The Hindu Business Line : Leave the tribals alone

Jawaharlal Nehru backed Verrier Elwin, but not many in the Congress or the wider political community were comfortable with keeping tribals as tribals.

"To steal a song is far worse than to steal gold," wrote Verrier Elwin. The collection of folk poetry and myth (of tribals), Elwin hoped, would banish "the dark and gloomy shadow over a great part of aboriginal India of the Puritan reformer and the missionary of whatever faith and challenge the leaders of the abominable movement to stop tribal recreations on the grounds that they were indecent."

Posted in the then NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) by the Nehru administration, Elwin was singed by what an educated Mishmi told him: "Remember that we are not by culture or even by race Indian. If you continue to send among us officers who look down on our culture and religion, and above all look down on us as human beings, then within a few years we will be against you."

Has that not come true in the seven States of the North-East with none in New Delhi being able to appreciate or imbibe with compassion the tribal mind. It is not a question of whether theses States can have an independent, political existence; it is more about the cursory, or rather dismissive attitude of the ruling elite. The interesting Elwin story, Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India, forms the third book the Ramachandra Guha Omnibus with the other two being: The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya and Environmentalism: A Global History. Guha's Omnibus is more than worth a buy and a read.

In July 1943, Sonia Tamara of New York Herald Tribune and Herbert Matthews of New York Times raced each other to have an exclusive with Elwin. Sonia beat Matthews to the tape. After a week with Elwin, she rushed to a post office in Jabalpur, 150 miles from Elwin's village of Patangarh. Her crisp wire report spoke of the relaxed manners of the tribals allowing Elwin to record "their lifestories, their customs rites, intimatest habits."

The lady journalist added, "men, women, children outpoured talked volubly smiled babies put into his lap." Verrier and Shamrao Hivale brought out a poetry collection, Songs of the Forest where the Pardhan women sing: "I am looking out of my house; The sun is but a bamboo's length above the hills. Where can you go now it is grown so late? Leaf of the Plantain, lover in whom my heart is bound, Like a dry leaf in the wind, You are ever blown to and fro away from me. Where can you go now it has grown so late?"

Gond men sing back an answer: "The palace is fashioned of chosen stone, The doors are also made of stone. In every corner burn the shining lights. But without a girl all is dark inside. On the new road the wheels run swiftly, So will I drag you to my heart. Inside, without a girl, the house is dark."

Dining, dancing and drinking with tribals, Elwin believed they had to be set apart or "protected" drawing the ire of Congressmen like A.V. Thakkar who dubbed him an "isolationist." He was afraid of established religions grabbing the aboriginals.

In 1943, a pamphlet, The Aboriginals, best stated the Elwin view: "Let us finally face an unpleasant fact. There is no possibility in India and the world as things are today of substituting civilisation for primitiveness: the only alternative to primitiveness is decadence. ...I advocate, therefore, for the aboriginals a policy of temporary isolation and protection, and for their civilized neighbours a policy of immediate reform. ... If you want to help the aboriginal, do not try to reform him: reform the lawyer, the doctor, the schoolmaster, the official, the merchant, with whom he has to deal. Until that is done, it is far better to leave the aboriginal alone."

Nehru backed Elwin but not many in the Congress or the wider political community were comfortable with keeping tribals as tribals.

A commentator in the Economic Weekly, Bombay, wrote that "as a personal attitude it is certainly a tenable one. Less so, perhaps, as the begetter of a governmental policy."

Between Elwin's time and today, there is a remission in the tribal romance. They know forests will not give them anything; a better life is to be lived outside.

Development projects have pushed them to the edges of small towns and big cities. Recently at Bori sanctuary, a tribal told me he wanted to shift to a home near the highway. The tribal, in his own manner, wants to lead a life like you and me. But in 2006, the wider political groupings, including Congress, want to lock the tribals in the forests.

Justifying the Tribal Bill, the Tribal Affairs Ministry says: "It is well known that the forest dwelling scheduled tribes are residing on their ancestral land and their habitat for generations and from times immemorial and there exists a spatial relationship between the forest dwelling scheduled tribes and the biological resources of India. They are integral to the very survival and sustainability of the forest eco systems including wildlife. In fact, the tribal people ... ... cannot survive in isolation."

Using tribals as cover, the mighty of the city and villages will pocket the forests using the provisions of the Tribal Bill. For instance, a stretch of the Melghat Tiger Reserve was denotified to help dying tribals.

Today, the tribals living in the denotified zone want to quit Melghat and the State Government is not helping. The way the Tribal Bill is rolling out it will do away with forests, wildlife and tribals.

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Leave the tribals alone