Carrying forward the flag of Koya tribes and their stories

Explore the rich heritage of the Koya tribe through their legacy flags, storytelling, and cultural traditions at Medaram.

As millions of devotees converge at Medaram at the foothills of Chilkalgutta for three days for the jatara, some of the families have with them legacy flags or as they are called ‘padaga’ or ‘dalugudda’ that are decades and even a century old. As the families plot and plan their visit to the spiritual heart of the Koya tribe, the flags flutter from large hired vehicles, carts and makeshift tents. Flags shaped like a triangle that tell a story of gattu or gotra of each family.

“Now, I and my brother are the only flagmakers I have been doing it for the past 10 years. Other flagmakers have retired or have stopped making them,” says Tholem Kalyan, whose brother Tholem Venkateswarlu has been making the flags for the past 20 years from their family home in Aswapuram Mandal in Bhadradri Kothagudem district.

When the reimagined space for the Samakka Saralamma platforms was being created by the Telangana government it was these flags crafted by the two brothers that helped the sculptors chisel the shapes. Symbols and shapes that range from a bull, geometrical shapes, oversized humans, elephants and other creatures big and small that now find space on the gigantic stone pillars and arches.

“The flags are not just random images. We go and purchase red cloth from Kothegudam after a family asks us to make a flag. Each flag has over 90 images. On an auspicious day, we begin work by cutting out the shapes that each family’s story has. Then we stitch them on the flag that takes up to three months of time,” informs Mr. Kalyan. While the two brothers stitch and create the flags there over 100 Koya families that use the same flag to narrate their family histories.

“The koya tribe history is narrated by folk artistes known as artikalakarlu. They use the flag and sing and narrate the story for an assembled audience. That is how the oral history of the tribe is carried forward,” says Jayadheer Tirumala Rao, an ethnographer whose collection of objects include similar flags with unknown vintage.

The common element in all the flags include a snake, Hanuman, sun, moon and stars. As the families assemble and listen to the folk artistes narrating the clan history, another generation learns about the creation of the world from a cracked egg, the great battles of their ancestors, their own family and the magical beings with which they share the world.