Abstract

Land, forest, village, community and territory are integral to tribal identity. The binding relationship between tribe and the land is an essential condition and a pre-requisite for the continuance of a tribal/indigenous identity. Any disruption of this relationship between the tribal peoples and their lands do not bode well for the continuance of the tribal identity. Taking note of the way in which the struggle of the Bodos for Bodoland has evolved, we identify that while land has been the central area of contestation between the Bodos and the state, its meaning and value differ for both.

Victor Narzary is Assistant Professor, Assam Don Bosco University, Guwahati & Bibharani Swargiary is independent reseracher and consultant for CBOs

The paper was presented in an International Seminar “Indian State and Indigenous/Tribal Peoples: Revisiting Philosophical Foundations of Constitutional Guarantees”, organized by Bodoland University & Centre for Social Justice and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences at Kokrajhar on 28-29th March 2014. The seminar was supported by the Tribal Intellectual Collective India.

Introduction

Tribal peoples are the earliest inhabitants of their lands. And they have been identified with terms like the “indigenous peoples”, “natives”, “First Nation”, “autochtons”, “aborigins”, “adivasis”, etc. across the globe. Over centuries of their existence, these peoples have lived closely with nature, and also been its custodians. Despite the painful and brutal experiences of the colonisation processes, the ruthless proselytisation and assimilationist moves of the mainstream, and the repressive mechanisms unleashed by the state, the rudimentary elements of this distinctive indigenity are adhered to. To this day the tribal peoples’ organisations, beliefs and customs, socio-relgious and cultural practices are intrinsically woven around nature and land (read also as territory). Our festivals celebrate the abundance of nature, our dances follow the rhythm of life surrounding us, and our songs champion the cosmic relationship between human and nature. While we have joyous and lively celebrations, we also have melancholic renditions that rue the unfortunate events and processes that alienate the tribal from nature and land. Our belief systems and socio-religious practices surrounding nature and our lands continue to give to us a unique identity- that of the respective tribe. And we celebrate this unique identity which often becomes antithetical and disjunctive to the assimilative advances of the dominant and the mainstream groups controlling the state.

This conceptual paper seeks to understand the relationship between the tribal and the land, the relationship between tribal lands, tribal identity and the state determined by its ideological positions. It is a humble attempt to throw light upon what meaning land, as a cultural artifact, holds for the tribes on the one hand and the state controlled by its varying socio-political and economic ideological positioning on the other hand. This conception, we believe, will lead us towards unraveling the inherent contradictory and irreconcilable positions held by the state and the tribes, at this point in time; understand the protracted conflicts that have erupted and also have been sustained in the tribal/indigenous areas of the country.

We have organized this paper in three different parts. In the first part, we will try to ‘situate’ the notion of land as understood from different disciplinary approaches and the meanings held by them. The second part is an attempt to draw from existing scholarship the meaning and value that land occupies in the tribal/indigenous worldview. And key to our understanding of the conflicts being played out in tribal/indigenous areas is the contradictory meaning and value that land holds for the state with its set of ideological underpinnings, exemplified by the case of the Bodo tribe of India, which forms the third part of this paper. We don’t claim that this paper is the answer to the issues and problems surrounding the notions of tribal lands, identity and the state, and the contested relationships between these. We do hope, though, that this attempt will help us who are trying to make sense of our experiences, that are often, very painfull events and processes unfolding in a very rapid pace in our tribal/indigenous heartlands.

Land, its daily usage

In geographical terms, land is used to denote the solid part of earth’s surface as distinct from seas, lakes, etc. It can also mean an area of ground with reference to its nature or composition, or an area of ground with specific boundaries. Sometimes, it is also used to denote rural or farmlands, as contrasted with urban areas (Dictionary.com, n.d.). Through the lens of human geography land is taken to mean a country, region or area, or the people of a country; distinguishable by boundaries or ownership (The Free Dictionary, n.d.).

In economic terms, land is referred to as the “resource that encompasses the natural resources used in production.” Modern economics view it as inclusive of all that land provides such as minerals, forest products, and water and land resources (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2014). Legally, land includes any part of the earth’s surface that can be owned as property, and everything annexed to it, whether by nature or by the human hand (Dictionary.com, n.d.).

Again, as a geopolitical entity, land is associated with the juridico-discursive notion of being a space where there is concentration of power and becomes a point of reference for people. Boundaries are created to make way for groups or nations to live as kingdoms, territories and states for establishment of territorial control, sovereignty, etc.

In the development literature, land has been traditionally presented as a resource for increasing wealth and income, a higher standard of living, improved technology and industrial progress by creating incentives for investment (Fernandes and Bharali, 2011). In the wake of recent literature on development, land is viewed as a resource that is integral to “economic activity, poverty reduction, sustainable management, and the well-being of households” (Ubink, 2008: 15). Thus highlighting the sustainable and prolonged use of resources.

Land and tribal identity

As tribal/indigenous scholars who accept that one’s position shapes one’s worldviews, we feel that it is essential for us to, first of all, identify and locate the epistemic premises that form the basis of who does the questioning and what answers are sought for, while discussing ‘tribal identity’ (see for example Akhup, 2013; and bodhi, 2014). Therefore, the framing of ‘tribal identity’ involves exercise of power, and raises the question of who has exercised that power and how it has been done. Going by Foucauldian notion, power is understood to be a complex “relations of forces” in the society that coerce one to act in a particular direction; and as power relations are “non-subjective and intentional”, they take the form of a strategy by the dominant to subjugate, oppress and reinforce relationships of divisions, inequality and disequilibrium (Lynch, 2012: 13-26). Thus, ever since and prior to the Indian independence, the vast-majority of epistemic positionalities that have attempted to study, understand and define tribal identities have sought to define tribes in relation to the mainstream and thereby deny agency to the tribals/indigenous peoples themselves. To reframe this discourse, Akhup (2013: 1) calls for “reverse anthropology”, that is to position oneself within the premises of tribal epistemology to reclaim the actual meaning and experiences of the “tribe” and their identity.

As mentioned earlier, there has been few and sparse literature that tried to study, understand and articulate the tribal identity from the positionality of the tribal episteme in the Indian context. Very few studies conducted hitherto fore, have established that land and the tribes are inseparable. Xaxa (2008), for example, argues that land, forest, village, community and territory are integral to tribal identity. Thus, emphasizing the need to recognize that a binding relationship between tribe and the land is an essential condition and a pre-requisite for the continuance of a tribal/adivasi identity. Any disruption of this relationship between the tribal peoples and their lands do not bode well for the continuance of the tribal identity. For example, Marak (2004) bemoans the loss of tribal peoples’ land and also their gradually degrading relationship with it. As nature and land are accorded a revered position in the tribal ontology and existence, they are wont to suffer from variety of illnesses, crises deprivation, marginalization and impoverishment in their individual as well as community-living (Fernandes and Bharali, 2011; Daimary, 2012; Leo, 2013).

Presently, we can see a renewed and growing scholarship in this line of study with the formation of the Tribal Intellectual Collective India by a group of young academics under the visionary leadership of bodhi sr, faculty at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and their subsequent publications in the online journal, the Journal of Tribal Intellectual Collective India. Thus, a serious engagement with and articulations of the conceptions and experiences of the tribes from the emic perspective has started emerging in India, for the first time in its history. Drawing from these scholarships (see for example Leo 2013, Riamei, 2013, Narzary & Swargiary 2013), one finds that they affirm, vouch and testify that land is integral to tribal identity and worldview. Land is inextricably linked to the tribal peoples’ identification and it forms the ground for their socio-cultural, political, economic and spiritual existence and being. It is this understanding of the meaning and value held by the tribal/indigineous peoples that becomes essential for articulating and juxtaposing the opposing tribal-state relationship and configurations pertaining to land.

In the contemporary times, tribal identity which is based on land has been facing threats due to loss of land like never before. While we discuss land loss of the tribal peoples, it is prudent to be reminded of the Marxian notion of ‘alienation’ (Abraham and Morgan, 2008: 41-45). In the tribal context, alienation from land and loss of control over leads to feeling of alienation from one’s culture, economy, religion and political structures, thereby alienating one from creativity and the ‘self’. In other words, alienation from land eventually mean tribal peoples’ alienation from their very identity. One possible outcome of this process is the presence of severe contradictions and conflicts in many tribal areas of the country. The continued process of land-grabbing from the tribes has resulted in their large scale impoverishment and marginalization (Fernandes and Pereira 2005; Fernandes and Bharali, 2011)). There is widespread assertion and resistance to these processes of dispossession countrywide. Rupavath (2009), in his study of tribal land alienation in South-India maintains that unless tribal lands and economy are protected in future, and a pattern of development better suited to their way of life is introduced, tribal oppression and movements arising from them will continue and reach bigger dimensions.

Tribe and the state: a century of struggle for land by the Bodos

Bodos, also appearing as Kachari in usage, is a generic term for a number of groups speaking a more or less common dialect or language or claiming a common ancestry in India. Gait (1905) and Baruah (2003) regard the Bodos as the aborigines, or earliest known inhabitants of Brahmaputra valley, that is, the whole of modern Assam, North Bengal and parts of Bangladesh. Though spread in different parts of this region, as well as, in the neighbouring countries, majority of their population is found in Central and Lower Assam. The Boro people form the largest indigenous group in the present demography of the region.

Eversince the arrival of the British colonisers and later the formation of the Indian state, the Bodos have found themeselves to be struggling to retain the lands where they have been living for ages wherein their culture, economy, politics and spirituality have been interwoven. The series of events that unfolded during the past century of the Bodo struggle suggest that land has been the foci all along. Below is a brief about the Bodoland movement.

The Kingdom of Bodos was annexed by the British in 1854 after the death of Tularam Senapati and was put under the direct administration by the British. Line System was then established for the areas inhabited by the Bodos and other Plains’ Tribes, that sought to exclude these areas on the basis of their non-governmentality by the Colonialists.

The first time the Bodos feared for the loss of their ancestral territories, and made a serious plea for separate electorates for the plains tribes happened under the banner of Kachari Yuvak Sanmilani on 14 th of September 1928 and 4 th of January 1929, when they submitted memorandums to the Simon Commission in Delhi and also when he visited Shillong respectively. The anti-Simon Commission wave in the Indian Nationalist movement, however, diluted their pleas. Subsequently, the Bodo areas became part of the Assam state in 1947 (Datta, 1993).

Despite the prevalence of the Line System in these areas and the recommendations of the F.W. Hockenhull Committee (February 1938) calling for stricter measures for the protection of tribal land, the areas inhabited by the plains tribes of Assam did not come under the Fifth or the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution soon after India attained Independence. Thus in 1947, in view of the opposition and displeasure raised by the Bodo leaders, the Assam Government (of undivided Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya) in consonance with the central government adopted a policy of promise to tribals. Accordingly, the Chapter X of the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation Act of 1886 was amended and henceforth came to be known as Assam Land and Revenue Regulation (Amendment) Act 1947 (or Assam Act XV of 1947). This Act provided for the creation of Belts and Blocks for the protection of those classes “who on account of their primitive condition and lack of education or material advantages are incapable of looking after their welfare”. The Act made extensive provisions for the protection of land of the classes for whom it was meant. In view of the Act, as many as 11 Tribal Belts and 24 Tribal Blocks were notified during the first five years between 1947 and 1951 with reference to the prevailing Line System, all of which were in the plains’ districts of Assam. The Article 162 (2) of the Act provided for protective measures pertaining to these belt and block areas as it stated that “Notwithstanding anything in the contrary in any law, usage, contract or agreement, no person shall acquire or possess by transfer, exchange, lease, agreement or settlement any land in any area or areas constituted into belts and block.”

Further, Article 162(3) provided that “From and after the commencement of the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation (Amendment) Act 1964, no document evidencing any transaction for acquisition or possession of any land by way of transfer, exchange, lease, agreement or settlement shall be registered under the India Registration Act, 1908, if it appears to the registering authority that the transaction has been affected in contravention of the provisions of the subsection 162(2).” Again 164 (B) added by Assam Land and Revenue Regulation (Amendment) Act of 1990 (Assam Act IV of 1990) strengthens the Act by making provisions of penalties to be inflicted upon the transference of land in contravention of the provisions of Chapter X.

The Act was, however, enacted to deceive the Tribal League that was representing the Plains Tribes, and with no intention of the tribal peoples’ welfare. The major flaw of the Act was that in none of the relevant provisions of the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation the word “tribal” was used. The discretionary powers given to the government officials and the absence of the word “tribal” led to its widespread liberal interpretations in many cases, mostly to the detriment of the tribes (Choudhury, 2007). Nonetheless, the creation of Tribal Belt and Block that came out of this Act was significant in the years to come, because it became the rallying point for assertion of rights of the plains tribes in several places.

In spite of providing for such strong measures to contravene the loss of land from the Bodos who were in 1947 leading a simple and indigenous way of life and apprehensive of the administrative mechanisms of the state (that were mostly run by non-tribals), the present predicament of the tribal peoples of the state speak volumes about the promises of the state that were kept more in violation than in deed. Different non-Assamese groups and communities in Assam, especially the Bodos, therefore have been apprehensive of the fact that the state of Assam is ruled by ‘Assamese chauvinism’ and therefore the state is for the Assamese, excluding tribal and other communities who mobilise around distinct community identity and territory (Datta, 1993; Hussain 1993; Pegu, 2013). As such, there has been widespread encroachment upon tribal lands- large areas have been occupied for settlement of refugees from earstwhile East Pakistan, reservation into forest lands, purchased or leased by non-tribes and the state as well (Choudhury, 2007).

In 1965, the Kokrajhar District Tribal Sangha alleged thus-

“The District Tribal Sangha has observed with grave concern that in May, 1952, the government alienated an area of 4037 bighas of cultivated land from the Bijni Tribal Block constituted in 1947 and included it in the Panbari Reserve Forests, and, in 1961, an area of about 1000 bighas of cultivable land of the said block was included in the Bishnupur Colony which has been created to accommodate the refugees from East Pakistan, thus making the land problems of the tribals within the tribal block more dangerous” (PTCA, 1967).

Though the state of Assam had 19 million acres of cultivable fallow waste land outside the Tribal Belt and Block Areas lying vacant for want of hands, it was the tribal belts and blocks that became the target, whether it was for the extension of forest area or for settlement of refugees (Choudhury, 2007).

The continued onslaught on the tribal lands, forests, communities and cultures has led to the demands for autonomy and political self-determination by the different tribes in the north-eastern region. Accordingly, the long-standing demand for the separate state of Bodoland attained the Bodoland Autonomous Council (BAC) in 1993. The tri-partite agreement by the Central government, the state government of Assam and the Bodo leaders was on the basis of the Tribal Belt and Block areas on the North of the Brahmaputra, notified by the state government of Assam. However, the agreement was a farce as neither the central nor the state governments showed any indication of implementing the agreed upon principles.

The betrayal led to further escalation of conflicts in Assam. Thus Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) was created in February10, 2003. The BTC is a territorial administrative structure established according to the Memorandum of Settlement by the Central Government, State Government of Assam and the Bodo Liberation Tigers’ Force. The Bodoland Territorial Areas District (Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalguri) came under the purview of the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution vide an amendment of the Indian Constitution in Article 371 B. However, the amended Sixth Schedule which is devoid of the Paragraph X of The Assam land and Revenue Regulation Act 1947 (that prohibits transfer of land to non-tribals), is further dilution of the protective mechanisms that were instituted to safeguard loss of land from tribals. It could be part of the larger neoliberal structures that guide the land policies of the state presently.

Land dimension of the Bodoland Movement vis-à-vis the state: conflicting paradigms

On careful observation of the case of the Bodoland struggle, we can identify that while land has been the central area of contestation between the Bodos and the state, its meaning and value differ for both. As a result of this dissonance there has been conflicts all along. Recent scholarship on identity as a basis for conflict in the Bodo areas suggest that state has prolonged and fuelled displacement meted out to the tribal groups in lieu of development projects (Fernandes & Bharali, 2011; Daimary, 2012). At the same time, there is an emerging scholarship to suggest that land to a tribal has, and takes at one and the same time, a valued meaning that shapes the political, social, economic and cultural aspects of one’s existence that integrates the tribal philosophy, worldview and existence into harmonious oneness (Nongkynrih, 2009; Sangma, 2009; & Debbarma 2009). Thus, I have attempted to summarize this dichotomous and conflicting paradigms in the following table-

Conclusion

The above matrix clearly shows the unfortunate incompatibility of the two worldviews pertaining to land, that of the state guided by its neoliberal agenda on the one hand, and on the other hand, that of the tribal/indigenous worldview. And this leads us back once more to question – who has held power in defining and identifying who is tribe and what constitutes a tribe in the Indian context? How has it been exercised thus far? How does it become a strategy of the dominant to create relationships of inequality and oppression?

I would like to conclude with a thought that this is where indigenous worldview, the meaning and value it holds for land takes a position of prime importance at a time when our earth is “heading towards ecological disasters and crises” (bodhi, 2014). It comes as a powerful alternative to the existing dominant socio-political and economic paradigm of the state guided by its neoliberal agenda.

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