Children of the Birhor tribe at the inter-school youth festival. Picture by Gautam Dey

Dhanbad, Oct. 12: The Birhor tribals maybe “on the verge of extinction” but today they left an ever-lasting memory in the hearts of students from four states.

At the 11th inter-DAV youth festival in Dhanbad, a group of Birhor children performed a traditional dance and song.

The children from the country’s rural backwater captivated the attention of hundreds of students and teachers.

The performers at DAV, Koylanagar, were from a remote Dhanbad village in Chalkari, under Topchanchi block.

The audience consisted of students and teachers from over 80 schools across Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and Orissa.

The main attraction was a tribal song on the rainy season.

Though hardly anyone in the audience understood the lyrics and their significance, the music enchanted them and they started tapping their feet to the beats on stage.

For the visitors from Bengal, Orissa and UP, it was an out of the world experience. “We did not know such a tribe exists in Jharkhand,” said a student.

The 20-minute performance was made by a group of five children aged between 10 and 12.

They were dressed in the traditional shorts, white dhotis, cummerbunds and headbands with twigs and feathers while dancing to drumbeats. Bada Birhor and Santosh Birhor, who were accompanying the tribal children, said they had never performed in front of an audience.

A teacher of DAV, Koylanagar, had taken the initiative of arranging the event today.

Ashutosh Mairh, the teacher, said:“It was totally an exchange of cultures. The Birhors, who want to stick to their jungle way of life, got an exposure of the mainstream and saw how others behave. It was only an effort to bring them to the mainstream.”

The Koylanagar school has been involved in other projects to uplift the tribals.

Earlier, a group of high school and some teachers had gone on an expedition to a Birhor village in Chalkari. The urban dwellers had discovered, studied and documented the various facets of the tribe that is on the path of extinction.

That photos that were taken during that project, named Samvedna, was displayed today to the audience.

The DAV school is also going to start an informal study centre called Samvedna to bring Birhors into the mainstream.