TRIBALS AND INDIA
About 8% of India’s population is tribal and the same statistic for Chhattisgarh is 33% - four times – you go south of Chhattisgarh to Bastar and the figure is 67%. That is how different 36garh is from the rest of India and why?
If you read Jared Diamond’s “guns, germs and steel” – quoting a para which concludes Chapter 4 says this:
“in short, plant and animal domestication meant much more food and hence much denser human populations. The resulting food surpluses, and (in some areas) the animal based means of transporting those surpluses, were a prerequisite for the development of settled, politically centralized, socially stratified, economically complex and technologically innovative societies. Hence the availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why empires, literacy and steel weapons developed earliest in Eurasia and later, or not at all, on other continents. The military uses of horses and camels, and the killing power of animal derived germs, complete the list of major links between food production and conquest that we shall keep exploring.”
Tribals are largely hunter gatherers and depend heavily on the forest and its produce rather than on settled agriculture. Using Jared Diamond’s argument, most tribal societies have not evolved as have other societies which went from hunting-gathering to settled agriculture followed by industrialisation.
If we look at India over the years we as a civilizational have been unified thrice; under the Mauryan empire, the Mughals and the British. All these three empires left alone the densely forested tribes of central India and the northern tribes on the other side of the Indus. None of the three empires penetrated these regions administratively. This was primarily because all three were agrarian empires and these two regions did not have any agricultural surplus. Therefore it did not make economic sense to penetrate these two areas,"
The reason I am going into so much detail, is to make the differences as distinct as possible between tribal India and the rest of us and the importance of forests for tribals. So any attempt, whether by pre independence Indian rulers, british or independent india, to destroy the forests and therefore change the way tribals lead their lives have led to rebellions by the tribals.
BRITISH and the INDIAN FORESTS
Once the colonial state had consolidated its control over large parts of India, it started looking towards the forests to gain access to natural and forest resources essential for ‘development’. Interestingly, colonial rule had to face stiff resistance from the forest inhabitants and local communities, characterised by several peoples’ movements and a tribal uprising against the colonial administration. These movements and uprisings were an assertion of the traditional rights of the tribal and local people over the forests and their resources. They also asserted the organic linkage of tribal culture, tradition and social systems with the forests. The colonial administration considered state monopoly rights over forests essential for achieving its own interests, thus the sharp conflict between the colonial state and the tribal people continued. The history of Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and the north-east is full of such peoples’ protest movements and uprisings in forest areas against the colonial state. Indeed, such movements generated a prolonged debate within the colonial bureaucracy on whether to treat the customary use of forests by tribals as based on privilege or on right. It was settled by the principle that the right of conquest is the strongest of all rights.
HOW THE BRITISH APPROPRIATED THE INDIAN FORESTS
The British with their expansionist vision, appropriated 100,000 square miles of forest land in the name of conservation in 1878 by passing the Indian Forest Act.
Devoid of good forests in England, the British realised the commercial value of Indian forests and tried to establish rigid control over them. We can trace the beginnings of a systematic forest policy to 1855 when the Governor General, Lord Dalhousie, issued a memorandum on forest conservation called the charter of Indian forests. He suggested that teak timber should be retained as state property and its trade strictly regulated.
In 1856, Dietrich Brandis, a German botanist, was appointed as the first Inspector General of Forests. The Forest Department was organised and the first forest act was enacted under his guidance. Brandis made an inventory of trees in India and classified them.
The first act for the regulation of forests was passed in 1865. It empowered the government to declare any land covered with trees or brushwood as government forest and to make rules to manage them. The act was applicable only to the forests in control of the government and did not cover private forests. It made no provision regarding the rights of the users.
The Act of 1865 was replaced by a more comprehensive Indian Forest Act of 1878. Forests were divided into reserve forests, protected forests and village forests. Several restrictions were imposed upon the people’s rights over forest land and produce in the protected and reserved forests. The act empowered the local government to levy duty on timber produced in British India or brought from any place beyond the frontier of British India, thus encouraging them to earn revenue from forests.
The Indian Forest Act of 1878 radically changed the nature of common property and made it state property. According to Baden-Powell, ‘The right of government to all uncultivated, unappropriated land is the basis on which the Indian forest law proceeds.’ This was only partially correct as a number of lands taken over by government were appropriated and used by tribal communities, though this was not legally recorded. These rights of people over forest lands and produce were later regarded as concessions.
The government announced its forest policy by a resolution on 19 October 1894. The policy emphasized state control over forests and the need to exploit forests for augmenting state revenue. The Indian Forest Act of 1927 replaced the earlier Act of 1878. This act embodied all the major provisions of the earlier act, extending it to include those relating to the duty on timber. The act is still in force together with several amendments made by state governments. The preamble states that the act seeks to consolidate the law relating to the transit of forest produce and the duty leviable on timber and other forest produce. Thus, there is a clear emphasis on the revenue yielding aspect of forests.
The Government of India Act, 1935, created a dual system of government by setting up provincial legislatures and assigning certain subjects to them, of which forests was one. Thereafter, the provincial governments made several amendments to the Indian Forest Act of 1927. In short, during British rule, the Department of Forest was organised, a systematic inventory of trees made, customary rights of people over forest land and produce curtailed and transformed into concessions to be enjoyed at the will of the forest officials and, most important, forests became a major source of revenue for the government.
SIMPLE ECONOMICS AT WORK
By around 1860, Britain had emerged as the world leader in deforestation, devastating its own woods and the forests in Ireland, South Africa and northeastern United States to draw timber for shipbuilding, iron-smelting and farming. The onslaught on the forests was primarily because of the increasing demand for military purposes, for British navy, for local construction (such as roads and railways), supply of teak and sandalwood for export trade an extension of agriculture in order to supplement revenue. This process greatly intensified in the early years of the building of the railways network after about 1853. While great chunks of forests were destroyed to meet the demand for railway sleepers, no supervision was exercised over the felling operation in which a large number of trees was felled and lay rotting on the road.
TRIBAL REBELLIONS
Chhattisgarh has witnessed several tribal rebellions starting from the late 18 century through the 19 century to the first few decades of the 20 century. However the central narrative of these rebellions remained largely common and unchanged. All these rebellions were focussed and asserted the traditionally inalienable right of the tribals on the local resources land and forests.
The key tribal rebellions were:
The Halba rebellion is a very important event in the history of Bastar as it was responsible for the decline of the Chalukya dynasty, which in turn created circumstances that first brought the Marathas and then the British to the region. The rebellion was initiated in 1774 by the governor of Dongar, Ajmer
Singh with the intention of establishing an independent kingdom at Dongar. The Halba tribe and Halba soldiers supported him. However, the fundamental reasons for the rebellion were economic in nature. There had been a prolonged famine, which had severely affected the people who had very little cultivable land. The presence of Maratha forces and the terror caused by the East India Company in these adverse circumstances precipitated the rebellioin. The stronger armies of
Bastar supported by the British and the Marathas crushed the rebellion. A massacre of Halba tribesmen followed the defeat of the Halba army. However, the revolt created conditions for the decline of the Chalukya dynasty which in turn significantly altered the history of Bastar.
The Paralkot rebellion followed where the tribals were opposing the taxes levied by the Maratha rulers. In essence this rebellion was directed against the foreign interference and control of Bastar and wanted to re-establish the freedom of Bastar.
The rebellion of Tarapur (1842-54) was once again the assertion of the tribals against opposition to taxes levied under the pressure of Anglo-Maratha rule. For the tribals, these experiences of coercive taxation were alien and new, and therefore they opposed them.
The Maria rebellion, which lasted nearly 20 years from 1842 to 1863, was against the insensitive and intrusive handling of tribal faith. The Anglo Maratha combine did not hesitate to enter and pollute the temple of Danteswari.
All these rebellions were defensive movements, they were the last resort of tribesmen driven to despair by the encroachments of outsiders on their land and economic resources What is surprising is not the occurrence of uprisings, but the infrequency of violent reaction on the part of the aboriginals to the loss of their ancestral lands and to their economic enslavement. These rebellions continued as increasingly the forest was looked upon as a resource by the British empire and directly started affecting the livelihoods of tribals.
RESIST AND YOU ARE A CRIMINAL
In order to safeguard the forests that they continue providing the much needed revenue for the British Empire, they took shelter in a law. In 1871, the colonial state passed the notorious Criminal Tribes Act to deal with these ‘suspect’ communities -- nomadic or forest-based -- and prepared a list of communities that were ‘notified’ under the Act as being ‘criminal’. Members of these communities were seen to be “addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences”. The Act provided for registration of members, restrictions on their place of residence, and their ‘reform’ by confinement in special camps where low-paid work could be extracted from them. By 1921, the Criminal Tribes Act was extended to all parts of India and new communities were continuously added to the list of ‘criminal tribes’.
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