An overview of Koraput Populace
The veteran anthropologist BK Roy Burman was questioned “you talk about a paradigm shift in tribal affairs. What do you mean?”. Roy Burman’s answer was “At the time of India ’s independence, tribal people in central India
After 1947, the so-called mainstream had a more intensive contact with the tribal society. It was found that some tribal societies were sceptical of the relief/welfare measures. The focus shifted to development, protection and participation. There was an assimilative approach to ‘mainstream’ the ‘backward’. There was an effort to modify the development package for the tribals. It was decided to allocate some additional funds for their development. The officials began to use what was to be additional fund as the main fund for development. In the 1970s came up the Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP). A special bureaucratic machinery was created for the purpose. However, tribal people were not to determine their own development priorities. I had insisted the Integrated Tribal Development Plan (ITDP) should provide for an elected body that should have an administrative and decision-making role. ITDP had no tribal advisory body. Technocrats controlled it. The siphoning of resources in tribal areas was facilitated by the infrastructure developed under the TSP.”
Next question was “what have been the key failures of the Indian state’s handling of tribal affairs?” He replied “One of the concerns in drafting the Fifth Schedule, I think, was to safeguard tribals from the feudal forces. But then it led to strengthening of the bureaucracy. For almost 40 years now, bureaucrats have controlled tribal affairs in Fifth Schedule areas.
While the Sixth Schedule is a better instrument of autonomy, the Fifth Schedule is more of a paternalistic tool of protection. In all these years, the Centre has invoked the Fifth Schedule only once. And all this talk of the state’s governor having the power to set aside any law in a Fifth Schedule area is wrong. The governor’s powers in this matter are not discretionary. The governor has to act on the advice of the state’s council of ministers, which means that it is the state government that has the power, not the governor. As for the Tribes Advisory Council, it is a consultative body, not a truly advisory body.”
Another question was “What is a good way to reorganise the governance of Scheduled Areas?”. Roy Burman answered “It is high time to move away from the paternalistic Fifth Schedule (applicable to Central India ) to the Sixth Schedule (applicable to only the Northeast), which offers better prospects of self-rule. When it was adopted, several areas were predominantly tribal. Over the past 50 years, there has been large-scale migration of tribal people out of these areas, while non-tribals have settled in. I have argued for long that areas in the Fifth Schedule that have tribal concentrations should be brought into the Sixth Schedule areas where tribals are a minority should be considered ‘ancestral domains’ where tribals enjoy certain privileges. There is already the example of Bodoland, where Bodos are a minority. The concept of ancestral domain, with diverse nuances, is gaining currency across the world. The ecology and resources of such areas would be protected, regardless of who rules.” (Ref: down to earth/org.in/node/13214)
From the above conversation with Prof. Roy Burman we may switch over to the exercises undertaken by the planning commission about three years back titled. ‘Development Changes in Extremist Affected Areas: March 2008’. The Planning Commission can claim to be the most reliable repository of comprehensive information of government and can boast of a staggering collection of statistical data, reports of investigations, recommendations, among other things. But now it seems, the planning Commission’s role has been reduced from the positions of a steering to that of a nearly indicative nature by the present generation of policy makers, who prefer to leave planning to the magnates of the market economy, instead of the state. (Banarjee Sumant:EPW)
The above referred document of the Planning Commission is an important document in the background of increasing Nexalite activities mainly in the scheduled areas. Though the terms of reference did not specifically mention Nexalites (or Maoists), the committee’s brief was to identify causes of unrest and discontent in areas affected by “Widespread displacement, forest issues, insecure tenancies and other farms of exploitation like usury, land alienation and imperfect market conditions….”. The experts groups consisting of scholars from different disciplines with the differing opinions could prepare a consensus report on several contentions issues and come up with a unanimously agreed set of recommendations, suggests that all is not lost. The report may not come as a surprise to those who have followed the earlier finding by civil rights groups and also other reports of the planning Commission like. “Prevention of Alienation of Tribal Land
The findings of the report need to be noted seriously by the rulers (both the political and bureaucracy). While drawing our attention to the Positive effect of the Naxal movement, the expert group painted against the high level of violence that its cadres indulge in and cautioned that “…. no state could agree to a situation of seizure of power through Violence when the constitution provides for change of Government through electoral process” But their findings also reveal how despite change of government, successive rulers who get elected use and misuse laws to suppress the poor and disadvantaged. There seems to be a design behind this continuity. The rulers, irrespective of party affiliation, are lackadaisical and sloppy in implementing pro-poor legal measures. “….recognised as a political movement with a strong base among the landless and poor peasantry and adivasis”. The report warn the government against resorting to ‘security-centric’ measures like setting up vigilante groups such as salwa judum and have called for “….. An ameliorative approach with emphasis on a negotiated solution”, and urged the government for resumption of the peace talks.
Now, let us be frank. In quite a large swathe of inaccessible territory, the state’s writ does not run and the Naxalities have been able to establish a parallel and alternative order that has largely benefitted the adivasis (as acknowledged in the above referred Report, despite reservations about their violent methods).
The superficial understanding of the people of Koraput Plateau, their Culture and environment has been the greatest deterrent reaching for the spirit of insurgency, terrorism, environmental deterioration etc. Who the Koraput populace are? The Koraput populace are those still considered by the government as ‘backward’ and need for special care and promotion. But it seems under the so-called special care and Promotion the government and also the so-called civilized society are nurturing inequality and exploitation of the people of Koraput Plateau. The people of Koraput Plateau have the right to the enjoyment and conservation of the specific endowments of the nature in specific territories apart from their right to physical survival in the context of the large scale displacement from their original habitats. The co-relation between the destruction/loss of the hill tribe environment and the loss of cultural diversity and biodiversity with the exploitation by the so-called Naxalite movements are to be understood in proper perspective by the rulers, designers of developmental Programmes and projects, the civil societies, political classes.
A tribe : an introduction :
The problem with tribal identity in India India
Ethnographic material from India India Ind
One of the major intellectual and administrative pre-occupations of the colonial state and to these existing categories, a new category was added during this period. This was the category of 'tribe'. In a sense the term 'tribe' is a colonial construct but not the notion of 'tribe'. In 1871 the first census in British India was initiated and it added the category 'tribe' with no definition. In fact in each decennial census of colonial India India India India India India ’ : Paper in the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS).]
The Term Tribe :
The Anthropological Survey of India under the ‘People of India Project’ identifies 461 tribal communities in India India India
There has been more concern with the identification of tribes than with their definition. This does not mean that lists have been drawn without any conception of tribe whatsoever. There did exist some conception. This was obvious from the use of criteria that were adopted. These ranged from such features as geographical isolation, simple technology and condition of living, general backwardness to the practice of animism, tribal language, physical features, etc. The problem however lay in the fact that they were neither clearly formulated nor systematically applied. One set of criteria was used in one context and quite another in another context. The result is that the list includes groups and communities strikingly different from each other in respect of not only size of the population but also the level of technology and other characteristics. Indian anthropologists have been acutely aware of a certain lack of fit between what their discipline defines as tribe and what they are obliged to describe as tribes. Yet they have continued with the existing labels.
The early ethnographers were not very clear about the distinction between caste and tribe in India India
It is only in the post-independence period that more systematic effort was made towards distinguishing tribe from caste. Though the distinction between the two was made in both colonial and post-colonial ethnography, the relation between the two was differently conceived in the two ethnographies. In the colonial ethnography, the concern shown by the British administrators-scholars was to mark off tribe from caste. Hence tribes were shown to be living in complete isolation from the rest of the population and therefore without any interaction or interrelation with them. In contrast the main concern in the native ethnography has been to show close interaction of the tribes with the larger society or the civilisation. Both Ghurye (1963) and Bose (1975), for example, stressed the nature of interaction between tribes and the larger Hindu society and the ways in which tribes have been drawn into the Hindu society. They stressed similarities between the two societies. Sinha (1958) even goes to the extent of viewing tribes as a dimension of little tradition that cannot be adequately understood unless it is seen in relation to the great tradition.
In view of such conception, tribes have come to be primarily studied in relation to features and characteristics of the larger society. The focus is on how tribes are getting absorbed into the larger society, the so-called mainstream, by becoming caste, peasant, class and so on. With such conceptualisation, the identity of the tribal group or community is indeed put at risk. This is because of the way tribes have been conceptualised in anthropological literature and the reference with which tribal society in India India
Tribes of Koraput Plateau
Since prehistoric days the hillmen of Koraput Plateau are the prime inhabitants of the prestine Highlands. They were the masters of all they saw around them. Their religion, culture and everything for their very existence revolved round forests, hills, rivers, streams and land which are nature's creations meant for them. They identified themselves as the First settlers and inventor of rice varieties, a contribution to the mankind.
The socio-economic conditions in the koraput highlands during the early part of the nineteenth century were particularly favourable to the persistence of a cooperative subsistence economy. Each narrow valley, with terrace cultivation on the adjoining slopes, supported a small number of families, which depended on their own labour for all the necessities and most of the ‘luxuries’ of life. Their agricultural produce was limited to certain types of pulses and millets, of which Ragi was the staple food. Rice was grown in the beds of small streams which were terraced. This suggests that the highlanders knew the art of growing rice in wetlands. This is a complex process of production which involves the transplantation of rice seedlings from nursery beds to wetlands. This is an advanced technique in agriculture. Mixed cultivation of different cereals, pulses, coarse grains and oil seeds on podu lands is one of the specialities of tribal agricultural practices. Thus it is misleading to regard the Hill Tribes of Koraput as ‘primitive’.
In the ‘thinly populated’ highlands, game was ‘plentiful’ (May, 1873: 236), and hunting was an important activity. Agricultural production was supplemented by hunting and other activities related to a forest economy. The major occupation was shifting cultivation, which was practised on the hill slopes. Harvesting millet and pulses on the hill slopes, grown by shifting cultivation, continued throughout the year. The system of myda cultivation of the Gadabas and the terraced cultivation of the Saoras are very ancient and took a slow process that some of the terraces on Saora hills with ten feet high boulder walls must have taken several centuries to the present stage. All facts, considered some scholars, have profounded the theory that the Soura hills are the original home of the paddy plants in India , if not Asia (N. Senapati - Koraput Gazetteer 1966 Edn. p.163). The manner how hill sides are terraced and uplands sustained with rough stone packed revetments is a wonderful eye-catching and indegineous engineering skill, which defies the modern engineering technology. The Bondas, Gadabas and Soaras are the pioneers of rice cultivation and it is a matter of great pride that the origin of about 2800 of paddy genetic resources in this plateau has been said to be one of the places indentified as secondary origin of rice in the world (P45 - Live stock and poultry Dynamic in tribal life Koraput - Das Kornel - 1999) For most of the nineteenth century, the populace of the highlands, like the other tribes of peninsular India, lived in conditions that were indeed ‘ideal’ for an ‘affluent’ existence. Few people in India
Initially, colonial administration remained aloof from the polarities of social antagonism. Through ‘protective’ legislation and ‘concern’ for the tribal people against the tyranny of the local and traditional chiefs, colonialism preserved, though not for long, its image as an arbitrator, mediator and even protector of the highland people. The report of a senior administrator at Koraput in 1865 presents a paternalist attitude:
The hill chiefs are quite competent to keep down crime in their own estates if they choose, and to deliver the criminals over to the Magistracy; but besides being open to bribery and other influences, they are very often themselves the offenders, and so great is the prestige of their authority, that they may offend with perfect impunity. Nobody in the hills could venture to lay a complaint against his feudal superior, without the actual location of the police in the neighbourhood. It is this alone, with the repeated tours of the European officers of the district, that leads to the detection of heinous crime, in these wild and distant localities (Carmichael, 1869:108).
It is not clear from the available reports what the nature, intentions and incidence of these ‘crimes’ in the highlands were. It is, however, important to mention that the contextual meaning of ‘crime’, as the colonial administration viewed it, differed from the way the popular culture of the highlands viewed criminality. At the same time, the customary corrective prerogatives were different from those of the colonial magistracy. More important, there were ‘good’ and ‘bad’ criminals in the highlands, from the point of view of the highlanders. As we later see, the rebels in the highlands who openly resisted colonial administration7 and the Hindu chiefs were imprisoned as criminals. In the highlands, those tribes which were in the forefront of tribal movements were referred to. in administrative reports, as ‘criminal tribes’. (Nanda : 1994)
The lack of a ‘written’ history has created an atmosphere of timelessness in the social anthropology of tribal societies. It is not surprising that a large portion of existing literature emphasises the unchanging aspects of ritual behaviour within a somewhat static frame of reference. This has given rise to the historical character of tribal studies. Yet another cause of such a historical analysis is the lack of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of tribes. Related disciplines of social sciences must come together in order to provide a holistic study of tribal social formations. Such a study of the historical process must extend beyond that of colonialism to the pre-colonial times that account for many existing ritual practices. This requires a critical examination of not only the existing colonial ethnographic prose of counter-insurgency (Guha, 1983), but also available oral traditions. Such a historical reconstruction is significant in two ways. First, it provides for a possible dialogue with the past in that the present and the future of tribal formations can be analysed in a historical perspective. Second, the accepted concepts and stereotypes commonly used in tribal studies, such as Hinduisation, tribalisation and the tribe-caste dichotomy, can be re-examined. Such a re-examination must take into consideration the social history of not only the tribe, but also the broader society at large, in order to bring into focus the local forces at work.(Nanda : 1994)
Now we may peruse extracts from Jagannath Pathy: 1995 to have a overview on history and ethnography of the hill tribes of Koraput Plateau. In these extracts ‘Kandha’ may denote the hill tribes also of Koraput Plateau.
The British conqucst of Orissa commenced in 1803 and by 1830 virtually all the Hindu kings had come under British rule. But several 'muthaheads'- far from recognising British suzerainty, relentlessly continued to resist the alien invasion. In 1835, the Hindu king of Ghumsar refused to pay any tribute (peskash') to the British,and the peasants revolted against the foreign encroachment. The rebellion was crushed with military might and the king fled to the Kandhamals with his family and treasury.The Kandha gave him shelter while the British army ravaged dozens of Kandha villages, looted their stocks of grain, and publicly hanged several Kandha leaders. In turn, the first batch of British soldiers were killed [Boal 1963: 1-7]. The ailing king died soon in one of the villages, but the entire Kandha region was in a state of unprecedented insurrection.
In August 1836, Russell, a member of the Board of Revenue responsible for controlling the disturbances, sent a brief note to the Madras government, saying that in the Kandhamals the people were notorious for• frequent rites of human sacrifice and female infanticide. He suggested that in order to rule over the Kandha territory, it was necessary to revive the fairs formerly held in different localities, as well as to establisha network of new market centres where the British administrators could conveniently approach the Kandha (Madras Presidency -selections 1854). The officer was perhaps bound to explain the local British failure to annex the Kandha territory. Anyway this constituted the first ever written note on these pernicious practices of the Kandha.
Consequently Colonel John Campbell was appointed as the assistant collector of Ganjam district to stamp out these oppro-brious practices by annexing the Kandha territory at any cost. In 1841, Lieutenant S C Macpherson succeeded Campbell
It needs to be noted that neither Campbel or Macpherson had any knowledge of the Kui, the Kandha language. Even their knowledge of Oriya was insignificant. Both depended upon Oriya traders, chiefs and local officers for information regarding Kandha society and culture. Their acquaintance with the Kandha was "confined to military expeditions in the winter seasons"[Bailey 1957:177].General Campbell's book was "bombastic, unreliable and fiercely determined to blacken the character and achievements of Macpherson who was dead when Campbell wrote his book" [Bailey1957: 177]. And Macpherson's letters and official reports were published by his brother as "an apologia' (1957:177). Indeed there was a prolonged and bitter jealousy between these two administrators. "For various reasons Campbell and Macpherson alternated several times with one another. When Campbell Campbell
Principally standing upon these official reports and books, a number of subsequent British administrators have written a few pages each on Kandha human sacrifice and female infanticide [Dalton 1872; Hunter1872; Frazer 1890; Risley 1891; Maddox1901; O'Malley. 1908; 'Thurston 1909;Russell and Hiralal 1916; Roy 1922 and many others]. Frazer on that basis even asserted that the "best known case* of-human sacrifices systematically offered to ensure good crops is supplied by the Kandhas" (1890:1-384). Suffice it to state that hardly any one of them had any direct contact with the Kandha. For instance Dalton
...personal acquaintance with the Kandhas is very limited. I have seen a few in attendance on tributary chiefs, and have fallen in with some families of the tribe in the Bonai dependency, but they had been too long dwelling in a servile position amongst aliens to have retained any distinctive or typical characteristics of their race, and could converse only in Oriya (1872: 285).
Any expectation that ethnographers such as Risley and O'Malley could have verified and elaborated on the accounts of the British soldiers is completely belied. In 1885, the British government had asked Risley to make a comprehensive field survey of the tribes and castes of Bengal for better administration and also as a contribution to comparative ethnological research. Though he claimed that his work was "the first attempt to apply to Indian ethnography the methods of systematic research sanctioned by the authority of European anthropologists"(1891, I: Preface), he relied upon the information provided by Jamesh Taylor, the Tahasildar of Kandhamals, and Rev Father Schaff. They in turn asked their subordinates to administrate on exhaustive interview schedule with as many as 391 questions.There was however not a single question of female infanticide, and three out of the four questions on human sacrifice were of trivial nature. And yet depending largely upon the accounts of the British soldiers, Risley wrote extensively on frequent inter-clan wars to capture wives, female infanticide and human sacrifice. Fortunately he did admit that he had serious "difficulty in ascertaining the precise form of exogamy practised by them,and indeed in getting any information at all on the subject" [Risley 1891:1-399, emphasisadded]. If on such an un offending subject the information could not be collected, how could he trust the soldiers to collect information on the atrocious practices of the Kandha half a century earlier?
It is true that Risley had some minor reservations about the earlier colonial accounts, but not with regard to the substantive issue of human sacrifice. He wrote:
Much has been written about the religion of Kandhas. But the subject can hardly be regarded as having yet been fully cleared up. Major Macpherson's account of the matter ascribes to the Kandhas religious conceptions of a very advanced character,quite out of keeping with their primitive social organisation, and one is inclined to suspect that the persons from whom he derived his information must have described to him rather their ideal view of what the religion of the tribe ought to be than what it actually was (1891:1-403).
The 'meriah' (the person sacrificed) "as a victim rather than a god may perhaps have received undue emphasis from the European writers who have described the Kandha religion" [Risley 1891: 1-407]. With regard to human sacrifice, as he was "not in aposition to add any fresh facts to those already on record in the reports" (1891*: 1-404), he approvingly quotes from Frazer's description of the rite. The status of colonial ethnography is thus self-explanatory.
The work of another better known British scholar, O'Malley (1908), "bears the stamp of having beep written at second hand from the information of local officials, and is quite inaccurate in its account of the history of the region..."[Bai!ey 1957: 177], This is obviously a very mild criticism. It is not a simple question of finding errors in the colonial accounts of the history of a territory or of the socio-political system, but essen-tially one of victimisation of an independent people through colonial constructions of customs such as widespread slaying of female infants and the atrocious crime of human sacrifice. Evidently, Bailey's own research was not directed at restoring the dignity of the people by exposing the colonial conspiracy.
That aside, the point is that neither the supposedly independent anthropologists of colonial times [Friend - Pereira 1903,1905;Elwin 1944] nor those of the post-colonial period [Bailey 1957, 1960; Das 1956, 1960;Raman 1957; Boat 1963; Niggemeyer 1964;Banerjee 1969; Pathy 1976; Patnaik and Das Patnaik 1982] have made any significant effort to demystify the imperial power structure and the Kandha "vile' customs.Rather by reiterating the colonial justification for annexation of Kandha lands, they have unwittingly provided much needed legitimacy to the colonial army actions and accounts
In conformity with the then popular indological theory of the Aryan invasion either annihilating or pushing back the indigenous peoples into the interior in hospitable jungles [Bhowmick 1982:297], British administrators such as Macpherson(1842) noted that the Kandhas were pushed into the hills by the Aryans who in turn displaced the docile Kurmo of the region.There is no way of knowing the actual history.There is no trace of the Kurmo in the recorded history of the area, and the economy of the Kandha is best suited to their present habitat than to the plains [Pathy 1984: 44-52;Kosambi 1975:41 ]. In any case, the Kandhas were in entire possession of the territory and were the rulers of the country when the Oriyas arrived [Russell and Hiralal 1916:111-465]. After the 19th century, the numerous surrounding Hindu kingdoms were periodically engaged in wars among themsleves as well as with the Kandha to assert their rule over the hills of adjoin interrior territories [Bailey 1957:178]. The Kandha strongly opposed any alien politica domination, but eventually around 350 years ago, some of the kings managed to send some of their subjects from the plains to curb the resistance struggle of the Kandha and protect their own frontiers from Kandha raids and guerrilla warfare. These immigran testablished a few fortified and separa tsettlements in the hills [Pathy 1976:5-7] Depending upon their power and popularity they were able to expand their domination beyond these Hindu settlements. This history is based on British accounts; the immigrant Hindu people opine that their ancestors were pushed into the area due to their inability to survive in the plains as well as intra-village factional fights [Bailey I960: 25-26].
It may be added that the British conception of property being one of individual ownership, the administrators never comprehended the local corporate-based occupation and use of land and land-based resources. The notion of 'res nullius' was adopted to usurp the corporate resources of the indigenous peoples. Risley wrote that the Orissan Kandhas, ... claim full rights of property in the soil in virtue of having cleared the jungle and prepared the land for cultivation. In some villages individual ownership is unknown,and the land is cultivated on a system of temporary occupation subject to periodical redistribution under the orders of the head-man (1891: 1-408).
Given such ignorance of the concept of group rights and the nature of axe cultivation,it was not surprising that the company thought initially that prolonged military expeditions into Kandhaland was costly. The local' administrators could persuade the Company only on the moral grounds of suppression of female infanticide and human sacrifice [Bailey 1960: 70].
The afore mentioned promises were given when the British were finding it difficult to conquer the people and there was a clear danger of uprising in the recently annexed territories [Bailey 1960: 182]. But once the colonial system consolidated itself through the recognition of the mutha heads, all the promises of Kandha rights and property were violated unilaterally. The Kandhas were forced to pay plough tax, cess tax and watchman tax in 1875, besides a large number of dues (mamuls), such as when someone dies or marries, for mediating in marital and land disputes, and so on. Around 1870, they were prohibited to distill liquor, practise axe cultivation, marry by capture and perform many religious rites. Several Christian missionaries infiltrated the area and started proselytising and deculturalising the Kandha. Several roads, bridges, schools and government rest houses were constructed with compulsory unpaid labour ('bheti') of the Kandha. And since 1875, every household was forced to pay one-fourth of a rupee for the road construction fund, which was increased and continued until independence [Thiady1965:25-31.59-60]. In addition, at frequent intervals Kandhas (including the recalcitrants) were sent to work in the Assam Mesopotamia to serve in the world war [Boal 1963: 61]
The distorted ethnography not only legitimised colonial terror and brutalities but also dehumanised the Kandha, who eventually internalised the degradation and transformed the conquerors into altruistic benefactors and self-sacrificing partners striving for the good of humanity and civilisation. That is why Kandha ethnography cannot be fully demystified through an examination of folklore and oral traditions.Careful utilisation of such sources may at best tangentially help to locate the broad historical tendencies affecting the material and cultural life of the Kandha. The best course to pursue is to locate ethnographic and administrative reports with reference to forms and periods of Kandha militancy,confusion, submission and compromise.Unfortunately this paper has not been able to enter into such a demanding complexity.
Second, by outright exaggeration of exotica - manufactured or otherwise - and subtle distortion of events, colonial ethnography has been able to capture the minds of the Kandha. Put simply, the tragedy of the Kandha is alienation from the past and internalisation of one and a half centuries of colonial and post-colonial propaganda about their cultural inferiority and their ancestors' heinous crimes and barbaric customs of female infanticide and human sacrifice. The memory assigned and the ethnography produced about their past, even if totally false, is contemporarily rooted, at least among the 'acculturated'. No serious analyst can separate this out of the context of their half century-long resistance against the intrusion of the mightiest power of the world, the subsequent intimidation,persecution and general trauma plus the repeated circulation of unsubstantiated accounts of customs and crimes of their forefathers even in the post-colonial era. In sum, several generations of the Kandha,their society and culture have been victimised by manufactured myths and colonial partisan interests, and there is little respite even now.
Third, the task is to present the Kandha with their own history and ethnography, written from their own point of view. Such a possibility can only be contemplated in the context of a Kandha national struggle for safeguarding their identity and resource base. But such a development is yet to materialise. Mean while liberal and radical scholarship could and should try to dismantle and demystify the so-called truths of colonial times by associating so-called heinous practices with the existing systems-of political, economic and institutional power,which produced and sustained the information or myths. It is not "a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power... but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social,economic and cultural, within which itoperates..." [Gordon 1980: 133].
The task is formidable and of crucial significance, not simply with regard to the Kandha but also to hundreds of other indigenous peoples who have been criminalised in the name of knowledge,science and civilisation.
In such a desperate ethnographic matrix,it is not easy to reconstruct the history and culture of the Kandha. The following seeks to utilise the internal and logical contradictions in the colonial ethnography with respect to female infanticide and human sacrifice. The oral tradition is not of much help when the society, being prosecuted and intimidated for generations, has in large part internalised the guilt. Perhaps there may be still some scope for selective recovery of legends and folklore, but we have not been able to explore the possibility.
The concept of ‘Tribe’ was induced to Koraput Plateau in the year 1917 by the Government of Madras Presidency under the ‘Agency Tracts Interest and Land transfer Act, 1917. The Act came in to force precisely on August 14, 1917 and the whole population of Koraput were termed as the ‘Hill Tribes’. The defination of the ‘Hill Tribe’ was :
“Anybody or class of persons residing in the agency tracts; not being a Land Holder (ie. Maharaja of Jeypore Zamindari) that may be notified for the purpose of the Act by the Government.”
From the above legal definition of the British administration, it is clear that all the communities residing in the highlands of Koraput are Hill Tribes. The term tribe become the masks of the whole population of Koraput Plateau.
In independent India the ‘Hill Tribes’ of Koraput were devided into three categories i.e. Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes under the constitution order of 1950. It seems the experts and the theoreticians have devided the whole population of Koraput artificially without designing any scientific parameter. Ultimately the so-called OBC communities of hill tribes become the most disadvantaged groups in Koraput Plateau.
Division of hill thibe communities in Orissa Portion, though in Andhra Portion all are notified as STs.
The layman's image of koraput tribe is that of a small group of people living in seclusion, accustomed to carefree and hand to mouth existence without any idea of saving for the rainy day and traditionally unmindful of the intricacies of modern life unless and until their traditional customs and taboos, mates and ethos and way of life are tampered with. This concept of tribal life and culture is a figment of the imagination of the age-old relations existing between tribals and their non-tribal neighbours; a myth as an empirical truth.
Tribals of present day very rarely live in perfect isolation anywhere in the world. They are caught between conventional and current cultural changes that is sweeping throughout the world. The degree of percolation of socio-economic process is mainly conditioned by the nature of communication and transport facilities available in Koraput region. The rapid strides made by Community and Tribal Development Projects and Programmes ultimately led to creation of new economic opportunities and a shift in the age old cultural standards and value-attitude systems of the people of this region.
The indifferent developmental projects/ schemes in tribal areas, designed by babus started upsetting the apple-cart of existing social system resulting in violation of tribal endogamy and family disorganisation. Gambling, prostitution, cheating, pick pocketing etc have also made their appearance amongst the tribes. Previously such violations of traditional norms used to be severely dealt with by the tribal council by ex-communicating the offenders and heaping all sorts of insults on them in order to make life unbearable for the culprit and his family in this society through ostracisation. Now-a-days such cases just end up with mild contemptuous remarks. Coffee and tea slowly replaced the traditional nutritious ragi gruel. Drinking illicit toxic liquor is also on the increase whereas they depended on healthy home brewing substances. Increased monetary transactions due to payment of wages in cash and the immoral activities of non-tribal workers served as catalirers in accelerating the process of social degeneration. The developmental schemes and programmes engineered for so-called development of this region made them conscious of new opportunities and ways of life and at the same time subjected them to sacrifice their traditional institutions with great stress and strain. The balance sheet of Socio-Cultural and Economic gains or losses can the summarised as follows :
1. The Positive aspects are :
(a) Tribes who acquired skills during the execution of developmental schemes and programmes got employment in urban areas as skilled or unskilled labourers and yet up rooted them from their family or home anchors.
(b) Some persons among the tribes have been motivated to strive for modern ways of life based on improved technology and have been able to stabilise their position, at the cost of neglecting their traditional vlaue systems.
2. On the Negative side are :
(a) The programmes and the schemes have been like a capricious lover of the tribals, giving bountiful gifts for sometime and then deserting them with complete unconcern when the purpose is sewed.
(b) The tribes who worked as casual labourers during the continuation of the programmes or schemes were left high and dry. The traditonal sources of livelihood no longer satisfies the need and at the same time the new hope which sustained them for sometime has disappeared like a mirage.
(c) The most hard hit of all in the process has been the younger generation. A good number of them could successfully challenge the traditional authority structure of the society, because of the economic opportunities provided by the schemes.
(d) The final result was - the younger generation unthinkingly discarded the traditions of the old. After a certain period the trauma of a guilty complex on the one hand and a superiority or inferiority complex of merely - 'being used' on the altar on the other hand goaded by these two complexes, compelled them seek escape in alcoholism, gambling etc. and other social vices.
(e) In this milieu, when the economic motive is added, the slippery slope of degeneration easily takes them to the practice of cheating, pick-pocketing and other delinquent behaviour without any compunctions.
(f) The same set of factors has also played an important role in creating a fertile ground for converting them into political iconoclasts of a sort to flourish in the area.
(g) Over and above these, the traditional social restrictions in sex life were subjected to great strain due to the monetary and other allurements available during the execution of the Project periods.
Taking an overall view, one cannot help feeling that the balance is heavily loaded on the negative side. But here a question arises, whether this negative balance is just another confirmation of the classical view of the harmful effects of contact between people of different levels of culture and technology or whether it is the result of inadequate planning and incomplete approach to the problem of (by the forcible induction of) development.
Further, establishment of industries for betterment of the people of this region seems to have been dealt with more as a territorial nexus than as an additional resource base. Its main purpose was to extract and exploit natural resource at one end and export for marketing at the other, but the human situation seems to have been considered more in terms of instrumental value than end value.
Now the tribal consciousness in relation to its own tradition and history and in relation to outsiders is taking shape as an important part of the subaltern consciousness of the region. The tribals of Koraput region during the last six decades have gone through the trauma of various domineering forces in the name of progress and development.
First, they were the targets of the 'missionary solution' which detribalised their rituals, customs and morals; it was followed by a vigorous reaction of the forces promoting Hindu institutions, disturbing their indigenous ethos. Second, the British rulers followed the policy of segregation under the garb of 'protection' and 'Excluded' and 'Partially Excluded' areas; tribals were linked with primitiveness, and the task of defining their direction of change was delegated to colonial administrators, guided by the theory of 'isolation'. Third, the Indian Government after the Independence
When the norms and values of one culture dominate the other (through subjugation, colonisation, acculturation and assimilation or in the name of development) these can generate dissonance between the two or result in the indistinguishable assimilation of one culture, weaker in demographic or economic terms, with the other. Feelings of resentment against outsiders and virtual rejection of the outsiders among a section of tribals indicate their uncertainty and a sense of helplessness, about their future.
Expressing ideals of the pluralistic heritage of India
"Every flower has the right to grow according to its own laws of growth; ..... to spread its own fragrance, to make up the cumulative beauty and splendour of the garden. I would not like to change my roses into lilies nor my lilies into roses. Nor do I want to sacrifice my lovely orchids of rhododendrons of the hills':"
In the words of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru : "there is no point in trying to make them a second rate carbon copy of ourselves."
We indicated earlier that all the communities of Koraput Plateau were termed as ‘Hill Tribes’ and in 1950 under the constitutional order the hill tribes are categorised into Scheduled Tribes(ST), Scheduled Castes(SC) and the rest of about 40% were left over tribes have been made general i.e. same as higher castes. It seems, we the outsiders have made ... legal provision to grab their land legally. Which they could not dare to do from 1918 to 1950. Of course these non ST, leftover, tribes were subsequently notified as other Backword Classes (OBSs).
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