made to stand aside?"
"Doesn’t a lover become unhappy when he knows that the girl he prefers is in the arms of another?" we want to know.
"That happens only rarely. We get used to sharing everything very early. If a boy frowns because of jealousy he is punished."
We ask some girls if they would rather not have a steady friend. "Then we would all be pregnant," one of them answers. "Oh, no – never! In the ghotul everything is all right as it is."
The Murias are convinced that a girl can only become pregnant when she binds herself to a man in her mind and remains physically true to him. That may be a ridiculous superstition. But somehow this conviction must have anchored itself so deeply in the consciousness of the Murias that it is effective. For there are hardly any pregnancies among them: only 4 percent – with complete sexual freedom. That is incredibly few. But as soon as one of these girls marries, the first child appears in the first year of the marriage.
Physicians and psychologists have concerned themselves with this phenomenon without finding a satisfying answer. Perhaps there are in the ghotul rules and prescribed times of love which explain this limitation on conception. We do not know.
In spite of everything we and others before us have been able to find out the republic of children still contains a thousand secrets. They are guarded all the more carefully as more and more Indians traveling through look upon the ghotul as a brothel and try to gain entrance as "customers." Thank God they have not yet succeeded!
This is the image "civilization" presents: foreign people who laugh at the Murias as primitives and scorn their customs, but who, at the first opportunity, try to exploit them shamelessly – supported by liquor, gifts, or threats. They are the snakes of paradise.
The Murias are not primitives. In their little world they have consciously created the most harmonious society we have ever seen.
~
Note: Mind you that this article was written in the early 70’s and published by a somewhat conservative German magazine. That’s why you stumble on some strange conclusions like the fact that “there is no homosexuality” – mentioned alongside with prostitution and theft.
