The Big Story: Stonewalling the adivasi

On Thursday, the Jharkhand police filed cases of sedition against 20 activists for social media posts opposing the state government and taking part in the Pathalgadi movement that had swept across a large numbers of Adivasi villages in the state.

The first information report accused the Adivasi leaders of trying to create communal tension, causing law and order problems and misleading people with respect to the Indian constitution.

With its epicentre in the state’s Khunti district, the Pathalgadi movement is a unique form of protest. It uses an Adivasi practice of installing stone tablets – traditionally used to mark graves – in order to list out provisions from the Indian Constitution which award vast powers to gram sabhas, village councils in Adivasi-dominated Fifth Schedule areas.

The movement stems from the constant infringement of Adivasi rights by the modern Indian state that has grabbed land for mining and industry, pushing indigenous communities to the margins in their own land. Since 2016, the state government has been trying to amend the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act as well as the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act of 1876 in an effort to allow industry to tap into Adivasi-held land. As a result, many Adivasi villages started to erect stone slabs emphasising local control over resources.

Yet, even this somewhat simple listing of constitutional rights has seen a backlash from the Jharkhand state government. The movement has been tarred by linking it with Naxals or branding it secessionist and anti-national.

Khunti district is today flooded with police personnel. In June, the gang rape of five NGO workers in June was sought to be pinned on the Pathagadi movement by the state police. However, multiple red flags have now emerged around this narrative with activists now concluding that the link was created in order to harass the leaders of the movement.

Since the establishment of the British Raj and then the modern Indian state in 1947, Adivasis in Jharkhand have seen their powers and rights shrink. From around 60% in 1911, they made up 28% of Jharkhand in 1991. Their lands have been exploited by outsiders, scattering Adivasis to other parts of the subcontinent, where they live on the margins.

In this constant violence, the pathalgadi movement is unique in that the protesting Adivasis are using the shield given to them by Indian Constitution and accusing the state government of violating it by taking away control of their own natural resources. If even this assertion of constitutional rights is opposed by using force, it would end up further alienating Jharkhand’s Adivasi population.

The Big Scroll

The Constitution set in stone: Adivasis in Jharkhand are using an old tradition as a novel protest, reports Priya Ranjan Sahu.

Punditry

  • The model proposed by Srikrishna committee leaves too many exceptions, especially when government is the data collector and user. Building a data protection regime requires leadership from the government and lawmakers, argues Raman Jit Singh Chima in the Indian Express.
  • Thirty four out of 1,000 children born in the country die in the mother’s womb itself. Nine lakh children die before they reach the age of five and approximately 19 crore people in the country are compelled to sleep on an empty stomach. In the Hindustan Times, Shashi Shekhar writes about the stark reality of hunger in India.
  • In the Hindu, RK Pattnaik and Jagdish Rattanani argue that there is a mistaken tendency among India’s states to reduce fiscal deficit at the cost of developmental expenditure.

Giggle

Don’t Miss

In Mangaldoi, where Assam Movement began, Arunabh Saikia reports on the glaring inconsistancies in the updating of the National Register of Citizens.

To be included in the citizenry list, applicants need to provide legacy data, proving the existence of an ancestor who had lived in Assam before 1971, and link data, proving their own relationship to the ancestor. Salimuddin insists that his younger brother’s family, whose names figure on the final draft, had linked themselves to the same person as his own family and him: their father. “How can we not be there? We have to be there, we have all documents,” he said, speaking more to himself.