Battling On

The other day a few of us veterans, who have been fighting for the elusive holy grail of Tribal Self Rule among the Bhil Adivasis in western Madhya Pradesh, were lamenting the fact that we have not made much headway despite four decades of struggle. Not only we, but an earlier mass movement of the Bhils initiated by the legendary freedom fighter Mama Baleshwar Dayal Dixit from the 1930s also came to nought despite at one point of time having sent as many as seven members to the legislative assemblies of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh after independence. We started our mobilisation in the early 1980s at a time when the earlier mobilisation had waned due to a combination of state repression and cooption of the leaders by the Indian National Congress into the mainstream corrupt politics that it has practiced ever since it began contesting elections from 1936 onwards. At that time, despite over three decades of independence and elections based on universal adult franchise, most Bhils in Alirajpur district, where we began work, did not even know that they were living in a democracy based on the rule of law in which there were considerable provisions for their protection.

The most important constitutional provision was the Fifth Schedule, which had the following very powerful provisions for Adivasis to develop according to their own genius - 

5 (2).The Governor may make regulations for the peace and good government of any area in a State which is for the time being a Scheduled Area. In particular and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing power, such regulations may –

a) Prohibit or restrict the transfer of land by or among members of the Scheduled Tribes in such area;

b) Regulate the allotment of land to members of the Scheduled Tribes in such area;
c) Regulate the carrying on of business as money-lender by persons who lend money to members of the Scheduled Tribes in such area.

5 (3). In making any such regulation as is referred to in sub-paragraph (2) of this paragraph, the Governor may repeal or amend any Act of Parliament or of the Legislature of the State or any existing law which for the time being applicable to the area in question.

So we began mobilising the Bhils to reclaim their lands and resources and also to demand their rightful share of funds allotted for their development. Of course this led to confrontation with both local oppressors and the State. However, despite this oppression, by the early 1990s the many mass organisations in the western Madhya Pradesh region, including the iconic Narmada Bachao Andolan, had gained considerable strength and were not only posing a serious challenge on the ground but also at the level of positing an alternative ideology of development. A major achievement of this mass mobilisation was the enactment in 1996 of the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act which upheld the paramountcy of the Adivasi Gram Sabha in all matters related to their governance and development and defined the Gram Sabha as the small Adivasi hamlet and not the administrative panchayat which may contain one or more villages and is too large an unit for the Gram Sabha to function through direct democracy. Later the Right to Information Act, The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Forest Rights Act were also enacted in the twentyfirst century. All these laws provide a very strong legal foundation on the basis of which tribal self rule can be actualised. 

Unfortunately, the mainstream political parties have continually sabotaged the efforts of the mass organisations, especially shameful are the actions of the Congress party which had ruthlessly suppressed these mass movements when it was in power till 2003 in Madhya Pradesh. We had established tribal self rule in an area of about fifty villages in Dewas and Khargone districts at the turn of the century. However, this movement was illegally crushed by the use of force by killing four of its members in police firing and the jailing of scores of its activists in 2001.   

So even though there is considerable mass mobilisation among the Adivasi youth and there are strong mass organisations like the Adivasi Ekta Parishad and Jay Adivasi Yuva Shakti presently, these are not able to build up a political party that can capture power through elections and actualise tribal self rule on a wider scale. 

Whether it is in the sphere of culture, agriculture or natural resource conservation, the Adivasi mass movements have forcefully registered their presence with viable alternatives that are based on their indigenous knowledge. However, these are all on the margins because they do not have any government backing and instead have to fight against the irrational and destructive destructive development policies of the State.

The encouraging thing is that the battle goes on and we have not given up the struggle!!!