MUTHANGA

Muthanga: a spark of hope.
Publication Date: 22-MAR-04
Publication Title: Social Analysis
Format: Online - approximately 4968 words
Author: Raman, K. Ravi
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On 19 February 2003, the armed police of the currently rightwing government of the Indian state of Kerala descended on over one thousand adivasi (1) families-men, women and children--who had peacefully settled on the fringes of the Muthanga range of the Wayanad Wild Life Sanctuary, driving them out in a most brutal fashion and even killing one of those women who resisted. The state had failed to give any prior warning of the police action, nor was any attempt made toward a mediated negotiation. The police unleashed a reign of terror in the region; physical molestation of women was also reported, the latter having been substantiated by the National Women's Commission. Those who felt into the hands of the police were brutally manhandled en route to the police station; in a bizarre innovation, the activists were forced to beat one another. The movement had been launched by the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha--the Grand Assembly of Indigenous People--led by a tribal woman, C. K. Janu. The demands of the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha for land, food, shelter, the enforcement of constitutional provisions, reparation for losses incurred by the intervention of foreign companies in their environment, etc., are paralleled in indigenous movements elsewhere, e.g., the Zapatistas in Mexico (see Collier 1994; Gledhill 1997; Hellman 2000; Weinberg 2000; Womack 1999). However, unlike other indigenous movements, the situation in Kerala has received little world attention. Adivasis are the only ethnic minority in the state of Kerala, constituting 1.14 percent of its 31.8 million population. These indigenous people, belonging to different clans but of a common social origin, are spread over an adivasi belt that straddles the highlands of Wayanad, Palakkad, and Idukki districts. To understand the trajectories of the adivasis in Kerala (2)--1argely their social exclusion and resistance--one has to briefly look into the genesis of their misfortunes. They were largely displaced from their traditional habitat. This displacement began from the early nineteenth century with the razing of forests of Malabar and Travancore for the British navy and, by the 1850s, for the colonial railways. The process of dispossession gained momentum from the second half of the century and was a result of land appropriation by European and local planters and also of development projects involving the construction of dams and irrigation systems. The hardships of the capitalist depression--starting in the 1930s and continuing through the 1940s--spawned the first waves of peasant migration into the forest areas of the adivasis. (3) Much of the migration was encouraged in a parliamentary political process of legitimation whereby the adivasis were ultimately created as a powerless minority in their own ancestral lands. Once 90 percent of the population in the Attappadi region of the Palakkad District, by 1991 they had been reduced to 30 percent of the population. Deprived of land and fragmented in community identity, many became bonded laborers living in desperate, virtually subhuman conditions. Promised Land: Politics of Procrastination? In 2001, the Kerala state government negotiated a historic settlement of the adivasi land issue. The state conceded the demands by landless families for land. Most importantly, it agreed to bring adivasi areas under Schedule V of the Indian Constitution. This implicitly protected adivasi land rights and indicated a move to granting them more autonomy. (4) But the promised one to five acres of land per landless family has not been given; moreover, many of those lands that were handed over were found to have false deeds. This is fully in keeping with the record of past governments--both the Left and the Right; the adivasis of Kerala have been repeatedly victimized and betrayed by them from 1975 when the Kerala Scheduled Tribes (Restriction on Transfer of Lands and Restoration of Alienated Lands) Act was unanimously passed. The Act was intended to restore the lands alienated on or after 1 January 1960--a full ten years of alienation being calmly swept under the carpet. Another ten years elapsed before the rules and regulations governing the Act were finalized in 1986. It was decided that all transactions of 'tribal' lands to 'nontribals' made between 1960 and 1982 would be invalidated and the lands restored to the 'tribals' concerned. In turn, the latter were required to pay compensation, the same being provided by the Government in the form of loans. But the settler farmers, whose representatives themselves had supported the bill on the floor of the legislature, jeopardized the implementation of the legislation at the very outset. They even resorted to physical violence in their bid to stall official proceedings. The Government on its part reacted by further procrastination. In the 1990s, the Left Government of Kerala attempted to push through certain amendments, which all but rewrote the parent bill to the extent of extinguishing all adivasi land rights. The 1996 amendment in itself raised a furor: the Palakkad District Collector was taken hostage for nine hours by four captors belonging to the Ayyankalippada, a Maoist group; the entry of non-adivasis into adivasi regions was blocked and the amended Bill was cremated in various adivasi belts amidst cultural rites; (5) and angry adivasis led by C. K. Janu attempted to enter the Legislative Assembly by force. With the state showing little inclination toward settling the land question, the adivasis gradually moved toward everyday forms of resistance (6) and "counter-hegemonic/ anti-systemic" movements (Arrighi, Hopkins, and Wallerstein 1989; Gramsci 1971; also see Guha 1983). Whenever the Kerala government attempted to restore alienated lands, powerful settler groups would take to violence to stop official proceedings. Such action prompted the High Court to ask: "Can a democratic state with the rule of law as its beacon light, bow to such illegal resistance to the implementation of a welfare legislation to benefit the oppressed classes? Clearly it cannot" (cited in Bijoy 1999; also see Ravi Raman 2002; Sreekumar and Parayil 2002). The Kerala government made no move to prevent settler violence; indeed, its agents often supported it. Thus, whenever the adivasis have tried to assert their land rights, they have been crushed--often by police action. This was the situation in Cheegeri in 1995, in Panavally in 1997, and now in Muthanga. (7) In the face of the failure of the Kerala state offices to deal successfully with adivasis concerning land issues, public litigation has been no more successful. To date, the Supreme Court has not dealt with the adivasi land claims brought before it. The misery of the adivasis is not due to the lack of land alone. As elsewhere on the global peripheries, globalizing neoliberal reforms have had a crushing impact on the adivasis. The liberalization of the export-import policy of the Federal Government of India has created a crisis in the Kerala plantation industry, causing a crash in coffee and tea prices. This has lead to the layoff of plantation workers, many of them adivasis. (8) The introduction of new crops, such as vanilla, has further reduced employment opportunities. This has also exacerbated the adivasi situation because it encourages the long-term lease of lands, especially state-owned lands. This affects the potentiality for land redistribution while jeopardizing food production for the local population. The foregoing is exacerbated by the expansion of the tourist industry into the highlands, increasing processes of displacement and the further movement of adivasis into occupations of the economically depressed, such as prostitution. The Kerala Government has firmly opted for the neoliberal reforms of the Asian Development Bank. This is proving devastating for the socially and economically vulnerable, particularly the adivasis and dalits (Ravi Raman 2004). March toward Muthanga With the land issue unresolved, and suffering from increased unemployment as a result of neoliberal policies, the adivasis were pushed to the point of starvation. More than a dozen deaths from starvation were reported between 2001 and 2002. Despairing, the adivasis began to rise in revolt: in one instance, a few women of the Ayyankalippada waylaid a civil supplies truck and distributed its load of food to the starving adivasis. C. K. Janu took a different route, now with a wider support base of dalit groups and with able assistance from leaders such as M. Geethanandan. On 30 August 2001, while mainstream society was celebrating Onam, the harvest festival of Kerala signifying prosperity, nearly three hundred adivasi families, erected 'refugee huts' in front of the Chief Minister's residence and the offices of the state Secretariat in the Kerala capital of Thiruvananthapuram. They demanded their right to livelihood and to land for the landless. In a complete break with the past, the adivasis now demanded a settlement outside the controversial amendments of the 1975 parent Act. After a 42-day long historic struggle (Ravi Raman 2002), the state conceded almost all their demands, including the bringing of the adivasi areas under Schedule V. The government also agreed to provide one to five acres of cultivable land depending on availability to all landless adivasi families--nearly forty-two thousand acres of land had been identified toward this end. It was agreed that every effort should be made to identify land for redistribution in the Wayanad District, the area in which most landless adivasi families are located. With the distribution of lands to be initiated from January 2002, adequate support measures would be provided for a period of five years until these lands would begin to yield income. The government also gave its word that it would implement the Supreme Court verdict as soon as it came; the 'refugee huts' were thus dismantled with ritual solemnity--now in a powerful signal of victory. However, when this agreement also fell through, the adivasis now took more direct action, but in a most democratic and nonviolent fashion, with support of other dalit groups. A 'Tribal Court' was constituted, the first of its kind in India, which virtually ratified the decision of the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha to march toward Muthanga and to occupy the degraded area. The adivasis occupied the fringes of Muthanga, which is not truly a forest area, although it was under the control of the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary. It was an area that had been cleared for eucalyptus cultivation to provide raw material for the rayon pulp factory owned by Birlas, the Indian multinational. (9) The 'self-rule' that the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha declared was largely symbolic of what would have transpired had the state implemented the Constitutional provisions it had accepted earlier. The adivasis had first sought legislative protection to have their lands returned, but they had failed in this. They had then demanded a settlement outside the Legislative Acts which avoided a direct confrontation with those settler peasants whose interests were well-represented by ruling groups, whether Marxist or Congress. They had been willing for a compromise but this strategy too failed abysmally. Ultimately, they gave up on routine expressions of protest and decided on a nonviolent one, broadly in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution: to recover their ancestral domains. Their ancestral links with the region were later to be confirmed by the discovery of traditional shrines at the site at which their ancestors might have worshipped until they were displaced. Thus, on 4 January 2003, the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha marched into Muthanga to set up a Grama Sabha (village council) of its own. A settlement was built, rationing was introduced, a nursery school was opened, and a checkpoint was established (Bijoy and Ravi Raman 2003). Other adivasi organizations also had initiated similar attempts during the same period, as in the case of the state-owned Orange Farm at Nelliampathi. In fact, this show of resistance in Kerala was but a continuation of adivasi resistance in other parts of India--the ransacking of the World Bank office in New Delhi in 2003, (10) and the 'Enter the Forests' operation of Nagar Hole National Park in Karnataka in 2005, (11) to mention two. But the attempt at a peaceful occupation of Muthanga by the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha met with the most inhuman kind of retaliation ever; the horrendous images flashed by the media, braving the news embargo, spoke for themselves. Fascist Overtones? But what rankles most in this entire episode is the smug fascism exhibited by the people's representatives in the state legislature, including the Speaker of the State Assembly who considered gun-fire a fitting retribution to the adivasis' attempt at 'self-rule.' Members of the State Human Rights Commission colluded in the state action illustrative of the "perversion of the idea of human rights into human rights imperialism." (12) The Chief Minister accused the adivasis of an "armed uprising. " Their action was associated with the armed violence of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (13) and the Peoples' War Group. (14) Although a policeman was killed in the encounter, such associations were hardly appropriate to a thoroughly subordinated population wielding little else than agricultural implements, symbols of their plight. The nature of adivasi action was deliberately misrepresented by the Government, further attested to by the official transfer (rather than prosecution) of forest personnel who were caught setting forest fires in order to criminalize the adivasis. The mainly nonviolent commitment of adivasi leaders to the pursuit of social justice is exemplified by their voluntary surrender to the police in order to spare their followers further police harassment. A People's Judicial Commission, formed by former judge of the Supreme Court, V. R. Krishna Iyer, alleged that the police had resorted to firing without sufficiently warning the tribal agitators; nor had there been any attempt at a mediated settlement. Human rights activists and writers, such as Arundhati Roy, Vandana Shiva, and Medha Patkar, also condemned the state violence toward toward this long socially and politically oppressed people. The Catholic Priests Conference of Kerala demanded the resignation of the Government, stating that the adivasis have never harmed the forests, and that the state provides protection instead to those who plunder forests and penalizes those who fight for land that is truly theirs. The demand for a judicial probe voiced by the Opposition and nearly a dozen dalit groups and social forums was rejected outright by the Antony-led Congress Government in the state. As Kuldip Nayar, the noted Indian journalist and human rights activist, proclaimed after his meeting with Chief Minister A. K. Antony, "Antony has become Indira of Emergency." (15) Concluding Observations The lived life of indigenous peoples the world over is under threat: first, from the insidious effects of 'modernization,' and then from policies (e.g., sustainable development) established in the circumstances of postmodern globalization. Kerala is a state whose major policies of modernization and rationalism were directed to overcome gross inequalities but paradoxically such state intervention has, if anything, exacerbated the situation of the poor and the excluded. For the adivasis in the state, history is an unbroken chain of atrocities and servitude. The formation of the Kerala State in 1956 did little to break that chain. With the coming to power of the Communist Party in 1957, major reforms were initiated, aiming at social justice and facilitating political participation from most sectors of the population in effecting radical changes in social circumstances. Of great importance were changes in land ownership and distribution. But the egregiously disadvantaged--especially the adivasis and others, such as those in fishing communities--continued to suffer serious inequalities and exploitation. (16) The adivasi situation was in some cases exacerbated by land reform. When tenancy and landlordism were abolished in 1970, the tenants were granted occupancy rights; but in the adivasi belts, it was the settler farmers who came to be considered 'tenants,' with the adivasis losing lands from their position as 'landlords' (Ravi Raman 2002; see also Raj and Tharakan 1983). Under duress, the Government confiscated nearly fifty thousand acres of surplus land from Tata-Tea, the world's largest tea producer; but neither the landless plantation workers nor the starving indigenous people have benefited from it. Even as decentralized planning is being projected as a highly successful venture by the mainstream parties, the plight of the adivasis has given the lie to their claims. Much of the funds from the 'Tribal Sub Plans' are being drained by the bureaucracy and even being diverted into neoliberal projects that often prove deleterious to adivasi interests. With every successive rentier-coalition in the state, the welfare state is shown its way out, with market ideology reigning supreme, making adivasi life all the more insecure. In a travesty of the 'Kerala model,' the majority of the adivasis exist in a condition of abject want and deprivation; in a state that boasts of universal literacy, most of the adivasis remain wrapped in the darkness of ignorance. Unaware of their basic rights, they live outside the ambit of the law, harassed, beaten, and at times, even murdered. The situation of women appears to have worsened as indicated in the expanding numbers of unsupported single mothers. Instead of respecting the basic human rights of indigenous people, the state, unable to provide access to land and work, violently crushes their resistance. Kerala is one historical demonstration of the way processes of neoliberal reconstruction, often occasioned by pressures from global imperial centers in the West, largely dominated by U.S. interests, have been instrumental in continuing injustices--and sometimes expanding them--established in earlier colonial and postcolonial periods. The discourses of human rights and of liberalization far from counteracting oligarchical processes creating or maintaining exceptional inequalities have been the cloak for their perpetration and perpetuation. In some instances, such discourses have actually been engaged to violent, state-mediated acts against resistant and depressed groups. Of course, this situation is by no means unique to Kerala. The events of Muthanga are but one local instance of similar processes elsewhere, in which major redirections in global policies and political realities are forces in creating the agents and agencies of state in new relations of violence toward citizenry. NOTES I am grateful to Bruce Kapferer for his valuable comments on an earlier draft. (1.) Adivasi means the original inhabitants, the indigenous people, the colonial/postcolonial official category being the tribes. In this article, 'the indigenous' and adivasis are used interchangeably. The word 'tribe' is avoided other than in reference to governmental procedures. (2.) A state that has traditionally been projected as a model of social development worth emulating with its universal literacy, high expectancy of life at birth, low maternal and child mortality and so on, see Dreze and Sen (1995), Franke and Chasin (2000), Kannan (2000), Lieten (2002), Ramachandran (1997), Ratcliffe (1978), and Tornquist (2002). However, the adivasis barely exist on the fringes of these works just as they do in the larger development process of the state. (3.) For an elaboration of the issues involved see Ravi Raman (1998) and Tharakan (1978). (4.) The Indian Constitution provides for the protection of tribal interests through Schedule V and VI of Article 244. In the mid-1800s, the British colonial government in India had designated certain areas as nonregulated areas, which were renamed scheduled areas in the postindependent phase. These areas remained outside the ambit of normal legislative and political processes; the president of India could by order declare areas to be scheduled areas on the recommendations of the state government and the governor. The fifth schedule invests all executive and legislative power in the state governor, who could consult an appointed Tribal Advisory Council on these matters. In other words, the governor has the power to exclude scheduled areas from state legislation as well as to decree legislative provisions such as protection from outsiders. The central objective of this constitutional clause is to impose total prohibition of transfer of immovable property to any person other than to a tribal, for peace and proven good management of a tribal area and to protect the possession, rights, titles, and interests of the indigenous peoples. Scheduled areas have been notified in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Rajastbau, and Gujarat; but the tribal areas in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and West Bengal are yet to be scheduled despite suggestions put forward by the concerned committees. The VI schedule allows for the formation of autonomous councils and regions, and provides for self-government. For more details, see Thakur and Thakur (1994). In an attempt at securing greater protection and as a prelude to greater autonomy, the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha has requested that the tribal areas in Kerala also be brought under Schedule V. (5.) For an understanding of how ritual could constitute an important site of resistance and power, see Dirks (1994). (6.) The concept of everyday forms of resistance began to gain acceptance with the work by Scott (1986), which, however, is not free from limitations. See Brass (1999: 257-259). (7.) State violence against ethnic indigenous minorities is a worldwide phenomenon, whether it is in the Americas, Australia, Africa, or in other parts of Asia. In a recent report on racism and the administration of justice, Amnesty International (2001) pointed out that there are 300 million indigenous people worldwide who suffer at the hands of racist states, where the hunger for power denies basic human rights. (8.) The impact of the WTO-inspired import policy of the federal government of India on the farm sector is largely parallel to that of NAFTA on the poor farmers of Mexico, where the Zapatista movement originated. (9.) The Birlas were challenged in Kerala on many occasions, particularly for their anti-labor policy and for the environmental pollution they caused. They were finally forced to shut down the factory in the face of strong public criticism. For an earlier account, see Rammohan and Ravi Raman (1988, 1989). (10.) More than three hundred adivasis from the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, representing all mass-based adivasi movements, ransacked the World Bank building on 24 November 2003 in protest against the World Bank-aided ecodevelopment projects in the state, which literally wreak more harm than good. They blocked the building, covering it with posters, graffiti, cow dung, and mud, singing slogans and traditional songs. (11.) The Government of Karnataka has been systematically evicting the adivasis of the Nagar Hole National Park either labeling them as encroachers or in the name of protection of the biosphere; yet the state has also simultaneously engaged in a lease agreement with the Taj Group of Hotels, another Indian multinational, and with the World Bank on ecodevelopment projects. The adivasis successfully resisted this, both legally and through mass mobilization, which led the High Court to rule that the assignment of forestland to the Taj Group was in violation of the laws of conservation of nature and wildlife. (12). For details see Uwe-Jens Heuer and Schirmer (1998). Also see Chomsky and Herman (1979) (13.) Founded in 1976, the LTTE is the most powerful Tamil group in multiethnic Sri Lanka which began its armed conflict with the Sri Lankan Government in 1983 and relies on guerrilla strategies for the creation of a separate state of Tamil Ealam covering the north and east provinces. There were many occasions in which the Government of India acted as mediator between the Sri Lankan Government and Tamil groups but in vain; currently LTTE is negotiating with the Sri Lankan Government for a peaceful settlement. (14.) The Peoples' War Group (PWG), formed in April 1980 under the leadership of Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, is one of the most influential groups of Maoist revolutionaries. Based in northwestern Andhra Pradesh, it engages in armed struggle and champions the cause of landless workers and tribals. The PWG operates in other states as well, such as Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Orissa. Generally, the members of the PWG are called Naxalites after the peasant uprising at Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal when a tribal youth, who had a judicial order to plow his land, was attacked by the local landlords in May 1967. There are many Maoist organizations in India that either predate the Communist Party of India or have emerged from the various factions of the CPI which split first in 1964, then in 1967 and also in the early 1970s after the death of Charu Majumdar who launched the Naxalite movement. With the Naxalites always having been a presence in Kerala and with some of the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha leaders themselves being former activists, the state government was quick to affix the Naxalite label to all adivasi strategies, in an attempt to legitimize its own objectionable actions and to gain popular approval. (15). Antony is usually seen to be a 'soft' and 'democratic' diplomat, but in this case he refused to permit a judicial enquiry into the police firing. He thus came to be compared with Smt. Indira Gandhi, the former Congress Prime Minister who had imposed emergency rule and suspended fundamental rights in the country in June 1975, and suffered an electoral defeat in 1977 for the same reason. (16.) For the relative discrimination against dalits and fisherfolk in the Kerala model of development, see Omvedt (1998) and Kurien (1995). However, the backward communities like the ezhavas have realized a certain degree of social mobility (Osella and Osella 2000). 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