Behind the Adivasi unrest in Assam

M.S. Prabhakara
The Hindu, 3 December


The Adivasis’ fight is not so much for their recognition as a tribal community as for the restoration of the tribal identity to which they believe they are entitled.

— Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar Vigilantist retaliation: Local residents of Dispur and Beltola beat up Adivasi protesters in Guwahati on November 24.

The continuing violence in Assam over the last few days, in particular the wanton vandalism and the crude and vigilantist retaliation that took place in and around Dispur in Guwahati on November 24, has rightly attracted wide and critical notice. However, any exclusive concern with the violent events of that Saturday, in particular the voyeuristic focus by the visual media on the shameful attack on the person and personal dignity of a young woman by the mob that has been unreservedly condemned by the people of the State, may obscure the real issues: the demand of the Adivasis for classification as a Scheduled Tribe, and the complex factors that inform the resistance to that and similar demands.

The Adivasi, a nomenclature now adopted by the approximately 20 million strong Tea Garden Labour and ex-Tea Garden Labour community, is not the only community in Assam seeking classification as a Scheduled Tribe. Five other communities (the Tai-Ahom, the Moran, the Motok, the Chutia and the Koch-Rajbongshi), all presently classified as Other Backward Classes (OBC), have also for long been pressing for recognition as Scheduled Tribes. The first four live predominantly in the districts of Upper Assam while the Koch-Rajbongshi live predominantly in western Assam, sharing broadly the same physical (and political) space as the Bodos, the most numerous of the tribal communities of the State. The Adivasis are, for the most part, settled in the vicinity of the tea gardens.

Contrary to the general impression, the clashes do not bespeak any deeply ingrained hostility between ‘tribal people and non-tribal people,’ or between the tribal people and caste Hindus, in Assam — a convenient distinction between supposedly irreconcilable categories made in much of the analysis of the so-called ethnic clashes in Assam and the north-eastern region. The Adivasis, though aspiring for recognition as a tribal community and indeed historically belonging to authentic tribal stock, are at present not recognised as a tribal community. It is only in popular usage that they are referred to as Tea Garden Tribes and ex-Tea Garden Tribes. Strictly speaking, their fight is not so much for their recognition as a tribal community as for the restoration of that tribal identity to which they believe they are entitled, being the descendants of various tribal communities of Central India who, over a century-and-a-half ago, went or were indentured to work in the gardens of eastern India. What they are fighting for is therefore the restoration of their legitimate cultural patrimony.

Why and how did the descendants of the tribal people whose ancestors were brought to Assam from other parts of India cease to be tribal people in their present environment? The answer lies in the peculiar rules that determine such recognition, according to which a person’s tribal identity is irrevocably and forever linked to her or his place of origin — in the present instance, the persons’ ancestral origins. For instance, the progeny of a Munda, a recognised tribal community in Jharkhand and other contiguous States, one of the 96 communities listed under the category, Tea Garden Labourers, Tea Garden Tribes, Ex-Tea Garden Labourers and Ex-Tea Garden Tribes in the official ‘Central List of Backward Classes, Assam,’ who was taken to Assam to work in the tea gardens over a century-and-a-half ago has lost his tribal identity, though were such a person to return to his (now notional) ancestral place, he would regain his tribal identity.

Such absurd rules and requirements do not however obtain in other cases of migration. A non-tribal person moving, say, from Karnataka to Assam continues to retain all the socio-cultural coordinates of his or her identity.

Indeed such absurd anomalies govern even the movement of tribal communities within Assam, and in the States that were carved out of colonial Assam after independence. For instance, the 23 recognised tribal communities in Assam are broadly identified under two categories: the Hill Tribes, that is, the 14 communities recognised as ‘tribal’ in the ‘hill areas,’ now comprising the two Autonomous Districts of Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills; and the Plains Tribes, that is, the 9 communities recognised as ‘tribal’ in rest of Assam, supposedly all ‘Plain’. Neither of the locational identifications is accurate, indeed cannot be accurate, given the facts of geography but that is the least of the problems.

More materially, neither of these two categories carries its tribal identity when it moves out of its ‘designated areas.’ Thus, Census figures for Guwahati city, very much in the Plains of Assam, which has people from every part of the country and also from foreign parts, do not enumerate a single person belonging to any of the 14 ‘Hill Tribe’ categories. Indeed, every Plains district enumerates zero population of Hill Tribes.

Similarly, the Census figures for the two Hill districts do not enumerate a single person from any of the nine designated ‘Plains Tribe’ categories. The reality is different; however such personas living outside their allotted spaces are for official purposes simply made ‘un-persons’.

While the Adivasis’ case for the restoration of their primordial tribal status seems strongest, the issues and demands underlying the struggle of the five other communities seeking recognition as Scheduled Tribes are equally complex. The Koch-Rajbongshi, also known as Sarania Kachari, historically part of the Bodo Kachari stock, lost their tribal identity over a long period going back to the days before the colonial conquest of Assam through a complex process of conversion and acculturation into the Vaishnavite variety of Assamese Hinduism. Such advantages as the conversion may have brought have lost their relevance in post-independence India where, increasingly, the tribal identity is getting to be perversely privileged by non-tribal communities. Corresponding urges and expectations no doubt drive the demands of the other communities seeking to be classified as Scheduled Tribes.

The State government says it is not opposed to conceding the demands but has pleaded its inability in view of the existing rules. There are indications that these rigidities may be relaxed, at least in respect of the Adivasi demand. However, if the Adivasi demand is conceded, the demands of other communities too will have to be eventually conceded. The issue also has national implications, in the context of the contradictions highlighted in the presently dormant Gujjar agitation for classification as ST.

The more immediate opposition in Assam to the extension of ST recognition to the six communities is however likely to come from the presently recognised Scheduled Tribes. The estimated 20 lakh Adivasis constitute about 60 per cent of the total ST population of the State which, according to the 2001 Census, was 3,308,570.

The addition of such a large population to the present ST pool will undoubtedly affect existing allocations in areas such as reservation of seats in legislative structures, higher education and jobs. Put simply, such identity struggles carry a cost, and a price.

(For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Manufacturing Identities? Frontline, 7 October 2005; In the Name of Tribal Identities, Frontline, 2 December 2005; and Separatist Strains, Frontline, 1 June 2007.)