Varli

The Varli were the principal landholders of regions such as Dahanu, Palghar and Umbergaon, in present-day Maharashtra, until around the 1870s. Under British colonial administration, outside merchants, moneylenders and landowners took advantage of illiteracy to seize these lands, and many Varli came to work as day laborers and bonded workers on what had once been their own.

In 1945, thousands of Varli workers, supported by Shamrao and Godavari Parulekar, refused to work for the landowners and demanded an end to unpaid forced labor. The movement was repressed, and five protesters died under police gunfire, but it contributed to the abolition of these practices and to the setting of minimum wages. This memory of resistance remains a source of dignity for the people.

Today most live from farming, growing mainly rice and other grains, and many supplement their income with seasonal work on farms in the region. The villages are small, and social life revolves around family and community, with mutual help in planting and harvest.

Art is part of daily life and festivals. The clay walls of homes are painted for weddings and harvests, and scenes of circle dancing express shared life. Across generations, women have been the main keepers of this tradition, and community life values cooperation and harmony with the land. Many families still live between the labor of the fields and the demands of a simple rural setting.

The traditional faith of the Varli is animist: the world is inhabited by spirits of nature, trees, hills and ancestors, and good relations with them must be kept. At the center of many ritual paintings is a sacred square, the devchauk, where the mother goddess Palaghata is depicted, linked to fertility and the abundance of the land.

Through long contact with their neighbors, they have also absorbed many practices and deities of Hinduism, and today the two streams blend in daily life. In general, religion is lived communally, in rites tied to planting, harvest, marriage and illness, and not so much as a system of written doctrines.

A New Testament is available for the Varli, which is already an important step for a people whose language is passed on mostly by word of mouth. Even so, since many Varli have little schooling and writing is not part of everyday life, silent reading reaches few. The Word reaches the people best when it is heard, told in stories and shared aloud among relatives and neighbors, in the rhythm of their own oral tradition.

For the Varli, faith is intertwined with village rites, ancestors and the identity of the group, so following another path may be seen as turning away from the community. The social pressure of the surrounding Hindu environment also weighs heavily. In addition, limited schooling and the oral nature of the language make access to Scripture difficult, and villages scattered across the hills make it rare to meet someone who lives out and explains the gospel in an understandable way.

Many Varli families still face the insecurity of depending on seasonal work, the scarcity of land of their own, and limited access to school and healthcare. There is a great need for education, especially in the people’s own language, and for opportunities that honor their culture and their dignity.

On the spiritual level, the people need a Word that speaks to the heart in their language, and communities of faith born among the Varli themselves, able to walk carefully alongside those who want to know Jesus.