Laws Of Their Land

The Northeast is perceived in much of India only as a land of secessionist conflicts. There certainly are conflicts, but most of them are centred on land. Traditionally, the commun­ity-based customary laws ensured sustainable management and equitable distribution of land within the respective tribes, and protection from encr­oachment by outsiders. The situation changed for some tribes when the British rulers imposed colonial laws in order to acquire their land for tea plantations, petroleum and coal mines. This resulted in much land alie­nation. Most other tribes whose land the colonial rulers did not need were allowed to govern themselves autonomously under their customary laws. That too changed post-1947 when Partition pushed hordes of refugees into such community-owned land. Before that, the British encouraged migrants from East Bengal,  now Bangladesh, to cultivate land in Assam. They continue to migrate to the Northeast in search of land. From the 1930s some leaders of the freedom movement encouraged Bihari peasants to enter Assam for fear that it was becoming a Muslim-majority province.

Most states changed laws in order to enable refugees, migrants as well as non-tribal locals, to occupy land. In Manipur and Tripura, the Land Reforms and Land Revenue Act of 1960 recognised only individual ownership when most tribal land was community managed. As a result, according to journalist-writer Subir Bhaumik, in the 1960s alone Tripura’s indigenous tribes lost 20 to 40 per cent of their land to what they called “illegal East Pakistani migrants”. In 1947, Assam had 35 tribal blocks and belts reserved for tribals. Their number has reduced to 25 and the size of what is left has been reduced drastically. While local non-tribal Assamese occupied land in tribal blocks and belts, migrants from Bangladesh and Bihar encroached on tribal as well as non-tribal land. In Manipur, the tribes—who are 40 per cent of the population living on 90 per cent of the state’s land—felt that the Act was meant to let plains-people encroach on their land. So they did not allow it to be applied to the hill areas.

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As conflicts flare up, the government brought many areas of the region within protective mechanisms. For the tribes, land is not a commodity as it is under the formal law. It is their sustenance and the centre of their economic, social and cultural systems, and of their identity. The tribes thus perceive loss of land as an attack on their entire life and culture. Even many non-tribal communities of Assam that call themselves indigenous to the state hold a similar view of land. In Nagaland, the conflict began in 1947 when Naga leaders felt that their identity and autonomy were under attack with the imposition of a single legal and administrative system on the hitherto autonomous tribes. Eventually sovereignty bec­ame their leitmotif. An effort was made to meet the demand by granting them statehood in 1963 and bringing it under Article 371A but the conflict has not ended. Mizoram revolted in the mid-1960s when their leaders felt that their identity was under attack. While granting statehood in 1987 the Mizos were also granted Article 371G that allowed them to run their affairs under customary laws. No Central Act applies to Nagaland and Mizoram till their state assemblies validate them. These prov­isions also protect land from enc­roachment. After the tribal-Bengali conflict that erupted in the 1980s around land and identity, the tribes of Tripura were brought within the Constitution’s Sixth Schedule and an autonomous district council was formed. Meghalaya came into being in the 1960s when its leaders felt a threat to their identity and autonomy within Assam. The whole state also comes under the Sixth Schedule. But Arunachal Pradesh, which is 64 per cent tribal, does not have any protective mechanism other than the Inner Line Permit that puts restrictions on the entry of outsiders into this border state.

What is the impact of the protective mechanisms? They have kept ownership of land to the tribes to a large extent but have not prevented outsiders from buying or occupying land completely. On the other side, there is no provision in these mechanisms to prevent internal alienation to rich individuals within the tribe, and official policies ensure precisely such a process. For example, in the 1980s, the Rubber Board launched  a plantation scheme in the East Garo Hills of Meghalaya inhabited by the matrilineal Garo tribe. A condition for loans and subsidies was individual ownership by the head of the family, understood to be a man by default, in this community-based tribe. A study done two decades later showed that 30 per cent of the families in the district had become landless. The little power that women had was reduced considerably. The community is weakened and class formation is strengthened in the egalitarian tribes. This situation was also noticed in the Karbi and Dimasa tribes of Assam among whom the tea and coffee boards introduced their plantations.

The development paradigm is one more cause of internal land alienation. Good quality colleges and health institutions are concentrated in the cities of Shillong and Guwahati and the hill areas are neglected. Civil society and church groups have opened good institutions in the hills but neglect of rural transport prevents the children of the hill areas from accessing them. Parents who want to send their children to colleges in the major cities or outside the Northeast have to sell their most productive land to rich individuals within the tribe to earn money for the expenses. They may be able to negotiate a fairly good price when they sell it for education. But in case of a health emergency their only option is to sell their best land at a throwaway price. That impoverishes many families and these processes are basic to conflicts. Similarly, the opposition in the Northeast to the Citizenship Amendment Act was mainly to the clause on welcoming people who alle­gedly flee religious persecution in the neighbouring countries. The people of the region fear that a large number of people from the minority communities will migrate to the Northeast under the garb of religious persecution.

What it means is that the protective mechanisms are required but are inadequate. They can prevent land alienation to outsiders to a limited extent but not int­ernal alienation. For example, while the tribes and the plains-people fight for tribal land, the story of the monkey mediating in the fight for a cake between two cats is repeated. The corporate sector has quietly taken over much land on both sides of the Asian Highway, thus depriving a large number of families of their livelihood. While attempting to protect their land these mechanisms do not deal with the causes of conflicts. New initiatives are required to make the land productive. Today land is used for a single crop and that too is in a crisis with the youth migrating away from the rural areas and abandoning agriculture that they perceive as drudgery. Ways have to be found of developing a three-crop regime based on local skills and upgrading local technology in order to produce income and jobs for a bigger population. It has to be combined with processing and marketing. Similarly, ways have to be found of developing good transport and educational and health inst­itutions in the hill areas in order to prevent land alienation and prevent the flight of youth away from the region. That would involve taking a new look at the protective mechanisms as well as official policies that facilitate land alienation.   

(Views are personal)

The author is director of North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati