The Hindu : Atrocities on Adivasis

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Monday, Jun 16, 2003

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Atrocities on Adivasis — I

By V.R. Krishna Iyer

The tribals in Kerala, refugees now in their own land, are biding their time to assert their right to life guaranteed under the Constitution.

WAYANAD, IN the Western Ghats, with its waterfalls and wild game, is a tourist's paradise. But the artless, powerless Adivasis, native to this habitat, are terrorised by law out of their forest dwellings. Tired of false promises and betrayed by both political coalitions in Kerala, the Left Democratic Front and the United Democratic Front, some of the tribals reoccupied a sparsely wooded area, Muthanga. This brought the fury of the State down on their heads; the police showed their might. The tribals, refugees now in their own land, are biding their time to assert their right to life guaranteed under the Constitution in print but a bleeding mirage after the Muthanga carnage.

Their simmering rage is like a gathering storm which may imminently blow up in outraged assertion of their fundamental right to shelter and survival. Today, Muthanga is a symbol of Adivasi protest against their unjust privation. The woods are lovely, dark and deep but we have promises to keep!

The Adivasis of Kerala, as elsewhere, are humble in numbers, homeless have-nots in status with negligible political clout and live in landless despair. Even the Judiciary and, of course, the Executive treat them as the Fourth World within the Third World. The Narmada tribals matter less, even for survival, than the kulaks who demand high dams denying them rehabilitation!

The rule of law blinks at them and politicians of all parties betray them. This micro-community, a little over one per cent of Kerala's population, is victim of social deprivation, dubious promises and dishonourable existence and suffers as derelicts and driftwood. Are they Indians? Yes. Are they forest dwellers from ancient days? Yes. What is their distressing status today?

De facto discarded as flotsam and jetsam by the state and de jure proffered jungle slices which do not exist, these tribal communities have not even a trace of what once belonged to them. The law plays hide and seek with these `specially favoured' children of the Constitution. Driven by despair, they have begun to dare and demand rights.

This militant mood may explode justly any day, heedless of the lathi-wielding men in khaki, unless the Adivasi land question is settled with justice, equity and good conscience, weaving a jurisprudence which treats tribals as humans with title to survival. Kerala is an advanced State and if their destiny even there is terrorised travail, their lot in other parts of the country must be more pathetic.

Adivasis are mostly `vanavasis', forest-dwellers. They live in jungles, collect forest produce and own small plots of cultivable lands. Their unlettered ways, their naivete make them easy prey to exploitation by cunning settlers from the plains who rob them of their land, leaving them without basic human rights.

The endemic social disease of alienation of Adivasi holdings over the years became an extermination operation too unconscionable for the State to tolerate without legislative intervention. So inaction ceased to be an option and land restoration legislation a compulsion.

In 1975, the Kerala legislature unanimously enacted the Kerala Scheduled Tribes (Restriction of Transfer of Lands and Restoration of Alienated Lands) Act. The legislation had a mission — the redemption of dispossessed, destitute tribals in distress.

Had this Act been implemented with the social passion which drove the House into salvationary locomotion, the tribal revolt at Muthanga would never have happened. Alas, this legislative manoeuvre proved to be a dastardly double deception — an illusion of rehabilitation and a design of non-implementation. The tribal innocents were stabbed in the back by deliberate default in not notifying the law for years, after being doped and duped by a statutory pretence of restoration of their alienated land. The people of the State who sympathised with the tribal proletariat were left with a deception of land legislation which was deliberately allowed to slumber.

The canny neo-settlers meanwhile developed the lands, defying the legislation and silencing successive Governments run in turn by Fronts of `radicals' and `democrats.' In politics, adjectival nomenclature is Orwellian double-speak, meaning the opposite of what it seems to say. Every party professed support to the Adivasis; every party had opportunity to enforce the law while it was in office but not one restored even an acre of alienated land.

The non-tribals settled on these lands, encroached on more neighbourhoods; and the forest-dwellers were disowned by the forests. To recover the lost land from the encroachers, the Government had to implement the law with conviction for the cause, compassion for the powerless.

The settlers, large in number and well-organised under various political flags, could not be dislodged. The scattered Adivasis, with a stillborn law in the statute book, had but futility and mockery. Imagine the seriousness of a Government which has been ruled by two rival Fronts, treating the law as all but dead. The Left Front slept a while but woke up late. The rules were at last framed more than a decade later, and given effect to from January 1982. This was mere jugglery with the calendar. The law, as a ground reality, was not implemented and so the Adivasis wandered in the jungle with not a cent to claim as their own.

Then came one P. Nallaambi Thera who filed O.P. No.8879/88 before the Kerala High Court seeking implementation of the Act. It is unfortunate that even the CPI (M)-led Government was guilty of insouciance. There were 8,088 cases pending under the Act for restoration and yet orders were passed only in 1,201 cases and, alas, only in three cases did actual restoration take place.

The grossest contempt for the Adivasi plight is thus clearly evident. Today, the Left Front is violently vitriolic against the Congress Government for betrayal of the tribals but its performance while in power is a dubious chapter.

The High Court was more progressive and loyal to the law than the noisy political parties and directed the Government to dispose of all pending restoration applications within a period of six months from 15-10-1993. Despite the High Court directive, the Government dawdled, delayed and deprived the tribals of their dues. Ultimately, the High Court ordered peremptory compliance.

The lack of sincerity of the Left Front in power became manifest when instead of giving land under the 1975 Act as ordered by the High Court, a legislation largely sapping the original Act was brought under the guise of an amendment in 1996. The sabotage of Adivasi expectations was the impact of this amendment. But a contradiction in history took place. The Marxist bill was withheld assent by the President who was advised by the Congress Cabinet to do so. A student of dialectical materialism has much to explore in this curious anti-climax.

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Atrocities on Adivasis — I