August 9 is dedicated to honour Indigenous People of the world over.
The indigenous are the earliest settlers in the areas they have been occupying for centuries.
In India when the British colonised the country, the encroacher nation claimed India as if its inheritance territory.
The colonial administrators conducted land surveys and apportioned land to the people and forced them to pay land tax to the British Crown. Thus, the occupier British claimed the land as if it was their father’s property.
No wonder, people rose against such exploitative and oppressive regime of the encroacher. The number of tribal revolts bear testimony to people’s uprising against the British and against their agents such as landlords, moneylenders and business class.
Through the Forest Act the British marked best portions as reserved forest. The best timber from such areas was transported to Britain for industrial use or to build palatial buildings of the British officers in India.
The locals were left with right to collect fuel wood or do cattle grazing in non-reserved forest areas.
Particularly the tribal areas were convenient hotspots for looting the resources. Considering the indigenous as barbarous, the British cared little for their education or progress. Instead, Macaulay’s system of education was introduced. Only the children of the landlords and upper class people could benefit. Preference was given to the Brahmin and upper class for higher education abroad.
After independence, the Brown Sahibs took over. They made rules for governance. They quarantined the Adivasis into a scheduled tribe list and fed them with ten-yearly reservations. So were the lower castes quarantined into a scheduled caste list to take the benefit of reservations as crumbs of development. The idea was that, with these crumbs of so-called ‘benefits’ they would climb the ladder to prosperity and development. Even after seven decades the STs and STs are at the bottom of the ladder, still quarantined, still marginalised, still exploited. So, how does the never-ending quarantine work for their benefit?
In this ever widening social and economic inequality, the SC/ST quarantine is ever to stay because the controlling levers are in the hands of those who wield money and political power. No wonder, the poor, including the Adivasis and the Dalits, are still fed with crumbs like subsidized rice and controlled ration even as privatisation is mounting.
With mounting exploitation of land and mineral resources by capitalist forces, marginalising the scheduled tribe and scheduled caste members from genuine benefits of development, and increasing attacks on Dalits, people of the quarantined schedule are forced to float for survival.
Their right to life is getting denied. There is a consistent threat to their physical existence on their own land. Capitalist forces, working hands in glove with the political leaders, are poaching on tribal areas for quarrying and mining of mineral resources. Result: increasing poverty, dispossession of land, emigration due to deprivation of life’s resources, migrant labour etc., have become threat to life. (Art. 21)
The Adivasis are faced with another burning issue: They are told in their face that they are Hindus and hence, ‘Ghar Wapsi’ (retuning to the fold) is the only solution. This Tsunami-like threat is issued by terrorist forces, backed by politicians and fundamentalist forces.
With it the centuries old historical existence as indigenous people of India, having original tribal characteristics, faces the threat of its being subsumed into the majoritarian fold.
Thus, even as their human rights are getting whittled down and their economic resources are appropriated by aliens, their social and cultural fabric is being torn apart.
The veracity of these issues need to be studied, and, if found true, serious solutions need to be arrived at.