Looking Back into the Future

Identity and Insurgency in Northeast India

M. S. Prabhakara

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000365801
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The book examines questions of identity, ethnicity, sovereignty and insurgency in northeastern India, and especially on Assam and its neighbourhood. Written by an academic-journalist, the various articles situate these in their larger social, economic, political and, above all, historical context, the last being especially important in their becoming a part of colonial India relatively late, well after colonial control was established in the rest of India.

Based on close, ground level experience involving extensive travel and interaction with the people, this collection is the result of a long journalistic career spanning nearly 50 years in the northeast region. Written in simple, lucid language, the essays cover a range of themes including culture, belief, and identity; homeland and language politics; and insurgency and separatism. The volume also achieves a uniquely dual historical value – while the articles themselves include a lot of historical information tracing the roots of the various issues discussed, the articles themselves range from 1974 to 2010, providing the modern reader with a series of historical moments captured in their immediacy. Of interest to students, academics, researchers in politics, peace & conflict studies, politics, sociology, history, language, those interested in northeast India, policy-makers, cultural studies, etc.

SECTION II: ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY

6
Strident Tribal Nationalism^*

Apart from the many policemen killed, the clashes on the Assam–Nagaland boundary in June (1985) have gravely affected a large number of plains tribal people of Assam — among others — who had for long settled in these areas. In the clashes of January 1979 too, the population on the Assam side who suffered comprised a large number of these plains tribal people.

According to S.C. Jamir, chief minister of Nagaland, one of the reasons for the exacerbation of the boundary problem with Assam was the Assam government’s policy of first permitting encroachment in the reserve forests on the boundary between the two states, and subsequently on the specious argument that these areas had already been encroached, ‘de-reserving’ them and formalizing such encroachments.

The Assam government has strongly repudiated such allegations; and sources in Assam in turn accuse powerful, ethnically Naga interests in Nagaland itself of encouraging encroachments on the Assam side and later claiming these areas as Nagaland’s own. In view of such accusations and counter-accusations, it would be useful to take a close look at the way in which these incidents have harmed — or are seen by the leaders of the plains tribal organizations to have harmed — the plains tribal people.

In a memorandum submitted to Hiteswar Saikia, Assam’s chief minister, the Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) demanded that the plains tribal people who suffered much in the Merapani area should be moved to safer places in areas inhabited by plains tribal people on the north bank of the Brahmaputra. The demand that the plains tribal people who have on their own spread and made settlements all over the state well beyond their national homeland (Udayachal) on both banks of the Brahmaputra should be shifted back to the north bank is consistent with the view of the PTCA that only the creation of a plains tribal state — the so-called Udayachal — on the north bank will provide salvation to these people.

Interestingly, the encroachments in the reserve forests along the Assam–Nagaland boundary all these years by not merely ‘foreign nationals’ (about which the Nagaland chief minister has repeatedly and specifically complained) but also by some Nepalis and plains tribal people were legitimized during the Janata Party government headed by Golap Borbora, which had representatives of the PTCA.

Indeed, the PTCA vice-president, Samar Brahma Choudhury, who is most vocal in explaining his party’s rationale for demanding the relocation of the plains tribal people on the north bank was the forest minister in the Golap Borbora cabinet and is accused by dissident elements among the plains tribal political organizations of simply exploiting the misery of the displaced persons for political ends.

Another contentious issue having a bearing on tribal politics and the related gathering agrarian tensions in Assam is the decision of the Assam government to include the Koch-Kshatriya-Rajbanshis of Goalpara, Dhubri and Kokrajhar districts (former Goalpara district) as a ‘protected class’ in tribal belts and blocks as defined in the Assam Land and Revenue Regulations.

The Assam Land Revenue Manual (Chapter 10) provides that the state government may adopt such measures as it deems fit for the protection of those classes which on account of their primitive conditions and lack of education or material advantages are incapable of looking after their welfare in so far as such welfare depends upon their having sufficient land for their maintenance; and may by notification in the official gazette specify the classes of people whom it considers entitled to such protection.

The ‘protective measures’ may include the constitution of compact areas in regions predominantly peopled by the classes of people thus notified into ‘belts and blocks’. The notification states that ‘the disposal of land by lease for ordinary cultivation, the nature and extent of rights conveyed by annual or periodic leases, the termination or forfeiture of such rights, the ejectment of persons in occupation who have no valid right in the land, the management or letting out in form of land … and other allied or connected maters … shall be governed by the provisions of this chapter and the rules made thereunder.’

In other words, and in effect, there would be restrictions on sale, purchase, leasing out or settlement of land in these belts and blocks by those not notified as coming under its provisions. The provision in practice has resulted in the constitution of various areas with concentrations of tribal people (who in the Brahmaputra valley districts are necessarily the plains tribes) as tribal belts and blocks and the guarantee of certain legal and constitutional protections in the matter of agricultural land.

Further, in order to ensure that those non-tribal permanent residents of areas (‘the boundaries of areas so constituted as tribal belts and blocks shall as far as possible coincide with mauza boundaries’) would not face undue difficulties, the state government can extend such protection to such other persons (including non-tribal people) as it deems fit and has been exercising this discretion in regard to various indigenous residents of tribal belts and blocks.

However, the government’s decision to include the Koch-Rajbanshis (also known as Koch-Kshatriya-Rajbanshis), a backward Hindu caste of Assam belonging to the so-called other backward classes (OBC), in this category of a protected class in the tribal belts and blocks is seen by many tribal leaders as simply a prelude to the entry of this class into the category of scheduled castes and perhaps, eventually, of scheduled tribes as well.

As it is, there is some controversy over the status of the Koch-Rajbanshi people in the former Goalpara district of Assam and the adjoining Garo Hills district of Meghalaya; while they are considered both in Assam and Meghalaya as belonging to the other backward classes (OBC), there are demands that they should be reclassified as a scheduled caste in Assam and as a scheduled tribe in Meghalaya. Further, the incidence of individual Koch-Rajbanshis now in the lower ranks of the caste-Hindu fold, which they entered fairly recently through a process of taking saran (a common feature of upward caste mobility among Vaishnavite Hindus in Assam) with affidavits renouncing their caste-Hindu names and reverting to tribal surnames, is not an uncommon phenomenon. Indeed, a similar move to secure the restoration of what is believed to be an ancient tribal status—now classified as an OBC—is apparent among certain other groups in upper Assam as well, chiefly the Morans and the Chutiyas.

The suspicion among plains tribal leaders is that some of the more politically astute leaders of the Koch-Rajbanshis have realized the advantage of formally laying claim to a tribal status. The PTCA, as indeed every other tribal organization, fears that these moves to settle the Koch-Rajbanshi people in the tribal blocks by bestowing upon them the status of ‘protected persons’ is merely the thin end of the wedge and that before long this segment of the population, too, will claim a share of the few benefits that the scheduled tribes are now entitled to.

That these Koch-Rajbanshis are not even indigenous people of Assam but are actually of Bengali stock (the Koch-Rajbanshis of Goalpara district form a mixed stock and include both the Assamese and Bengali elements) is a further sore point though the PTCA leaders’ emphasis on this is perhaps intended to win support for their demand from the majority Assamese people, who have their own reasons to be apprehensive of further Bengali settlements in Assam.

Other demands of the PTCA include the appointment of special sub-deputy collectors (SDCs) and assistant deputy commissioners (ADCs) for the tribal belts and blocks as provided in Chapter 10 of the Assam Land Revenue Manual, the constitution of advisory committees at the sub-divisional levels for tribal belts and blocks and the creation of a special directorate at the state level for the implementation of these provisions.

Underlying all these demands are the still relatively dormant tensions over agricultural land which are a feature of agrarian relations in Assam. This often takes on contrary shapes in the form of seemingly contradictory demands. For instance, a demand uniformly voiced by the tribal leaders is that the government should stop eviction of tribal people from government khas land (held directly from the government) and forest land while at the same time expediting evictions of non-tribal encroachers on tribal territories.

The demand has acquired a shrill urgency following the policy decision of the Assam government declaring all encroachments made after 1 January 1980, ‘illegal’. The government has been engaged in the eviction of encroachers on forest land in the Daranga area in the Tamulpur block on the Assam–Bhutan border. The tribal leaders, however, argue that only ‘foreign nationals’ who have encroached into these areas should be thrown out and not the tribal people.

Another interesting feature of the protests against the eviction of allegedly legitimate residents of these tribal belts and blocks is that, as with so many other similar complaints, this too has become embroiled in the internal politics and rivalries of various tribal organizations. The persons who are resisting the eviction at Darranga had first been settled in the Doyang and Rengma reserve forests on the Assam–Nagaland border and were uprooted from there following the disturbances in January 1979. They then moved to Darranga where they were promised a settlement by virtue of being plains tribal people. But even here these people seem to have become unintended victims of rivalries of tribal leaders and now there is a controversy about the status of 813 tribal families (about 4,000 persons) who were once again being sought to be evicted from Darranga.

While the PTCA has come out with a statement making a general complaint about evictions in general, other organizations like the United Tribal Nationalist Liberation Front, a recently floated set-up headed by the former leader of the PTCA in the Assam assembly, Binai Basumatari (who resigned, or as the PTCA leaders put it, was expelled from the organization), and the Tribal Rights Protection Committee have demanded that all ineligible people should be evicted from the Darranga area. Indeed, there have been reports that while tribal people have been most vocal about eviction of the tribal people from these areas they are themselves actively cooperating with the government in the eviction of ‘foreign nationals’ from these areas.

This pattern is going to become more and more a general feature of the gathering agrarian tensions in Assam. The illusion that immigrants would simply remain distant and invisible in the remote and inaccessible char (alluvial) land could anyway not be sustained perpetually; in the course of time when these immigrants were drawn to the relatively less strenuous environment of the forest areas or encroached into tribal belts and blocks, a situation arose which decades ago might have led to a state of wary coexistence.

With the worsening of objective conditions, such coexistence is now not possible. A factor is the realization of the substantial gains to be made by capitalization of agricultural practices with the entry of moneybags, who deliberately encouraged such encroachments from the hardy peasants with the expectation, realized profitably in many cases, of getting them to grow cash crops to feed the growing and diversified industries run without virtually any control in the remoter regions. Sugarcane to feed the distillery in Dimapur, for instance, is grown by virtually bonded ‘encroachers’ as a captive crop in substantial areas on the Nagaland–Assam boundary.

And as in so many other areas of Indian politics, the awakening among the plains tribal people and the emergence of an educated and conscious leadership has meant that these agrarian tensions, instead of being channelled along political lines under the leadership of the Left, are being appropriated by tribal nationalists.

Note

* First published in The Hindu, 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Section I: The Word and the Idea
• Section II: Ethnicity and Identity
• Section III: Issues of Culture and Belief
• Section IV: Discontent and Revolt
• Section V: Homeland Politics
• Section VI: From the Borders of a Borderland
• Section VII: Theoretical Underpinnings
• Epilogue
• Select Bibliography
• About the Author
• Index