Living on the Margins. Minorities in South Asia - EURAC

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introduce loopholes in the law under the pressure of the landed elites. Land reform laws become like other pro poor statutes, devoid of meaning. By way of Closing a Painful Chapter of Tribal History It would be in the order of things to conclude with a quotation from the Planning Commission appointed ‘Study Group on Land Holding Systems in Tribal Areas - " The basic threat to the tribal existence emanates from land alienation. For the tribals, traditional land holding system was the basis of their polity, economy and culture... Traditionally in most tribal areas individual rights of enjoyment of land and land based resources are embedded in communal systems of access to and management of resources which were systematically suppressed during colonial rule. But the very distortions introduced by the colonial government were accepted as the crucial elements of the legal framework for implementation of policies and programs in the tribal areas. Paper laws of the colonial dispensation were given the place of pride over the laws on the ground by which people lived. The significance of tribal upsurges in diverse forms which have taken place from time to time during the last one century, for protection of resource based survival systems, not only as biological entities but also as social entity, in specific historico-ecological niche, has not been adequately appreciated. On the other hand, paper laws of the past have been used as an alibi to deny the customary rights of the people and in the process accommodative compromises have been made with the feudal pretensions in some areas and factional elites have been promoted in others... The study team has lighted another interesting fact. It has brought out that the land reform (without first removing the colonial distortions) has promoted a neo-feudalisation process where the tribals are less assertive and democratic mobilization where they are conscious of their historical rights”. (49) We have come full circle. Every single Commission, whether of the state or the center and legislatures of the states and the center, without exception harp on the same theme. Land alienation rings the death knell for the tribal people. Protecting the tribals from ethnocide is the primary objective of every single piece of land reform law since independence. Yet every recommendation appears to have been made to be forgotten, every law made to be subverted, by design or by default. No wonder that the call of the ultra left Maoist party resonates in the hearts of the tribals and large tracts of their homelands are the staging grounds for the party guerillas who wage a war against the state. I end with a quote from the Chairperson of the Planning Commission, Expert Group on Development Issues, dealing with Discontent, Unrest and Extremism - “Unmet just demands may provoke the sufferers to use force, whether for the occupation of land or for exercising rights …The ruling establishment cannot avoid taking responsibility for its failure to read the writing on the wall”. (50) Will the ruling elites sit up and listen ? 1. Census of India 2001, Government Press, New Delhi 2. Prabhu Pradip, Legally Looted and Cheated – Land Reforms & Tribals in Maharashtra, Monograph, NIRD, Hyderabad. 3. Census of India 2001. 4. Pradip Prabhu, op cit 183
5. Tribal Research and Training Institute, Malnutrition Related Deaths of Tribal Children in Nandurbar District, Monograph, Government of Maharashtra, Pune 2002 6. Report of the Agricultural Census, Department of Agriculture and Co-Operation, Government of India, New Delhi, 1990-91 7. Tribal Research and Training Institute-Pune, Benchmark Survey, 2003 8. Evidence of the same is found in the different survey and settlement reports of the various districts. e.g. Report by Captain Wingate, Revenue Survey Commissioner, on the plan of Survey and Assessment most suitable to the province of Khandesh and also Instructions issued on the subject by Government, Selections from Government Records, No. 1, Old Series, Bombay, 1851 9. The earliest records pertaining to the pattern of land ownership among the tribal peoples, like the Gazetteers prepared by the British, refer to the communal ownership of land in the tribal communities, for example Gazetteer of Bombay Presidency Vol XIII, Thane (Gazetteer), Central Government Press, Bombay, 1882. 10. This is particularly visible in Bihar, where the Sasandhris, large stones placed in the memory of the ancestors were not only the indications of a tribal habitation but also the 'title deeds' of the community. 11. Report of the Study Group on Land Holding Systems in Tribal Areas, Chairman B. K. Roy Burman, Government of India, New Delhi, 1987 12. The anomie that follows the loss of land was reflected immediately in the very high incidence of 'suicides' among the displaced tribals in the Dapcheri Milk Project in Thane. The explanation that was forwarded by most of the tribal people without exception was - 'what happens to a tree when you cut its roots? It dies. The same is happening to the older people of the village. They prefer death to the debilitating anomie." This concept has been explored at some length in Prabhu P. and Suresh V Transience and Transition in Tribal Societies, ISISD, Madras, 1986. 13. Roy Burman JJ, Sacred Groves Among Communities, Mittal Publications, New Delhi 2003 14. D. Symington, Report of the Aboriginal and Hill Tribes of the partially excluded areas in the Bombay Presidency, Central Government Press, Bombay, 1938. 15. Report of the Committee on Special Multipurpose Tribal Blocks, Chairman Verrier Elwin, New Delhi 1960 16. 28th.Report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Government of India, New Delhi, and 29th. Report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Government of India, New Delhi 17. Fernandes W and Ganguly T, (eds) Questions on Development, Displacement and Rehabilitation, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, 1989, pg.6 18. National Commission on Agriculture, 1951, Government of India Press, New Delhi 1951, Vol. 15, para 65.2.14 19. Advocate Brian Lobo has made a careful analysis of the judgments and orders of the Sub Divisional Officer’s Court, the Maharashtra Revenue Tribunal and the High Court. His study is published in ‘Land Reforms in Maharashtra’ in Shah G. & Shah D. C. (eds) Land Reforms in India, Volume VIII: , Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2002, pp 247-294 20. Land Reforms in Maharashtra, An Empirical Study, Lal Bahadhur Shastri Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, 1994,pg. 18 21. Land Reforms in Maharashtra, An Empirical Study, op cit pg.6 22. When tracing their ancestry, a number of tribal villagers in Thane District have mentioned their ancestral villages to be in distant talukas. On probing further, these families mention that their forefathers, not so far ago had fled the village due to the tyranny of the local landlord and abandoned the land because of inability to pay loans taken to stave off starvation. 23. Report of the Depressed Classes and Aboriginal Tribes Committee, Chairman, O.H.B. Starte, Bombay, 1930 also see Papers relating to the Revision Survey Settlement of the Taloda taluka of the Khandesh Collectorate, Selections from Government Records, No. 387, New Series, Bombay official, 1899, p.9. 24. B. H. Powell, The Land System in British India, Vol. II pg. 456 and Vol. III pg. 28 25. Parulekar G, Jeva Manoos Zaga Hoto,(Marathi) Peoples Publishing House 1960 and Parulekar S, Revolt of the Warlis, Peoples Publishing House, Bombay 1947 26. B. H. Powell, The Land System in British India, Vols. 1 & II 27. Case No. 237/84 heard and disposed of by the Maharashtra Revenue Tribunal, Bombay, Court Records. 28. In Maharashtra alone 73,546 landlords resumed their lands for personal cultivation. See Land Reforms in Maharashtra, An Empirical Study, op cit p.23. There is however no explanation for the landlords sudden love for agriculture, particularly when these lands were with the tenants for 184
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Prepared in the frame of EURASIAN
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I - Introduction Rita Manchanda II
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‘powerlessness’. The history of
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theory of the ‘clash of civilizat
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unitary ideology, centralized struc
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Pakistan: Constitution based discri
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their construction process, since t
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Chowdhury explores the dilemma of a
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such a collusion and has systematic
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viii The rights of ‘people’ and
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these make for an egalitarian socie
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Muslims. There are three kinds of w
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Nonetheless, this alignment with se
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the oppressed even while we recogni
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The result was the impoverishment o
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negligence or failure has its roots
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Muslims, in other words have joined
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xviii Indicators of development her
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social identity of the ruling class
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Since Bengalis in general were in c
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As long as separate electorate exis
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their significance as a group and h
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it would seem that Bangladeshi Hind
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However, the image of Hindus as vot
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Trends Production of communalism or
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Religious Minorities in Pakistan: M
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In the 1981 census, out of a total
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the 1998 Census, caste Hindus const
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elationship with Sikhs in Afghanist
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Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Excerpts of In
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many regimes would use the Islamic
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The 1956 Constitution largely refle
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Christian & Hindu Votes Impact 50 N
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across the country. Now, Pakistan
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that takes Pakistan’s plural trad
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minorities and women. This was evin
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Wolpert, S., Zulfi Bhutto of Pakist
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ensures that it is fully absorbed a
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aggressiveness and Hindus are aggre
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community, is subject to the most i
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frenzy”. The major absence in thi
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After the death of emperor Aurangze
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speech is used to create silences,
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Muslims in Sri Lanka: Political Cho
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They rarely highlighted their ‘Mu
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generation of the Muslim intelligen
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Athaullah, Rishard Bathiuddeen, and
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forces hoped that the Rajapaksa reg
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won 15 seats while the UPFA won 18.
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xvii After the general elections of
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an equal opportunity law in 1996-19
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administration headed by the Eelam
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nationalism was that the nationhood
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Rights Claims in Muslim Politics Mu
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councils for the two provinces. Bot
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A subsequent agreement signed betwe
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areas where the local majority popu
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a scheme for an interim administrat
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months later. The de-merger occurre
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Meanwhile, the strategies of minori
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xvii Cited in Loganathan, 1996, p.
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I will just briefly summarize it he
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Table 1: Parliament Seats under FPT
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under the district governments, the
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However, there are other groups whi
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The threshold for PR election shoul
Page 133 and 134: controlled by local elite (Harper a
Page 135 and 136: Likewise, the parliament could deci
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Page 139 and 140: Stash, Sharon, and Emily Hannum. 20
Page 141 and 142: The in-migration of labor force fro
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Page 145 and 146: culturally. In the last five thousa
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Page 151 and 152: leave Karachi. Outward migration re
Page 153 and 154: are for and against lobbies in Isla
Page 155 and 156: It is questionable whether the nati
Page 157 and 158: 17 Aitizaz Ahsan, The Indus Saga, A
Page 159 and 160: wars between the tribes and the Bri
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Page 165 and 166: But even these additional criteria
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Page 169 and 170: date. In India, despite the protect
Page 171 and 172: Tribal Land Alienation in Maharasht
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Page 175 and 176: name of projects using the colonial
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Page 181 and 182: Examination of the case records sho
Page 183: While the table appears to be recen
Page 187 and 188: Legality and Pragmatism Usha Ramana
Page 189 and 190: to resolve this problem that, other
Page 191 and 192: means of livelihood”. 15 The “o
Page 193 and 194: leasehold rights but only a licence
Page 195 and 196: public lands was being addressed in
Page 197 and 198: was in the eighties and the early n
Page 199 and 200: obligations have devolved upon them
Page 201 and 202: There is a direct relationship betw
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