Tribal Movements in India

Tribal Movements in India
by : Mamta Aggarwal

Numerous uprisings of tribals have
taken place beginning with one in Bi­
har in 1772, followed by many revolts
in Andhra Pradesh, Andaman and
Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh,
Assam, Mizoram and Nagaland. The
important tribes involved in revolt in
the nineteenth century were Mizos
(1810), Kols (1795 and 1831), Mundas
(1889), Daflas (1875), Khasi and Garo
(1829), Kacharis (1839), Santhals
(1853), Muria Gonds (1886), Nagas
(1844 and 1879), Bhuiyas (1868) and
Kondhas (1817)

Some scholars like Desai (1979), Gough
(1974) and Guha (1983) have treated
tribal movements after independence
as peasant movements, but K.S. Singh
(1985) has criticised such approach
because of the nature of tribals’ social
and political organisation, their
relative social isolation from the
mainstream, their leadership pattern
and the modus operandi of their
political mobilisation.

Tribals’ community consciousness is
strong. Tribal movements were not
only agrarian but also forest-based.
Some revolts were ethnic in nature as
these were directed against
zamindars, moneylenders and petty
government officials who were not
only their exploiters but aliens too.
When tribals were unable to pay their
loan or the interest thereon, money-
lenders and landlords usurped their
lands. The tribals thus became tenants
on their own land and sometimes
even bonded labourers. The police
and the revenue officers never helped
them. On the contrary, they also used
the tribals for personal and
government work without any pay­
ment.

The courts were not only ignorant of
the tribal agrarian system and
customs but also were unaware of the
plight of the tribals. All these factors
of land alienation, usurpation, forced
labour, minimum wages, and land
grabbing compelled many tribes like
Munda, Santhals, Kol, Bhils, Warli,
etc., in many regions like Assam,
Orissa, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh,
Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and
Maharashtra to revolt.

The management of forests also led
some tribes to revolt, as forests in
some regions are the main sources of
their livelihood. The British govern­
ment had introduced certain
legislations permitting merchants and
contractors to cut the forests. These
rules not only deprived the tribals of
several forest products but also made
them victims of harassment by the
forest officials. This led tribes in
Andhra Pradesh and some other areas
to launch movements.

Raghavaiah in his analysis in 1971 of
tribal revolts from 1778 to 1970 listed
70 revolts and gave their chronology.
The Anthropological Survey of India in
their survey in 1976 of tribal
movements identified 36 on-going
tribal movements in India.
It was said that though these revolts
were neither numerous nor gravely
frequent, yet there was scarcely any
major tribe in middle or eastern India
which at some time in the last 150
years had not resorted to launching
movements to register their protest
and despair.

Some studies on tribal movements
have been conducted and reported in
North-East and Central India.
However, there were an insignificant
number of movements or none at all
among the tribals of the southern
states. This is so because the tribes
down south are too primitive, too
small in numbers, and too isolated in
their habitat to organise movements,
in spite of their exploitation and the
resultant discontent . L.K. Mahapatra
also has observed that we do not find
any significant social, religious, status-
mobility, or political movement
among the numerically small and
migratory tribes.

After independence, the tribal
movements may be classified into
three groups:

(1) movements due to exploitation by
outsiders (like those of the Santhals
and Mundas),

(2) movements due to economic
deprivation (like those of the Gonds in
Madhya Pradesh and the Mahars in
Andhra Pradesh), and

(3) movements due to separatist
tendencies (like those of the Nagas
and Mizos).

The tribal movements may also be
classified on the basis of their ori­
entation into four types:
(1) movements seeking political
autonomy and formation of a state
(Nagas, Mizos, Jharkhand),

(2) agrarian movements,

(3) forest-based movements, and

(4) socio-religious or socio-cultural
movements (the Bhagat movement
among Bhils of Rajasthan and Madhya
Pradesh, movement among tribals of
south Gujarat or Raghunath Murmu’s
movement among the Santhals).

Mahapatra (1972) has classified tribal
movements in three groups: re­
actionary, conservative and
revolutionary. The reactionary
movement tries to bring back ‘the
good old days’, whereas the
conservative movement tries to
maintain the status quo. The
revolutionary or the revisionary
movements are those which are
organised for ‘improvement’ or
‘purification’ of the cultural or social
order by eliminating evil customs,
beliefs or institutions.

Surajit Sinha (1968) has classified
movements into five groups:
(i) Ethnic rebellion,
(ii) Reform movements,
(iii) Political autonomy movements
within the Indian Union,
(iv) Secessionist movements, and
(v) Agrarian unrest. K.S. Singh (1983)
has also classified them in more or
less the same way, except that he has
used the word ‘sanskritisation’ instead
of reform movement and ‘cultural’
instead of ‘ethnic’.

S.M. Dubey (1982) has classified
them in four categories:
(a) Religious and social reform
movements
(b) Movements for separate statehood
(c) Insurgent movements and
(d) Cultural rights movements.
Ghanshyam Shah has classified
them in three groups:
(1) Ethnic
(2) Agrarian, and
(3) Political.

If we take into consideration all the
tribal movements, including the Naga
revolution (which started in 1948 and
continued up to 1972 when the new
elected government came to power
and the Naga insurgency was
controlled), the Mizo movement
(gurerrilla warfare which ended with
the formation of Meghalaya state in
April 1970, created out of Assam and
Mizoram in 1972), the Gond Raj
movement (of Gonds of Madhya
Pradesh and Maharashtra, started in
1941 for a separate state and reaching
its peak in 1962-63), the Naxalite
movements (of the tribals in Bihar,
West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and
Assam), the agrarian movements (of
the Gonds and the Bhils in Madhya
Pradesh), and the forest-based
movements (of the Gonds for getting
customary rights in the forests), it
could be said that the tribal unrest
and the resultant movements were
mainly movements launched for
liberation from (i) oppression and
discrimination, (ii) neglect and
backwardness, and (iii) a government
which was callous to the tribals’ plight
of poverty, hunger, unemployment
and exploitation. K.S. Singh (1985)
analysing tribal movements before
independence have divided them into
three phases: the first phase between
1795 and 1860, the second between
1861 and 1920, and the third between
1921 and 1947.

The first phase coincided with the
establishment of the British Empire,
the second with intensive colonialism
during which merchant capital
penetrated into tribal economy, and
the third with participation in the
nationalist movement and also
launching of agrarian as well as some
separatist movements.

Tribal movements after independence
have been classified by K.S. Singh in
four categories: agrarian,
sanskritisation, cultural and political.
In the first two phases before
independence, K.S. Singh holds that in
their effort to introduce British
administration in the tribal areas, the
British came in conflict with the tribal
chiefs.

The rebellious tribal leaders revolted
against the British and exhorted their
followers to drive out the outsiders.
Such movements were launched by
Oraon, Mundas, Maikda, etc., in
Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and North-
East India. After independence, the
tribal movements were launched
either for maintaining cultural
identity or for demanding a separate
state or for asserting their status as
caste Hindus through sanskritisation
process or on economic issues.
Stephen Fuchs (1965) has dealt with a
large number of first types of tribal
movements. He has called them
messianic movements led by rebel­
lious persons gifted with abilities for
assuming the role of a Messiah, or
these gifted people (Messiahs) are
given this messianic role by the
community when it faces economic
distress, social strain or political
oppression.

Fuchs has suggested that success of
such a movement would depend upon
the individual ability of charismatic
leaders, thereby ignoring the relevance of system characteristics. Fuchs’
analysis of movements is mostly
descriptive which lists host of factors
for the success or failure of these
movements. None of them propose a
theoretical framework.

Not many studies have been
conducted on the political-separatist di­
mension in Nagaland, Mizoram,
Chotanagpur and Madhya Pradesh.
The Jharkhand movement in Bihar is
a movement of tribal communities con­
sisting of settled agriculturalists which
are sensitised to Vaishnavism.
Further, Chotanagpur was the most
advanced of the tribal regions in
terms of literacy, political
consciousness and industrial progress.
Christian Missions influenced the lives
of tribes here substantially. These
Missions promoted education, planted
the notion of private rights in land,
and emphasised a sense of
separateness from the rest.

The Jharkhand movement after 1950
developed in phases—from ethnicity
to regionalism (Singh, 1977). Of these,
the phase (1963-1975) after the fourth
general elections is characterised by
fragmentation of the Jharkhand party
and factionalisation of tribal politics.
The BJP-led government at the Centre
announced in 1998 the creation of two
tribal states—one in Bihar and an
other in Madhya Pradesh.

B.K. Roy Burman (1971 and 1979) has
distinguished between proto- national
and substantial movements among
tribes. Proto-national movements
emerge when tribes experience a
transformation from tribalism to
nationalism. It is a search for identity
at a higher level of integration.
In contrast, sub-national movements
are a product of social disorganisation
pioneered by acculturated elite
engaged in the contraction of
relationship and not exclusion of it
with the outside world. While proto-
nationalism results from expansion of
the orbit of development, sub-
nationalism is the result of disparities
of development. Sub-nationalism is
based on the coercive power of the
community, while proto-nationalism is
based on the moral consensus of the
community.

L.K. Mahapatra (1968) in his study
of tribal movements based on a
time-sequence and the nature of
stimulus in their existence noted
certain general tendencies:

(1) Most reformists’ tribal movements,
although initiated by charismatic
leaders, gradually led to
rationalisation and
institutionalisation, affecting structure
but not always affecting basic
changes.

(2) Tribal movements, irrespective of
their goal orientation, invariably
appeared among the numerically
strong, usually settled agriculturalists
and economically well-off tribes.

(3) Primitive and small tribes directly
took to large-scale conversion and
separatist tendencies are marked
amongst them.

(4) Given the geographical
distribution, a pan-Indian tribal
movement is unlikely to emerge.

(5) Democratic politics among tribes is
fragmentary which in turn blocks the
emergence of civil collectivism.

Surajit Sinha (1972) has proposed
several propositions regarding tribal
solidarity movements:
(1) The nature and degree of
involvement of tribes in solidarity
movements will depend on several
factors like location, size of
population, exposure to outside
communities, level of economy and
the historical experience.
(2) The intensity of tribal solidarity
will not be strong.
(3) Isolated and scattered tribes with a
primitive economic base would rarely
be involved in solidarity movements.
An instance of tribal exploitation may
be taken to explain the cause of origin
of a movement. This incident took
place in June 1999 among Bettada
tribals in Nagarhole forests near
Hunsur town in Kodagu district in
Karanataka state. About 29,000
Bettada tribals have been evicted
from the Nagarhole forest ranges
since 1972.

These tribals were promised reha­
bilitation by the Government. In 1998
some land became available in the
area and the Bettada Gram Sabha
authorised 70 families to take over the
land. This was legal because the
Centre had empowered gram sabhas
to disburse land under their control.
But about 200 forest department
officials and the police burnt down
huts of these 70 tribal families. The
local tribal organisation first
organised protest dharnas and then a
movement calling for severe action
against the officials concerned and the
rehabilitation of the tribals. All this
depicts that when the law does not
help tribals, when the government
remains callous, and the police fails to
protect them, even harasses them,
they take to arms against their
exploiters.

These movements indicate that
tribals adopted two paths of
achieving goals:
(a) Non-violent path of bargaining and
negotiating with the government and
using a variety of pressure tactics
without resorting to violence/revolts,
and
(b) Militant path of revolts or mass
struggles based on developing the
fighting power of the exploited/
oppressed tribal strata.
The consequences of both these paths
are different. One indicates struggle
oriented to reforms, while the other
indicates structural transformation of
the community. The fact that tribals
continue to be faced with problems
and also continue to feel discontented
and deprived, brings to the fore the
conclusion that both paths have not
helped them to achieve their goals.