KANDHAMAL

KANDHAMAL, THE CONTINUING STORY OF
EXPLOITATION AND DISPOSSESSION

I have to confess that like most of the urban, educated, English-language-speaking elite I was not aware of the existence of this small and backward district of Orissa, a state generally associated with starvation and famine. The outbreak of violence and the resultant deaths of several poor people, therefore, did not seem as something out of the ordinary, for such incidents are happening every other day in some part of India. Nor did the temporary spotlight turned upon the area by the print and television media appear to be different. The secular media, of course, went to town about the clash between Hindus and Christians, declaiming that the Hindu mobs had unleashed its fury on the hapless Christians of the district, without sufficient cause. The political parties jumped upon the bandwagon, seeing an opportunity for destabilizing the incumbent state government. All this, by itself, does not make one sit up, as violence seems to have become a way of everyday life. Our sensibilities have become inured to these daily occurrences, and we hardly take note of them. Therefore, when Kandhamal erupted, it did not evoke a different response.

Gurumurthy’s article in The New Indian Express of Sept. 11 again did not have anything unusual to tell. The activities of evangelical missionaries in the backward districts of India; the huge global funds available to them for the “harvest of souls” etc.; the declining numerical gap between Hindus and Christians in these areas; are all known facts. What really came as a surprise was his statement that the Kandhas, the traditional, tribal rulers of the area, chose to remain true to their faith and refused to convert, rejecting the allurements and blandishments held out to them by the missionaries. The Kandhas are aboriginal tribals, and in spite of reservations offered to the tribals by a patronizing state, they have been systematically marginalized and driven from their traditional lands. Their continuous exploitation and dispossession has made the tribals easy fodder for the missionaries, ever on the lookout for ways to increase the number of true believers in the “only true faith”.

Why the Kandhas resisted the onslaught of nearly 360 evangelical outfits is perhaps a subject for a different study? What, however, is obvious is that India has miserably failed in its attempt to lift its “naked, hungry mass” out of abject poverty, deprivation, and degradation, even sixty years after independence from British rule. Fifty years after independence, in 1997, the government estimates reveal that the number of people who are below the absolute poverty level is equal to 35 crore; which was the total population of the country in 1947. Why has this condition endured in the country despite its rapid economic growth, despite the IT revolution, the “commanding heights” of a planned economy with a commitment to socialism? Why the “levels of hunger, illiteracy, excess mortality and other indicators of deprivation are today far higher in India than in China, the Philippines or Indonesia”. The young Siddharth Dube first asked this question in his brilliantly researched and evocatively written “Words Like Freedom”, published in 1998. And he proceeded to find the answer through “the memoirs of an impoverished Indian family”. The following two passages are drawn from his book which outlines in detail the reasons for the continuance of this cycle of intense deprivation and poverty.

Before the British rule, there was very little idea of private ownership of land. Usually, land would be shared between the cultivators and tillers who would enjoy hereditary rights, and the zamindars, whose role was to collect revenue from the peasants. They did not have the absolute right to dispossess the peasants, and so long as the farmer paid his dues and taxes he could not be evicted from the land. The British changed all that as they wanted to deal with one individual from an area who would be elevated to the position of ‘proprietor’ of the land and who would pay the taxes and dues to the treasury. By this mechanism all the cultivated land was transferred to the zamindars. Additionally the “British soon made them the owners of inhabited sites, fallow and barren land, groves and orchards, water sources, river crossings, markets and roads”. These landlords or zamindars became the “linchpin of the colonial order”. By elevating the zamindar’s position and making him the absolute ruler of all those subservient to him, the British ensured the upper-caste domination of society, as most of the zamindars were upper-caste Hindus, and some powerfully placed Muslims. Conversely, the lower castes, the tribals, and the petty peasants were condemned to permanent impoverishment and severe discrimination.

The peasant revolt of 1919 in the Awadh was the first rebellion against this system of exploitation by the entrenched colonial administration, but after three years of intense struggle in which reportedly one lakh peasants participated, the movement failed. It failed because the Congress refused to provide it the required leadership and support. Gandhi and Nehru both let the peasants down by asking them to “abort their struggle”. The Congress drew its ranks from the upper castes and was dominated by the landed elite. The zamindars and the landed capitalists were the financiers of the Congress party, and Gandhi would not support a movement that threatened this class. In fact Gandhi even betrayed his Harijans for whom Babasaheb Ambedkar was trying to obtain special electoral representation as a minority in the early 1930s (something that had been granted to the Muslims in 1906). Both Nehru and Gandhi were “adamantly opposed to allowing either reserved seats or separate electorates for the untouchables”. By going on a ‘fast unto death’, Gandhi forced Ambedkar to withdraw his demand for separate electorates, who wrote: “Mr. Gandhi, the friend of the Untouchables, preferred to fast unto death rather than consent to them and although he yielded he is not reconciled to the justice underlying these demands.”

Similarly, the aboriginal inhabitants of this land, the Adivasis were also “completely left out of the picture.” One of these Adivasis was a Munda from Chotanagpur (today’s Jharkhand). Jaipal Singh was a brilliant young man, sent by the missionaries to study in England, at Oxford, with the hope that on his return he would preach the Gospel, and increase the fold of His Lord. Jaipal Singh was also a brilliant hockey player. He captained the Indian team that won the Olympic Gold Medal in 1928. In 1938 he founded the Adibasi Mahasabha and made the first demand for a separate state of Jharkhand. In the Constituent Assembly he was the most articulate representative of the tribals of India. It is worth recalling his speech on 19th December 1946, when he spoke on the Objectives Resolution:

“I am not expected to understand the legal intricacies of the Resolution. But my common sense tells me that every one of us should march in that road to freedom and fight together. Sir, if there is any group of Indian people that has been shabbily treated it is my people. They have been disgracefully treated, neglected for the last 6,000 years. The history of the Indus Valley civilization, a child of which I am, shows quite clearly that it is the newcomers – most of you here are intruders as far as I am concerned – it is the newcomers who have driven away my people from the Indus Valley to the jungle fastness….The whole history of my people is one of continuous exploitation and dispossession by the non-aboriginals of India punctuated by rebellion and disorder.”

He further went on to say, “And yet I take Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru at his word. I take you all at your word that now we are going to start a new chapter, a new chapter of independent India where there is equality of opportunity, where no one would be neglected.”

Jaipal Singh was a unique individual, at once deeply proud of his aboriginal roots, while completely committed to the Indian union unlike the radical tribal leaders of the North East.

His spirited affirmation of faith in the members of the Constituent Assembly did result in some partial amends being made by the inclusion of some 400 tribal communities in a “Scheduled Tribes” list, which would give its members reserved seats in the legislatures and government jobs.

However, like Nehru’s Independence Day speech, this pledge also remains unredeemed in “full measure”. The unwillingness of successive governments at the centre and in the states to institute substantive land reforms, in order to protect their primary backers, who are the landed and the capitalist elite in the case of the Congress and the BJP; and the creamy layer of the scheduled and middle castes who support the Samajwadi and the Bahujan Samaj parties, is at the centre of this failure. In the skewed development model that the country has adopted from 1985, there is no room for the “naked, hungry mass”. It is as if this vast number has dropped from the radars of the planners’ screens, and as if they have been eliminated from view by the pushing of a button.

I am afraid, we will witness many more Kandhamals, not because the evangelists are busy gathering their ‘harvest of souls’, but because the model of our governance and development does not allow the poor and the marginalized to participate in the country’s growth. To conclude in Siddharth Dube’s words: “poverty might indeed worsen despite accelerated economic growth. This is a possibility if the Indian government further reduces public spending, particularly on agriculture, infrastructure and the social sectors. The risks to the poor will be even greater if the government further loosens land ceiling laws, as is being demanded by the rural rich and the many votaries of economic liberalization.”

“To enable the poor to participate and benefit from economic growth, the Indian government would need to undertake widespread land reform, promote good healthcare and schools, foster gender equity, and encourage local democracy. It has not done so for fifty years. The reasons for the tragic inaction remain unchanged. In the future, as in the half-century past and in centuries earlier, India is destined to remain the land of hunger, want and suffering.”