|
| Sadanand Menon: The tragedy of being tribal in India |
| Sadanand Menon / New Delhi Jun 26, 2009, 00:18 IST |
|
Millennia ago, a certain warrior-teacher, fearing the superiority of a tribal lad’s martial skills over that of his own urbane students, demanded the gift of the lad’s right thumb in return for transgressing codes of civil and caste hierarchy. The story of Dronacharya and Ekalavya is etched in most Indian minds. Many of us might even have wept at this injustice as we heard the mythological fable in our childhood. Of course, the sentimentalism blinded us to the reality of the here and now. The almost nine percent tribal population of the nation continues to be asked to part with more than its thumb.
Tribals across the country are being asked to part with their forests, lands and livelihood to make way for ‘development’. They constitute the largest percentage today of the internally displaced people. National Parks, dams, large mines, SEZs — it is the tribal zones that are up for grabs. They are now beginning to consolidate and resist. Muthanga in Kerala where they came out with their bows and arrows and Lalgarh in West Bengal now, with a large number of adivasis merely carrying sticks and axes, are just the surface manifestations of decades of aggression the ‘civilised’ have practiced over the ‘savage’.
There is a rousing music-video by documentary filmmaker K P Sashi which has become popular on You-tube. It compresses the plight of tribals into a six-minute montage, with the main slogan ‘We won’t give up our lands, we won’t give up our forests, nor will we give up our struggle’. It poses a critique of the mainstream capitalist development model which took just a few decades to destroy the forests and rivers that the tribals and their ancestors had preserved for centuries. It almost suggests why the nation needs to rethink from a tribal perspective if it has to save itself. One can see it progressively emerging as an anthem in the days to come.
It is also pertinent that both CK Janu and M Geethanandan who head tribal organizations in Kerala like the Adivasi Gothra Mahasabha and the Bhoo Parishkarana Samithi have called for an “immediate cessation of the joint military action against the people of Lalgarh to capture tribal lands”. They have proclaimed that the claim of ‘flushing out’ Maoists is merely a ploy to grab lands of the impoverished population of the region. They have alleged a secret deal between the governments at the Centre and the state with Jindal Steel Limited to hand over 5,000 acres of land to the company in return for multi-crore investments.
Obviously, the ‘Tribal Question’ is coming to a boil. It is certainly extraordinary how, in recent years, tribals seem to be of use only for getting us some Olympic gold medals in archery or hockey. Otherwise, the insights of a social-anthropologist like Verrier Elwin who lived amongst Gonds, Bastars, Marias and Mundas in the 1940s and wrote so movingly about their life and customs has made no impact on national consciousness. Typically, after the painstaking work of Elwin, no Indian academic has chosen to extend his work. It was left to literary personalities like Mahasveta Devi and GN Devy to carry on that task. The detailed research work of the Chaibasa Research Centre stands ignored. The nation-state merely set up an oppositional stance with tribal regions, which explains the waves of collective disaffection in the North-East as well as in the Chota Nagpur Plateau. The State did manage to neutralise the 1980s tribal uprisings of the Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh Mukti Morchas and incorporate them within the ‘national’ developmental framework. But that still leaves a large number of poor human beings crushed and decimated at the margins.
As for Lalgarh, it was perhaps just a matter of time before the mainstream Indian Left was dealt some preliminary lessons on the meaning of ‘alienation’. Those with basic familiarity with Marxism would know about the Marxian concept of alienation which is the cornerstone of Marx’s political philosophy. One would have expected the CPM in West Bengal, for example, to have internalised this and to have taken measures to see that their governance mitigated aspects of alienation amongst the subalterns. Instead, now, as events in Lalgarh unfold, it seems clear that even after thirty years and more of Left rule in the state, they have simply had no clue about how to deal with its 11 percent tribal population.
Even if you never go to those regions, just look at those faces and bodies that are now flooding your newspapers and TV screens. Gaunt, emaciated, barefoot, and in tatters. Thousands of them. By what alchemy did they become ‘enemies of the Left’ or of the nation? Do the poor not fit into the idea of the proletariat? If you don’t speak up for them, the Maoists might. But don’t wait for the day they begin to speak up for themselves. That will be another day.
sadanandmenon@yahoo.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Read Business news in |  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Advertisements |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Content Guide
