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A Gradual Alienation

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A Gradual Alienation
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MUDIA Khan, a tiny village in Ghadarpur block in Udham Singh Nagar, is testimony to a cruel  social process whereby one-time masters have became slaves. The Buxa and Tharu tribals, original inhabitants of the Terai region, have been slowly but systematically driven out of their land.

Years ago there were more than 30 Buxa families in Mudia Khan, all of them in possession of vast tracts of land. Three decades down the line, only three Buxa families are left in the village. The richest among them is Hattu Singh who owns only five acres. Left with very little land, the Buxas are now forced to earn their bread by toiling in the same fields of which they were once the owners. There are a number of such villages in most of the blocks of Terai.

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Devla, a 70-year-old blind woman, recalls how most of the families after losing their land left the village one after the other. Devla was married in the village when she was 15. For more than half a century she has been witness to the worst kind of deception. "Who is going to listen to us, we have become paupers," she sighs.

The chain of deceit and exploitation runs on a definite pattern. Despite a ban on the selling of land belonging to Buxas, the influential Sikh and Punjabi farmers managed to appropriate land with the connivance of tehsil officials and patwaris. Many Buxas sold their land for a song on a Rs 5 stamp paper. In some cases the Buxas were offered as meagre an amount as Rs 500 or a bottle of liquor for an acre of land, in other cases they were simply forced into submission. "Our menfolk are very simple," says Phulwati.

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Apart from illiteracy, economic backwardness and the absence of a strong political lobby or tribals' organisation have added to the plight of the tribals. And whenever they have tried to raise their voice, they found themselves fighting a lost battle.

Hattu Singh, a 55-year-old Buxa peasant, remembers that his grandfather Baldev Singh was the pradhan of the village and he owned around 30 acres. The land was distributed among Hattu and his cousins. But slowly all of them lost their land to a Sikh farmer who now has a huge walled house. In a bid to get his land back from the farmer, Hattu's cousin Chet Ram filed a case in court over four acres and won. The irony is that despite a favo-urable verdict, he could not occupy the land. "We won the case, but our elders were afraid to take the land into possession. Who will fight the farmers? They are powerful people after all," says Hattu.

Claims and counter-claims made by politicians as well as the strong kulak lobby over the future of Udham Singh Nagar have totally ignored the very presence of the hapless tribals. Unlike the powerful Sikh farmers, who have a powerful voice and political backing from a prosperous state like Punjab, the tribals of Terai receive no notice whatsoever. They are the mute spectators of lobbying which will decide their future.

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