Unruly Hills: A Political Ecology of India's Northeast 9780857451057

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Abbreviations
Maps
Illustrations
Part I Intersections
Introduction
Chapter 1 Nature and Nation
Part II Environment
Chapter 2 Elusive Forests
Chapter 3 Shifting Land Rights
Chapter 4 Mining Matters
Part III Culture
Chapter 5 Indigenous Governance
Chapter 6 Political Ecology at the Frontier
References
Index

Citation preview

Unruly Hills

Unruly Hills A Political Ecology of India’s Northeast

Bengt G. Karlsson

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First published in 2011 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2011 Bengt G. Karlsson All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Karlsson, B. G. Unruly hills : a political ecology of India’s northeast / Bengt G. Karlsson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-104-0 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-105-7 (ebook) 1. Indigenous peoples--Ecology--India, Northeastern. 2. Indigenous peoples-Ecology--India--Meghalaya. 3. Political ecology--India, Northeastern. 4. Political ecology--India--Meghalaya. 5. Environmental ethics--India, Northeastern. 6. Environmental ethics--India--Meghalaya. 7. Environmental degradation-India, Northeastern. 8. Environmental degradation--India--Meghalaya. 9. Deforestation--India, Northeastern. 10. Deforestation--India--Meghalaya. 11. India, Northeastern--Environmental conditions. 12. Meghalaya (India)--Environmental conditions. I. Title. GF661.K37 2011 304.20954’1--dc22 2011006665 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper. ISBN: 978-0-85745-104-0 Hardback E-ISBN: 978-0-85745-105-7

In memory of my father

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Glossary

xii

Abbreviations

xiii

List of Illustrations

xiv

PART I:  INTERSECTIONS Introduction Chapter 1  Nature and Nation

3 24

PART II:  ENVIRONMENT Chapter 2  Elusive Forests Chapter 3  Shifting Land Rights Chapter 4  Mining Matters

77 126 173

PART III:  CULTURE Chapter 5  Indigenous Governance Chapter 6  Political Ecology at the Frontier

227 266

References

290

Index

311

Acknowledgements This book has been long in the making. Over the years my path has crossed that of a number of people whose knowledge, friendship and support have made the endeavour not only possible but enjoyable and rewarding. First of all I would like to offer a collective thanks to all of you who spoke to me and shared your views on the topics at hand. Without you, there would obviously have been little for me to report. Among my friends and colleagues I would first like to thank Gunnel Cederlöf. Gunnel and I have been involved in several joint ventures at Uppsala University, collaborations I highly appreciate. Together we received a generous research grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation that enabled us to work on rights and claims in nature in India. Gunnel’s important monograph Landscapes and the Law: Environmental Politics, Regional Histories and Contests over Nature (2008) and the present volume are the main publications of the project. Tanka B. Subba, professor of anthropology at the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) in Shillong, has helped me immensely in realizing this project. I came to know Tanka back in 1989 and we have since been in dialogue, sharing ideas and texts. As with my earlier works, Tanka has read and commented on this manuscript in its various stages of completion. Tanka and his wife Roshina have also opened their home for me, making me part of the family. For all this, I am truly thankful. NEHU has been my institutional base in India for almost a decade. Institutional backing has been critical and I would like to thank the university administration and the faculty members, especially A.K. Nongkynrih, A.C. Sinha, David Syiemlieh, H.J. Syiemlieh, L. Cajee, S.K. Barik and B.K. Tiwari. At the Tura Campus, I am particularly grateful to the eminence of Garo studies, professor emeritus Milton S. Sangma. Already during one of my first days in Shillong I ended up on the doorstep of the small office of the magazine Grassroots Options run by journalists Linda Chhakchhuak and Sanat K. Chakraborty. Since then I have pestered Linda and Sanat with countless questions and requests and they have patiently served tea and offered their opinions or dug through dusty files, searching for a particular document or article.

x   Acknowledgements

Vincent Darlong and Imtienla Ao at the Ministry of Environment and Forests have offered invaluable assistance over the years. Vincent also introduced me to Banlum Blah and his wife Pam who run a guest house in Shillong. As it turned out, Bonnie Guest House was the ideal place to stay and Banlum and Pam soon became my close friends. They have both been of immense help and comfort for which I am most grateful. During travels, especially in the Garo Hills, I have been lucky to have Somu Ingty as my guide. Somu knows people and places in Meghalaya better than most and through him I have learned a great deal about the ground realities in the state. I would also like to thank Daniel Ingty and the local IFAD team in Tura who allowed me to accompany them to various project sites in the Garo Hills where I learned about their experiences in community resource management. In Tura I ran in to the Dutch anthropologist Erik de Maaker. Erik has since provided many insights relating to Garo society. Deputy Commissioner Shyam Jagannathan in Tura was kind enough to give free access to the archival material kept in the record room. In Guwahati I have had a friendly circle of travelling scholars in Sanjib Baruah, Zilkia Janer, Xonzoi Barbora and Dolly Kikon. Ongoing conversations with them helped me comprehend some of the troubled aspects of Northeast India. Sanjib, as head of the research centre CENISEAS, provided an important forum for me to present ongoing work. Xonzoi has been kind enough to go through the first drafts of all the chapters, offering most valuable comments. Sociologist Tiplut Nongbri gave important input at an earlier stage of the research. Her publications are central references in my work. Ecologist P.S. Ramakrishnan, also at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, has similarly provided key insights and shared with me his rich work on environmental issues in Meghalaya and Northeast more generally. During the initial phase of my research I had the privilege of being a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago (the academic year of 2000/1). I am deeply thankful to my hosts at the South Asian Studies Center and the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and to The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) for offering the fellowship. My greatest indebtedness is to Dipesh Chakrabarty for hospitality, friendship and continued intellectual inspiration. I would also like to thank bibliographer James Nye for his most valuable assistance in accessing the rich archival material held at the Regenstein Library (India Office collections on loan from British Library). In Chicago I also had the great pleasure to get to know Kunal and Shubhra Chakrabarti, who also were visiting fellows at the time. Their home has ever since been my refuge while in Delhi. Others scholars with whom I have been in contact over the years and whose scholarship have had a significant impact on my thinking

Acknowledgements   xi 

are Nandini Sundar, Amita Baviskar, Vinita Damodaran, Richard Grove, Brian Morris, Willem van Schendel, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Pernille Gooch, Alf Hornborg and Jonathan Friedman. Chris Erni at IWGIA in Copenhagen has been an important interlocutor. Staffan Löfving has been a critical source of encouragement especially during the writing process. Staffan has read and commented on various drafts of the text. My colleagues at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology in Uppsala have as always showed valuable faith in my work. I am thankful to Hugh Beach for his efforts at promoting environmental anthropology and indigenous studies at the department. My old colleague and friend Mikael Kurkiala has been around offering help when needed. Carina Green has been kind enough to keep an eye on my mail box and assisted me in urgent matters during my last years of absence from the department. I have recently taken up an new position at the department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University and would like to thank my collegues there for a warm welcome. Anne Cleaves has done a wonderful job of editing the language. At Berghahn Books my warmest thanks goes to Marion Berghahn and editors Ann Przyzycki and Mark Stanton, who eventually turned the manuscript into a beautiful book. The comments by the two anonymous reviewers were most helpful, forcing me to clarify certain key arguments in the book. Elisabeth Dunn also offered valuable suggestions for the final revisions of the manuscript and Andrzej Markiewicz helped with the photographs and Jonatan Alvarsson for making the maps. Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to my wife Louise, whose love and encouragement has made all the difference. When things have looked especially gloomy, she has been the one to think ahead and to see new possibilities. This work owes more to her than to anyone else. My four wonderful children Emanuel, Agnes, Love and Ella should have credit for just being around, being the joy of my life. The book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Gösta Viktor Karlsson who sadly passed away in the summer of 2008. I offer it as a tribute to the values of solidarity and compassion that he held highest in life. Parts of chapter 2 appear in Ecological Nationalisms (eds. Cederlöf and Sivarakrishnan 2005) and in CENISEAS Papers (No. 3, 2004) and a part of chapter 4 appears in Economic and Political Weekly (2009, Vol. 97(4)) and, finally, a part of chapter 5 appers in NEHU Journal (2005, Vol. 3(2)).

Glossary a’king – village land bandh – strike begar – forced labor benami – title held in someone else name to by-pass land laws restricting landownership of non-tribal persons Bigha – land unit, roughly equal to one third of an acre or 0.13 hectare durbar – council haul – land tax hat – local market hima – native or traditional state jhum – shifting cultivation ka khadduh – youngest daughter who inherits ancestral property laskhar – tax collector and lower judicial officer appointed by the British lyngdoh – traditional priest, also title/name machong – a unit of descent, “clan” or “motherhood” mahari – matrilineal “kin group” mela – festival nokma – headman patta – land title ri kynti – private land ri raid – common land syiem – traditional chief or ruler (of a hima) zamindar – landlord zamanidari – land estate under a zamindar

Abbreviations ADC – Autonomous District Council ANVC – A’chik National Volunteers Council BJP – Bharatiya Janata Party CFI – Community Forestry International CRPF – Central Reserve Police Force DONER – Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region FAO – Food and Agriculture Organisation HNLC – Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council IFAD – International Fund for Agricultural Development IWGIA – International Working Group of Indigenous Affairs JNU – Jawaharlal Nehru University KSU – Khasi Students Union LAEF – Liberation of Achik Elite Force MAA – Meghalaya Adventurer Association MLA – Member of Legislative Assembly MOEF – Ministry of Environment and Forests MP – Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha MPHRC – Meghalaya People’s Human Rights Council NEC – North Eastern Council NEHU – North-Eastern Hill University NGO – Non-Governmental Organisation PIL – Public Interest Litigation TI – Traditional Institutions Movement or the grassroots democracy movement UCIL – Uranium Corporation of India, Ltd. ULFA – United Liberation Front of Asom

Maps Map 1 Map 2

Meghalaya Northeast India, courtesy East-West Center, Washington

25 26

Illustrations Plate 1 Plate 2 Plate 3 Plate 4 Plate 5 Plate 6 Plate 7 Plate 8 Plate 9 Plate 10 Plate 11 Plate 12 Plate 13 Plate 14 Plate 15 Plate 16 Plate 17 Plate 18 Plate 19

Shillong Peak Denuded landscape, Garo Hills Pnar refugees Chief Minister D.D. Lapang at the Wangala festival Large tree felled in a newly cleared jhum field Mr. Dirap Sangma Planks loaded into a taxi Mawphlang sacred forest; photo by Emanuel Åström Inside the sacred grove; photo by Emanuel Åström Cherrapunjee or Sohra town Waterfall in Cherrapunjee; photo by Louise Bermsjö Statue of Sonaram R. Sangma Balpakram National Park; photo by Pankaj Sekhsaria Mrs. Spilliti Lyngdoh Langrin Lafarge conveyor belt under construction Coal trucks being unloaded Durbar Ri at Smit; photo by Grassroots Options Stone lying function in Tura with MP Robert Kharshiing Woman and child under the spell of uranium

4 13 60 69 81 81 102 109 110 118 119 130 155 197 204 209 229 241 286

Part I

Intersections

Introduction It was already late afternoon when the lyngdoh (the traditional priest) of Hima Khyrim, Mr. P. Lyngdoh Nongkrem, and his assistant welcomed us into their office in Smit. My friend Pam and her two children had come along to shop at the weekly market that was being held that day. After hours of haggling in the crowded marketplace, we were all rather exhausted. And as we waited for Mr. Lyngdoh to turn up, I had several cups of sweet tea, which added to the stress I had been feeling during the day. I was going back to Sweden early the next morning, and had still to sort out a number of practicalities. In short, it was not an ideal day for anthropological field engagements. But again, I did not want to miss the opportunity to get some new bits of information about how the sacred forest of Shillong Peak had been felled. Shillong Peak, or Lum Shyllong as it is locally known, is one of the most important sacred places of the Khasi people. It is the place from which the nine streams originate that provide people with drinking water and make the land fertile. As Kong Sweetymon Rynjah, a prominent interpreter of Khasi customs, put it, the peak is regarded a “Natural Guardian of Khasi land.”1 Shillong Peak is also the highest point in the Khasi Hills, with an astonishing view of the surrounding landscape. Because of the regions’ strategic location, the Eastern Air Command established its headquarters in Shillong in the 1960s and built a radar station on lands close to the peak. The station covers a large area, parts of which used to be sacred forests. But the peak itself had been spared and remained densely covered with impressive oaks and a variety of other species of trees. As I heard, in March and April when the trees blossom the grove was magnificent. It was a paradise for bird-lovers, especially during the migratory season, when a number of rare species could be spotted. People would go there for picnics on weekends. In earlier days, though, as an old woman running a tea stall at nearby Elephant Falls told me, many people were afraid of the place. She said that when she was a child they never dared to enter the sacred forest, fearing to upset the spirits. If you just broke a branch of a tree or plucked a leaf, the elders had warned them, you could fall ill or even die. Yearly offerings

4   Introduction

were also performed on the peak, but, as the old woman said, people no longer seemed to care about these things. Finally, in the early 1980s, as several other interviewees confirmed, all the trees were cut down. It happened more or less in one go, and according to the common story, it was the syiem (traditional chief/king), Francis Syiem, who was behind it. Apparently, he leased the peak to a timber contractor who did the logging. After the contractor had finished his part, local villagers entered to get the rest of the trees. In the end, there remained only one tree on the peak. As some men in the nearby village explained to me, when the loggers had tried to fell this tree, flames of fire came out and frightened them away. Since then the tree has been left undisturbed and still stands there to call to mind the forest that once covered the peak. Ever since I started my work in Meghalaya, I had been puzzled about the fate of Lum Shyllong. How had this most culturally significant grove come to end up like much of the other forest in the state, converted into timber? Though Shillong Peak belongs to Hima Mylliem, my search had now brought me to the lyngdoh of Hima Khyrim, to the person who, I had been told, would be able to tell me what happened. Mr. Lyngdoh Nongkrem was in a relaxed mood and seemed to appreciate our visit. As soon as we got seated in his dark office, another round of tea was served. Our meeting had been arranged through a relative of Mr. Lyngdoh and he knew about my research interest. As we were short of time, I thought it best to get straight to the point and just fire off a few direct questions (not my usual approach). My host, however,

Plate 1  Shillong Peak

Introduction   5 

had other plans. When I tried to begin, he raised a hand to hush me and make me wait. I was there to listen, not to ask questions, as I was soon to discover. Mr. Lyngdoh began by narrating a series of myths, the first one being about a deer that had come from the plains to graze on the peak. People in the nearby village saw the deer, were upset by its trespass, and subsequently killed and ate the deer. Birds that had watched the event informed the mother of the deer. The mother went to the peak and began crying in the most heartbreaking way. The god Lai Shyllong heard the mother’s cries and felt sad for her. Lai Shyllong touched the mother deer with his silver rod and at once she turned into water, or a spring of sacred water. And, Mr. Lyngdoh Nongkrem added, it is this water that feeds the nine streams, and the lyngdohs still take sacred water from the well for their rituals. As I desperately tried to scribble down notes—I had of course forgotten my tape recorder—I thought to myself, why is it that everyone thinks anthropologists are all in to myths? But I had no chance to intervene. As we ventured into the third myth, I completely lost track and Pam took over the pen and notebook. Between myths, Mr. Lyngdoh Nongkrem inserted explanations about various aspects of Khasi history, how people migrated from the peak to settle in the surrounding parts of the Khasi Hills, for example, and how sacred rituals are still performed to link these places with the original home at Lum Shyllong. The overall message, as I understood it, was to underline the immense importance of Lum Shyllong in the Khasi cosmology and traditional belief system. Finally, Mr. Lyngdoh paused, allowing me to raise the question that had been hanging in the air: “Then how come people allowed the peak to be stripped of trees?” He knew the question would eventually come, and said in a matter-of-fact way, “It all began with the deer.” The deer, I thought to myself, wasn’t that about the origin of water, the nine streams? But he said, as he skillfully moved into another mode of narration, that the deer myth pointed also to the invasion of foreigners to the Khasi Hills. This invasion, and the impact it has had on the Khasis, is the original cause of all the problems they face today, he explained. The degradation of nature is because the Khasis have forgotten their own culture and faith. But not only that: Mr. Lyngdoh Nongkrem further stated that present-day chaos, with its conflicts, insurgency, and alienation from the land, has the very same basis in the foreign invasion that divided people and made them give up their culture. “New ways of living, new beliefs, and new forms of government have taken over and people have forgotten what we used to respect and keep sacred. This is why the trees on Shillong Peak have been cut,” he said. Later he also acknowledged that Francis Syiem had played a direct role in it, saying that he was known to be especially cunning with money. Francis Syiem, however, was punished by the gods and died shortly after the peak was logged. With the loss of the sacred grove on Lum Shillong, which Mr. Lyngdoh also dated

6   Introduction

to the early 1980s, the problems he spoke of in society have rampaged. “As a community,” he summed up, “we need a lot of reflection on how to preserve our traditional beliefs. This is what eventually will bring back prosperity and peace.” When we stumbled out of the office some two hours later, I could not believe what had transpired. Mr. Lyngdoh had narrated in masterly fashion a vivid environmental history of the Khasi Hills, taking us from the beginning of history, told in the idiom of myths, to the British intrusion and the new ways it brought with it—not least of which were Christianity and modern forms of governance—leading to the present predicament with social animosity, militancy, human greed, and ecological crises and, finally, as a way out of this, he pointed to the urgency of reviving traditional Khasi culture. And the entire story was beautifully woven around, and in response to my query about, the Shillong Peak.2 In many ways this book grapples with similar issues relating to the nature–society interface and how this has evolved over time. My geographical context is extended to include not only the Khasi Hills but also the other areas making up the present-day state of Meghalaya, situated in the northeastern corner of India. If Mr. Lyngdoh skillfully grounded his story in myths, mine is based on a variety of sources: interviews and observations carried out during fieldwork in combination with written sources like archival material, media reports, government documents, political pamphlets, and not least the work of other scholars. The initial aim of my research was to understand how the forests were being managed in a situation where ownership and control were with people (villages, clans, and individuals) rather than with the state, as they are elsewhere in India. What did this difference in property arrangements imply for the management, use, or abuse of the forest? Can we speak about a more sustainable forest regime in situations when communities, not the state forest department, are the principal resource managers? Questions like these figured initially. But, as I soon discovered, the reality on the ground was far more complicated. Contrary to the commonly held belief, communities had in fact little say over how the forest and other natural resources were being used. In addition, as in Mr. Lyngdoh’s story, the forest issue soon opened up into a large number of interrelated problems having to do with resource control, property regimes, land rights, customary laws, development, violence, gender and the politics of culture and identity. It is more difficult now to formulate my aim in terms of a set of concise questions or a well-defined problem. But if I were nevertheless asked to do so, I would say that this book concerns the appropriation of nature. As a question: how do the politics of nature unfold in the state of Meghalaya? My answer, however, cannot be stated in a similarly straightforward manner. In the book I will engage a number of stories linked to forests

Introduction   7 

(chapter 2), land (chapter 3), minerals (chapter 4), and governance (chapter 5). The red thread running through these stories is the cultural aspect of environmental politics. Access to land, for example, is intrinsically about the position of women in society as well as the politics of ethnic belonging and indigenous sovereignty. Further, as in most environmental histories of India, colonialism is a critical event that radically restructured the economy and society, putting an extractive resource regime in place with severe repercussions for people’s mode of dwelling or being-in-nature. If the hill areas appeared to offer little scope for revenue generation to begin with, this changed with the expansion of the tea industry in Assam during the nineteenth century and the new demands and possibilities that opened up with the integration of this region into the larger colonial economy (chapter 1). Jungle tracts that had earlier seemed too inaccessible now turned into highly valuable forests that provided hardwood, fuel, and a number of other commodities. The British also introduced new notions of land ownership and separated hills and plains administratively, applying a form of indirect rule in the case of the hills. The way in which the hill areas were inserted as an economic and political frontier in the British Empire is of utmost importance for the later postcolonial developments that are my main concern in this book. The hill areas that eventually came to constitute Meghalaya remain in many ways a frontier. Frontiers, as geographer Michael Redclift (2006: 23) aptly puts it, are “transitional spaces,” marked among others things by an “ambiguity towards the authority of the state.” Put differently, frontiers are unruly places, not yet fully governed or incorporated in to the expanding nation-state structures.3 The unruly can be frightening, but arguably also a space of hope.

Anthropological Horizons The events recounted and examined in this book arguably involve the familiar story of global circuits of capitalism penetrating southern hinterlands. As this story goes, land and natural resources are being appropriated and turned into commodities, and indigenous livelihoods and ways of being in the world are subsequently being pushed to the edge by the ravaging forces of “the great transformation” (Polanyi 2001[1944]). But as we have learned from recent scholarship, things might not be as straightforward or uniform as was once assumed. In this process there are also resistances, negotiations, continuities, and the creation of new cultural differences. The forces of capitalism appear extremely powerful, then, but not omnipotent, and there are those who, rather than thinking in terms of one singular process, point to co-evolving capitalist geographies producing what they refer to as “alternative,” “vernacular,” or

8   Introduction

“multiple modernities.”4 If anthropologists have long been occupied with documenting cultures dying or disappearing under the onslaught of Western civilization, during the last two to three decades most anthropological accounts of the modern predicament of peripheral peoples have oscillated between the concurrent stories of destruction and creative engagement. In this book I grapple similarly with questions concerning, to cite historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, “the fact that global capitalism exhibits some common characteristics, even though every instance of capitalist development has a unique history” (2000: 47). Chakrabarty argues that though there are different ways of thinking about this “fact,” most of the available approaches suffer from a tendency to “think capital in the image of a unity that arises in one part of the world at a particular period and then develops globally over historical time, encountering and negotiating historical differences in the process” (ibid., emphasis added). For Chakrabarty the issue is one of finding new ways of addressing the persistence of historical difference, or ways of being in the world, that are inside the story of capital yet not subsumed by it. In the more common language of anthropologists, this could be rephrased as a matter of cultural continuity under conditions of modernity, a call for what Marshall Sahlins terms the “resistance of culture” (1999: 412). My theoretical inclination has me favoring such a call, but during the work with this book it seems I have gravitated in the opposite direction, putting greater emphasis on common characteristics of global capitalism. Anthropology has made a name producing knowledge about the lesser known people and places, covering, as it were, “the local aspect of the human condition” (Löfving 2005: 9). Since the 1990s, margins have lost much of their appeal to anthropologists. Those anthropologists who did stay in the margins tended to dwell on transnational connections that mark these places. And, of course, even the most out-of-the-way place has its history of global entanglements that need to be accounted for. But one can also sense a scholarly impatience with the details and idiosyncrasies of small places, the notion that too much of mundane ethnographic facts will just get in the way of the argument or obstruct the larger story to be told. As a friend and colleague told me, “Face it, ethnography makes boring reading.” To gain an audience, then, many anthropologists prefer to stay aloof from the field, to avoid being seen as “area specialists,” and instead posit themselves as theorists of the global, sometimes reducing ethnography to mere anecdotal illustration. Personally, I think that insisting on in-depth knowledge of particular settings remains critical and that there are reasons to be wary of some of the anthropological attempts to “think big” (Englund and Leach 2000). Bruce M. Knauft notes, in an assessment of recent developments in anthropology, a move towards “mid-level articulations” that span

Introduction   9 

different temporal and geographical scales but stay closer to local and regional levels and that, further, engage more directly with “concrete human problems as foci of research” (2006: 422). This turn to place-based issues is perhaps a reaction to the previous excess of globalization talk and this is a development I, too, welcome. To gain rapport in a particular place and get some clue about what people are up to is in itself a most daunting venture. Adding the imperative to think across different scales makes the task look almost impossible. There is something deeply humbling in the ethnographic practice of enmeshing oneself in the daily life of people, listening to their stories, engaging with their problems and aspirations and, in the end, trying to make sense of it. Every encounter seems to take you astray, to undermine what little coherence you have started to perceive, and hence to ask for new beginnings. Perhaps this is a kind of epistemological weakness in the ethnographic way of knowing, but equally, one can argue, it is the very strength and ethical imperative of grounded research. Anthropology strives to take seriously the lived experience of people, and for this to happen the researcher has to engage in open-ended dialogue, the direction of which one cannot tell beforehand. This uncertainty is what makes anthropological research challenging and, for me, worth pursuing. If my earlier ethnographic experiences come from fairly conventional localized village-based studies, the attempt here is of a different kind. The scale is extended, but at the same time the focus is more limited. In short, what I aim at is understanding the politics of nature in the state of Meghalaya, thus seeking to delineate central aspects of contemporary nature–society relations or “socio-ecological processes,” to use a term from David Harvey (1996). More precisely, the aim is to understand the modalities of resource extraction in the state, how these have evolved over time, and the types of conflicts and negotiations that shape present uses of nature. If Meghalaya is my geographical point of departure, this does not mean that the processes I look at remain bounded within this entity. The opposite is very much the case. In simple terms, I am looking at the extraction of resources for markets outside the state. Such extraction is bound to generate conflicts, whether they are disputes relating to the ownership or control of the particular resource, the distribution of the “revenue” generated, or the social and environmental consequences of, say, coal mining or large-scale logging. I focus especially on issues that have become particularly contentious and publicly debated in the state. In situations of conflict, the different interests, claims, and assertions of rights are made explicit, and the discourses that are being generated subsequently become a vital form of “data” in the study. Forest is a primary theme; it reappears in debates about forest reservations, deforestation, biodiversity conservation, survival of sacred groves, logging, shifting cultivation, and community management. In addition,

10   Introduction

the mining of coal, limestone, and uranium are also key themes in the book. As we will see, these issues are closely intertwined with the land question, and throughout the book I have reasons to come back to this especially intricate matter. Here it is especially important to note that we are dealing with societies where shifting cultivation has been and still is a dominant form of land use and hence with a landscape in flux, with blurred boundaries between forest and agricultural land. What I aim at here is akin to the type of methodology and epistemology that Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing alludes to in her recent book Friction (2005). As she puts it, “[D]espite the standardization and consolidation of capitalism, I found it impossible to learn about resource extraction without dragging my analysis into the arrogance and despair of the Kalimantan frontier” (ibid.: 267). Rather than assuming that we know in advance where things will go, we are called to engage with the messy, contradictory, and contingent nature of global interconnectedness. Special configurations in the margins might indeed destabilize assumptions taken for granted. Tsing names her study an ethnography of global connection; this book more modestly traces mainly regional configurations. Even so, I find a great resemblance to the type of “patchwork fieldwork” she has been conducting (ibid.: x). I have followed the trail of a number of resource issues spanning several different communities and localities; many of them I cannot claim any deep knowledge of but must rely on the work of others. I hope nevertheless that through my strategic ethnographic intersections in combination with archival material and the use of a variety of other sources, I will be able to capture the central dynamic of the historical process in which I am interested with regard to the appropriation of nature. As I will elaborate, the question of nature is closely intertwined with that of nation.5 Ownership of land, rights over natural resources and to the revenues generated, struggles over ethnic homelands: in all these issues the politics of nature and nation converge, aptly summed up by Sivaramakrishnan and Cederlöf’s term “ecological nationalism” (2005). “Nature” is a key term in the book. As a great many scholars remind us, however straightforward it may appear, “nature” is a most elusive word (see Williams 1976). Although I do not dwell at any length on the more subtle ontological and epistemological debates concerning “nature,” such issues do pop up here and there in the book. Briefly, nature, as it will be used here, refers to the biophysical realm that, however shaped by human history, still has an independent existence outside human consciousness. Nature works according to its own laws and processes, independent of yet in relation to societal processes. However, our ways of knowing nature—how we perceive it, speak about it, and engage with it—are always historically situated. We can never, so to say, approach nature directly, without the mediation of culture.6 The proxy

Introduction   11 

term “environment” has a more precise meaning in that it signals a relationship with a subject, i.e., that which surrounds and co-evolves with a particular organism, population, or society. Even so, as will be clear as we move along, some of my formulations tend to evade a precise distinction between nature and the environment.7

Environmental Destruction I opened with the story of the sacred forest of Shillong Peak, and I take its fate as a metonym for the state of the environment as a whole in Meghalaya. Though there are places of great natural beauty, the general situation is rather dismal, largely at odds with the official rhetoric of the state’s spectacular greenness. I suppose you see what you come looking for. My gaze was perhaps geared towards the degradation of the environment. Yet others travel to Meghalaya with very much the opposite expectation—to experience the thrill of untamed jungles and richness of biodiversity. A man working in adventure tourism in Shillong told me once that he was taking a British group of wildlife explorers to a particular dense and inaccessible part of the forest near the Bangladesh border in the southern Garo Hills to search for what was believed to be an undiscovered species of “wild cow.” For these people, I guess, this was very much a quest for pristine tropical jungles. From adjoining parts of the Garo Hills there are also reports of the mythical creature “Yeti” or “Bigfoot.” Outside adventurers still come to find out whether there is any truth to reports by local eyewitnesses who claim to have seen the creature or in the photographs that have been taken at places where the yeti is supposed to have stayed.8 Still others come to enjoy the sacred groves, not least the Mawphlang sacred forests situated some twenty-five kilometers outside Shillong. In a recent film produced by the American organization Community Forestry International it is said that the forest is at least five hundred years old, successfully managed by the local community for generations.9 I too have enjoyed visiting the sacred groves as well as other such spectacles of nature’s bounty in the state. Stopping by the roadside in the Garo Hills to watch an elephant happily munching on a stand of young bamboo trees, for example, or walking across the fabulous plateau of the Balpakram National Park, a holy site for the Garos where the spirits of the dead come to dwell. I have been to dense forest areas, wildlife sanctuaries, and have seen stunningly beautiful waterfalls, mysterious caves, and breathtaking canyons in the Khasi Hills. All this is there, yet what surfaces for me are the scarred hillocks denuded of vegetation, some literally shoveled away. Boulders and soil are being loaded onto trucks, carried away to Bangladesh or to the Assam plains to be used as ground fill or for construction. As the machines bite into the hillsides of

12   Introduction

the northern slopes, the red soil is exposed, and with rain and wind it erodes and covers everything. During the rains, roads and tracks become almost impassable because of the red mud. Coal trucks ply all over the state, and in the places where coal is being mined, reloaded, and stored, everything is covered instead in black. Run-offs from the coal pits enter the water system, making the water acid and toxic with high levels of heavy metals, killing fish and other organisms and making it extremely hard for people to find safe drinking water. Large tracts of agricultural land have also been severely degraded because of the extensive coal mining carried out especially in the Jaintia Hills. During the 1980s and 1990s, the coal trucks were accompanied by caravans of timber lorries. As I have been told, the main highway, passing through Shillong, was often completely jammed by these trucks, all in a hurry to bring their valuable loads down to the plains. This was during the heyday of the timber boom, finally leading to the intervention by the Supreme Court with its imposition of what is popularly known as the “timber ban.” Felling of trees was no longer permitted, huge quantities of logs were seized, and the saw mills that had sprung up all over the state were closed (except for a few operating under government license). As mentioned, even one of the most sacred places of the Khasis, Shillong Peak, was looted in the hunt for timber during this period. This was the fate of many other sacred groves in the state as well, as will be discussed later. Religious idioms as a basis for traditional forms of protection and management were not able to hold against the prospect of profitable resource extraction. From a bird’s eye view on a helicopter traveling from Shillong to Tura, a journey transecting the state, the most common sight is hillocks with little or no tree cover left. Even if large-scale timber extraction has been stopped, illegal felling continues, and trees are also being felled for charcoal production; smaller trees and shrubs are being cut for charcoal as well. A large proportion of rural people, especially in the Garo Hills, live on shifting or jhum cultivation, and as large tracts of swidden land have been taken over for other uses, the fallow periods are being substantially reduced. This mode of subsistence seems to be taking a toll on the environment as well, and the farmers experience this directly through the less fertile soil and consequently smaller harvests (Burling 1997: 326). Throughout the colonial and postcolonial period, shifting cultivation has been opposed by state agencies, commonly charged with being the main cause of tropical forest destruction. The issue has been cast largely as a problem of finding alternatives, most commonly in the form of permanent cash-crop agriculture. Today, however, the debate has started to change towards a greater appreciation of shifting cultivation, not least for its contribution to “agro-biodiversity,”10 and policy measures are being geared increasingly towards finding ways

Introduction   13 

of improving and complementing jhum cultivation rather than abolishing it. Such reorientation is visible, for example, in the rural livelihood project that IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) is running in the region. Even so, when it comes to discussions of the driving forces of deforestation in the northeastern hills the blame commonly ends up with the jhum farmers. For example, a recent report by the National Forest Commission, under the Ministry of Environment and Forests, resumes the colonial trope of the necessity of “weaning away people from shifting cultivation,” even raising the question of whether it should be allowed to continue at all.11

Plate 2  Denuded landscape, Garo Hills

As I will discuss in this book, the environment in Meghalaya is undergoing rapid and far-reaching transformations, what appears in many places to be devastating ecological deterioration. Whether there are causes for alarm—a possible “crisis”—remains, as elsewhere in the world, a matter of dispute. Opinions and interpretations differ. It is not my intention, nor within my capacity, to evaluate the general state of the environment, though I obviously think there are troubling signs. My aim, as I have said, is rather to map the politics of nature, which among other things relate to the different voices struggling to define if, how, and why the environmental is being degraded. In simple terms, one can detect two dominant narratives in Meghalaya, one cherishing the lavish greenness of the state and the other, opposite one, speaking of loss of forests and disappearance of wildlife and the once unique flora. Depending on context, it is not uncommon for a per-

14   Introduction

son or organization to invoke or employ both of these narratives. These opposing narratives have their respective iconic representations in the sacred forest and the wet desert. The latter, the wet desert, stands as a warning example of nature rendered barren, a kind of dystopia with the environment pushed beyond repair. The sacred forest, on the other hand, speaks about a possibility of a green future based on indigenous wisdom and respectful engagement with nature. These icons have become powerful global tropes. Schoolchildren around the world learn about Cherrapunjee, the wettest place on earth, now suffering water shortage due to deforestation and unsustainable resource usage. The Mawphlang sacred forest, as mentioned, has on the contrary become somewhat of an international success story in community nature conservation. Even if the state of the environment does figure frequently in public debates, I think it is correct to say that it is nevertheless not a primary concern. There are some environmental organizations in the state, but these are numerically weak and have little impact on public opinion. When environmental issues are brought to the fore, it is commonly a result of the involvement of high-profile persons and/or influential political groupings. In the case of deforestation and uranium mining, for example, the powerful Khasi Students’ Union is one of the key actors. The environmental aspect, as we will see, is not necessarily the sole or main reason for their involvement. The fact that environmental issues are entangled with local politics, commonly with ethnic undercurrents, makes it difficult to get outside backing. Though there are contacts and exchanges with larger Indian and transnational environmental networks, such contacts seem to play a rather nominal role in mustering support and providing logistical backup in particular conflicts. This seems to be the case with the northeastern region as a whole. Part of the reason, I believe, is that the all-India lexicon of environmental protests does not apply in the Northeast. The good and bad guys seem all mixed up. To begin with, the main villain, the forest department, is not the all-powerful institution that it appears to be elsewhere in India. As stated earlier, it is people and not the forest department that officially own and manage most of the forest lands in the northeastern hills; this in itself is a complicating factor that disrupts the common story of forest struggles in India. In the case of the environment, as with other matters, the Northeast is different, and this in combination with the geographic distance from the economic, political, and cultural centers that define agendas and distribute public attention, makes it difficult to sustain public interest. In chapter 2, I look more closely into the debate about deforestation. The point of departure is the above mentioned timber ban or moratorium on all felling of trees imposed by the Supreme Court in Meghalaya and the other states of the Northeast as well as in some other parts of

Introduction   15 

India. This intervention was based on the understanding that forests were being destroyed in an unprecedented way, calling for a particularly drastic measure. The timber ban has been opposed on many grounds, environmental as well as social, not least on the grounds that it is an infringement of indigenous rights, wresting control of one of the main resources from the community into the hands of the state. It became a contested issue here whether jhum land should be understood as forest and thus come under the Supreme Court order or be regarded as agricultural land where the order does not apply. With regard to the environment, the debate came to circle around the question of how much forest there actually was in the state. Those who opposed the ban argued, on the basis of official forest department figures generated through satellite images, that Meghalaya had a sound and even increasing forest cover and that the intervention thus lacked even an ecological rationale. Others welcomed the ban on the grounds that the forests in the state were on the brink of total destruction and questioned the accuracy of forest department assessments, for example whether satellite imagery provides reliable data on the state of the forest. Situations of environmental conflict like this offer a most appropriate entry point for the type of political ecology analysis I seek to apply. Different epistemologies, ways of knowing nature, and opposing interpretations and interests in nature—commonly tied to particular rights claims—are being articulated by the different actors that surface in the conflict. I seek to trace the arguments and see how different positions and actors evolve in particular situations of environmental conflict. Besides the many aspects of the conflict over forests, I will also address related conflicts concerned with the mining of uranium, limestone, and coal. These conflicts can be described, in brief, as nature-as-resource issues. As we will see, the right to and control of resource extraction is closely intertwined with issues of land ownership. In line with political ecology modes of analysis, my focus is on the social and political aspects or dimensions of environmental conflicts, and, as such, the power relations inherent in defining and managing nature. Who controls nature, whose rights and claims in land and natural resources are recognized, who are the relevant actors involved; such questions are of particular importance for studies using a framework of this kind. A way of beginning to theorize the present situation in Meghalaya, as has already been suggested, is that what is going on relates to a far-reaching capitalist appropriation of nature. As it appears, the commodification of nature is an extremely critical socio-ecological process that seems to alter people’s relationship to and engagement with nature as well as their mode of dwelling and perceptions of the environment. Nature is thus turned into extractable resources, commodities for market exchange. Put differently, it can be said that a new “nature regime”

16   Introduction

is taking over (Escobar 1999).12 This, as we know, is a common feature of capitalist transformations. In general terms, however, we still need to consider the possible resilience of other, non-capitalist modes of dwelling or being in nature. The single tree still standing on the Shillong Peak, which the axe-men failed to cut as flames scared them away, is a reminder of this. Hence, I would argue, it is not a matter of a wholesale transition from one mode to another, but rather a more complex coexistence of multiple modes of dwelling where capitalist appropriation nevertheless has come to dominate. It goes without saying that people engaged in different economic activities—farmers living on jhum cultivation or government servants working in an office in town—also relate differently to the environment. But even in situations where people are directly involved in extractive activities—coal mining or the timber business, for example—we cannot expect them to have a purely capitalist or instrumental relation to nature. The anthropologist Michael Taussig’s classical study of plantation and mining laborers in South America (1980) is a telling example of people co-inhabiting capitalist and “precapitalist” life-worlds. I will return to the significance of this later, and as I move along will complicate the picture further, engaging recent critique of the reductionism inherent in claims that nature under modernity is solely a product of commodification. But I will nevertheless begin at this end, using Marx’s notion of “primitive accumulation” as a point of departure (chapter 1). What this alert us to is how land is being privatized, accumulated by the economic and political elites; how forests, water, and minerals are being turned into extractable resources; and, in more recent times, how certain sites or environments are simultaneously being reinvented as pristine nature to be consumed by eco-tourists and wildlife enthusiasts.

Political Ecology The colonial civil servant and historian Sir Edward Gait comments in his still widely referenced A History of Assam on the problems in governing this “out-of-the-way tract” (1905: 317–18). It was remote and difficult to access, and the local conditions were quite different from what the colonial administration had experienced in Bengal. The Assam plains were soon incorporated into the general legal framework, whereas the less civilized inhabitants of the hills were not considered, as Gait put it, “suited for elaborate legal rules” but had to be “governed in a simpler and more personal manner” (ibid.: 315–16). The region’s otherness and away-ness continues to be the dominant trope defining it. The Northeast was on the fringe of the expanding Mughal Empire; the various polities in the hills remained largely independent. The British finally did occupy the hills but adopted a policy of light administration in order not to cre-

Introduction   17 

ate unnecessary disturbance in this unruly frontier tract (Mackenzie 1999 [1884]). With Independence, and the establishment of the Indian nationstate, another phase of intensified integration has taken place. Even so, during both the colonial and postcolonial period, most of the characteristics commonly associated with frontiers persist, i.e., relatively sparsely populated areas peripheral to political and economic centers of power undergoing rapid demographic transformation along with ferocious land- and resource-grabbing.13 In many ways, frontiers are unsettled places. Or, as Tsing aptly put it, a frontier “is a zone of not yet—not yet mapped, not yet regulated” (2005: 28). In earlier studies of colonialism it was often assumed that the frontier was a space entirely controlled or dominated by the expansionist colonial power. Recent research, however, points to a more unpredictable process that involves not only conquest but also negotiation and compromise with local societies, and even at times direct failures in, for example, colonial attempts to establish control over valuable resources (Sivaramakrishnan 1999; Cederlöf 2008). Mary Louise Pratt has suggested that “contact zone” might be a more suitable term for capturing such “improvisational” aspects of colonial encounters (1992: 6-7). While taking in Pratt’s characterization of colonial encounters, particularly her ideas concerning how subjects are constituted in and through such encounters, I prefer to retain the term “frontier” (using it in the sense indicated above). Even if the resource frontier I discuss in this book relates to an area that is marked by the international borders of presentday national states, the conditions of a frontier can as well apply in other contexts, say, in the resource rich states of central India.14 As I stated at the outset, I seek to apply a political ecology framework in understanding the dynamics of the resource frontier in Northeast India. Political ecology is an increasingly influential research field that focuses on various aspects of nature–society interrelations, commonly insisting on the social and political basis of environmental problems. Issues of power and interests linked to larger political processes of the market and the state are given analytical priority. In this, political ecology parts from studies of human–environment relations that concentrate mainly on the local context and the internal dynamics in society as a driver of ecological change.15 Yet, as most introductory texts or attempts to summarize the field will state, political ecology is not one thing: there is no single theory or analytical framework to which all political ecologists would subscribe. It is more correct, perhaps, to talk about a shared perspective and a common research agenda, scholars who address similar questions and share a number of basic assumptions and theoretical orientations as well as modes of explanation (Peet and Watts 2004 [1996]; Robbins 2004; Neumann 2005; Biersack and Greenberg 2006). Nancy Peluso and Michael Watts sum it up well, saying:

18   Introduction

Political ecology provide[s] tools for thinking about conflicts and struggles engendered by the forms of access to and control over resources. Its attentiveness to power relations inherent in defining, controlling, and managing nature suggests an alternative way of viewing the link between environment and political action. (Peluso and Watts 2001: 24–25) Political ecology studies often begin by mapping the different actors involved in the particular conflict or issue under scrutiny, actors that would range from the more powerful ones like the state, transnational corporations, or multilateral institutions to the weaker ones like communities, local NGOs, or social movements (Bryant and Bailey 1997). It is not only the different interests of these actors that are important, but also how their respective claims are being articulated, and the very basis or ground upon which those claims are based. Here it is also interesting to note the different worldviews or perceptions of the environment that might be at play in the conflict. Ventures of this kind always run the risk of simplification, of imposing an internal coherence on actors that are themselves internally differentiated and riven by opposing interests. For example, recent anthropological work on the state has increasingly come to question the unity of the state, pointing instead to the often chaotic and incoherent nature of state activities (Hansen and Stepputat 2001; Das and Poole 2004; Nugent 2004; Spencer 2007). The same could be said about the community and the other actors involved. Another related problem that political ecology analysis needs to be wary of is the tendency, as Arun Agrawal rightly argues, to take actors and interest as “already given” and thus fail to “examine how they are made” or emerge in situations of conflict (2005: 211). This last point could be read as a call for a merging of political ecology with environmental history, which to some extent is being pursued here (see also Hornborg 2007).16

Critical Research In research of this kind, it is hard to claim a detached position outside the conflicting interests and interpretations. I certainly have my own sympathies, biases, sensibilities, and prejudiced notions that influence arguments and discussions. I have a background in the alternative movement in West, was active in the Swedish Green Party during its sprouting years in the 1980s, and have protested against nuclear energy, sought out radical communes around Europe, and started a small collective bakery producing “organic” bread in Uppsala. Like many other Western “greens,” I have spent a lot of time with the writings of people like Schumacher, Naess, Gandhi, and Thoreau. Through my anthropology studies I also got involved in organizations working for minority and indigenous peoples’

Comparing the Incomparable   Introduction   19  19

rights, for example, organizing campaigns to protest against the genocide of the hill peoples in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. All these previous engagements have a direct bearing on the topics at hand. During late 1990s, India as well as Pakistan joined the club of states with nuclear weapons, and India is also investing a great deal in nuclear energy as a vital component of the country’s energy strategy to meet the ever-increasing demand. The recent deal with the US to cooperate in civil nuclear energy development has further enhanced these plans. In this situation it is obviously an imperative to secure the existing uranium assets in the country.17 It so happens that an inaccessible, sleepy cluster of villages in Domiasiat in the West Khasi Hills are sitting on what is regarded as the largest and best-quality asset of uranium in India. As I will discuss in chapter 4, the question of whether to mine or not to mine this deposit is haunting people in Meghalaya. The then President of India, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, stated during a visit to Shillong in 2007 that uranium mining is perfectly safe and poses no risks whatsoever to people’s health. According to the president, mining would give a critical boost to the development of Meghalaya. With his background in natural science, working closely with nuclear physicists, he further asserted that nuclear energy is a clean and “eco-friendly” source of power that is of great importance to the nation.18 Some people in Meghalaya seem to share such views and welcome mining, whereas others take a strong stand against it. Given what I said earlier, my personal conviction and sympathies are obviously with the latter camp. This is not to say, however, that I have taken an activist role and in any way tried to lobby against or influence people to oppose uranium mining. This is neither called for nor my assigned task as researcher. As in the case of the other contentious issues dealt with in the book, I have instead as far as possible engaged all the concerned actors and tried to map their respective interests, their influence and mode of operation. Such an enterprise might be deemed political to the extent that it provides a space for critical reflection or social critique. Along with many other scholars in the field of political ecology, I like to think of the approach developed here as having an emancipatory dimension. The implicit solidarity is with people who “eat of the land,” those who seldom reap any of the profits made from capitalist extraction but commonly are left to face the environmental consequences or who lose their lands and livelihoods in the process. And if one were to look for an underlying message in this book it would be a call for serious reflection on what it entails to build an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable future. My fieldwork in Meghalaya spans a period of over six years, from a brief one-month stay in December 1999/January 2000, to field stays of three to four months in 2002, 2003, and 2005, and a shorter final visit in 2006. My base has been in Shillong, but I have made rather extensive

20   Introduction

travels in the state. Sometimes I have been out just for the day or a couple of days or, as during my stays in the Garo Hills, for a few weeks at a stretch. The choice to work from the centre and outwards was motivated by my focus on the elite in society, i.e., those who arguably exercise a major influence over how land and resources are being used and managed. Though “ordinary” villagers also figure in my stories, their voices have less prevalence. Hence the main body of ethnographic data derives from interviews and interactions with middle-class people like politicians, community leaders, development workers, activists, journalists, university scholars, and businessmen, above all coal traders and timber contractors, most of whom are based in or operate from Shillong, the state capitol, and to a lesser extent Tura, the commercial and administrative center of the Garo Hills. English is the official language as well as the link language in Meghalaya; it is used in government offices, is taught in schools, and has rather wide circulation in society. Most of the people I have interacted with or interviewed are fluent in English and this is also the language I have used in my research. In conversations with people who do not know English, commonly during stays in villages, I have worked with interpreters. In most such situations, I have used a tape recorder, which has allowed me to return to the conversations and go through the translations at a slower pace. Between stays in the field I have remained in contact with a number of people and thus followed the evolving resource conflicts from a distance. The cutting date of the book is roughly the end of the year 2007. In most cases I refer to the people I have interviewed by their real names. Only occasionally, when I found reasons for anonymity, have I omitted names and referred to informants as a “government officer,” “coal trader,” a “journalist friend,” etc. In my experience, most people like to have their names included—this is also what people have told me—but a researcher still has to consider, of course, whether a particular statement might get someone in trouble at a later point. I have screened my text with this in view and sincerely hope that none of the people who have taken time to share their experiences with me, making this work possible, would eventually come to regret this. If this were ever the case, for what it is worth, I extend my sincerest apologies. Although this book mainly concerns the material aspects of people’s engagement with nature, above all in terms of contested rights and claims to land and natural resources, such issues are intimately linked with other, should I say existential, aspects of people’s attachment to place. “[P]laces,” anthropologist Keith H. Basso writes, “provide points from which to look out on life, to grasp one’s position in the order of things, to contemplate events from somewhere in particular” (1996: 56). In situations when people experience a loss of control of the land or the

Introduction   21 

resource base of community, we can also assume a profound experience of ontological insecurity. Struggles over land and resources are, in other words, deeply entangled with struggles over meaning and belonging. As we will see, being “indigenous” has gained particular salience in Meghalaya (chapter 5). Mr. Lyngdoh Nongkrem’s story is a telling example of this, calling upon people to fight outside influences and reconnect with the land through the old Khasi beliefs and customs. Despite some troubling aspects of this turn to indigeneity—a phenomenon we can note among marginalized people around the world—it nevertheless seems to open a critical space for resistance against state and capital intrusion into the life of inhabitants of resource-rich global peripheries.

Notes   1. Interview in Shillong, 15 December 2002.   2. My meeting with P. Lyngdoh Nongkrem took place on 11 December 2003.   3. As I make the final round of revisions of the book manuscript in November 2009, I’ve been able to lay hands on James C. Scott’s much anticipated and highly enjoyable The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009). In this book Scott focuses on the continued struggle among hill peoples in the larger region of Southeast Asia (including parts of China in the north as well as the hills of northeastern India in the west) to keep the state at a distance. The pursuit of evading the state to avoid taxation, conscription, forced labor and other forms of state oppression has made these people move up in the hills, take up shifting cultivation, develop a segmentary lineage system and an acephalous social organization. These “nonstate spaces,” however, are fast disappearing as people, lands and resources are being “monetized,” according to Scott (2009: 4–5). Without necessary agreeing with all facets of Scott’s historiography, the distrust of the state that I identify as critical in Meghalaya and the Northeast more generally do resonate well with the anarchist spirit of the self-governing uplanders that he is concerned with.   4. See, e.g., Rofel (1997) on “alternative modernities” and the special issue of Daedalus (Winter 2000) on “multiple modernities.”   5. Much has been written on the concept of “nation.” I will not directly engage with this literature here, but in discussing various aspects of cultural and ethnic identity or a sense of collective belonging and the related political struggles for territorial sovereignty or self-determination, I consider “nation,” as I use it, to encompass all these issues.   6. In this I subscribe to a kind of “critical realism” shared by many political ecologists (Neumann 2005: 46–51).   7. For further elaboration about the difference between “nature” and “environment” see, e.g., Ingold (2000: 20) and Gold and Gujjar (2002: 6–14).   8. “Bigfoot” is known among the Garos as Mande Burung, and during the last ten years it has been spotted a couple of times by local people, most recently in the Nokrek National Park (see “On the trail of mysterious Bigfoot,” The Telegraph, 12 March 2002, and “Probe ordered into yeti ‘sightings’ in Garo Hills,” The Telegraph, 6 December 1997). I met with two photographers in Tura involved in the search for the Yeti and they told of the enormous interest from outside about this (see the

22   Introduction website of the American organization, The Bigfoot Field Research Organization, http://www.bfro.net).   9 The film is entitled Sacred Forests of Meghalaya – Wisdom from the Mother’s Hearth, directed by Minnie Vaid (Community Forestry International 2005). 10. In a cluster of villages in the West Garo Hills it was found that as many as twentythree varieties of rice and twenty-five varieties of millet were being cultivated in the jhum fields (presentation by Dhrupad Chaudhury, natural resource expert working for IFAD, at a seminar on biodiversity in Northeast India held at St. Mary’s College, Shillong , November 27–28, 2002. 11. The report has a special chapter on the Northeast (chapter 10) and is available on the Ministry of Environment and Forests webpage (http://envfor.nic.in/welcome. html), 2006, page 158. The same language, of the necessity “to wean the tribals away from jhuming,” is also used in the recent report “Peace, Progress and Prosperity in the North Eastern Region, Vision 2020” (Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region, Government of India, 2008, page 14, 24 (http://modoner.gov.in). 12. Anthropologist Arturo Escobar has introduced the notion of “nature regime,” by which he refers to different historical articulations of society–nature interactions or, as he puts it, “different regimes of articulation of the historical and the biological” (1999: 5). Escobar focuses on thee major nature regimes: “organic nature,” “capitalist nature,” and “technonature.” It is hard to fully comprehend Escobar’s theoretical underpinnings as well as his usage of the term “nature regime,” but I nevertheless find it useful to think with. My main concern here is the relationship of the organic and the capitalist regimes of nature and how the latter has come to take precedence. The capitalist regime is characterized by the twin processes of governmentalization and commodification of nature. Escobar develop these ideas further in his recent monograph Territories of Difference: place, movement, life, redes (2008). (See also Biersack (2006) for a constructive application of Escobar’s “nature regime.”) 13. See, e.g., Paul Little’s study of the Amazonian frontiers (2001) and the earlier mentioned book Frontiers: Histories of Civil Society and Nature (Redclift 2006). 14. I thank the anonymous reviewer of the manuscript for pointing out that many of the frontier characteristics I identify for the Northeast apply to Central India as well. This then would suggest that the proxy to nation-state borders is of less significance and that frontiers are more about a “cultural condition.” While I agree with this, I do think that international borders matter greatly in shaping different frontier histories. As I hope will be clear further ahead in the book, this is also the case with the frontier dynamics of Northeast India. But again, I fully embrace the reviewer’s suggestion to compare the Northeastern situation with that of Central India, where resource grabbing, insurgency and indigeneity are equally familiar configurations. As a starting point for such an exercise, I would recommend the recent excellent volume Legal Grounds: Natural Resources, Identity, and the Law in Jharkhand (2009), edited by the sociologist Nandini Sundar. 15. A lot of work within ecological anthropology, not least Rappaport’s pioneering study Pigs for the Ancestors (1968), suffers from the lack of engagement with extralocal processes. For an early critique of cultural ecology, see Friedman (1974). 16. As an emerging cross-disciplinary field political ecology is being criticised from various quarters, for example, claiming that it over-states the political and hence fails to account for how the environment functions (Vayda and Walters 1999) or, as sociologist Amita Baviskar put it recently, that it is dogged by “economic determinism” and hence misses the symbolic dimensions of natural resources (2008:

Introduction   23  1). While there are reasons to take such criticisms seriously – I could properly be found guilty on both accounts—one has to be alert to how political ecology is being assembled. In the above two cases, I would say, the respective authors define the field too narrowly in order to make their points. 17. As I point to in a recent article, the Indo-US nuclear deal signed in 2008 is built on a separation between civil and military nuclear usages and India will remain dependent on domestic uranium for its weapon programme (Karlsson 2009). 18. See, e.g., “Uranium energy eco-friendly,” The Shillong Times, 17 March 2007. Friends at NEHU have told me that President Kalam made similar statements at a meeting with faculty and students at the university.

Chapter 1

Nature and Nation The road from current anarchic situation to progress and prosperity is long and arduous, but it has to be to be trekked. Vision 2020, Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region1 In this opening chapter, I shall introduce the reader to Meghalaya and the larger region known as Northeast India. The aim is basically to set the scene for the later discussions. There is a lot of ground to cover and I ask forgiveness if the reader at times feel lost in the text. I begin with a note on the state boundaries that have come into place since Independence, and then move back in time to discuss the significance of British rule and its contemporary legacies. Here I return to Marx’s notion of primitive accumulation. I then move on to discuss present-day attempts to develop the region and bring an end to decades of political turmoil and ethnic strife. Harnessing the natural wealth of the region is what will bring people on the road to “progress and prosperity”. A large part of the chapter addresses the ongoing insurgencies and violence that mark contemporary Northeast Indian societies. As I hope will be clear further along, the armed struggle for sovereignty and the attempts by the state and the armed forces to quell such struggles are also of utmost importance for how the politics of nature unfolds. I close the chapter by looking at the present claim to indigenous peoples’ status and the legalistic modality that is the basis of such assertions.

Boundaries The choice of Meghalaya and hence the present geographical grid of Indian states to delineate my research area is not an obvious one. Meghalaya is a recent invention. It became a separate state in 1972,

Map 1  Meghalaya

Br

a

a hm

pu

tra

51

Tura

Garo Hills

51

R

r ive

44

Khasi Hills

37

B A N G L A D E S H

62

A S S A M

40

40

Jowai

Guwahati

Shillong

31

52

44

Jaintia Hills 44

37

53

54

Nature and Nation   25 

26   Unruly Hills

CHINA (TIBET) Arunachal Pradesh

BHUTAN

Assam

Nagaland

Meghalaya Manipur

BANGLADESH Tripora

BURMA / M YA N M A R

Mizoram

INDIA

Map 2  Northeast India, courtesy East-West Center, Washington

carved out of the larger state of Assam. Meghalaya consists of three previous (colonial) entities, the Garo Hills, the Khasi Hills, and the Jaintia Hills, named after the main peoples or “ethnic groups” that populate the respective areas, the Garo, the Khasi, and the Jaintia. As with most of today’s ethnic groups in the northeast, these three contain “sub-groupings” with their own cultural and historical specificities.2 The boundaries of these respective ethnicities – who belongs or not – remain disputed, as we shall see. Put in a simplified way, it can be said that the Garos were traditionally organized in independent villages with an acephalous or egalitarian political organization based on headmanship, connected through a common exogamous clan system. The Khasis have a more complex and hierarchical political structure based on independent states or Himas under the leadership of chiefs/rulers elected from particular,

Nature and Nation   27 

founding, lineages in the individual state. The Jaintias, finally, had their own kingdom, which at its height in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries controlled large areas in the Bengal plains and other surrounding areas.3 The Garos and Jaintias were brought under colonial rule during the nineteenth century, whereas most of the Khasi states retained a kind of semi-sovereign status under the British. The British made Shillong the administrative and military headquarters for the entire northeastern region in the 1860s, and the place soon became a popular hill resort for government officials, tea planters, missionaries, and the Indian aristocracy. In their wake came businessmen, clerks, servants, and a large number of laborers to feed and house all these newcomers. Roads, government buildings, churches, hospitals, schools were built. All this, of course, came to radically transform Khasi society as well as the natural landscape of the plateau.4 Independence and the subsequent creation of India and Pakistan as two sovereign countries became a turbulent period in the history of these areas as well as in the region as a whole. Aspirations to restore ancient kingdoms and pre-colonial chiefdoms in the northeast came up against the larger project of Indian nation-state building. The new national borders that were created cut through earlier polities, community attachments, and economic zones. This, as we shall see, is the origin of much of the political turmoil and violence that marks contemporary Northeast India. The Garos, Khasis, Jaintias, and a number of other hill peoples were granted what were called autonomous district councils, designed to allow a certain degree of self-rule for these communities, albeit as parts of a larger Assam state. Discontent soon arose and the leaders of the Garos, Khasis, and Jaintias joined forces to demand a separate hill state, which eventually was granted by the Central Government in 1972. That this particular constellation came into being as a political entity was anything but predictable; several other options were being considered at the time. Moreover, a number of leading Garo organizations continue to aspire to a separate Garoland, seeking also to restore supremacy over areas in the Assam plains that they consider historically theirs. Similar aspirations are simmering among the Khasis and Jaintias. The entire political map of Northeast India is fraught, in fact, with competing national imaginaries and contested state boundaries. But however accidental and arbitrarily drawn, once political boundaries are put in place they often take on a life of their own, and important dimensions of society and economy can come to be refashioned as a result. After three decades with a common political and administrative structure, Meghalaya has to some extent become a social and material reality for people. For example, a Garo villager might have to undertake frequent arduous day-long journeys to Shillong to seek legal advice in a land dispute. Being a government employee can involve a Khasi being posted

28   Unruly Hills

in the Garo Hills and vice versa, exchanges that most likely would not have taken place otherwise. As the capital of Meghalaya, Shillong is the hub from which political influence, administrative control, and financial resources linked to the new state structure emanate. Meghalaya is among the smallest states in India. The population is only 2.3 million (2001 census), and the geographical area is 22,429 square kilometers (somewhere between the size of Wales and Sicily). The Garo, or Achik as they commonly prefer to be called, the Khasi, and the Jaintia, or Pnar as they are also known, make up the bulk of the population in Meghalaya. The latter two ethnic groups are culturally and linguistically close; some even claim they are the same people, the Hynniewtrep people. The Garo, Khasi, and Jaintia all have a matrilineal kinship system, a feature that is commonly emphasized to mark their cultural difference vis-à-vis others. These three peoples have a special status in the state, linked to their claimed status as the “indigenous tribes” of Meghalaya. But there are also a number of other “tribal” peoples in Meghalaya, such as the Rabha, Koch, Hajong, and Karbi.5 The latter, as we shall see, have not gained the same recognition and rights as the major tribal communities. However, those who have arguably gained the least from the new state structure are the “non-tribal” minorities who live primarily in Shillong and a few other pockets: the Bengali, Assamese, Nepali, Bihari, Marwari, and “Muslim” communities, for example. The three autonomous district councils that were established the 1950s are still in place6 and these compete not only with the new state administration but also with older, so-called “traditional institutions” for power and influence over social matters. This “bricolage” of old and new structures of governance confuses not only outside observers but, equally, those who live in the state. Besides Meghalaya, I also place my enquiries in relation to the larger geopolitical entity of Northeast India. This is also a relatively recent territorialization consisting of seven separate states: Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.7 The region is commonly described as situated at the crossroads of South Asia, South-East Asia and East Asia, where culture and history are said to be a product of influences of all these “traditions” or “civilizations”. Perhaps the most significant divide that still marks the region is that between the plains and the hills. The majority of people live in the Assamese plains, speaking Assamese and Bengali. Plains people also dominate in the states of Manipur and Tripura. In the other states, in the hills, the bulk of people belong to indigenous or tribal peoples (officially the scheduled tribes), all with their own languages. Assam has a population of 27 million, whereas the other northeastern states only have a population of a few million each (2001 census).8 According to a government census, around 220 different languages – belonging to Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan and Austric language

Nature and Nation   29 

families – are spoken in the region.9 The cultural diversity is remarkable on other grounds as well. In fact, heterogeneity is what comes to the fore when one starts looking at this region today, be it in terms of language, religion, livelihoods, ethnicity, politics, or ecology. Bringing all this under a common label can indeed be a way of erasing critical differences and imposing a mistaken homogeneity. There are plenty of instances of such simplifications in media reports and scholarly publications. Yet, I would argue, there are also important similarities that can legitimize the talk of Northeast India as a region that shares certain common features. This is especially the case with the hill areas that I am mainly concerned with: for example, a dependence on shifting cultivation, the relatively sparse population, a similar social organization that is based on lineages and clans, and a history of relative independence continued through the colonial period in the form of light or indirect rule. Large-scale conversion to Christianity is yet another experience shared by several of the hill communities. As mentioned, the new nation-states that came into being with the demise of the British Empire completely disrupted earlier forms of trade and mobility. If people had previously had contacts with neighboring communities to the north, south, east, and west, they were now bound by a geopolitical map in which the only legitimate relations were with Assam and beyond to “mainland” India. People were now faced, in other words, with the common dilemma of recreating a sense of place and belonging in this new Indian framework. This has triggered similar forms of ethnic mobilization or the creation of modern ethnic identities and subsequent quests for political sovereignty. Control of land and natural resources is especially critical for most of these movements something to which I will return. But, again, one needs to be cautious in noting such similarities. For example, the Naga quest for complete independence has brought about a postcolonial predicament utterly unlike that of most of the other hill peoples.10 And if one compares the environmental history of Meghalaya with that of Mizoram, for example, important differences stand out as well. Just take the case of the bamboo flowering in the late 1950s that caused a rat invasion and subsequent famine, and triggered strong antiAssam-government sentiments because of the inadequate relief measures that eventually translated into an armed rebellion under the Mizo National Front. Unlike the Naga independence movement, this rebellion could finally be contained through a peace agreement which included the establishment of a new state, i.e., the formation of Mizoram in 1987. The new state government did away with the earlier district council, curtailed the powers of traditional chiefs, and created a new form of village councils. Among other things, these councils have been entrusted with the management of village forests and the regulation of shifting cultivation (Singh 1996). This, as we shall see, is a situation rather unlike

30   Unruly Hills

the one found in villages in Meghalaya. In a similar fashion I shall make comparisons between Meghalaya and other parts of Northeast India, identifying common threats as well as poignant differences. However, this should not be misread as a claim to be dealing with the region as a whole. I shall come back to the contingency of the present geopolitical grid and now turn to how the region came into being as a result of colonial rule.

A Capitalist Geography Primitive accumulation is the term Marx uses to refer to the historical process in which peasant land, commons, and different types of communal landholdings were appropriated by the emerging capitalist class, forcing the subsequently landless masses into dependency on wage labor. According to Marx, this historical process of “divorcing the producer from the means of production” has been a brutal one, a history of mankind that, as he poetically puts it, is written in “letters of blood and fire” (Capital vol. I, chaps 26–27; 1977: 875). David Harvey writes: A closer look at Marx’s description of primitive accumulation reveals a wide range of processes. These include the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; the conversion of various property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights; the suppression of rights to commons; the commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); the monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; … (Harvey 2003:145) And, further, Any social formation or territory that is brought or inserts itself into the logic of capitalist development must undergo wide-ranging structural, institutional, and legal changes of the sort that Marx describes under the rubric of primitive accumulation. (ibid.: 153) Harvey stresses the crucial role of the state in promoting and backing these processes, and further, that these forms of accumulation continue to be central features of today’s capitalist geography; he therefore prefers the term “accumulation by dispossession,” since “primitive” might be read as something of the past. As Harvey and several other commentators have pointed out, things did not develop as uniformly as Marx anticipated. In Harvey’s terms, accumulation by dispossession thus

Nature and Nation   31 

“entails appropriation and co-option of pre-existing cultural and social achievements as well as confrontation and supersession” (2003: 146, see also 179). Different parts of the world have experienced and are experiencing this in quite different ways, and again referring to Harvey, we have to take into consideration the largely uneven geographical developments that follow (see Harvey 1996). Marx describes the European colonial endeavors as a primary moment of primitive accumulation, and hardly surprisingly, the transformations that colonialism brought about constitute a key theme in this study. The story of tea has particular relevance here and makes a fitting starting point. Wild tea bushes had been discovered in the Ahom Kingdom in 1821 by Major Robert Bruce, who learned on a merchant exploration that the Singpho used the plant to make a hot brew. With the British annexation in 1826, after the war with the Burmese forces that had invaded Ahom some years earlier, success with experimental tea plantations soon opened up to large-scale commercial plantations of tea. The tea industry had exceptional growth during the latter part of the nineteenth century, with capital coming mainly from British business houses. In his pioneering account, historian Amalendu Guha (1977) describes how these sparsely populated backwaters, previously territories of no economic interest, were transformed into a locus of vibrant capitalism. The colonial government gave away large tracts of land to the planters on long-term leases for the most nominal rents. The previous uses of these mainly forest lands—grazing, hunting, shifting cultivation—were generally not recognized by the colonial state; the land was classified as empty or “waste” and thus at the government’s disposal. Roads, railways, water-borne transportation, telegraphs, and other modern means of communication firmly re-situated the area as part of an expanding world market. Laborers, who could not be acquired in sufficient numbers locally,11 were brought in mainly from Chota Nagpur in central India. Guha claims that though tremendous capitalist forces were unleashed, the plantation economy remained a rather isolated sector with little effect on or interactions with the surrounding society and economy, thus arguing that it was a false start in modernization (ibid.: 26). Without going into an argument with Guha, to me it seems that the reverse is true. Although the plantation economy was an enclave, “an outpost of one mode of production in the midst of other modes,” to cite Eric Wolf (1982: 315), directly and indirectly the inception of tea came to trigger changes that had very far-reaching consequences for the region as a whole, not least in terms of large-scale transformations of the environment with which I am chiefly concerned.12 A vast landmass was cleared of forests and planted with tea seedlings in straight rows, thus reshaping the landscape into a disciplined, mono-crop plantation. In addition, the expanding tea industry also needed large quantities of wood for fuel for the factories

32   Unruly Hills

and laborers, and later for the making of tea chests13 as well as for various construction purposes, which caused further destruction of forest areas. Tea capital also ventured into commercial logging, taking leases on large forest tracts in the surrounding hills, a business that had become profitable due to the opening of the region and its connection to larger markets (see A. Saikia 2005). The tea industry speeded the building of railways in the region, and as we know from other parts of India, railway construction often become a very decisive moment in the environmental history of a particular place (Gadgil and Guha 1992: 120–22). It requires enormous quantities of timber, and as a consequence the government is bound to find ways to gain control of the forest resource. The forests of the Garo and Khasi Hills, for example, were heavily taxed on timber for the production of railway sleepers. Once in place, the railways made timber and other “bulky” natural resources more interesting for commercial exploration, not least the oil and coal that had been discovered in the region. More indirectly, tea propelled the colonial administration into taking a more active role in the governing of the region. This is not to say that tea was the sole interest of the colonial state. Generation of revenue and the overall stability of this border region were concerns that at times even came into conflict with the interests of the tea planters. But with the expansion of tea it became an imperative to settle the many incongruencies of the colonial frontier. In other words, to establish what James Scott (1998) aptly describes as state simplifications enabling the state to see, though a narrowing of vision, and to gain control of, the resources in its newly acquired territory. Land had to be settled, areas for various uses needed to be firmly demarcated, and orderly and peaceful relations needed to be established with the “savage” hill peoples who continued to raid the plains, posing a threat to the tea industry and in general being a nuisance to the establishment of British supremacy in the region. The colonial control of the unruly hill areas thus tightened, although most of these areas were declared off-limits for the tea planters through the so-called Inner Line system (a boundary beyond which outsiders could not buy land, and even travel or trade in these areas required a special permit). To increase revenue, the colonial government also encouraged settlement by industrious peasants from Bengal, which, along with the tea-garden laborers and the professional groups and business communities that catered to the tea planters and the colonial state, led to a tremendous increase in the population as well as changing its ethnic composition. Although tea alone cannot explain the changes that took place as a result of colonialism, it became the dynamic force that accentuated processes that most likely would otherwise have been much slower and less dramatic. Tea for the British was not just an innocent pleasure, but a strategic commodity of immense national importance. The enormous demand for tea in England created something of a fiscal crisis for the East

Nature and Nation   33 

India Company in the mid-nineteenth century, and finding alternatives to the import from China became an extremely pressing imperial concern (Chatterjee 2001: 37–38). In any case, the point here is that tea, in a most dramatic way, incorporated Assam and the surrounding hills into an evolving capitalist world system. As historian Yasmin Saikia argues: “It would not be an exaggeration to say that Assam was created sometime in the mid-nineteenth century as a result of the global trade in tea” (2005: 105). The importance of this for my argument is that a new economic structure was put in place. Along with tea, timber, coal, oil, and other natural resources were being extracted and sent out, constituting a rather classic case of what development economists refer to as a primary-product exporting region or what world-system theorists would call a “periphery.” The control over these resources, especially the trade in them, was in the hands of non-indigenous private interests (foreign and Indian) as well as the colonial state. The profits the extraction generated benefited local people to a very limited extent; instead they found themselves marginalized and their earlier forms of production and trade seriously undermined. For example, the rather large production of iron in the Khasi Hills, which was traded regionally, soon crumbled because cheap iron was being imported in large quantities from Europe (Syiemlieh 1989: 101). Most importantly, the modality of resource extraction that was established during the colonial period has continued to structure the economy of the region to the present day, as I shall argue in greater detail in the following chapters of the book. But it is also important to note that the administrative grid established by the British in the hill areas—institutionalizing a relatively large measure of self-governance and security in “tribal” land holdings in the name of protecting these primitive peoples from the onslaught of more advanced groups in the plains, later re-fashioned by the independent Indian state under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution—has had, and continues to have, a crucial impact on the particular history of capitalist transformations in the northeastern hills (see, for example, the commodification of land discussed in chapters 3 and 6).

Rich Environment, Poor People As is often pointed out, Northeast India is richly endowed with natural resources, yet remains one of the poorest regions of the country.14 Hardly anything of the much-celebrated economic wonders of contemporary India can be noticed here. No booming IT industry, no mushrooming of outsourced service enterprises, no manufacturing industry, or any of the rest of India’s economic miracle applauded by commentators worldwide.15 The region’s geographic location is clearly a disadvantage, “land-

34   Unruly Hills

locked,” as economists would put it, and with a rugged terrain where the seasonal rains tend to disrupt land transportation and at times wash away bridges and roads. The political boundaries that came into being after Independence remain an increasingly significant economic stumbling block, more than the geographic predicament in itself. Just a quick glance at the map and one will understand that. Northeast India is hanging on to the rest of the country through a narrow corridor, called the “chicken’s neck,” surrounded on all other sides by international borders. In a situation where unfriendly or even hostile relations have developed with most of the neighboring countries, the chicken’s neck has become the sole (legitimate) channel for trade and travel to and from Northeast India. As historian Willem van Schendel argues in his excellent book The Bengal Borderland (2005), the establishment in 1947/48 of the new international borders precipitated the “political assassination” of the regional economy (ibid.: 148). Van Schendel discusses here a larger geographical entity covered by the term the “Bengal borderland,” of which Northeast India is a central part along with what became the independent nation-states of Bangladesh (earlier part of Pakistan) and Burma. The three new states sought to create an integrated national economy, a scheme in which the economy of the borderland was not a priority (ibid.: 148–49). Economic transactions were encouraged primarily with the center, and the earlier trade routes and interactions between the hills and the Bengal plains, for example, were heavily constrained though not completely blocked. There were revenues to be earned from the border trade, and according to the priorities of the day, the respective governments allowed certain goods to cross. In addition to sanctioned flows, very lively borderland interactions have continued to take place in the shadow of the nation-state structure, as van Schendel describes in great detail (2005: chaps 7–10). In recent years, India has officially declared an intention to open its international borders, above all to the dynamic economies of Southeast Asia. Within the so-called “Look East Policy,” the vision is to make Northeast India a “gateway” to the East, and among other things to develop transport infrastructures that allow goods and people to flow more easily in an easterly direction (Baruah 2005: chap. 10).16 Flights directly from Guwahati to Bangkok were inaugurated in 2002, thus making Guwahati airport an international one. In relation to Bangladesh, there has been a lot of talk about opening trade relations and restoring the old marketplaces along the border. So, too, in the case of Burma (or Myanmar), and here the master plan is to build a railway connection between the two countries. And most recently, the Indian government has announced plans to build a substantial road system to facilitate trade with the northern neighbors, China and Bhutan.17 However, regardless of official celebrations of such new openness, the realities on the ground seem to remain unchanged. Trade with the

Nature and Nation   35 

Eastern neighbors has indeed increased, but as the economist Sushil Khanna (2005) points out, most of this is sea-borne trade from ports in Calcutta and elsewhere, not through the “contagious borders” of Northeast India. To give a small example: a man in charge of sales in a cement plant, the largest state-owned company in Meghalaya, told me that they had to give up their recent attempts to export to Bangladesh because of harassment by border security personnel and the various administrative procedures, which made the venture too cumbersome and unpredictable. Trucks loaded with cement often ended up waiting for days to cross the border, exposing the goods to possible damage as well as inflating the costs of transport. I have encountered numerous stories of a similar kind, for example, from people who have been trying on a smaller scale, without success, to bring agricultural produce from the Garo Hills to marketplaces on the Bangladesh side. Again, there is still important trade going on between the two countries, but the approved goods have to pass through the few official border crossings. The export of coal from Meghalaya to Bangladesh is one such item. Here, as with other items, the flow is irregular, stopped at times—for example, when the Bangladesh authorities claim that Meghalaya coal is polluting the environment because of its high sulfur content.18 But after a period of closure, the coal trade resumes, as it is apparently still in high demand in Bangladesh. Though coal fetches a higher price in Bangladesh, some traders prefer even so to take the coal to the more distant depot in Assam, thereby avoiding the hurdles of export or the high transaction costs involved in international trade. Despite this, there are reasons to assume that economic collaboration and trade between these countries will eventually pick up. But even if this happens, the question remains whether the region’s position as a periphery dependent on natural resource extraction would change. What, in other words, will the place of the Northeast be in the new, emerging geography of transnational connections? In chapter 4, I shall discuss the rather spectacular solution of the French multinational company Lafarge to secure raw material for its newly built cement factory in Bangladesh. Lafarge has built a long conveyor belt (supposedly the longest in the world) to transport limestone directly from the quarries in India—leased from the Khasi landowners— to the plant, situated some twelve kilometers from the border. This case is interesting for several reasons, not least because it has become a source of great controversy in Meghalaya, above all on the grounds that Lafarge is said to have violated the special land law, the Land Transfer Act, that seeks to prevent alienation of “tribal” land. The Lafarge story also points to a type of resource extraction that is becoming more prevalent in areas marked by civil wars or political turmoil. James Ferguson refers to this as “socially thin” extraction that takes place in secured enclaves

36   Unruly Hills

with little connection to the surrounding society and economy, using the offshore oil extraction by Western companies in Angola as an example (2006: 194–210). As Ferguson argues, other forms of mineral extraction in Africa and elsewhere in the world are becoming “more ‘oil-like’ in their social consequences” (ibid.: 203). To some extent this type of enclave extraction resembles earlier colonial plantation systems, like the tea plantations in Assam, though arguably with novel features. In the case of the northeast it is not unlikely that we shall see an increase of investment in mining and, for example, oil extraction (perhaps in Nagaland) by foreign companies that appoint private security firms to maintain control over the extractive zones as well as the transport infrastructure. I shall say more about this later. But to return to limestone, the Lafarge story is the latest chapter in a longer history of imperial extraction in these parts of the southern Khasi Hills. Control of this resource became an initial concern for the East India Company, which apparently saw the French, Greek, and Armenian traders that had become engaged in the limestone business back in the eighteenth century as a potential security threat. The Company officer Robert Lindsay, Collector of Sylhet, managed to wrest almost the entire trade into his personal monopoly, and for some years he had five to six hundred men permanently employed in quarrying and transporting limestone. Lindsay had entered a lease agreement with the Cherra Syiem (chief/king), but this very profitable arrangement of Lindsay’s came to an end in 1783 when Khasi troops attacked Company establishments in an attempt to seize control of the foothills. The Company eventually managed to reestablish its supremacy over the disputed border area, and other English businessmen would assume the privileged position Lindsay had once occupied in the limestone trade (Syiemlieh 1989: 11–24).19 An interesting continuity between the extraction that took place under Company rule and the present arrangements made by Lafarge is that the limestone quarries are being leased out rather than worked directly by the Khasis themselves. An argument that is often articulated in relation to present-day resource conflicts, as in the case of the limestone extraction, is that local people gain very little from the operations, and that the richness of nature continues to be exploited in a colonial-like fashion in the interests of outsiders. This is commonly stated as a development issue, i.e., whether or not the outflow of natural resources leads to development, a question that regularly surfaces in public debates in Northeast India. Even so, the type of development proposed for the region continues to be based on such resource flows. Water, or rather, “untapped hydropower” is the resource that is currently claimed to hold the key to the region’s overall development. It is said that the Northeast harbors about 40 per cent of India’s hydropower potential, a resource which, like the Meghalaya uranium, is

Nature and Nation   37 

considered to be of the greatest national importance for energy security as well as for maintaining the present level of economic growth.

The “Resource Curse” Northeast India lacks “development,” everyone seems to agree. But enhancing development has proven to be a particularly tricky mission in the region. After decades of not particularly successful attempts, a new central government ministry was formed in 2001 for this very purpose. The Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, known by the acronym DONER,20 incorporates the North Eastern Council (NEC), the central government institution earlier entrusted with the job of enhancing development. With better coordination and ambitious infrastructure investments, DONER hopes to get development on the fast track, to close the development gap, as it were, with the rest of the country. In order to achieve this, the World Bank has recently been called in to provide its expertise. According to the Bank, the areas considered to have the largest growth potential in the Northeast are water and forest. What is envisioned is a “resource-led strategy,” where hydropower projects alone are said to have a potential to “double the region’s net state domestic product”. These quotes are from the World Bank report “Development and Growth in Northeast India: The Natural Resources, Water, and Environment Nexus” (2007), developed in collaboration with DONER and with input from various research institutions and independent experts.21 Below I shall unpack some of the key ideas in this document, which, for the sake of simplicity, I call the World Bank/ DONER report. To propose the construction of large dams is of course extremely controversial in India: it is sufficient to recall the still ongoing conflict relating to the Sardar Sarovar dam in the Narmada River and the dams-anddevelopment equation, most powerfully addressed in Arundhati Roy’s essay “The Greater Common Good” (1999). The World Bank was one of the masterminds and funders of the Narmada project, though it later pulled out as the protests gained international recognition. Dam building in India, as in many other parts of the world, has been in retreat for some time, due to a large extent, some argue, to the successful resistance by transnational alliances of anti-dam protesters (see Khagram 2005). The World Bank has been one of the main targets of such protests, and during the past decade the Bank has worked hard to reinvent itself as “green.” Some see the greening of the Bank as a merely cosmetic facelift, whereas others, even some of the old environmental critics, apparently take it as a real change of heart. As sociologist Michael Goldman argues, the Bank has been remarkably successful in crafting a new development framework—what he refers to as the “green neoliberal project”—that

38   Unruly Hills

combines the neoliberal economic agenda with neocolonial ideas concerning nature conservation or biodiversity preservation, conjured as environmentally sustainable development (2004: 168; 2005). Thus equipped, the Bank has managed to bring previous critics into its fold and, for example, to foster alliances with various influential conservationist organizations and other major transnational NGOs, bedfellows that only a decade back would have seemed unthinkable. Goldman gives a detailed account of how green neoliberalism has evolved as the dominant philosophy within the Bank and how it transpires in practice. One of his examples is from Laos, a country which, like the Northeast of India, is said to have mainly two commodifiable resources, “hydropower and timber.” The World Bank is engaged in a massive project to construct a system of large dams in the Mekong River basin (mainly for the purpose of exporting electricity to Thailand), but unlike previous projects of this kind, there is now an ambitious environmental component that the Lao government was compelled to accept to get access to the necessary foreign loans. The most spectacular aspect of this “greening” of Laos, perhaps, is that about one-fourth of the country’s forest areas have been converted into “conservation and protection forests,” part of which are the twenty newly established National Biodiversity Conservation Areas. Through this, leading international conservationist organizations like WWF, WCS, and IUCN are now collaborating with the Bank and the Lao government in building a new mega dam, Nam Theun 2, in the Mekong River (Goldman 2005: chap. 5). Goldman writes: The environmental projects are the legitimizing vehicle for the dam: without a strong public commitment to environmentally sustainable development, the World Bank and its counterparts would encounter robust resistance from highly effective campaigns to stop “businessas-usual”, Bank-style development. In effect, the Bank’s proactive response to transnational environmental organizations, networks, and movements are new strategies of global environmentalism that have become institutionalized (with greater and lesser effectiveness) throughout the world. (Goldman 2005: 201) Perhaps it is experiences like these that make the Bank and the Indian government confident about venturing into or, at this stage, suggesting new grand dam-building plans for the northeast.22 But the question is whether one can expect such a development fix under the auspice of international finance institutions to work as “smoothly” in the case of Northeast India. There are plenty of reasons to assume that this will not be the case. Let me illustrate with an anecdote from the field. Activists that are part of a loose network of human

Nature and Nation   39 

rights, environmental, and other civil society organizations in Northeast India had come to know that the World Bank/DONER were organizing a consultation in Guwahati, the capital of Assam, to discuss background papers prepared as part of the earlier mentioned report. They quickly organized a small protest rally outside the hotel where the meeting took place, shouting slogans like “World Bank, go home.” They later headed for the entrance of the hotel and to their surprise the guards outside did not try stop them from entering. They were even able to make it all the way to the meeting room. As one of them narrated the event, to her surprise they found a couple of regional NGOs at the conference table, an act of betrayal in her eyes. The meeting subsequently halted and they silently distributed leaflets and unfolded a banner, with the same message for the Bank to quit. The chairperson of the meeting asked the protesters to take the microphone and voice their grievances. They declined, claiming that they did not want to be co-opted and made part of an undemocratic “consultation” process that to begin with lacked real civil society representation. The few NGOs that were present had not shared the information about the consultation meeting with others and hence lacked a wider mandate to speak, she argued.23 Incidentally, a person who works for the Ministry of Environment and Forests –– and had been part of the research group that prepared a background report on forests24—was also present at the meeting. As he told me, he was not at all impressed by the protesters’ interruption, saying that they just shouted at the World Bank but had nothing constructive to say, referring to their declining to voice their criticism at the meeting. And what was there really to protest against, he argued; the purpose of the meeting was just to discuss a study that the World Bank was in charge of. The Bank was interested in supporting livelihoods and their advice could be a valuable input for the Government, he argued. From the activists’ horizon, the World Bank means trouble, the pursuit of a kind of development that is antithetical to what they aspire to.25 As it was reported in the media, the protesters “alleged that the WB was only interested in exploiting the abundant resources of North-East instead of ensuring sustainable development of the region.” As one of the activists—who had been invited to the meeting but left it in protest—argued, it was not just a “consultative meet,” but rather “an attempt to get the WB’s own plans endorsed by a group of people and government officials.” 26 So what does this little incident tell us? To reduce the protests to the kind of standard activist response one would get as soon as the World Bank shows up is, I believe, a mistake. At stake here is rather the earlier mentioned distrust of the state in Northeast India. The hydro-schemes proposed would obviously imply a massive intrusion and transfer of resources to the agencies of the state and other outside interests, to which people at large tend to object. Add to this the involvement of

40   Unruly Hills

controversial international financial institutions like the World Bank and there is bound to be a reaction. The involved Bank staff are clearly not oblivious to the sensitivity of the matter. The very fact that the protesters were allowed to enter the meeting room and even given a chance to speak, shows that they try to avoid confrontation and negative press. Drafts of the World Bank/DONER report and the background papers have also been made public to avoid criticism for undemocratic and non-transparent dealings.27 But even with the documents in hand, the ultimate objectives remain anything but obvious. As with policy documents of this kind a terminological magic of participation, stakeholders, transparency, livelihoods, and governance tend to obscure the aim and rationale behind the policy. This is clearly not by accident. As David Mosse argues, “the vagueness, ambiguity and lack of conceptual precision is required to conceal ideological differences so as to allow compromise and enrolment of different interests” (2005: 230). Let us, nevertheless, try to pull out the main gist of the report. One of the key arguments made concerns the crucial role of “institutions,” and it is claimed that in the absence of strong and transparent institutions the proposed resource-led strategy is unlikely to “accelerate a broad-based development of the region.”28 Research findings from other parts of the world are cited in the report, showing that abundant resources in situations of weak governance tend to generate conflict, lawlessness, and generally “retarded development,” vicious features so common in the developing world that they have been termed the “resource curse.”29 The Northeast can escape this curse, it is argued, provided the required institutional arrangements are put in place, i.e., things like “participatory decision-making by the different levels of stakeholders; clear and transparent rules and regulations; and an equitable enforcement of those rules and regulations.” All this is missing today and, as the report goes on to argue, crafting new institutions is easier said than done.30 Elinor Ostrom’s celebrated work on institutions and their crucial role in natural resource management (mainly in relation to “common-pool resource problems”) comes to mind here. Ostrom has again and again stated the complexities in understanding institutions and even more, the difficulties in crafting robust new ones, something one cannot achieve “in one single step” (2005: 31). There are many pitfalls and risks involved in drafting new rules and regulations, and the rule of the thumb seems to be to move in a slow and receptive way. In view of this—i.e., that the crafting of new institutions and the transformation of existing ones is very challenging, and that the success of such an endeavor is a prerequisite if resource-led strategy is to enhance overall development—should not the World Bank/DONER be more wary of proposing large-scale exploitation of the region’s water resources? No, on this point the report expresses no doubts; the hydro-

Nature and Nation   41 

power potential should be tapped. The report asks instead why there is a reluctance among people to avail themselves of the golden opportunities in utilizing this resource. In the absence of public consent, however, there are apparently other means available; as mentioned in the report, one such possibility is through the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 (a piece of colonial legislation that still is in place, see further chapter 3), which permits compulsory appropriation of land for public purposes. Though, as it is added, “there is recognition of the need to limit the coercive powers of the state.”31 This document offers different readings, but it appears to me that there are reasons to share the protesters’ worries. The type of large-scale scheme envisioned in the case of water is built on the extractive modality that exacerbates dependency, uneven development, and environmental degradation. The ultimate objective is to enhance energy production in India, hence the suspicion among the activists that “the greater common good” of the nation will be at the expense of people in the Northeast. The World Bank/DONER report talks about creating a mechanism for benefit sharing, for the payment of adequate compensation to those displaced—stating that the numbers of displaced persons would be significantly lower in comparison with dam projects in other parts of India or elsewhere in the world—and similarly about measures to safeguard traditional culture and livelihoods. But this obviously does not seem to reassure everyone. Ongoing hydro projects in Northeast India are already under criticism for lack of social and environmental concerns.32 The forest, the second key resource discussed in the report, has a less clear position. Mainly, there are vague statements relating to the necessity of strengthening community management institutions and to the overall importance of forests for local livelihoods, but the ultimate contribution forest is supposed to make to enhancing development is not spelled out. The only concrete reference is to the possibility of generating income from the forest though the carbon trading mechanism under the Kyoto protocol33—using the capacity of forests to function as carbon sinks—and more vaguely from ecotourism. In the case of the first, there are a great number of difficulties to be sorted out before the situation of the Northeast can be made compatible with the present rules relating to carbon trading. As I was told by a senior officer at the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the “Kyoto Standard Forest” applicable for carbon trading should be planted after 1980 and involve a shift of land use, for example, from jhum to permanent tree plantations, and such forests should further contain certain species of trees with a particular capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.34 There are apparently a lot of uncertainties about how to interpret this, but as the officer told me, discussions are going on to work out more flexible and context-sensitive definitions of Kyoto carbon forests. It is difficult, of course, to predict the outcome of such discussions, but if I were

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a farmer I would certainly think twice or thrice before I started converting my jhum fields into carbon forests. At least in the short-term perspective, this simply does not appear to be a viable economic option. Ecotourism or tourism in general might have great potential in the Northeast, but it is unlikely that there will be any significant development of this “industry” as long as the political turmoil remains. Why, then, is forest included in the proposed resource-led development strategy? As it appears, forest has been grafted onto the plan primarily to make it appear more “green” and livelihood-oriented, so as to draw attention away from the fact that dams will inevitably displace people and cause environmental damage. The authors of the report, in other words, seek to communicate a message that the strategy they propose is not just a matter of building dams, but rather a grander vision that concerns both economic and environmental improvement of the region. Bear in mind that this is largely how the World Bank managed to go ahead with dam building in Laos. As mentioned, the report invokes the notion of the “resource curse.” Let me add some background to this. It was Richard Auty (1993) who first used the term, or rather what he referred to as the “resource curse thesis,” thus proposing a negative relationship between abundance of resources and overall economic and political development of a country. After him, the thesis has been the subject of a major scholarly debate, engaging among others the well-known economist Jeffrey D. Sachs (Sachs and Warner 1995). Sachs is one of those who finds ample empirical evidence in favor of the thesis, something that other scholars have questioned, citing such examples as Norway and Australia where extraction of mineral resources has gone hand in hand with economic growth and development. In short, the debate circles around the question of whether it is a curse or a blessing for a country to sit on a major deposit of oil or some other valuable natural resource. As far as I can make out, the debate is tipping in favor of arguments in line with the World Bank/DONER report, i.e., that the threat of the curse is real but that it can be mitigated or escaped if the right type of robust institutions are (put) in place (see Boschini et al. 2003; Mehlum et al. 2006; Weinthal and Luong 2006; Humphreys, Sachs and Stiglitz 2007). Hence, it is not a matter of “fate,” as Sachs puts it (2007). But again, how to get the “desired” institutions in place, institutions that prevent looting or grabbing of the resource rents (what commonly is referred to as “rentseeking behavior”)? This seems to be the very crux of the matter. An implicit assumption in the debate, it seems to me, is that the institutions that are lacking are those that you find in Western capitalist societies, not least those relating to security in private property and the functioning of a free market economy. But more than this, the way institutions are discussed in the resource curse debate is itself deeply problematic. In

Nature and Nation   43 

short, I would argue that institutions are not properly historicized but are discussed as things in their own right, somehow existing outside of the larger process of society, culture, and history.35 What is left out of the analysis is the fact that institutions themselves are products of unfolding histories, not least those relating to struggles over land and resources. In the case of Northeast India it would be futile, for example, to discuss institutions without taking into account the colonial and postcolonial circumstances under which they came into being. A fitting illustration of this point is anthropologist Fernando Coronil’s revealing account of how oil and petro-dollars are closely intertwined with the formation of the modern Venezuelan state (1997). Obviously, to understand how institutions function today one needs to engage this larger history of Venezuela’s transformation from a predominantly agrarian society into one of the largest oil-producing countries in the world. And to understand this trajectory, as Coronil emphasizes, we have to account for the place a Third World country like Venezuela has “in the global structure of production and distribution” (ibid.: 391). But this is exactly what is missing in the resource curse debate. Besides problems relating to economic development, the abundance of valuable natural resources in a country is also linked, as mentioned, to the emergence of social unrest and violent insurrections. Here it can be said that the resource curse thesis is part of a set of theories that proposes a linkage between the environment and violence. If one “school” identifies abundance of natural resources like oil, diamonds, and timber as drivers of violence, the other dominant school postulates scarcity of, for example, water and land as triggers of violence. Despite the basically contrary positions, both perspectives are based on the common assumption that, to quote Philippe Le Billion, “societies confronted with specific environmental circumstances—scarcity or abundance—have a higher risk of being affected by violent conflicts” (2001: 564). Due perhaps to the simplicity or commonsensical nature of the argument, both schools have attracted a lot of attention, and indeed influence, in scholarly as well as public debates during the past decade. With an ever-increasing population along with increasing consumption—leading to over-exploitation, environmental degradation, and hence increased scarcity—it seems plausible to assume that conflicts (“green wars”) will arise over the essentials of life, like access to drinking water or cultivable land (see Homer-Dixon 1999).36 Similarly, one can assume that the availability of highly priced primary commodities would lead to elite competition and rivalry to control the extractive chain, something that can eventually turn into a civil war (“resource wars” or “greed-driven conflicts”). Rebel groups can also finance their arms purchases through the taxation of the extraction and trade in such resources (Collier 2000).37 And indeed, all armed conflicts have an economic dimension and are concerned in

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one way or another with the control of territories, land, and natural resources. Similarly, pursuing an armed struggle requires financial means that have to be found in some way. But to conclude from this that a particular civil war is caused by land scarcity or, alternatively, that it is all about greedy elites that are fighting for control over diamonds or oil—i.e., identifying one single, determining factor or cause—would be a serious mistake. As a general device in analyzing social phenomena we ought to look for more multi-faceted explanations. Following Paul Richards (2005: 11), I would argue that to grasp the “inherent complexity of wars” one has to engage the larger social context close up, tracing out “multiple motivations,” not least the political ones. Several of the active rebel groups in Northeast India finance their activities by taxing those involved in the lucrative extraction of natural resources or engaging directly in, for example, illegal logging. Deeming these groups to be purely “greed” driven, seizing the opportunities provided by nature’s abundance of primary commodities, is simply not accurate in most cases, as I shall argue in this book. Suffice it to say at this point, neither scarcity nor abundance is in itself a sufficient explanation for why conflicts have emerged in the region. But let us return a final time to the significance of the World Bank/ DONER report. After the authors have taken note of the absence of the required robust institutions as well as the difficulties in crafting new ones, the report ends on a positive note, saying that “the resource curse does not need to become a reality in the Northeast.” And further: Thousands of young Northeasterners are waiting for a chance to productively contribute to their home region. Thus, with some of the changes advocated here taking place, a process would be set in motion that could support them in this endeavor.38 As I hinted at earlier, on the basis of what is being presented in the report it is hard to understand how the authors have derived such a conclusion. The ultimate question to be asked is whether the proposed resource-led strategy, based on the building of a large number of dams, brings the type of development that people in the Northeast stand to benefit from or aspire to. In the so-called Vision 2020 document that DONER has also been involved in, the language is different, the vision is supposedly articulated by the people themselves, but the bottom line is the same; i.e. progress and prosperity through the harnessing of the rich resources such as the “vast hydroelectric potential,” land, mineral wealth and forests.39

Nature and Nation   45 

Interrogating Development Development is a slippery term that lends itself to many different usages. We all seem to know what it refers to, yet, as critical interrogation of the term in the past decades has made abundantly clear, it conceals unequal power relations and carries a problematic legacy of Western dominance over those who are defined as underdeveloped or in need of development (see Ferguson 1994; Escobar 1995; Crush 1996). Akhil Gupta aptly describes how the institutions, ideologies, and practices of development have imposed “a pervasive feeling of being underdeveloped” among the rural poor in northern India (1998: ix). This, “the postcolonial condition,” as he terms it, applies equally to other parts of India and I believe elsewhere in the “Third World.” Such a condition, I would add, invariably makes people subjects of the state in that the modern state gains legitimacy and is expected to function as the provider of development. Later I shall discuss the ambivalent relationship with the Center or “Delhi” among people in Northeast India as a consequence of what people perceive as the failure or negligence of the state in delivering development. For now I shall just note one disturbing feature of the development discourse pertaining to the northeast, namely the intimate interlinkage of development with a strategic political or military agenda. There is nothing secretive about the intersection of the two, rather the opposite; it is an officially acknowledged device that development is the best way to combat insurgency and bring the region into the national fold. When new developmental packages are announced on the occasion of visits by some prominent government representative to any of the northeastern states, it is commonly stated that development will bring back the misguided youths who, for want of other avenues, have been lured away to the bush by anti-national terrorist organizations. In looking more closely at how development serves security and state-building interests, I rely on the work of political scientist Sanjib Baruah, who congenially describes it as the nationalization of a frontier space through development (2005). There are several interrelated aspects of this type of state-making, some of which I shall return to in subsequent chapters of the book. Suffice to say at this point that Baruah identifies the earlier discussed division of pre-1960s Assam into smaller, financially unviable, states as the most decisive aspect of the security-driven development strategy in Northeast India. According to him, rather than containing insurgency, this policy has led to ever new separatist organizations taking up arms for the sake of establishing their own ethnic homelands. Baruah is a fierce critic of the five decades of government interventions based on this strategy, policies which he claims are responsible for creating the veritable mess of ethnic violence, economic misery, and political chaos that has followed. Hence the notion

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of “durable disorder,” introduced in his recent book Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (2005). In this book he develops arguments earlier posed in the equally important book India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (1999). For Baruah, the 1962 war with China was the founding moment of the scheme to nationalize the region through development. Chinese troops were able without much opposition to invade the northern territory of Assam and along with parts of the present state of Arunachal Pradesh, (at that time under a special type of “tribal” frontier administration known as NEFA). It thus became imperative for the government under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to insert the structures of the Indian state more securely not only in NEFA but in Assam and the Northeast as a whole. A major concern at the time was also how to handle the Naga rebellion for full sovereignty and other simmering separatist tendencies in the region. The policy eventually adopted was to divide Assam into a number of smaller states. Nagaland was subsequently established as a separate state in 1963, to be followed by Meghalaya in 1972, and Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh in 1987. These new states, together with the already existing states of Tripura and Manipur, earlier princely states, and the reduced state of Assam, then formed what became known as the seven sisters of Northeast India (Baruah 2005: chap. 2). There are obviously different views on how and why this breaking and making of states happened, and contrary to Baruah, who emphasizes a kind of master plan drafted at the Center, others have argued that an increased Assamese chauvinism played a decisive role in the process.40 But leaving this debate aside for the moment, the end result was what Baruah describes as the establishment of a “cosmetic federal regional order” under which the new states that had been created were under the direct control, both politically and economically, of the central government in New Delhi (ibid.: 37). Significantly, the military has been given a particularly powerful role in this new order. Almost all the governors that have been appointed in the Northeast have a military, police, or intelligence background, and with the special powers these have been granted, Baruah argues that a “parallel political structure” has been created that is autonomous in relation to the democratically elected governments of the respective states (ibid.: 44). Development is supposed to perform the magic of selling or making this new order acceptable. As Baruah quite tellingly notes, the major institution set up for the dual purpose of development and security, the North Eastern Council (NEC), initially had no representation by the elected heads of the Northeastern states, but only the appointed governors (the former were allowed in later). To illustrate how development enters into the scheme, Baruah takes the case of Arunachal Pradesh, a state of particular importance because of its border with China as well

Nature and Nation   47 

as its rich endowments of natural resources, not least of which is the hydropower potential discussed earlier. He writes, As state institutions have penetrated deeper into Arunachali life, developmentalism has increasingly been able to capture the imagination of local elites and development discourse has been able to bring the aspirations of Arunachal’s new elites into line with New Delhi’s national security-driven goals. (Baruah 2005: 47) It is therefore no surprise that the former Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Mukut Mithi, supported the construction of two mega dams as well as several road-building projects in the state, argues Baruah. Development funds are allocated by the central government in New Delhi and it is also there that project designs are worked out. Thus, to be able to cash in on development funds, the officials in the state government have to submit proposals that fall in line with the desires of those in charge of the planning bodies at the Center. In light of this, the World Bank/DONER strategy report discussed above gains salience. But the flip side of the coin is the experienced lack of development, the popular sentiment in Northeast India that they are being neglected or deprived of development; in more radical terms, that the type of development promoted by the Center, it is claimed, enriches only a small section of society but fails to improve the lives of people in general. This, as we shall see, alienates people from the state and gives legitimacy to those who proclaim that prosperity can only be achieved by disconnecting the Northeast from the Indian “mainland.”

Insurgency and the Indian State When I tell people in India that I work on the Northeast, a common reaction is a sigh of despair. Trouble surfaces, above all the image of insurgency and violence. And equally a kind of bewilderment, “What is it really that these guys want?” But people generally seem to be fairly indifferent towards and ignorant about the situation in the Northeast. This is not a matter only of geographical distance, but perhaps even more, of culture. The place is simply different, and difficult to relate to. One consequence of this, it seems, is that the state is able to pursue its security agenda without much concern for the larger public opinion in the country. But people in the region also cultivate a similar attitude of otherness. India is often spoken of as a different country, as in the commonly invoked notion of the “Indian mainland”—a place one is connected to but not really part of. A story commonly told is about someone visiting Delhi and being taken for a foreigner, asked whether they are from

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Burma, Thailand, or some other Southeast Asian country. This reinforces their sense of not being fully Indian, of not properly belonging to the Indian nation, which again strengthens self-identification as Khasi, Naga, or Bodo, for example. The Hindutva movement’s increasing influence in the 1980s and the subsequent electoral success of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 1990s is of immense importance here. India under the subsequent BJP-led government has been constructed as a Hindu nation where not only the large Muslim minority but also the numerically relatively insignificant Christian community are being cast as alien and an internal threat (Ludden 1996; Karlsson 2002a). Christianity is an important ethnic marker and identity for many of the hill peoples in Northeast India, and already at the time of Independence the leaders of the Naga nationalist movement argued for the necessity of sovereignty on the basis of religion, that they wanted to become part of neither Hindu-dominated India nor Muslim-dominated Pakistan (Nuh 2002). Here, in other words, is a case not primarily of being denied Indian nationality but rather of grounding oneself outside the imaginary realm of such a project. And this, I would argue, is a more general feature of ethnic politics in Northeast India. As an old man in Shillong, whom I used to meet regularly, told me in a moment of affection, “You have to understand we are Khasis, we didn’t chose to become Indians, it was forced upon us.” He refers here to the events surrounding the Independence of India. As I shall discuss in chapter 5, many Khasis and other people in the Northeast feel that they were deprived of their right to choose their political future at that critical juncture. Because of this, many people in the Northeast still seem to maintain a kind of ambivalence towards their “Indianess,” being, I suggest, “reluctant Indians.” Let me take note, however, of one aspect of particular concern to people in the Northeast, which seems to be a major constraint in their identification as Indian as well as a cause for ambitions of autonomy, and this is the perceived imbalance in economic relations. If Indians in general feel that money is being pumped into the Northeast, people in Northeast India commonly assert the very opposite, that they are held in a state of internal colonization in which they are being robbed of their natural resources. The oil resource in Assam is commonly used as an example, pointing to the fact that most of the revenue generated is appropriated by Delhi while only a fraction remains in the state (Y. Saikia 2005: 108–9). And this is also claimed for most of the other natural resources in the region, that the entire economic chain is controlled by “outsiders” and that the profits generated are being ripped off by them. The Indian state is understood as the main instrument in perpetuating these exploitative relations. Most of the insurgent groups active in Northeast India make this condition their very raison d’être, stating their objective as the libera-

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tion of their people/nation from the tyranny or exploitative nature of Indian rule. The majority of these organizations describe their cause as a national one, to establish territorial sovereignty for their particular ethnic constituency, be it Nagalim for the Nagas, Bodoland for the Bodos, or Ahom for the people of Assam. As I have discussed elsewhere (Karlsson 2001), territorial claims often overlap, and this has increasingly become a source of inter-ethnic violence and, in some cases, “ethnic cleansing.” Some organizations seek national liberation within India, in some kind of autonomy arrangement, whereas others strive for complete independence. The insurgency scene in the Northeast is indeed complex, and even the most up-to-date political analysts would have great trouble keeping track of all the armed groups that come to life, have their go for a while, and eventually disappear, split up, or evolve into a new configuration under some related acronym. Others have been more persistent and have continued their armed struggle for decades. The sheer number of rebel groups is staggering; a reasonable estimate would be around fifty to one hundred.41 But among these are groups of very different kinds, whether in terms of numerical strength, organizational capacity, activity level, or political influence (Baruah 2005: 5).42 Most of the Northeastern insurgencies remain unknown to the outside world and figure in the media only when more spectacular incidents of violence take place. This despite the fact, for instance, that the Naga liberation struggle is one of the longest ongoing armed resistances in the world—about half a century to date—in which tens of thousands or perhaps one hundred thousand people have died, and which in terms of human suffering could compete with any of the more well-known scenes of war in the world.43 The ongoing insurgencies and counterinsurgency operations by the army and the security forces have created a situation in which violence has become part of everyday life. The Manipuri scholar Binalakshmi Nepram gives a telling example of how as a child she grew up in an environment where words like “combing operation,” “curfew,” “CRPF” (Central Reserve Police Force), and local terms for “insurgents” and various types of weapons were part of the daily vocabulary. At times she could not come home from school as there had been a “shoot out” nearby, and at night they often woke to gunshots and their mother rushing in telling them to take cover. Looking back on this, Nepram states that the most intriguing thing is that all this did not appear “abnormal”; these were just “‘normal’ everyday occurrences” (2002: 1). As ethnographies of war-torn societies show, life under conditions in which violence is naturalized is marked by a kind of collective nervousness, embodied fear, or ontological insecurity that permeates every sphere of society (see Feldman 1991; Aretxaga 1997).44 Violence is

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understood, then, not only as destroying the societal order, but actually producing its own order. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai writes: A key insight Achille Mbembe (2003) has offered us is that in societies in which everyday life is characterized by the everydayness of physical violence, militarized conflict, and somatic brutality in the name of collective identities, we can no longer imagine a simple opposition between nature and war on one hand and social life and peace on the other. Mbembe invites us to imagine a more terrifying landscape, in which order (regularity, predictability, routine, and everydayness itself) is organized around the fact or the prospect of violence. (Appadurai 2006: 31) Though I believe that these types of explanations are useful in understanding the situation, especially in the more troubled parts of the Northeast, there is nevertheless a risk that by emphasizing the everydayness of violence one might lose track of the political motivations or the more directed reasons why the state or the insurgent groups engage in acts of violence. I shall come back to this shortly. The article by Mbembe to which Appadurai refers engages in a larger discussion that centers on notions of sovereignty, Foucault’s biopower, and Benjamin’s “state of exception,” themes that surface in much of recent anthropological thinking on violence and the contemporary state (Taussig 1992; Das and Poole 2004; Hansen and Stepputat 2006). The work by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has gained particular significance in this area. Along with Benjamin, Agamben makes the controversial claim that “the state of exception … has become the rule,” a permanent feature or paradigm of present-day governance (2005: 6). In short, Agamben points here to the problem or paradox that the state as a sovereign is invested with the legal power to declare a state of exception, hence to suspend the law or the legal order itself. In such situations the executive wing of government, which includes the police and the armed forces, is commonly given superior powers—for example, to rule by decrees with the force of law. These measures are generally to be applied for a short time in extreme situations of civil war, insurrection, or major political crises where the very survival of the state is at risk. But again, according to Agamben, the state of emergency has become the order of the day, “one of the essential practices of contemporary states, including so-called democratic ones” (ibid.: 2).45 Much could be said about this, but for the purpose of this study I would like simply to note the usefulness of Agamben’s argument in understanding the political situation in Northeast India. I would argue that the region can be said to be under a permanent state of emergency. The earlier mentioned parallel structure of governance under the direct

Nature and Nation   51 

command of New Delhi and the security establishment is the best illustration of this. But there are also more direct convergences. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958, designed particularly for Northeast India, has been applied on and off in the region, most frequently in the states of Nagaland, Assam, and Manipur.46 Under this act, the central government or the governor of the concerned state in the Northeast can declare certain parts or the entire state a “disturbed area,” thus calling upon the armed forces to assist the civil powers in handling situations perceived as particularly dangerous. There are no direct specifications regarding the conditions under which areas can be declared “disturbed,” and again, this is a decision that bypasses the elected governments in the states concerned. As the name of the Act reveals, it is a matter of increasing the powers of the armed forces; for example, under the controversial section four, any army personnel or commissioned officer is entitled, for the maintenance of public order, to “fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law or order” and further, also to arrest, without warrant, persons who have, might have, or are about to commit a “cognizable” offence (Sections 4a and b). In addition, persons operating under this Act have legal immunity and consequently cannot be prosecuted (unless the central government sanctions such legal proceedings). People in Northeast India are highly critical of the Act and there is a longstanding demand by various political and civil society organizations that it should be rescinded. Human rights groups, for example, hold the Act responsible for the high level of human rights violations reported in the region. As stated in one report by an independent citizens’ human rights initiative: The Fact Finding teams found widespread use of the power to search and arrest given by (Special Powers) Act to security personnel deployed in the region. In all the states, the teams met with countless people and heard accounts of the harassment that they face regularly in the ‘safety of their own homes’. At times like this women and children are manhandled, and the men most often, beaten up and taken away for ‘interrogation’. It was found that during this kind of harassment, the women are doubly victimised. Even routine road checks have sexual overtones, and molestation and rape by security personnel is frighteningly rampant. … Entire villages are rounded up at regular intervals and hooded persons asked to point out ‘suspects’. Failure to do so leads to reprisals like beating up or detention. With no official records, such detention literally amounts to kidnapping. Hundreds of civilians and ‘insurgents’ have been captured and killed in ‘encounters’. … By their own admission, security personnel posted in north-east believe

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that most locals are either ‘insurgents’ or ‘supporters’. In fact, many officials even felt that ‘outsiders’ like the Fact Finding teams who go to make enquiries into human rights violations by security forces were ‘stooges’ of militant groups.47 A recent report by Amnesty International conveys a similar message, stating, for example, that the Act “has facilitated grave human rights abuses, including extra judicial execution, ‘disappearance’, rape and torture by bestowing sweeping powers on the armed forces.”48 This is not to claim, however, that the security forces alone are responsible for human rights violations in the region. Much of the violence against civilians is indeed inflicted by the rebel groups as well as by other armed gangs that are more difficult to identify (some just criminals, others acting in tandem with rebel or security interests).49 Army and police persons are also victims of human rights violations, of course. But the fact that this is the case does not diminish the responsibility of the state for the dirty war against insurgency carried out under the auspices of the Act. The heavy-handedness of the armed forces has, to say the least, made them greatly unpopular in the region (see Das 2005). The security forces are trying to improve their reputation by getting involved in various welfare schemes—the so-called “smiling policy”— for example, distributing medical aid and food rations to impoverished villagers.50 They also take part in staging public events like the wellpublicized Hornbill Festival in Nagaland, an involvement that among other things raises questions concerning the militarization of functions that normally are in the hands of local government, as pointed out by the anthropologist Dolly Kikon (2005). Northeast India is said to be one of the most highly militarized regions in South Asia. The extraordinary presence of the army and other types of security forces is obvious to anyone visiting the area. The security situation, the activities of the many armed rebel—or what in official rhetoric are increasingly referred to as terrorist –groups are what calls for this presence. The dominant position of the state, most clearly expressed by representatives of the security forces, is that the rebel groups are misguided troublemakers or simple criminals engaged in looting and senseless acts of violence. The greedy leaders, safely based abroad, are the ones who, it is claimed, reap the sole benefits. When rebels surrender, they are routinely made to issue statements to the press testifying to the luxurious life of the “top-brass leaders,” commonly contrasted to the harsh conditions endured by the “foot soldiers” in the bush. On the Armed Forces website,51 it is explained that insurgency in the Northeast has nothing to do with “ideology” but is above all a matter of “ethnic and tribal perceptions” or of “identity and affinity.” What the terms “perception” and “identity” refer to is not clearly spelled out, but as far

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as I can make out they are something that derives from the isolation and general primitiveness of the people in the region. It is quite interesting to note the biological metaphor used in the following account, under the heading “Genesis and Evolution of Insurgency”: It has also been seen that, within a particular state, insurgency by one set of tribals raises its head, finds roots and spreads and then dies with an agreement with the Government. Thereafter, in the same geographical area, another lesser tribe/subtribe undergoes the same cycle. That identity plays a crucial role, all analysts as well as the insurgents themselves would probably agree, but how, why, and in what way are more complicated questions where views differ. But what strikes me as more important here is what is said not to be important, i.e., “ideology.”52 Reading this against the grain reveals that if ideology were acknowledged, one would need to engage with the insurgency movements as political actors having genuine grievances, aims, and aspirations, not as some kind of phenomenon of nature, weeds that just have to be cut or rooted out (basically a law-and-order problem). As has often been pointed out, one of the major stumbling blocks in finding lasting political solutions to the vexed problems in the Northeast is the reluctance of the central government to enter into serious and transparent dialogue with all the different parties in the respective conflict zones. The talks that do take place today are generally only with the main or dominant militant group, which provokes rival fractions to show their muscles as well and in addition creates uncertainty and frustration among those who do not support the particular group engaged in talks with the government but might nevertheless be affected by the outcome or possible settlement reached in such talks. The vicious logic of these “peace talks” is that ethnic militias first have to prove their capacity to kill and cause enough destruction before they are invited to the negotiation table. Violence, in other words, becomes the political language par excellence, the way in which these groups seek recognition by the state. Because of this it ought not to come as a surprise that new insurrections flare up after the government has reached a settlement with one rebel group. Meghalaya is usually considered the peaceful exception in Northeast India. Even so, there are two major insurgent organizations in the state: the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC), struggling for a homeland jointly for the Khasis and Jaintias (collectively named the Hynniewtrep people), and the A’chik National Volunteers Council (ANVC), struggling for a separate, greater Garoland. In the case of the latter, as often happens, there has recently been a partition, the formation of a splinter group, the Garo Hills United Achik National Front (UANF), which opposes the present ceasefire and peace talks with the govern-

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ment. There are also two other rebel groups that seem to be on the rise, one called the Liberation of Achik Elite Force (LAEF) and the other the Achik National Liberation Front (ANLF). As I understand it, these two are also dissenting groups from ANVC. It is hard to estimate their influence, but it appears that together, these new rebel groups seem to pose a challenge to the ANVC supremacy. HNLC seems to be going through a rough time, with several prominent members either being arrested or voluntarily turning themselves in.53 Even so, it still makes its presence felt in the state and manages, for example, to continue obstructing the official celebration of India Republic Day and Independence Day, commonly declaring a twenty-four-hour bandh (general strike) where people are told to remain at home. In addition, Meghalaya is increasingly used as a passage and hideout for insurgents from other Northeastern states; several have camps in Bangladesh or, for example, get their supplies of arms from there. There are complicated networks of collaboration (and hostility) between the different militias, and it is claimed, for example, that ANVC has close links with the major Naga underground organization the NSCN(IM), which supposedly provides training, logistic, and arms in return for a 50 per cent share in the “taxes” that ANVC manages to collect/extort (Nag 2002: 299–300).54 As with many others, the Meghalaya rebels get a major portion of their finance by taxing the extraction of natural resources, above all from the coal trade and, earlier, from the business in timber. During the height of coal season, from November to April when there is less rain and roads and coal pits have dried up, the militants have a busy time collecting money by erecting roadblocks where every truck has to pay a certain sum to be allowed to pass, for example, or by demanding shares of the money collected at the official district council toll gates. As will be discussed later, the larger coal traders also have their individual deals with the insurgent groups. ANVC and HNLC have a common agenda in that both organizations strive to divide Meghalaya into ethnically defined territories, but as in many similar situations in the region, the borders of respective homelands are being disputed. Some intermediate areas are being claimed by both groups, making the relationship a bit constrained (but as far as I know, there have not been any armed clashes to date between the two).55 It is beyond the scope of this work, as well as my competence, to locate the type of support the different rebel groups enjoy. How do these groups manage to recruit new followers; why do people (mainly young men) join; how and why do they muster public support? And further, by what means can it be said whether a particular insurgent group is supported, tolerated, or simply feared by its supposed constituency? Opposition is not easily expressed in public; neither, of course, is support. Issues like these nevertheless seem critically important to address.

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My general impression is of a kind of weariness with violence, and that most people regard armed struggle a political dead end. Insurgency seems to be regarded more as part of the problem than as part of the solution. The life of ordinary people is being circumscribed in numerous ways, the economy is clearly suffering, and schools and other educational institutions cannot function properly; for example, exams are often interrupted, causing enormous difficulties for the students.56 People also have to face the daily nuisance of the ever-present armed forces with check-posts, streets blocked off for military VIPs and higher government officials on tour, and more generally the irritation and humiliation people experience in their interactions with often arrogant and bullying security personnel.57 And even if the extent of human rights violations caused by persistent “counterinsurgency” operations has been less widespread in Meghalaya than in the other Northeastern states, the excessive use of violence by security forces is still a common feature. I shall give a few instances of this below. First, however, I would like to note another major feature regarding the public stance on insurgency, and that is a general frustration with the ethnic militias themselves. This is commonly discussed in terms of a general deterioration, i.e., loss of cause and increased criminalization of these groups. This is attributed in part to the recruitment of spoiled youngsters who, it is claimed, are attracted to the underground organizations in search of adventure and easy access to money, and to gain status among their peers. It is important to note, however, that this critique mainly targets the corruption of the militias, not their existence as such. It can in fact be argued that, things being as they are, doing without the undergrounds could be hazardous. Especially when the going gets rough, it seems that these groups also perform “useful” social functions. This is particularly the case when inter-ethnic tension is building and villagers in contested areas find no other source of protection than what is provided by the “boys,” as ethnic militias are commonly referred to. One can also point to a kind of tacit popular agreement with rebels in terms of the overarching political agenda pertaining to ethnic self-determination. Finally, the ways in which the security forces hunt insurgents down is in itself a source of community frustration. I have been told several times about excessive and unmotivated use of violence by the police and the paramilitary forces in such “encounters.”58 To give an example, I arrived in Tura, in the Garo Hills, the day after a group of young men and women had been killed by the police in an alleged “encounter.” This was in October 2003, but I still remember the collective grief and rage everyone I spoke with expressed. As I was told, some of those who had been killed did not belong to the ANVC as the police claimed, but happened to be around when the security forces attacked the hotel where the “insurgents” took shelter. According to my local informants, none of

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those who were killed had been armed; the youths had simply been shot in cold blood during and after the arrest (the bodies arranged afterwards in a way that made it look like an armed encounter). “Our youngsters are being slaughtered like animals, the police are simple criminals and in no way better than the militants they are after,” a man in his forties working with an international community development organization told me, his voice breaking. He was just back from visiting the family of one of the dead youths, relatives on his wife’s side.59 His words come to mind as I later read about “Bloody Friday,” on 30 September 2005, when nine Garo students were killed and hundreds were wounded as police and paramilitary forces opened fire on student demonstrations in the towns of Tura and Williamnagar. The police claimed that the demonstration, organized by the Garo Students’ Union and the Garo Hills Citizens’ Forum and relating to a conflict concerning the Meghalaya Board of School Education, was illegal and that they had first been attacked by the protesters as they tried to disperse the crowd. According to the organizers, the permission to hold the demonstration was withdrawn at the last minute, giving them no time to inform the people who had started coming in from all parts of the Garo Hills. Without prior warnings, and without prior provocations, the police lobbed tear gas shells and started firing indiscriminately with automatic weapons into the large crowds that had gathered in the two places. That the police fired at almost at the same time in both places made the explanation given by the officer in charge, of a situation that got out of hand, sound most unlikely. The cold-blooded massacre of students was condemned by all Garo organizations and equally from other parts of the state. But how could it happen? Several disturbing issues puzzled people. Why was the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), equipped with sophisticated automatic weapons, present at a public demonstration? How did they start firing at people more or less at the same time in the two different places? Who gave the order to open fire? The Congress Party-led Meghalaya government was ultimately held responsible and the public demanded that all Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) from the Garo Hills resign. The MP from the Garo Hills and former speaker of the Indian Parliament, P.A. Sangma, withdrew from office in protest.60 There are naturally different views on how it all happened. The Meghalaya government appointed a commission of inquiry, later divided into two separate commissions for the respective “incidents,” but for various reasons these inquiries are still not completed. An independent team consisting of two university professors and two journalists from Delhi and Calcutta has recently completed a one-hundred-page report that gives a detailed account of the event. It is chilling reading, which reveals the most cynical and brutal application of violence against

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unarmed civilians, most of whom were young students. Eye witnesses and video recordings reveal how CRPF men were firing at fleeing students, even targeting people who were carrying wounded friends. As the report sums up: It is the opinion of the team that there is strong evidence that the firings were deliberate and pre-planned, and that there was a clear intent to use disproportionate force against the protesters. The administration’s actions after the firings have focused on absolving itself of any responsibility, rather than trying to secure justice. (Independent Fact Finding Team 2006: 8) In the words of the team, it is “simply” a question of a “massacre” (ibid.). Without taking this any further, the Bloody Friday incident points to some general features of significance. First of all, it reveals the level of militarization of the state, the involvement of security force in functions normally handled by the civil administration, as discussed earlier. Further, along with the ordinary police the paramilitary CRPF and SOT were also present at the scene, and the army was subsequently deployed as curfew was declared in the two affected towns. It all seemed to follow the logic of a counterinsurgency operation. The measures taken, the use of automatic weapons to disperse a crowd of protesting students, were indeed exceptional. Some commentators have associated the event with the massacre of students at the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, questioning whether India could really be described as a democratic country.61 The very functioning or rather dysfunctioning of the state administration also stands out: its lack of sincerity in establishing responsibility and even more, its failure to deal with the matter that led to the massacre, i.e., the conflict relating to the functioning and organizational setup of the Meghalaya Board of School Education. The School Board is one of the few state institutions whose head office is located in Tura, in the Garo Hills. There had been repeated demands by Khasi organizations to open an additional office in Shillong, intensified through a campaign of protest rallying during 2005 led by the Khasi Students’ Union, the eventual outcome of which was that the Meghalaya government finally decided to reorganize the Board, very much along the lines KSU had demanded. Various Garo organizations reacted to this, describing it as yet another example of Khasi dominance. Garo leaders commonly state that they are discriminated against because of Khasi hegemony in all matters of the state, said to influence things like the allocation of development funds and the recruitment of government servants, and more generally, that the entire functioning of the state administration works in favor of Khasis. The Garo Students’ Union, along with other Garo organiza-

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tions, launched a movement protesting the decision to “bifurcate” the School Board. Part of that movement was the rally to be held on the 30 September, the day of the massacre. One direct consequence of this event was that the demand for a separate Garoland has gained increasing popularity and, for example, the Garo Students’ Union has now declared this to be its prime objective.

Ethnic Politics and Violence The school board controversy reveals the extent to which public life is being ethnicized, i.e., structured along the lines of ethnicity or community affiliation. This can be explained in part through what Appadurai (2006: 5) describes as a “new type of uncertainty” that haunts contemporary societies caught up in the fury of global transformations—this uncertainty that has to do with the idea of the nation, of being a majority or a minority (“the politics of numbers”), with issues of “us” and “them” or “insider–outsider.” Anxieties relating to state-provided goods and other entitlements that usually depend on “who you are,” on your collective identity, might also play a decisive role. If one adds large-scale migration and “threats to local security and livelihoods,” such uncertainty, along with fear, might produce a most volatile situation that can easily spark the upsurge of large-scale ethnic violence, as been witnessed around the world especially during the 1990s, according to Appadurai (ibid.: 5–7). As Appadurai himself observes, such features alone do not explain why and how violence occurs in specific situations, but they can, as he puts it, provide an “angle on the problem” (ibid.: 9). And indeed, some of this resonates with the situation in Meghalaya and the Northeast more generally. To recall, violence is not only something that can be attributed to the state—the police or armed forces—but is also something intrinsic to the politics of ethnic homelands that is being enacted by various actors around the region. In the pursuit of establishing ethnic sovereignty in a particular area, militias and popular mobs, too, take it upon themselves to exercise the ultimate right of killing people, as Mbembe put it, “to dictate who may live and who must die” (2003: 11). As I shall discuss later, the influx of migrants from Bangladesh is a very decisive issue in Northeast India. In addition, there is also concern relating to “immigrants” from mainland India. Violence against “outsiders” is relatively common in the region, most brutally exercised against Muslim immigrants, as in the well-known Nellie massacre in Assam in 1983, where as many as two thousand people were killed, mainly by enraged Tiwa “tribals” who had seen their ancestral lands passing into the hands of the migrants over the years (Hazarika 2000; Kimura 2003). Most recently, Bihari laborers in Assam have been targeted in a series of killings most probably carried out by ULFA militants. There are also numerous instances of inter-

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ethnic violence, with, for example, Bodo militants killing Santals, Kukis killing Nagas, and vice versa. Though these cases are different in many respects, there is a common, underlying logic that can be related to the vicious politics of ethnic or national sovereignty. As to how this type of ethnic politics might unfold, I would like to draw attention to a “minor” and perhaps already forgotten incident that took place during one of my stays in Shillong. As part of their struggle for a separate Karbi homeland, Karbi militants in the adjoining area of Assam had begun to target Khasi villagers, or more precisely Pnars, a community belonging to the larger Khasi ethnicity, forcing about three thousand people to take refuge in camps in Meghalaya. The problem relates to an unsettled border dispute between Assam and Meghalaya, through which the Pnars have ended up in Assam, although they identify themselves as Khasis and have most of their dealings with, and for example vote in, Meghalaya. The Karbi militants have started to claim these areas as part of their homeland, extracting money and threatening villagers. The plight of the Pnars became a major issue in November 2003, not least for people in Shillong. Food, blankets, and money were collected for the refugees and everyone expressed deepest sympathy for them. The tension soon started to build against Karbis living in Meghalaya, above all as the Khasi Students’ Union declared an ultimatum that all Karbis in Meghalaya should leave within twenty-four hours. KSU activists also started to search for Karbi students at the many colleges and other educational institutions in Shillong. In the North-Eastern Hill University, colleagues in the anthropology department mentioned that the KSU boys had come to look for Karbi students, entering classrooms and asking whether anyone was a Karbi. The Karbi student association in Shillong had condemned the attacks on the Pnars and also asked KSU to withdraw its “quit note.” But as this was not done, most of the Karbis left town. Three unfortunate Karbi boys, however, were picked up at their college, pushed into a car, and taken out to a forest area where they were severely beaten. As one of them, Risim Ringpi (age eighteen) told it, “They first asked my name, then my tribe and begun the assault.”62 Most terrifying were the atrocities against a theological student, twentytwo-year-old Eldrin Tisso, who also was picked up at his college, but in his case the assaulters finished the beating by pouring petrol over him, setting him on fire, and leaving him to die in the flames. Miraculously, Tisso survived, but with severe burn injuries. These incidents were condemned by many people. The KSU itself denied involvement, and although one of its members was initially arrested none were finally convicted. Interestingly, though, there was no public debate about the role and responsibility of the KSU, not least why it had issued a “quit notice” that forced hundred of Karbis to flee the town, and if not directly,

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then indirectly instigated violence against fellow students. In the wake of these incidents, three Karbi coal laborers were killed by “unidentified gunmen” in the Jaintia Hills. These killings, away from the public gaze in the Jaintia coal belt, passed without much notice.63 That innocent Karbis would be attacked as a consequence of actions by Karbi militants elsewhere came as no great surprise, appearing to be the expected outcome in such situations. Suffice to say, this points to the general level of “ethnification” of social life in Meghalaya as well as in the Northeast in general. This is not infrequently expressed in the form of violence, the bottom line of which is that on the basis of ethnicity any individual can become a legitimate target of violence. In such situations, as journalist Slavenca Drakulic (1993) explains (in relation to the brutalities of the war in the former Yugoslavia), you are stripped of all other identities and reduced only to being a member of an ethnic group, a nationality, depending on which you might be killed or allowed to live. It can be mentioned here that the theology student Eldrin Tisso, as I found out visiting the refugee camps, was known by several of the Pnar villagers, as he used to visit their areas serving the church. I spoke with a group of refugees who mentioned that Tisso was a much-liked young man and that they felt terrible that he had been targeted in their name. And, as they said, targeting Karbis in Meghalaya would only make it harder for them to return to their homes.64

Plate 3  Pnar refugees

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What would be the way out of this situation of ethnically motivated violence? On a general, theoretical level it can be argued that the idea of ethnic homelands simply does not work in situations like that in the Northeast with tremendous ethnic diversity: hence the need for new, non-territorial (post-national) collective imaginaries. Certainly, but under the present military-dominated political regime—the state of emergency—such alternative agendas have little chance to thrive. The violence of the state feeds discontent and gives legitimacy to the struggles for ethnic homelands. The space of democracy needs to be enlarged to allow new voices to speak and visions to be shared. Here it is important to note that there do exist civic counter-forces that bridge the ethnic divide, not least in form of church networks, political parties and other regional and national bodies. People are obviously not only acting as members of a particular ethnic group. It is just, as suggested above, that these other modes of identification and agency are harder to sustain under present conditions. One development I find particularly interesting is that ethnic assertions are being framed increasingly in the global language of indigenous rights. Indigenous politics is not entirely different from the ethnic politics discussed earlier, but there are certain facets that might push things in a different, possibly less violent, direction.

Indigeneity Communities all around the world that have been marginalized in one way or another by the present nation-state setup have increasingly started to mobilize as indigenous peoples and to assert rights on the basis of such an identity. The indigenous peoples’ movement is built upon complex transnational alliances and it has been surprisingly successful in gaining international recognition and presence, particularly in the United Nations system (Muelbach 2001). Today it has become a truly global phenomenon. There are reasons, I would argue, to welcome this development and to see it as a legitimate force that empowers marginalized peoples and challenges “the centralizing tendencies of states” (Niezen 2003: xvi). Not least as indigenous rights are to be achieved legitimately through peaceful negotiations, legal activism, alliance building, and transnational campaigning rather than through armed struggles and ethnic cleansing. Killing people or pursuing other acts of violence is not, I would argue, the way ahead. This is not to say that the critics warning of the inherent dangers of indigenous politics—that it might trigger communal violence or ethnic animosity or undermine wider class-based alliances—are necessarily mistaken. As with all forms of political mobilization, risks are certainly involved, as some stand to gain and some to lose. On the basis of such fears, some scholars have

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rejected or argued against the entire notion of indigenous peoples (see, e.g., Kuper 2003). I take this to be a mistaken approach, one important reason being that it fails to take into account the fact that indigenous peoples have already established themselves as a collective subject, an identity that infuses politics around the world. This is not something scholars can wish away. We are already “after the fact,” to paraphrase Geertz (1995). Rather than condemning this development, I call for a critical approach that interrogates the circumstances under which indigeneity gains salience in a particular place (cf. Li 2004). The notion of indigenous peoples is obviously also making headway in Indian politics (Karlsson and Subba 2006, Karlsson 2008). A more thorough genealogy is yet to be written, but, as I recount in an earlier article, the first Indian organizations started participating in the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations back in the mid 1980s. During the first decade this participation aimed primarily at claiming identity as indigenous peoples, arguing that this notion initially should refer to the recognized “scheduled tribes” (Karlsson 2003). Groups from Northeast India were soon to become those most well represented at the UN meetings, apparently considering this forum to be of strategic importance to their struggles for self-determination. These organizations mainly pursued separate ethnic agendas but at the same time expressed a shared predicament and a joint struggle. Speaking at the UN Working Group in 1994, P.K. Debbarma and Apam Muivah stated that “indigenous peoples in Northeast India are losing control over their land” and that they are being “systematically marginalized.” They asserted that they, the indigenous peoples, were “nationalities” with a “right to self-determination.”65 This has been echoed in other statements. For example, in a resolution by a meeting of various tribal organizations in the Northeast, it is claimed that the right to self-determination is a “prerequisite” for their very survival as people. It is stated here that indigenous people’s way of land management is not respected and that the region’s natural resources are being exploited by outsiders in the name of development and nation-building. According to the resolution, indigenous peoples are capable of safeguarding their “land and forest without any state/central intervention.”66 Expressed in a less direct way, but nevertheless sharing the same sense of insecurity in relation to control over land and resources, Professor G.G. Swell, then a member of the Indian Parliament, stated, in relation to a Khasi celebration of the United Nations Year of Indigenous Peoples in 1993: [W]e share with the rest of the world’s indigenous peoples our critical dependence on our land and vulnerability. Take away the land from us and we can easily be swamped, uprooted and dispersed.67

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The universally expressed predicament of indigenous peoples obviously resonates with collective experiences in the Northeast. To this extent indigeneity can be understood as a form of identification. Along with this there are also, as pointed out, strategic advantages in asserting oneself as “indigenous,” since indigenous peoples’ rights to selfdetermination have been approved in various international forums, not least within the United Nations structure. In a newspaper article,68 Paul Lyngdoh, former president of the Khasi Students’ Union and presently a minister in the Meghalaya government, places the Khasi demand for self-determination in the context of universal indigenous peoples’ rights, acknowledged, for example, in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Article 3 of the Draft Declaration). He correctly points out that the Indian government has not recognized India’s tribal peoples as “indigenous peoples”; to him this is part of a strategy to deny these communities their “inalienable right” to self-determination. Quoting Lyngdoh—previously the leader of an organization with a reputation for stirring up ethnic animosity, as in the instances mentioned above—could be taken as a counterargument to my proposition that indigenous politics might hold something new for the region. In response to this I would restate the argument that we are talking not about two distinct forms of politics, but rather of a new dimension brought in, that might make a difference. In this particular article, Lyngdoh is developing a critique of the present arrangements with autonomous district councils established under the provision of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. Lyngdoh, like many others, argues that the autonomous district councils fail to safeguard the interests of the tribal peoples, and he seeks instead a solution in which the traditional governing bodies of the Khasis are empowered and refashioned in accordance with present modern norms. Lyngdoh is developing an idea here that has gained some prominence in recent years. In chapter 5, I shall discuss the movement to re-empower traditional institutions, represented as a core aspect of ancient Khasi democracy that itself is claimed to be superior to the modern, Western form that has been put in place by the Indian state. One of the leaders of the movement told me with a laugh, “You know, some say we are the over-ground.”69 By this I think he was indicating that they were basically fighting for the same cause as the underground, but by other means. In their case, they are working within the constitutional framework and trying by peaceful means to establish greater sovereignty. Though the initiative is dominated by a handful of influential Khasi leaders, the movement seeks to build a larger multi-ethnic alliance working jointly with the traditional heads of the Garos and the Jaintias. Bringing back the traditional institutions of governance is certainly not without its problems; critics have pointed out that women and outsiders have no place in these institutions. But as the movement seeks legitimacy

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by appealing to an international standard of human rights, especially the United Nations’ recognition of indigenous rights, it must address these problems (as it is doing, arguing that the traditional institutions are undergoing change, that women are being brought in, and, for example, that non-Khasi communities in Shillong have started forming their own local councils). As I elaborate in chapter 5, the movement is nevertheless important as, among other things, it opens up a discussion about the “content” of self-determination, what I call indigenous governance, rather than just the “form,” i.e., the establishment of ethnic homelands. To recapitulate, the indigeneity discourse centers above all on the notion of self-determination, that is, that indigenous peoples, like all other peoples and nations, should have the right to govern themselves and thus to exercise control over their traditional lands and resources. Self-determination is a tricky term that means different things to different people. From a statist perspective, the right to self-determination is perceived as a threat in that it gives legitimacy to secessionist movements. And indeed in international negotiations, indigenous representatives commonly argue that self-determination should include the right to secede from an existing state. This is rarely a desired option for those who claim indigenous status, however; it can be described perhaps as a last resort in situations of severe human rights violations by a repressive state. In the absolute majority of cases, self-determination is rather about the right to pursue a particular way of life; to regain control over land and resources that are being threatened by expanding majority populations or intrusive states; and to gain recognition of cultural differences— to be able to use their own languages, for example, and practice their own religions.70 Indigenous peoples seek to be treated as equal partners in a dialogue with the state. Dignity, respect, and recognition are crucial features in keeping such a dialogue on track, thus requiring a “state that listens” (Simpson 2000: 117). Ethnic autonomy movements also strive for sovereignty in one form or another. But as I have been arguing, the important difference between indigenous and ethnic politics is that they appeal to different audiences and hence seek legitimacy in different ways. If the first can be characterized as a legalistic form of politics that draws on global human rights standards to muster international support, the latter engages in a more direct dialogue with the state where violence in many instances is the most effective way of getting recognition. While they may sometimes have recourse to the same language, their aims and means are very different. So for example, when the HNLC legitimize their armed struggle for an independent state by talking about the rights of the indigenous peoples of Ri Hynniewtrep, I still take this to be a matter of ethnic rather than indigenous politics.71

Nature and Nation   65 

“Neo-tribal Capitalism” Concerns with self-determination permeate most aspects of political life in Meghalaya. The insurgency groups have their version of it, as do those that seek a peaceful separation of the state into two distinct entities, one for the Garos and one jointly for the Khasis and Jaintias. More generally, though, the overarching self-determination issue concerns the influx of “outsiders” and the subsequent fear that powerful majority populations from the plains will come to take control of land and resources in the state (a sentiment aptly illustrated by the statement of Professor Swell quoted earlier). This fear is indeed a social reality, although the land does remain to a large extent in the hands of the state’s tribal communities. The massive alienation of tribal land that has happened in Assam and Tripura, in other words, has not taken place in Meghalaya. An important reason for this is the Land Transfer Act of 1972, mentioned previously, that prohibits the sale or transfer of land to non-tribal persons. The Act is watchfully protected by the majority of people in the state; it has an almost sacred status. Every time the Act is found to be violated, there is a vocal public reaction. Some of the communities that are excluded from the right to hold land keep pushing for a revision of the Act, i.e., to make it more inclusive. In this context the debate has come to focus on a distinction between what are called “indigenous” and “non-indigenous” tribes. The indigenous tribes of Meghalaya are said to be the three main communities: Khasis, Jaintias, and Garos. As I shall discuss in greater detail in chapter 3, there is no mention of indigenous tribes in the Act; “tribal” refers to the communities defined as such in the state, i.e., the recognized Scheduled Tribes. The dominant view, however, is that the Act pertains only to those three indigenous tribal communities, and claims by other, smaller tribal communities in the state that they should have the same rights to buy land have had difficulty gaining public support. This applies even more to demands from other ethnic groups that have been settled in the state for a relatively long time—the Bengali community, for example, which has been living in Shillong for more than a hundred years. These communities can own land only in the small enclaves in town that have been classified since colonial times as European wards. Outside commentators often point to the Land Transfer Act as an obstruction to economic development, saying that it blocks the circulation of capital and scares away possible investors (I can recall only one instance in which a person belonging to one of the indigenous tribes has criticized the Act on such grounds). In other words, that it is incompatible with a liberal market economy. But such arguments seem to have little impact on local opinion. On the contrary, the Act seems to have gained in importance in recent years; without it, people say, small indigenous communities like their own would be lost forever. Here again, the

66   66  Unruly UnrulyHills Hills

situation in Tripura is taken as a warning: the state has been taken over by people from the Bengal plains and the indigenous communities are being pushed to the margins, with neither economic nor political influence. As pointed out, control over land is not only considered critical for economic prosperity and political influence, but it is also perceived as a matter of cultural survival. The neoliberal economic dogma of openness is thus pushed to the back by the concern to prevent land alienation and an influx of outsiders. There are many instances in which large investments have been stopped on such grounds. For example, the Center has approved a plan to build a railway connection from Assam to the newly established industrial estate of Byrnihat in the northern part of Meghalaya (on the border with Assam), but the project has not been able to take off because of opposition, mainly from the KSU, which has been arguing that the project would lead to a further influx of outsiders and consequently undermine the position of the locals.72 That such an infrastructure project would enhance the possibilities for industrial investment in the state, something that all political parties and interests groups otherwise favor, obviously matters less here. One might speak of two conflicting economic visions, the first a more conventional one expressed by the Meghalaya government’s talk of an investor-friendly state seeking to attract welcome capital and initiatives from outside,73 and another, less well-formulated one that seeks economic development from “within.” However sympathetic one might be to the attempt to seek societal alternatives against the grain of capitalist logic, one very evident effect of the focus on threats from outside is the neglect of what one could call internal matters of social justice. Again taking the case of land and control of natural resources, it is apparent that the hill societies are increasingly becoming a class-divided society in which some people have managed to take possession of huge tracts of land and control the lucrative extraction of timber, coal, and other resources, while the number of people whose access to land is insufficient or nonexistent is increasing day by day. Their position is particularly critical in view of the limited opportunities for alternative income due to the stagnant economy. The majority of people belonging to the relatively well-off middle classes hold various types of government employment. Since 85 per cent of government jobs, as well as seats in educational institutions and political assemblies, are reserved for the scheduled tribes in the state (40 per cent for the Garos, 40 per cent for the Khasis and Jaintias, and 5 per cent for other STs), this group is not insignificant in numbers, and given that they are exempted from paying income tax, the middle classes are fairly well-to-do. It is not uncommon for salaried people in urban areas to invest in landed property in their home village or other rural areas where land is still relatively affordable. And naturally, the more affluent urban classes—businessmen and not least politicians—have managed to

Nature and Nation   67 

acquire substantial land estates. It is said of Chief Minister D.D. Lapang, for instance, that he is one of the largest landowners in the state, owning a large part of Ri Bhoi district (his home district, where he enjoys his main political support). But in view of the lack of land records, it is hard to establish how much land he or anyone else actually owns. There is surprisingly little debate about this aspect of the land question. A few local scholars as well as some NGOs have started to address problems relating to the increase of landless people in rural areas, something that is not supposed to exist in “tribal societies” where everyone has traditionally had a share in clan or community lands. This is clearly no longer the case, as the sociologist A.K. Nongkynrih shows, for example, in his studies of a number of villages in the Khasi Hills. In some instances he found as many as 50 per cent of the villagers without access to any land (Nongkynrih 2002,). In the Garo Hills, reports indicate a similar development in the privatization of land, along with an increasing concentration of land in the hands of wealthy urban elite groups (see chapter 3). The situation, in other words, is far from the commonly stated claim that land in Meghalaya is under community control. In a series of articles, the anthropologist Elizabeth Rata explores the recent emergence of what she calls “neotribal capitalism” in Maori society in New Zealand (see, e.g., 2002 and 2003). By this she is referring to the capitalization of traditional resources and the formation of new class relations among the Maori, processes that are concealed by Maori ethnic revivalism and claims for indigenous self-rule. As she argues: The use of the newly capitalized lands, waters, and knowledge for commodity production has resulted in the emergence of exploitative class relations between a new bourgeoisie, located in sites of power and control in the corporate tribal regulatory structures, and a proletarianized worker-in-community class. (Rata 2002: 174) Although the New Zealand situation is very different from that of Northeast India, I find Rata’s observations extremely helpful in thinking about the current predicament of the Northeast. As I mentioned initially, land and resources are increasingly being privatized in the northeastern hill societies. The Land Transfer Act prohibits sale of land to non-tribals in Meghalaya but provides no safeguards against land alienation or unequal accumulation of land within the tribal communities. Back in the 1970s a land commission in the Khasi Hills argued for the necessity of cadastral mapping, but this was met with vocal protests and claims that a land survey would lead to taxation and increased government control over land belonging by tradition to the people.74 Later attempts to conduct land surveys have also been opposed, and as some commentators have pointed out,75 the landholding elite—with an interest in avoiding public scrutiny into these matters—instigated this opposition.

68   Unruly Hills

The scramble for land has led to an increasing number of land conflicts or disputes regarding ownership. Such disputes arise especially in situations when some project is coming up and compensation is to be paid to the affected landowners. As an example of this, I shall discuss the establishment of two national parks in the Garo Hills, the Balpakram and Nokrek National Parks. But there are also numerous smaller disputes relating to the inheritance, purchase, or occupation of land. These disputes are meant to be settled by the special District Council Courts set up under the purview of the Sixth Schedule. In Meghalaya there are three such courts, one for each district council (the Garo, Khasi, and Jaintia district councils). The rulings of these courts are supposed to be based on the customary laws of the particular community. As these laws have not been formalized in writing, or “codified,” there is ample space for uncertainty that resourceful contestants can explore. The older accounts by colonial ethnographers, such as Sir Keith Cantlie’s Notes on Khasi Law (1934), are commonly invoked as the ultimate authority. As I shall discuss in chapters 4 and 5, the courts are not the most efficient institutions and land cases often drag on for decades without being settled. Sanjib Baruah claims that the system of reservations for scheduled tribes in the hill states of the Northeast with their predominantly tribal populations has created a situation of “citizens and denizens.” The recognized ST communities are then the “citizens” with full rights, while the non-tribals are the “denizens” with highly circumscribed rights. The latter, for example, almost entirely lack political representation. According to Baruah, this is based on the pervasive logic of “insiders and outsiders”—the idea of ethnic homelands—that structures politics in Northeast India. In his view, this “cannot be expected to provide a framework for the struggle for social justice of today and of the future” (2005: 204). The way ahead is instead to “replace the ethnic principle with a civic principle,” referring to the recent development in several European countries where immigrant populations can acquire full citizenship after a certain period (ibid.: 204–5). What he suggests is a kind of dual citizenship (Indian plus state, for example, Meghalaya), where non-tribal Indians after some time would become citizens of the state where they are living and then have the same rights as the recognized ST communities there. Baruah draws attention to an extremely critical issue and one feels compelled to agree. Even so, I sense, he is missing the very crux of the matter, which has to do with the claimed particularity of the predicament of indigenous peoples. This would have been obvious if Baruah had taken his example from European countries, like the Nordic ones, where besides immigrant and minority groups there are also the Saami people, who are seeking recognition as an indigenous people and, on the basis of this status, particular rights in their traditional territories. The same would apply in other similar cases, as with the Aboriginal

Nature and Nation   69 

people in Australia or Native American Indians in the US or Canada. All of these countries face the dilemma of how to address the indigenous claim in a largely civic framework. Suffice to say, I do believe that a viable political solution to the vexed problems in Northeast India also needs to bring this particular claim into the matrix. In drawing the contours of popular politics in the contemporary world, Partha Chatterjee claims that one of the most central conflicts is the rival demands of “universal citizenship on the one hand and the protection of particularist rights on the other” (2004: 8). If the first builds on the ideals associated with civic nationalism, such as individual freedom and equal rights, the latter has to do with assertions of cultural identity, “which call for the differential treatment of particular groups on grounds of vulnerability, or backwardness or historical injustice, or indeed for numerous other reasons” (ibid.: 4). India is perhaps the prime example of a country where contradictions stemming from this conflict dominate political life. The controversial issue relating to reservations for people belonging to groups designated as “scheduled tribes,” “scheduled castes,” and “other backward classes” is one example of this. It could be argued, in the name of universal equal rights, that the reservation system is unjust and that it creates more problems that it solves, pointing, for example, to the many anomalies and social conflicts that arise out of the classification regime upon which the reservation policies are based. But again, following Chatterjee, there are reasons to acknowledge the legitimacy of particularist arguments and thus engage what he calls the politics of heterogeneity. Chatterjee writes:

Plate 4  Chief Minister D.D. Lapang at the Wangala festival

70   Unruly Hills

[U]nlike the utopian claims of universalist nationalism, the politics of heterogeneity can never claim to yield a general formula for all peoples at all times: its solutions are always strategic, contextual, historically specific and, inevitably, provisional. (Chatterjee 2004: 22) To sum up this rather extended discussion on issues relating to ethnicity or nation in Northeast India, I can only subscribe to Chatterjee’s call for solutions that of necessity are “provisional.” The dual citizenship formula suggested by Baruah is something of this kind, though as I have argued, it is not sufficiently sensitive to the “indigenous question.” In the following three chapters we shall move closer to the ground, to “nature” as it were. Despite the shift in focus, we shall at times come back to the above problems of the “nation” and especially how the politics of nature and nation intertwine.

Notes   1. Quoted from the first volume of the report “Peace, Progress and Prosperity in the North Eastern Region, Vision 2020,” Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region, Government of India, 2008, page 3 (http://modoner.gov.in).   2. For example, some of the Garo groups speak their own relatively distinct languages (see Burling 2003).   3. For respective areas, see, for example, Momin (2003), Giri (1998) and Lamare (2005).   4. For a general history of Shillong and other Indian hill stations, see Dane Kennedy’s lovely book The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (1996). In the case of Shillong, see also the recent and richly illustrated book From Residency to Raj Bhavan: a History of the Shillong Government House (2005), by Imdad Hussain.   5. For a general background on the different communities in the state, see the Anthropological Survey of India’s People of India volume, Meghalaya, eds. Pakem, Roy and Basu (1994).   6. Khasi and Jaintia Hills initially had a joint district council, but this was divided into two separate ones in 1966 after consistent protests by Jaintia leaders.   7. Sikkim was, in 2003, administratively included in the region of Northeast India.   8. Assam 26.6 million, Tripura 3.2 million, Manipur 2.4 million, Meghalaya 2.3 million, Nagaland 2.0 million, Arunachal Pradesh 1.1 million and Mizoram 900,000 people.   9. For a general introduction to some of the cultural complexities in the region, see the edited volume The Anthropology of North-East India by T.B. Subba and G.C. Ghosh (2003). Regarding contemporary political turmoil, in addition to the texts referred to later in the chapter, I recommend the accessible policy reports published by East–West Center (available on the internet, www.eastwestcenter.org/ policy studies). 10. For a useful collection of documents concerning the Naga independence struggle, see Nuh (2002). 11. The local people were in large part reluctant to work in the plantations, something the British planters attributed to their “fundamentally ‘indolent’ nature” as well as to the “exuberant fertility of the soil” that made people stick to their own cultivations, as Piya Chatterjee puts it in her fascinating account of a tea plantation in North Bengal (2001: 69).

Nature and Nation   71  12. See also “From Jungle to Garden: Colonial Assam in the 19th Century,” paper presented by Jayeeta Sharma at the environmental history conference at the University of Sussex, 2003. 13. The tea chests were initially made of imported woods, but local woods later came to dominate (A. Saikia 2005: 196–200). 14. The levels of absolute poverty is very high in the Northeast, with somewhere between 42 to 58 per cent of the population having an income below one US dollar a day, making it one of the most economically “backward” regions in India (Khanna 2005). 15. See, e.g., the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s bestseller The World is Flat (2005) or Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty (2005). 16. See also the special issue of the journal Seminar entitled “Gateway to the East” (June 2005). 17. See also the earlier mentioned Vision 2020 report by the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, 2008 (http://modoner.gov.in). 18. The high sulfur content is cited again and again as the reason Bangladesh authorities stop the import of Meghalaya coal (see further chapter 4). 19. For a detailed account of this turbulent period during late-eighteenth-century Company rule, see David Ludden’s article “The First Boundary of Bangladesh: On Sylhet’s Northern Frontier” (2003). 20. Or, alternatively, MoDONER. 21. “Development and Growth in Northeast India: The Natural Resources, Water, and Environment Nexus,” World Bank Report No. 36397-IN (2007: viii). 22. For an overview of the dams planned or under construction in Northeast India, see the special issue “Large Dams in Northeast – A Bright Future?”, The Ecologist Asia, 1 January 2003. 23. The meeting took place on 10 November 2005. 24. It is interesting to note that the background paper on forest by a very experienced group of researchers under the leadership of Mark Poffenberger is rich in details on existing traditional institutions and indigenous environmental knowledge, something I find lacking in the equivalent paper on water. Forest is clearly intrinsically linked to livelihood issues in Northeast India, but the report is largely silent on how forest is supposed to contribute to or fit into the larger resource-led strategy. See Poffenberger, Mark et al. (2006) “Forest Sector Review of Northeast India”, Draft Report, March 2006, prepared for the World Bank/ Government of India study, Study on Natural Resources, Water and the Environment Nexus for Development and Growth in Northeast India. 25. See also Wangkheirakpam (2008). 26. “Protesters disrupt World Bank meet on N-E,” Deccan Herald, 11 November 2005. 27. The first two versions of the report were made available on the DONER webpage; the first draft is dated 10 March 2006, the second revised version, 28 June 2006. The drafts have more or less the same content as the final report of 28 May 2007. 28. World Bank/DONER report (2007: v). 29. Ibid.: 12. 30. Ibid.: 105. 31. Ibid.: 61. 32. Large-scale protests have flared up around the construction of the Tipaimukh dam in Manipur. Spokespersons from the organizations involved claim that people have not given their consent to the project and that the dam will cause severe environmental problems as well disrupt social life for a large number of people in the state

72   Unruly Hills (see, e.g., “Rally against Tipaimukh dam,” The Telegraph, 3 April 2006, and “Furore in House over dam,” The Telegraph, 8 March 2006). The proposed Pagladiya dam project in Assam has stoked up strong local protests (Hussain 2008). 33. For a comprehensive critique of global carbon trading, see Lohmann (2006). 34. Personal communication, Shillong, 15 January 2006. 35. This is a general point of criticism that of course does not apply to all scholars engaged in the debate. For example, the book referred to earlier, Escaping the Resource Curse edited by Humphreys, Sachs and Stiglitz (2007), contains a chapter by political scientist Terry Lynn Karl that addresses the issue of institutionbuilding in resource-rich countries in a larger historical and political context. 36. For a critique of the scarcity thesis, especially the influential work of Thomas Homer-Dixon, see Peluso and Watts (2001). 37. For a further discussion and critique, see, e.g., Richards (2005). 38. World Bank/DONER report: 104–5. 39. See “Peace, Progress and Prosperity in the North Eastern Region, Vision 2020,” Ministry of Development of Northeastern Region, Government of India, 2008: 13 (http://modoner.gov.in). Here it is interesting to note that B.G. Verghese has been involved in both undertakings; in the case of the World Bank study he wrote the background paper on water, and in the Vision 2020 project he was one of the key persons as Chair of the Steering Committee. 40. Most accounts by people involved in the hill peoples’ movement in what later became Meghalaya stress the language policy imposed by the Assam government—making Assamese the official language in the state—as a key event. As the well-known professor Milton S. Sangma, for example, told me, the idea that Assamese teachers were to be sent out to village schools in the Garo Hills was strongly opposed by the Garos and led villagers to join the struggle for a separate state. The language policy made them feel culturally threatened, above all for fear of losing their own language but also in terms of religion (they were largely Christians, and the Assamese Hindu) (interview 14 October 2003). I have discussed some of these issues elsewhere in relation to Baruah’s work; see, for example, my review of India Against Itself (Karlsson 2002b). 41. Numbers are always tricky. One author recently lists fifty-eight armed insurgent groups in the Northeast (Nepram 2002: xxvi), whereas the controversial Institute of Conflict Management, on its web portal (“South Asia Terrorism Portal” http:// www.satp.org), gives a state-by-state record of insurgency groups in which the states of Manipur, Assam, and Tripura are at the top with around thirty each. 42. The Washington-based East–West Center is currently bringing out a number of publications on the conflicts in Northeast India that provide a very useful overview. See Baruah (2007), Bhaumik (2007), and Das (2007); additional works are in the pipeline. 43. Here one can simply note the significant difference with the Kashmir conflict, which is relatively well-covered in Indian media as well as globally. 44. Here I also think of the series of doctoral theses presented in my own department at Uppsala University under the auspices of the Living Beyond Conflict Group, for example, Macek (2000), Löfving (2002), Finnström (2003), and Coulter (2006), and further also the various contributions to the edited volume No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts (Richards 2005b). 45. A recent example of this being the actions of US President George W. Bush in the aftermath of September 11 (supposedly a situation of emergency), for example the “military order” issued by him on 13 November 2001 authorizing the indefi-

Nature and Nation   73  nite detention of non-US citizens suspected of involvement in terrorist activities (Agamben 2005: 3). Through the increased use of such exceptional measures by the government, not only are the legislative powers of the parliament undermined, but in the long run democracy itself. 46. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 initially applied only to Assam, which then included Nagaland and Manipur. Through an amendment in 1972 it was extended to the other parts of Northeast India. 47. The report in question is entitled Where ‘peacekeepers’ have declared war: Report on violations of democratic rights by security forces and the impact of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act on civilian life in the seven states of the north-east (1997), and it is based on the findings of an all-India fact-finding team consisting of wellknown human rights advocates, social workers, and journalists visiting the different Northeastern states. The report is published by the National Campaign Committee Against Militarisation and Repeal of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. I have quoted from pp 96–100. 48. See Amnesty International “India: Briefing on the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958,” May 2005 (AI Index ASA 20/025/2005). 49. As I was writing the initial draft of this part of the chapter in (early) January 2007, Assam was experiencing a period of terrible violence most probably carried out by ULFA (The United Liberation Front of Asom), where mainly Hindi-speaking laborers from Bihar were being targeted (more than sixty people were killed in separate attacks). To handle the situation, additional security troops were (as usual) brought in. It was even suggested that the army should be deployed in the capital, Guwahati, to assist the police in maintaining law and order (see BBC News, “Army plan for India city peace,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ south_asia/6, accessed in January 2007). 50. Such attempts to muster support among the local population, “to win hearts and minds,” is a well-known “counter-insurgency strategy,” for example, frequently applied by the US military to quest revolutionary movements in Latin America and elsewhere (Keen 2000: 27). 51. See http://eastarmy.nic.in (accessed November 2006). 52. On the Ministry of Home Affairs website this is put in even more direct terms. “Militancy” in the Northeast, it states, involves “no ideology – basically criminal activities of extortion and kidnappings”; see http://mha.nic.in/nemili.htm#nem (accessed 8 January 2007). 53. The most spectacular surrender was when HNLC chairman Julius K. Dorphang and his four bodyguards gave themselves up in July 2007. Dorphang was one of the founders who had been living underground, mainly hiding in Bangladesh, since the organization was founded in 1988. (See, for example, “Outfit’s chairman, four others, come overground to join mainstream – HNLC suffers Dorphang set back,” The Shillong Times, 25 July 2007). 54. See also “Naga insurgents tap on Garo Hills to raise funds,” The Times of India, 16 December 1998. 55. See, e.g., “ANVC’s ‘Greater Garoland’ demand not acceptable: HNLC,” The Shillong Times, 5 August 2003. 56. Shillong used to be a famous destination for education, but nowadays the more affluent sectors of the middle class in the state send their children elsewhere for schooling, preferably to South India. 57. See “Militarisation of civilian space,” by the acclaimed journalist Patricia Mukhim, editorial in the Shillong Times, 21 September2005.

74   Unruly Hills 58. Two such recent cases of publicly alleged “fake encounters” relate to the death of LAEF commander-in-chief Peter Marak in August and the police shoot-out killing of five HNLC activists traveling in a car in Shillong two months later, in October 2007. 59. Personal communication, 19 October 2003. 60. P.A. Sangma is one of the two members of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament, from Meghalaya. Sangma is a bit of a political joker and his involvement and criticism of the Meghalaya government—even calling for President’s rule to be declared in the state—was understood by many as motivated primarily by his personal political ambitions. I shall discuss Purno Sangma’s political engagements in later chapters as well, especially in chapter 5. 61. See the article “Tiananmen in Tura,” The Week, 16 October 2005. 62. See The Shillong Times, 18 November 2003. 63. It was reported only in the local newspaper, The Shillong Times, 26 November 2003. 64. Interviews during a visit to the camp on 23 November 2003. 65. From an intervention at the 12th session of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 25–29 July 1994, Geneva. 66. Quoted from “Statement and Resolutions” by the North-East Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Forum, Guwahati, 1994: 1–3. 67. Khasi National Celebration Committee, 1994: Introduction. 68. “Khasi States’ Inclusion in District Council a Mockery,” The Sentinel, 22 December 2001. 69. Interview, Shillong, 5 November 2003. 70. Professor Ram Dayal Munda, President of the Indian Council of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ICITP), stressed these points at his opening speech at the ICITP conference in Guwahati on 27 February 2005. Delegates from all over India as well as from neighboring countries (Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, and even Taiwan) were present at the conference. One of the keynote speeches was given by Mr. P. Tamang, from Nepal, who is the vice chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues based in New York. Tamang referred to the most used criteria for the application of the term indigenous peoples: (1) pre-existence, i.e., before the state, (2) different culture from the mainstream, (3) marginalization, and (4) self-identification, i.e., that indigenous communities themselves should define who the indigenous are. Tamang insisted on the last point because, as he put it, “we are always defined by someone else.” (Regarding definition, see also Karlsson 2003; Karlsson and Subba 2006). 71. HNLC frequently uses the term indigenous peoples to make their claim for an independent country, Ri Hynniewtrep. This was, for example, the case with their internet based newsletter The Voice that was running for a few years in early 2000 (first issue in September 2002). 72. This has been a long-standing issue and KSU has held to its position opposing the rail connection (see, e.g., “KSU reiterates stand on railhead,” The Shillong Times, 16 June 2004). 73. See the Government of Meghalaya publication Meghalaya: Investment Friendly (not dated, Department of Industries), and further also the Government webpage (http://meghalaya.nic.in). 74. See Report of the Land Reforms Commission for the Khasi Hills, Meghalaya Government (1974). 75. The well-known journalist Patricia Mukhim, for example, has pointed to this in several articles in the local newspaper, The Shillong Times. See also Nongbri (2003: 155–59).

Part II

Environment

Chapter 2

Elusive Forests [T]his Hon’ble Court has also observed that Central Govt. should play a larger role for conservation and management of forests of North-East in view of its unique biodiversity which is a national heritage. The Supreme Court of India, 19971 In this chapter, I explore various aspects of the forest in Meghalaya. The forest has become a key site of contention in the state. How much forest is there, how should the forest be managed, who has the rights over it, and what happens to the environment if all the trees are being cut down? These are some of the questions I will address. I begin by recounting a story from the field.

December 2003 Rathan Mumin told me that his father once took a photograph of a car parked on the stump of a giant tree and that picture had made it into the family album. I had come to Rathan and his uncle at their house in Tura to learn more about the large-scale logging in the Garo Hills in the 1980s and 1990s. I was particularly interested in the big scam that had taken place in the Chimabangsi and Dhima reserved forests, not far from Rathan’s natal home in Mendipathar. Both he and his uncle had been in the timber business up until the Supreme Court “ban” in the late 1990s. The ban had been a major economic setback for both of them. His uncle had been unable to harvest his plantations of teak and was forced to close the veneer mill he had operated for more than ten years. Further, he had lost large quantities of logs, which had been seized by the Forest Department. Rathan himself had also been forced to give up timber and had shifted to the coal business. They were very critical of the ban. Still, they both agreed that things had got out of hand in the 1990s and that some measures had to be taken to save the remaining forest.

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Rathan’s father, the late Jagadish Singh,2 had been one of the pioneers in the sawmill industry in Meghalaya. His mill, established back in 1951, was located in Mendipathar in the lower Garo Hills adjacent to the Assam plains. These areas were famous for their rich sal (Shorea robusta) forests, and the British had turned some of the most well-stocked forests into reserves in the late nineteenth century (see further chapter 3). Rathan’s father had produced large quantities of railway sleepers out of the sturdy sal wood,3 and the business was thriving up until the introduction of concrete sleepers in the late 1980s. He sold the mill in 1992 and invested in rubber. Interestingly, this was at a time when the timber boom was at its height and new sawmills were mushrooming all over the Garo Hills and other parts of Northeast India. Rathan’s father’s decision to sell had sprung out of the contempt that he felt for the spreading corruption and mismanagement of the forest at the time. The photograph Rathan had mentioned captured my imagination: could trees really have been that big? I wanted to see that photograph to get a glimpse of the type of forest that had existed fifty years back. So when I was invited to come to Mendipathar, I accepted with delight. Rathan’s sister Kalpana had recently moved back to their family house there. Kalpana would know where the old photos were kept, and she could also introduce us to the people who had been involved in logging down there. So off I went with my friend Somu, and after several hours on bumpy roads in the Indi car we finally reached the house. To our disappointment no one was home. It was around midnight and pitch black outside. Suddenly a man appeared and told us that Kalpana had gone to the mela (festival) in the neighboring village. He offered us tea and said we could wait at his place, but realizing that she probably would not be back for hours we decided to go and look for her. The mela was packed with people, and when we found Kalpana she was about to go onto the large bamboo stage constructed for the event, to sit on the jury for the beauty and fashion contest that was just starting. Since Somu is an old friend of Rathan and Kalpana, she happily invited us to stay at her house. But as she was one of the organizers, we had to wait for the rest of the program. Two rock bands were going to play and she instructed us to join them backstage for some drinks. Unfortunately, the old photograph was nowhere to be found, but our visit turned out to be most rewarding even so. During the couple of days we stayed with Kalpana we met with several timber merchants and others who had been involved in logging. As this had been a largely clandestine undertaking, I thought those involved would be hesitant to speak with me, but to my surprise they were rather frank about their activities. The general picture that emerged from these interviews confirmed my earlier findings: regulated logging had been going on and then, in the early 1990s, all restrictions and checks more or less evapo-

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rated. As a consequence, entire hills were clear cut. Transit permits could easily be bought or one just bribed the people at the check gates to take the timber out of the state. Getting a license for a sawmill or a veneer mill had been exasperating in the past, but in the beginning of the 1990s it was just a matter of paying off the concerned officers at the district council (most of these sawmills were under what were called benami arrangements; that is, the sawmill was registered in a tribal name but was actually owned and operated by a non-tribal person from outside the state). A lot of money was in circulation and everybody wanted to have their share of the lucrative timber business. Several names with which I was already familiar kept appearing in the interviews, the most prominent being no less than the then minister in charge of the forest, Mr. A.C. Marak, and the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Mr. Balvinder Singh. Both gentlemen, we were told, had played a role in the scandal relating to the Chimabangsi and Dhima forest reserves. It is beyond the scope of this work to verify the responsibility of individual persons, but I simply note that the findings of the Enquiry Commission appointed by the state government under Mr. Rangan Dutta confirmed that the scam involved the most senior forest officers as well as top representatives of the government.4 Dutta estimates that about 46,000 trees were illegally cut inside the reserves, and considering the magnitude of the illegal operations this hardly comes as a surprise.5 The commission report states that a “systemic collapse” of the forest administration was the main cause of the illegal felling and that responsibility had to be shared by all officers in the “entire chain of command.” “Indeed,” Dutta writes, “the protectors became the predators of State Reserve Forests.”6 Dutta’s report reveals the most uncomfortable facts relating to the situation of governance in Meghalaya. It is not only the Forest Department that is found wanting, but also the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council as well as senior politicians holding government offices or sitting in the legislative assembly in the state. All of them had failed miserably in upholding their public offices. But as often happens with cases like this, those in power seem to enjoy legal immunity and in the end escape responsibility. For example, Dutta cites several instances of gross negligence, if not direct illegalities, committed by the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, but he nonetheless remained in office his full term.7 The report also discusses the land conflict that the forest authorities initially claimed was the main reason behind the illegal felling. This dispute concerned lands that were particularly rich in mature sal trees, situated between the Chimabangsi reserved forest and the a’king of Doracha village.8 The sal forest was claimed by both parties, i.e., the Forest Department and the nokma (headman) of Doracha village,9 and as the legal case had been dragging on in court since 1979, the “timber

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mafia” had moved in to “harvest” the area (eventually also venturing into the reserved forest, the forest authorities claimed). Dutta argues that the land dispute might have been a contributing factor but, again, not the main cause. If the forest administration had been functional— maintaining the forest check gates according to rules, for example—the forest in the disputed area would have been protected until the ownership was settled. The disputed area is about five hundred hectares, and the numbers of trees lost here is estimated by Dutta to be in the range of 100,000 to 200,000.10 During a visit to Doracha village we found out that the High Court Bench in Shillong had recently settled the case in favor of the nokma. The disputed land was found to be part of the a’king, as the villagers had argued all along, having the delim map,11 established by the British in the 1920s, to back their claim. The nokma who had been running the case, Mr. Mingjeng Sangma, was out, and we had instead a long talk with the second nokma in the village, Mr. Dirap Sangma; he was busy cleaning jhum land on one of the disputed hillocks when we arrived. The hillock was completely denuded of vegetation. The trees that the contractors had left, non-commercial species, had now also been felled, and the largest ones, which apparently had not burned during the firing, lay scattered like corpses reminding us of the forest that had once been. These logs help prevent soil run-off, but even so, the sight was depressing, and I asked the nokma whether they ever considered keeping some of the trees, pointing to a huge tree with a trunk well above two meters in girth. He replied that as hill people they lived on jhum, and for this they had to cut the trees; the more sun, the more heat, and the better for the crops. But what about the humidity of the soil, I asked, isn’t the land getting too dry? He also pushed this question aside, saying that too much water just makes the crops rot, adding that they still had plenty of water around. But in fact, surviving on jhum is getting harder day by day, he said. The land seemed to yield less, and as he put it, they would need some alternatives. They had already tried orange trees, but all six hundred trees they had planted died from insect attacks. A couple of years back some people from the government had come to survey their land for a rubber plantation. The villagers had even heard that their land was officially declared a rubber area, though, he said, pointing all around him, “As you can see, we have no rubber trees.”12 When the nokma said this, all the people who had gathered during our conversation started to laugh. The rubber people had apparently never returned, and although the nokma mentioned that they would like to try rubber, they would not be able to do it on their own. It felt strange seeing people carrying on with their daily work in the jhum fields. Everything was peaceful, and there was nothing of the commotion that must have existed around here during the heyday of the timber rush. We had come after the event; the forest was gone and so

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Plate 5  Large tree felled in a newly cleared jhum field

Plate 6  Mr. Dirap Sangma

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were the trucks, laborers, and contractors who would have been busy getting the timber out. As it appeared, hardly anything of the enormous profits generated through the logging had remained in the village. When I later met with the advocate in Shillong who had represented the nokma during the last couple of years, she told me that the villagers seemed to be very poor. The nokma had often had difficulties raising money for the bus fare to Shillong, and when he came to see her he was always poorly dressed, wearing an old ragged jacket. It is very rare, she said, that villagers win cases like this. They are often illiterate and lack the money to pursue lengthy legal proceedings. This case had also taken many strange turns, first settled by the District Council Court in favor of the village and then, after complaints by the Forest Department, handed over to the High Court, which also ruled in favor of the village, only to be re-opened later, after an intervention by the local district administration, so that it landed once again in the High Court.13 Dutta mentions in the commission report that the legal expenses had been covered by the timber contractors to whom the nokma had given permission to log the area.14 If this was so, it seems plausible that such monetary support ceased with the completion of the logging operations. On our way back we stopped for tea at a small road stall. A few men were waiting for the bus, and when they found out I was interested in the forest they started telling stories about how things had started to change with the large-scale deforestation taking place during the last decades. “Just see the elephants,” one of them said. “They have nowhere to go and nothing to eat now. Instead, they head for our gardens and paddy fields.”15 The others joined in, narrating recent incidents where elephants had even attacked people. This is not how it used to be, they said. “We respect the elephants and they never used to harm us,” one stated. “Earlier, we knew how to speak with elephants and we could tell them to stay away from our fields.” And in this way they took turns telling the most amazing elephant stories, all stressing the point that the previous peaceful coexistence of people and elephants no longer existed. Back in the car, Kalpana reminisced that when she was a child they used to have elephants and all kinds of wild animals coming to their house. It was all dense jungle around here, she recalled. Several times, in the course of earlier stays in North Bengal, I was told similar stories of how the remembered jungles of childhood days had disappeared. Such stories have often made me wonder how the place would have looked back then. For the untrained eye, there are few traces in the natural landscape that tell you what kind of vegetation there once might have been. Even the denuded Doracha hillocks would look lushly green to a city-wallah.16 Photographs like the one mentioned earlier can at least give a glimpse of a bygone landscape. Similarly, individual accounts can be of great use in tracing environmental change, but these

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are hard to scale up and can hardly suffice if one aims for a thorough environmental history of a larger area or region.17 As we will see, the privileged way of knowing nature today is from above, through satellites, “the eye in the sky” as it were. Even if most people agree that the forest is indeed decreasing, there are important disagreements regarding the actual amount of forest left, the causes of deforestation, and what is to be done to preserve the forest. Such disagreements are further exaggerated because of differences in how the term “forest” is to be understood or defined. The Indian Supreme Court added a novel dimension to the debate by stating that the word “forest,” in its Order, “must be understood according to its dictionary meaning,”18 without saying what this is. If the Oxford English Dictionary will do, forest means “a large area of land that is thickly covered with trees.”19 The other major English dictionaries give a more or less similar meaning/definition. Although this might appear clarifying, it has generated further complications for the disputed forests of Northeast India, as we will see. Discussions about deforestation commonly presume a kind of baseline, a point of time prior to the destruction or replacement of the forest. Sometimes this would be projected as climax vegetation or a situation of ecological balance. There has been a heated debate for some time in the environmental history of South Asia concerning the impact of colonialism on nature, commonly framed as whether or not the colonial rule brought about “an ecological watershed.” Proponents of the thesis claim that local communities used to live in harmony with nature, managing the natural resources in a sustainable fashion, but that the British, by expropriating forest lands and other common property resources for commercial extraction, initiated an exploitative and environmentally imprudent regime of resource use (Gadgil and Guha 1992). As I suggested in the previous chapter, the British colonization of Northeast India had a tremendous impact on nature. But this should not be mistaken to mean that people in this region lived in eternal balance with nature in pre-colonial days. Here I agree with the historian David Hardiman that such romanticized notions speak to a “reversed Orientalism” that distorts historical understanding and, for example, “cannot begin to explain how it came about that most of India was deforested long before the period of colonial rule” (1994: 90–91). As historical experiences from all over the world testify, even small-scale societies like those based on hunting and gathering have proven capable of bringing about or causing large-scale transformations of their natural landscape (Hughes 2001: 22).20 Not to speak of larger polities—agrarian empires or the ancient hydraulic civilizations, as in southern India, for example—that constructed extremely complex irrigation and water storage systems that naturally have had a significant impact on the ecology of these regions as a whole (see, for

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example, Mosse 2003). Environmental history alerts us to how human societies have reshaped and co-evolved with their natural landscape, a history of human engagements in nature that seems to have left no place “undisturbed.” Many of the sites of nature’s wonders that we seek to preserve today in their “pristine” form are in fact inscribed with human history. Similarly, the highly valued sal forests in India, which the British wanted to save by keeping people out, had apparently sprung up in places where shifting cultivation had been practiced in earlier times. These forests, as the historian E.P. Flint puts it, have been generated through a “long-term interrelationship with human settlements” (1998: 435). Once one starts to think about ecosystems in a more dynamic sense, as systems that constantly interrelate with and adapt to new circumstances brought about by anthropogenic forces as well as forces of nature itself, the notion of “harmony,” ecological balance, or climax vegetation said to exist at a particular point of time (and later lost) appears obsolete.21 However, this does not rule out the possibility of critical environmental ruptures that might undermine long-term human dwelling in a particular place or on a wider, even planetary scale.22 The relevance of this will be clearer as we proceed.

Assessing the Forest The Northeast harbors a substantial part of India’s remaining forests. According to some estimates, somewhere around one-fourth to onethird of India’s forest resource is to be found in the northeastern region (see Darlong 2002: 15). Several states boast of their greenness and their richness in flora and fauna—embracing the notion that they are “biodiversity hot spots.” The official figures speak about impressive forest covers of more than 80 per cent of the total geographical area in several of the states: for example, Mizoram 89.1 per cent, Nagaland 85.8 per cent, and Arunachal Pradesh 81.9 per cent. Meghalaya is somewhat lower with a forest cover close to 70 per cent. The most recent forest assessment of 2003 even notes a slight increase in forest cover in most of these states. But despite these figures, most observers seem to agree that the rich gift of nature is on a slippery slope of degradation. The alarming rate of forest loss, estimated to be about 8 per cent annually during the 1990s, was the focus of a seminar organized by the North East India Council for Social Science Research in 1999 to observe World Environment Day. It was suggested that: “If extreme caution is not exercised, desertification of North-Eastern region cannot remain far behind” (Maiti and Chakrabarti 2002: 4). Debates about alarming deforestation are not unique to Northeast India, of course, but rather a well-known story from other parts of India as well as elsewhere in the world. It could even be argued that dev-

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astating deforestation has become something of a master narrative of contemporary environmental crises. The Brundtland Commission says in its widely circulated report, Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987: 2), that “more than 11 million hectares of forests are destroyed yearly,” and to give a sense of the magnitude of the problem it is stated that this, “over three decades, would equal an area about the size of India.” The report expresses the mood of the 1980s when environmental issues were a high-priority concern of the international community and had a sort of urgency to them; the very survival of planet Earth was considered to be at stake. A global consensus started to develop during this time stressing the need to rethink earlier forms of state-centered management and to enhance the role of communities as resource managers. In India this realization translated into the much discussed and, indeed, internationally recognized scheme of Joint Forest Management (JFM).23 Even if such programs have encouraged afforestation initiatives and more sustainable use of the forest in certain areas, deforestation nevertheless seems to be continuing on a massive scale around the world. According to FAO’s “Global Forest Resource Assessment 2000,” net deforestation is globally is approximately 9 million hectares annually. The highest rates are found in Africa and Latin America, while the situation looks significantly better in Asia, where tree plantations have compensated for the forest loss (FAO 2001). The 2005 assessment notes a slight improvement, a net loss of 7.3 million hectares a year (noted as roughly equal to the size of Panama or Sierre Leone). The positive trend in Asia, with large-scale afforestation especially in China, is the major explanation for the improvement. India, as the Ministry of Environment and Forests proudly announces, reports a net increase in forest cover. But again, there are reasons to be cautious here. What types of forests, for example, are being gained or lost? Plantations make an ecologically poor substitute for “natural” forests. This issue is commonly downplayed in India due to the official emphasis on the quantity of forest rather than on its quality (Sundar et al. 2001: 16); what is lost here is the ongoing problem of forest degradation. Further, there are a number of other difficulties with the entire exercise of assessing the forest situation. Figures are produced and used in different ways and for different reasons. And, as with the high forest cover figures for the hill states of the Northeast, the figures might have little resemblance to what you experience on the ground. Even so, there is a kind of magic to numbers, and once they are out they tend to stick, as we will see. The main tool for assessments of forest covers today is satellite remote sensing, i.e., the use of satellite imagery along with GPS (Global Positioning Systems) and GIS (Global Information Systems). For the layperson, information based on remote sensing tends to have a compelling aura of scientific validity to it, as if one is dealing with undisputable hard

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facts. But at a closer look, it is evident that a lot of assumptions, interpretations, and uncertainties go into the processing and reading of satellite imagery (see, e.g., Robbins 2003). “[S]atellite image interpretation is never free of error,” as Prabhakar et al. remind us in a recent article on the degradation of Himalayan forests (2006:61). There are a variety of difficulties involved, for example, in differentiating between different vegetation or land-cover types, and problems in getting clear shots free from clouds, dust, smoke, and topographic shadows.24 A general problem with satellite imagery is that it “often fails to pick up the more gradual processes of ecological decline” (Ravindranath, Gadgil and Campbell 1996: 290). Ground-proofing, or physical verification on the ground, is a crucial step in getting reliable results, but as this is a tedious exercise that requires manpower and resources that are seldom available, it is commonly overlooked or not performed in a satisfactory way. This, I have been informed, is the case with many of the forest assessments that are carried out in India.25 Another difficulty with aggregated forest assessments is the lack of clarity regarding what constitutes a forest, i.e., the definition. Assessments conducted at different moments in time and in different places commonly define “forest” in their own way, which naturally makes comparisons over time and space difficult. FAO points this out in its 2000 assessments, stating that this is the first global report based on a single definition, and as this is a new definition it is even problematic to compare FAO’s present findings with those of its earlier assessments. In addition to this, as the report points out, most countries lack “comparable time series” and generally have rather scanty information about their forest resources.26 In sum, the point here is simply that all assessments of changes in forest covers need to be taken with several pinches of salt; the facts are anything but “hard.” The relevance of this will be clearer as we move along.

The “Timber Ban” I came to Northeast India with the idea of doing research on community management institutions. My previous work in North Bengal concerned the indigenous Rabha community, who lived in forest villages under the Forest Department without any recognized rights in the forest (beside that of being seasonal laborers for the Forest Department) (see Karlsson 2000). The idea was to compare the situation of the Rabhas with one in which the forestlands were owned and controlled by the people themselves. I soon realized the complexities of the matter and the difficulties of talking about existing “community control” in the case of the Northeast. During my first stay in Meghalaya in early 2000, I found myself in the middle of the controversy about the “timber ban.” This, I felt, was a perfect entry point into my new field. The timber ban was on everyone’s

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lips, and most of the people I talked to saw this as yet another example of New Delhi’s misuse of power. As the local newspaper, the Shillong Times, reported, the Joint Action Committee of Jaintia Hills protested against the ban, its advisor, Phidalia Toi, had been imprisoned because of this, and she had now gone on a hunger strike.27 An article in the magazine Grassroots Options28 described how the Supreme Court timber ban had devastated the rural economy of the West Khasi Hills. Families had to go hungry and parents could not afford to send their children to school, as their income from the timber trade had dried up.29 I was invited to take part in a one-day workshop on the subject arranged at Pinewood, one of the nicer hotels in Shillong. Influential persons from different walks of life participated: senior representatives of the state government, Forest Department officials, development organizations, researchers, journalists, and civil society groups. All, except for the central government officer from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (in charge of monitoring the Supreme Court Order), condemned the timber ban. The MOEF officer claimed it was in fact not a “ban,” but rather a “temporal moratorium” on timber operations until approved working plans had been established. Nobody took notice of his clarification, and “ban” was what everyone else seemed to take as the most relevant term. The Minister of Finance claimed that the loss of revenue from timber was ruining the state’s finances, not to speak of loss of employment since, for example, almost the entire sawmill industry had been closed down. A Catholic nun running a boarding school confirmed that they were no longer getting students from rural areas, and in a most emotional way she urged that for the sake of children the timber ban be scrapped. Sociologist Tiplut Nongbri (originally from Shillong) described the severe consequences of the ban on women’s lives and she further questioned the legal basis of the Supreme Court Order, saying that it violated the autonomy given to tribal communities under the Sixth Schedule.30 One of the organizers, Dev Nathan, a political scientist working for the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia, spoke about the serious environmental consequences of the ban: that people had started making charcoal of valuable timber, selling the bark of standing trees or converting woodlands into jhum fields as trees no longer had any market value. The ban was thus not only “antipeople” but also “anti-environment.” Nathan ended by questioning the very rationale of the Supreme Court’s intervention. Quoting the Forest Department’s latest forest assessment, he said that Meghalaya had a forest cover of as much as 69.80 per cent of the total geographical area. And as he pointed out, this figure was based on data derived from satellite images. The National Forest Policy recommendation for hill areas is a 66 per cent forest cover, which is less than what Meghalaya had at present. Why then should the people of Meghalaya be penalized or “banned” in this way, Nathan asked rhetorically.31

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The history of the Supreme Court intervention is intricate, but apparently it followed from a lawsuit by a private person in 1995 against the Indian Union for its alleged failure to halt deforestation in Tamil Nadu during the 1980s.32 The case was subsequently merged with a similar one concerning deforestation in Jammu-Kashmir (see, further, Rosencranz and Lélé 2008). From these two states, the case was later extended to include the Northeast in view of the extensive destruction that had taken place there. The Supreme Court Order of December 1996 states that “all ongoing activity in any Forest …, without prior approval of the Central Government, must cease forthwith” (paragraph 1). The additional Order of January 1998 similarly speaks about the suspension of timber operations and other wood-based industries until concerned state governments had developed working plans approved by the central government. The Supreme Court Orders contain formulations that, at least for me, are anything but transparent. In her in-depth scrutiny of the Order, Nongbri (2001) particularly draws attention to two things. First of all, as indicated above, that the Supreme Court Order bypasses the Sixth Schedule in which the autonomous district councils are given full jurisdiction over all forests except those declared as reserved forest or protected areas. In the name of forest conservation, the Supreme Court now entrusts the power over all forests—as stated in the order, “irrespective of ownership and classification thereof”—to the Forest Department or the state through the requirement of approved working plans. Second, the employment of the term “forest” in the Supreme Court Order fails to take into account the particular situation of the Northeast, where shifting cultivation is still a major form of agriculture. As Nongbri points out, the Khasis have a very complex system of ownership and management of land, and above all, there is no “clear-cut separation between land and forests” (2001: 1895). People of course make a conceptual distinction between land and forest (and have different terms for the two), but since the very nature of shifting cultivation is that trees and bushes reclaim land that has been cultivated, the boundary between the two is constantly blurred or in flux (ibid.). The Supreme Court does not take these very basic features into consideration, and by stating that the Order should apply to “all forests” the Court in fact imposes centralized state control over most of the lands and resources that people depend on for their livelihoods. The relative autonomy and freedom that the tribal communities in the Northeast previously enjoyed have now been seriously constrained. To Nongbri, this is not by chance but is “symptomatic of the state’s attitude to the rights of indigenous people” (ibid.: 1897). And, as she further argues, the underlying assumption is that state institutions rather than tribal people are best suited to conserving or managing nature in a sustainable fashion. Nongbri is also concerned about the ongoing deforestation, but to her, more sophisticated measures are

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needed that above all differentiate between subsistence farmers’ use of the forest and outside contractors’ large-scale timber extraction (ibid.).33 With my later visits to Meghalaya, it has become obvious that the timber ban also has its local supporters. Most interestingly, the influential student body, the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU), prior to the Supreme Court Order, had filed what is called a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) at the Guwahati High Court proposing a ten-year moratorium on timber trade, and closure of saw and veneer mills, to save the remaining forest in the state. KSU backed its PIL by citing a drop in the forest cover from 40 per cent at the time of Meghalaya’s independence in 1972, to 18 per cent forest cover in 1996, when it filed the case. Not only did KSU question the official forest cover figure, but it also argued that satellite imagery did not provide reliable information because of the particular situation in a state like Meghalaya where the green cover of shrubbery, grass, etc., could easily be mistaken for trees/forest.34 The KSU motivated its support of the ban with reference to its being mainly people from outside who profited from the timber trade. Even so, KSU had to face a strong public reaction because of its stand. Over the years I have found more and more people who now speak in favor of the ban, describing it as a necessary evil or arguing that the timber trade would have died by itself sooner or later because all the valuable trees would have been cut. But let us return again to one of the main questions that figured in the debate at the time: to what extent Meghalaya had a sound forest cover and thus whether the ban was called for or not.

Interpreting Nature The Indian State Forest Report of 1999 contains for each state color forest maps that have been extracted from satellite imagery.35 In the case of Meghalaya, the map is largely light greenish, meaning that most of the state is covered by “open forests.” Dark green areas, denoting “dense forests,” are relatively few and more limited in size. These areas are concentrated mainly in the Garo Hills and the bordering West Khasi Hills. To the east, on the central Khasi Hills plateau and large parts of the Jaintia Hills, the map is mostly white, denoting “non-forest” areas. Put in numbers, the report assesses the total forest cover at roughly 16,000 square kilometers, or 69.80 per cent of the total geographical area, as mentioned earlier. Of these forests, about 6,000 square kilometers is classified as “dense forest” and 10,000 square kilometers as “open forest.” The report notes an increase in dense forest, and a slight total loss of forest (compared to the assessment two years earlier). Shifting cultivation is said to have caused the loss. Logging is not mentioned. The overall impression, however, is that things are under control and that there is no cause for alarm. The then Principal Chief Conservator

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of Forests, Baldvinder Singh, confirmed the correctness of the findings of the 1999 report. When I met him, he even brought the report out to show me the exact forest cover figures.36 In view of this, it appears that Nathan has a point in arguing that the Supreme Court “timber ban” was uncalled for. But let us look a bit more closely into the issue. Forest cover, in the Indian State Forest Report, means “all lands with a tree canopy density of more than ten per cent”; open forest is 10–40 per cent, and dense forest is 40 per cent canopy density and above (paragraph 1.3). As open forest is most prevalent, it appears crucial to know more about what could come under this category. The report mentions that it is difficult in satellite assessments to differentiate between forests and “bushy vegetation” or plantations of tea and coffee (paragraph 1.2.5). In Meghalaya there are large areas with various types of plantations; there is also jhum land that, after cultivation, is quickly covered by bamboo, bushes, and other “secondary vegetation.” The question that arises is the extent to which such types of vegetation are registered as open forest. On its website the Meghalaya government gives a much more modest assessment of the forest. Of the total area of the state, which is 22,429 square kilometers, only 8,514 square kilometers are said to be forests.37 This would give a 38 per cent forest cover. The website also gives figures on forest cover in each district, and these range from the lowest, 35.34 per cent, for the East Khasi Hills to the highest, 64.11 per cent, for the South Garo Hills.38 There is no information, however, on how the assessment was carried out, nor on how the term “forest” is used. But interestingly, a study by a geographer at the North-Eastern Hill University also pointed to figures in the same range. This study by Professor Siddheswar Sarma is based on satellite imagery and arrives at a total forest cover in Meghalaya of 44.71 per cent (2003: 156).39 Sarma does not comment or reflect on his significantly lower figure compared to that of the Forest Survey of India. This is indeed remarkable, as the Forest Survey is commonly taken as the authority in these matters and its statistics quoted in most reports, also by Sarma himself. In addition, one would think that such a comparison would be particularly interesting since both the Forest Survey and Sarma are using data generated by satellite remote sensing. For some reason, Sarma instead finds it useful to juxtapose his forest cover figure with that of the Meghalaya government, finding the latter slightly lower than his (he puts the government figure at 42.34 per cent). The difference between the two, he explains, might be due to “higher accuracy achieved through remote sensing data” (which the Meghalaya government apparently is not using). Sarma, like the government, does not provide any definition or explanation of how he uses the term “forest,” and we are again in the dark about what his “forest cover” consists of. My point here, however, is not to question the findings of

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this or any other study, but rather to draw attention to the ambiguity of the figures themselves, an ambiguity that is masked by the exactness of numbers (even given in decimal fractions). Regardless of whose assessment one would find most reasonable—KSU’s of a forest cover as low as 18 per cent, the Meghalaya government’s and Sarma’s of around 40 per cent, or the Forest Survey of India’s of almost 70 per cent—the question remains of what these figures signify. What kind of forest or vegetation are we actually talking about? Take the case of Mizoram, the state with the highest official forest cover. As a forest officer explains: “The official records of Mizoram forest cover is 87 per cent, but hardly anyone is bothered to identify that most of this is bamboo brakes.”40 In a similar way, I think Nathan makes a serious mistake when he takes the high forest cover figure as an indication of a healthy environmental situation in Meghalaya. To get an idea of what type of forest you might encounter in Meghalaya, let us listen to some personal accounts regarding the lie of the land. Garo Hills is commonly taken to have the richest forest in the state, so I start there. Winstone G. Mumin, Deputy Conservator of Forest at the Forest Resources Survey Division, with decades of experience from the area, says the following: Most of the areas of Garo Hills … fall under open forest cover. These areas are not worth calling forests as most of them are degraded after repeated indiscriminate jhuming. (Mumin 2002: 30) In another account, this time on the state of the forest in Meghalaya as a whole, F. Suchiang, retired Chief Conservator of Forest, holds that: With the increase in demand of raw materials for feeding the forest based industries in the other parts of the country most of the erstwhile lush evergreen and coniferous forest have been destroyed without rhyme and reason. During the last four decades or so many of the erstwhile rich forest areas which were full of matured crops have been either degraded or laid waste and barren. It is beyond one’s comprehension even to conceptionalise the ecological changes that have taken place in these forests. (Suchiang 1994: 22) And, finally, by the noted ecologist P.S. Ramakrishnan, describing the general situation in Northeast India in the early 1990s as follows: Large-scale timber extraction has been carried out in this region during the last few decades. In fact, a substantial part of the timber needs of the country is met from the north-east. The secondary damage done to the forest due to the falling trees during timber

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harvest, destroying everything else in their path is also substantial. Bamboo forests … are being harvested in a major way by the pulping industry. (Ramakrishnan 1992a: 3) Here again we have stories of rampant loss of forests, in the first case due to shifting cultivation (jhum), the common story of those working in the Forest Department, and the latter due to outside demand for wood. The High Power Committee for the North East Region takes the size of the wood-based industry as an indication of the denudation of the forest. According to its findings, prior to the timber ban there were 1,228 sawmills, 291 saw-cum-veneer mills, and 77 plywood factories in the region.41 Together these naturally consume enormous quantities of trees, to which must be added the export of round wood, i.e., un-sawed timber. Further, the fact that we are dealing with a substantial timber business could be proved by the protests against the ban itself. If it is true that so many people are affected, which certainly seems to be the case, there must have been considerable logging going on. Journalist Sanat K. Chakraborty gives a revealing account of the timber trade in the West Khasi Hills, one of the districts of Meghalaya. A sawmill owner told him, for example, that as a conservative estimate, some one hundred and fifty to two hundred trucks of timber would leave the district daily. The acting syiem42 of Nongstoin put the figure at as much as four to five hundred trucks a day at the peak of the business in the early 1990s (Chakraborty 2000: 15).43 When a forest area is cleared of trees, other forms of environmental degradation might kick in. According to Ramakrishnan, various exotic and native seeds can take over and create a bald landscape where trees can no longer regenerate in a natural way. This, he argues, further reduces the land available for shifting cultivation, and adds to the pressure on an agriculture system that is already under great stress. To him, large-scale extraction of timber with an increasingly unsustainable modification of jhum cultivation (shorter fallows) creates a vicious cycle that severely affects things like water flows and soil fertility, a process of environmental degradation that is happening in Meghalaya and elsewhere in the northeastern hills (Ramakrishnan 1992a: 373, 386–87). What emerges here is a situation that is far more critical than the high forest cover figures seem to indicate. But can such “crisis scenarios” be trusted?

The “Alarmist Environmental Discourse” In the contemporary literature on forests and deforestation, a number of researchers have started to question gloomy accounts of the sort where, first of all, large-scale loss of (tropical) forest is taken at face value, and

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where it is further assumed that deforestation always triggers negative spirals of ecological destruction. The anthropologists James Fairhead and Melissa Leach argue in the case of West Africa that the alarmist discourse on depletion of the tropical rain forests is “hugely exaggerated” (1998: xiv). Forest is lost, but not to the extent that is claimed. The type of forests lost is also different from the commonly mourned destruction of rainforests. On the basis of different types of historical material, they claim that in some areas there has even been an increase of forest cover (ibid.). In the same spirit, Jack D. Ives and Bruno Messerli argue against “the widely supported prediction that the Himalayan region is inevitably drifting into a situation of environmental supercrises and collapse” (1989: xvii). Their particular critique relates to the presumed relationship and supposed causal linkages between population increase, deforestation, soil erosion, and water shortage and floods (ibid.: 8–9). Ives and Messerli question alarming reports of deforestation, as in the case of Nepal where as much as half of the forests cover was claimed to have been lost between 1950 and 1980 and where, by 2000, no accessible forest would remain (ibid.: 39–40). Such reports, according to them, are based on inaccurate and unreliable data. Different surveys of the forest cover have started from different definitions of “forest” and thus produced flawed comparisons over time. In many cases, areas defined as forest were in fact “mere shrubberies” (ibid.: 46).44 The underlying motive of these exaggerations is power, that is, to legitimize external intervention in the control and use of nature (in this case forests). As one observer put it, “By generating and appealing to crisis narratives, technical experts and managers assert rights as ‘stakeholders’ in the land and resources they say are under crisis” (Roe 1995, cited in Leach and Mearns 1996: 20). This type of critical questioning of dominant environmental crisis narratives is certainly welcome. It reminds us that all readings of nature are positioned; they stem from some particular vantage point and hence, in some respects, are always political. “One person’s degradation is another’s accumulation,” as Piers Blakie and Harold Brookfield put it in their classic study Land Degradation and Society (1987: 14). As they stress, it is critical to realize that there are always “competing social definitions of land degradation,” and that, for example, deforestation does not necessarily “constitute degradation in a social sense” (ibid.: 17, 6). For Fairhead and Leach (1998: 197), the alarming forest statistics that are circulating in various international forums speak about “power relations with long historical roots” (going back to the colonial period). Many of the scholars who pursue this type of analysis take a sort of propeople stand, more or less overtly framing their analysis as a defense of local livelihoods and community rights in natural resources. Although I largely share such a position, I find nevertheless that the questioning of the supposedly dominant environmental narrative has been pushed too

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far here, subsuming all accounts of serious environmental disturbances under the banner of ideologically motivated “alarmist discourses” or as just “myths.”45 One is then left with no space to address pressing ecological problems, be it water shortage or soil erosion, that might threaten the livelihoods of the very people the researcher seeks to defend. Returning again to the timber ban, from an “alarmist/myth” perspective the large-scale destruction of forests in Northeast India would then appear as a pretext for the Supreme Court to intervene and hand over the ultimate control of the forest to the state (to MOEF or the Forest Department) at the expense of the rights of the local people. This argument has, as mentioned earlier, been put forth in the debate. However, even if the Supreme Court obviously entrusts the role of environmental manager to central government institutions, I think it would be a mistake to reduce the intention of the Court to facilitating such a relocation of power in favor of the state. This, I believe, is to confuse means with goals. During the last ten years or so, the Supreme Court has taken a surprisingly active role in environmental issues. Some commentators even speak of the Court as engaged in “environmental activism,” being a champion of the environmental cause. Others take a more skeptical view, noting that the Court’s involvement is not consistent, that it concentrates on issues like forest and traffic pollution, for example, while stepping back on major environmental problems relating to the construction of dams and pollution by large industries (Dhavan 2000).46 Noting the environmental zeal of the Supreme Court, Shubankar Dam and Vivek Tewary criticize the tendency of the Court to “act as the executive in environmental matters, making policies and creating institutions for their implementation” (2005: 385). In this the Court trespasses beyond its assigned role of interpreting laws and enters into the field of governance that supposedly should be the responsibility of the bureaucracy or the state administration. This, the authors argue, has several repercussions, one of which, for example, is that it undermines the autonomy and functioning of the state administration, and further, that it disturbs the necessary dialogue between people and the rightful institutions of governance. And this, Dam and Tewary suggest, might itself have a negative effect on the long-term commitment of state bodies to the environment (ibid.: 391–92). In a recent article on the Supreme Court forest case, Armin Rosencranz and Sharachchandra Lélé argues further that, “the judicial overreach not only hurts the process of governance by undermining the role of the executive, but also the content of governance by producing flawed judgements, i.e. interpretations of law that are both unsound and impracticable” (2008: 13–14). But the point I would like to stress here is that we can assume at least that the primary intention of the Court was to preserve the forest and the rich biodiversity in the region (see the epigraph that opens this

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chapter). Even if the Supreme Court intervention can be criticized on many grounds, as we shall see, the ecological rationale behind the intervention does appear to be justifiable as well. In addition, what strikes me as particularly interesting about the Supreme Court Order is that with that focus on the timber industry we see a radical discursive shift away from jhum cultivation as the main culprit in forest destruction. From colonial times up to the present, the dominant trope in the state has otherwise concerned the ills of shifting cultivation/shifting cultivators, projected as a major threat to the fragile mountain environment in Northeast India. But let us return to the social geography of deforestation. Here, again, I will start with a personal account of the loss of forests.

Community Forests The sociologist A.C. Sinha opens his pioneering study on the environmental history of the eastern Himalayan region with the following remark: It all started with the occasional observations on the tree cover around the highway between Shillong to Gauhati during the last fifteen years. Slowly and slowly, hills turned naked, trees have become fewer, scattered and younger: thickets have replaced the clumps of trees and settlements have sprung up all around. During the dry days one comes across even clouds of dust. From nowhere a new problem of drinking water in the abode of clouds—Meghalaya—has been added to the list of the urgent issues which are to be attended. Then, one is startled on the paradoxical expression: “the wet desert of Cherrapunji.” The Government Forest Officials claim not to be responsible for the alleged rape of forests as they hardly control an appreciable acreage of the forests. It is the community, represented by the District Council, which controls and manages the extensive forests as per constitutional provisions. Elsewhere [in India] the environmentalists are articulating the issue as a conflict between the state control and community interests and demand the forest to be given back to the community as they were in the hands of local communities in the pre-colonial days. Is it so that the community control has led to destruction of forests in this region? (Sinha 1993: 7) As Sinha rightly argues, the situation in the northeastern hill areas differs greatly from that of mainland India. The bulk of the forests are, as pointed out, in the hands of communities, under the formal jurisdiction of the “autonomous district councils,”47 rather than with the Forest Department as elsewhere in India. Only about 5 per cent of the forest in the Northeast is under state control (reserved forests and protected areas, i.e., sanctuar-

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ies and national parks). What then does the experience of the Northeast tell us? Sinha has a straightforward answer, that “community control over the forest resources has completely failed to safeguard the forests” (ibid.: 10). If this is correct it certainly has important implications for the larger debate about forest management, where community involvement has become the blueprint for successful forest recovery. Are the advocates of such policies all heading in the wrong direction? Are communities, in this case “tribal” or indigenous people, as bad as or even worse than state departments in managing forests in a sustainable fashion? Before beginning to answer such questions one needs to ask what “community control” implies and what type of community involvement we are actually talking about in the case of the Northeast. As recent literature on conservation and resource management in South Asia has pointed out, the notion of “community” is itself deeply problematic and in need of serious unpacking.48 What this critique points to is that much of the development discourse on “joint forest management,” “ecodevelopment,” and the like is based on rather naïve perceptions of communities as small-scale, homogenous, territorial units (the self-evident atoms of rural polities). Agrawal and Gibson rightly argue that such understandings fail to take into account differences “within” communities, differences that indeed “affect resource management outcomes” (2001: 7). As they put it, communities thus need to be reconceptualized as “complex entities containing individuals differentiated by status, political and economic power, religion, social prestige, and intentions” (ibid.: 1). Such a move allows a critical scrutiny of existing structures of dominance that easily disappear or are played down by the populist understanding of community as the very embodiment of grassroots democracy, solidarity, and equity. Sinha is not unaware that the term community can conceal internal differences, and he raises the question of who is controlling the forest in the name of “communal control.” But he does not really engage the question seriously and, as mentioned, sticks to his main conclusion that community forest management has proven to be disastrous in Northeast India. My simple suggestion is that what we see is in fact not a failure of community management, but rather the lack of it. For example, in the case of logging, no doubt a major contributor to forest loss in the region, this is a capitalist undertaking in which communities as such have little or no say. The main players running the show, to quote the High Power Committee set to monitor the Supreme Court Order banning all timber operations, are “mill owners, forest contractors, forest and other government officials and the politicians in the North Eastern Region.”49 Or what is commonly referred to as “a nexus of contractorsbureaucrats-politicians” (Aier and Changkija 2003: 358). This nexus consists of people from the elite group of the hill society and well-placed

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“non-tribal exploiters from outside,” as the sociologist Tiplut Nongbri puts it (2003: 158). There are huge sums of money involved, and through deals with persons of authority in the villages, be it traditional chief, clan elder, headman or landowner, the contractors acquire forests to log. In the case of the disputed area in Doracha, the nokma apparently allotted logging concessions to four different contractors, two of them Garos and the other two non-tribals from Assam (Dutta 1997: 78–79). How much the nokma got in the deal, and whether the money was kept by him only or was shared by others in the village is not clear to me. The point here is that what enables these kinds of deals is a larger historical process of increasing privatization of land at the expense of the earlier communal institutions of land management related to jhum cultivation. Put differently, it could be said that we have a bifurcated setup of eroding communal institutions relating to land and resource management, on the one hand, and, on the other, a very significant development of individual ownership and exploitation of forest and other natural resources. These processes will be discussed in greater detail in later chapters of the book. But suffice to say, deforestation is thus taking place in a situation of multiple and changing property regimes in which communities play a significantly diminishing role as resource managers. Among forest officers, the most common claim is that deforestation is a problem mainly in the privately or community-owned forests and that most of the still dense forests would be those under Forest Department management. And there are certainly reserved forests and protected areas with healthy tree cover, but equally, there are also areas under the Forest Department that have been heavily degraded due to unregulated logging, the most flagrant cases being the reserved forests in the Garo Hills that I discussed earlier. If we stay in the Garo Hills, the rather typical story of logging in “community forests” is that an outside merchant (from Assam, West Bengal, or some more distant place) with the help of a local contractor approaches a headman (the nokma) or influential clan members, and, often for a rather nominal fee, manages to secure the right to cut all the trees in a particular area (this could be in terms of a longterm lease agreement). The local timber contractor would then hire local laborers, or bring his own gangs, to cut the trees and would also arrange for transportation down to the plains, where the outside merchant takes over. Sometimes the timber would be converted into planks; otherwise it would be sent out as round timber. The outside merchant, through his knowledge of and access to the national timber market, naturally has an advantaged position in determining the price of the logs, and it is also there that the largest profits end up. I once asked a local timber merchant why he did not try to take the timber to Delhi himself. He laughed at this, saying, “What to do, we have to sell it here for whatever price we

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get. The bigger contractors control everything, they extort and cheat, they are not like us.”50 The extraction of timber took place without any regulations, and getting the logs out was apparently not much of a problem. For instance, a former sawmill owner told me that one of his friends in the timber trade had his own copies of transit permits and could issue passes for whatever amount was needed. For others, as discussed earlier, it was just a question of bribing the people in charge of the check gates. The District Council, although equipped with a detailed Forest Act, was basically interested in getting as much revenue as possible. As a major timber merchant told me, there are set rates on the royalty, but in most cases he just reached a mutual understanding with the concerned persons in the District Council. They “negotiated the price,” as he put it.51 The very functioning of the District Council administration was in fact dependent to a large extent on the income from timber. After the ban, this source of revenue dried up and the finances are today in a severe crisis.52 The forest management of the District Council is basically non-existent at present. As the forest officers in charge told me, they did not even have the money to buy petrol for their vehicles and they cannot be expected to keep watch on the huge forest areas under their jurisdiction by traveling on public buses or going by foot. Thus they remained in the office in Tura. In their view, the District Council lacked actual authority to impose anything on the people who owned the land. Though this is not technically correct—the existing District Council Acts give far-reaching powers to regulate the forest operations on private/community lands53—in practical terms, the landowners apparently did what they wanted with their forests.54 It could be said, to put it briefly, that the situation has been similar in other parts of Meghalaya. To cite Sanat Chakraborty’s study again, “A sort of laisser-faire principles govern the land and forest management in large parts of the Khasi hills, with both the state forest department and the autonomous district councils failing to enforce any forest laws citing legal, financial and managerial problems” (2000: 6). As it appeared, someone else had to intervene.

Imposing Protection from Above With the Supreme Court Order a new regime of forest protection was put in place. It all happened from one day to next. And the “suddenness” of the intervention is one of the things that many of the people I have spoken to describe as one of the main problems. A member of the District Council described it as a “surprise visit.” “The timber ban came out of the blue,” as one sawmill owner told me. He said he was in favor of regulating the timber industry and agreed that the forest needed

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further protection, but this was not the way. Besides the problem of no prior consultations or information, he was very critical of the complete inactivity on the part of the Meghalaya government. According to him, the government had not tried to make use of the openings in the Supreme Court Order to allow certain approved felling. Everything had come to a standstill, and valuable, already felled trees were rotting in the forests and in the timber yards.55 Other critics of the ban note the lack of compensatory schemes or programs, arguing that there should have been economic plans to provide alternative incomes for those who were dependent on timber for their very survival. And in addition, people raised the issue of self-determination, the supposedly constitutionally guaranteed right of the hill people to govern themselves (under the Sixth Schedule), asking whether the Sixth Schedule no longer had legality. In the case of the Garo Hills, it has been suggested that the militancy that re-emerged in the late 1990s was partly a reaction to the imposition of the ban.56 Regardless of whether or not such a link can be established, it is clear that the organizations working for increased autonomy have a case to argue that present arrangements allow “the Center” too much power or control over their lives (see, e.g., the earlier arguments by Tiplut Nongbri). International experiences relating to logging bans show that they are a blunt instrument that becomes effective only under certain circumstances. A recent FAO study on logging bans in the Asian-Pacific region during the last ten years states that one of the main problems with these types of top-down policies is the hastiness of their implementation, which “often contributed to confusion, conflict, and adverse impacts on local communities” (Brown et al. 2001: part II, 2). In some cases, the ban can even exacerbate the pressure on the forest. As it is put in the report: “If policies fail to provide viable alternative livelihoods or if they create economic disincentives to community—or private sector—participation in conservation and protection activities, then abuses and illegal forest activities will persist” (ibid.: 3). And, as a consequence, this also causes “resentment of government policy” (ibid.: 5). A successful implementation, on the other hand, would require popular participation and that the costs of forest conservation be “equitably born by all segments of society” (ibid.). Without elaborating this any further, I think it is obvious to anyone that the timber ban in Northeast India lacks most of the desirable preconditions for successful implementation. The immediate effect of the ban was a collapse of the timber industry. Export was stopped and large numbers of sawmills were closed. This ought to have had positive effects on the level of deforestation. The immediate and short-term effects on the logging volumes are important, of course, but more important are the larger political and ecological implications of the ban.

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It is perhaps too early to evaluate the consequences of the ban, but some tendencies can be noted. First of all, the authorities have failed considerably in curbing illegal logging, which apparently takes place all around the state. For example, the forest close to the Bangladesh border is reported to be subject to ongoing large-scale illegal timber operations. Trees are being cut and transported along waterways across the border.57 But more accessible forests are being logged as well. The local newspaper, the Shillong Times, reported a stunning case in 2004 in which thousands of pine trees were being cut along the Shillong–Jowai highway, a road that a large number of people travel daily. A bus passenger told the newspaper: “If trees can be cut mercilessly right on the roadsides, nobody can imagine the destruction that has already taken place in the interior parts of the forests.” He also added that the Forest Department seems to be indifferent to these illegal acts.58 In a letter to the editor, an upset person from Jowai similarly pointed to the slackness of the forest authorities in enforcing the ban; timber was stacked along the highway and sawmills were in full swing again. The responsible officers should be “brought to book,” he argued.59 During my own travels in the state, I have similarly come across felling and transport of timber, as well as sawmills in operation on the roadside. This obviously testifies to a lack of effectiveness or dedication in enforcing the new rules under the Supreme Court, which naturally undermines public confidence in the government. The Garo Hills appeared in the media again, in 2006/7, because of reports of large-scale illegal felling in the reserved forests. Lack of staff and proper equipment in the Forest Department was stated by the government as the major reason for the failure in protecting the forest. The Chief Secretary of the Government, Mr. Tiwari, also claimed that the militancy factor had contributed to the problem, preventing the forest guard from patrolling interior areas of the forest.60 In their absence, other actors feel obliged to step in. For example, the rebel group Liberation of Achik Elite Force (LAEF) has made a case of saving the remaining forest. In a spectacular action, it kidnapped two timber smugglers involved in illegal operations in reserved forests in the East Garo Hills. The LAEF spokesperson told the media that it would give a “stern” punishment to the timber smugglers, sending a strong message to others “involved in stripping our motherland’s natural resources.” The organization reprimanded the Forest Department, claiming that forest officers were either involved in the racket or turning a blind eye to what was going on. The Garo Student’s Union has also reacted to the slackness in forest protection and threatened to file a legal complaint against the government for violation of the Supreme Court Order.61 What seems to be missing is a joint strategy, with the different branches of the state working in tandem to implement the ban. The Forest Department drive to close illegal sawmills in 2004 is a telling example.

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After about sixty mills had been closed, protesting sawmill owners and laborers apparently gave the government cold feet. The Meghalaya minister in charge of forests joined in the criticism of the Forest Department’s action, also claiming that he had not been informed about it. This is quite remarkable, considering that he has the ultimate responsibility for forest matters in the state. One would assume that he is aware that sawmills require clearance from the High Power Committee to operate, and he himself is responsible for enforcing these rulings; to do otherwise is to defy the Supreme Court, a criminal offence. But the government was obviously under pressure from powerful vested interests. A high-ranking senior officer in the Forest Department told me six months later that the government, even the Chief Minister himself, had done their utmost to make the department halt its campaign to close illegal sawmills. Forest staff had also faced threats to life during the operation. Because of this the department felt compelled to cancel further closures.62 The Meghalaya government further, along with the three district councils and the sawmill lobby under the Meghalaya Land and Forest Owners’ Association, submitted a joint petition urging the Supreme Court to relax its ruling. Interestingly, a few months later the state government, apparently realizing that it was playing a risky game, announced that it was determined to strictly implement the ban on sawmills functioning without proper license.63 Hardly a convincing change of mind, it seems. To issue a statement in 2004 that one was going to implement a Supreme Court order that has been in place since 1996 (or 1998) speaks instead of an astounding indifference on the part of the government. On a more general level, it also confirms the ineffectiveness, already alluded to, of a top-down approach to safeguarding the environment. When sanctions are imposed from outside without public mobilization and the necessary backing of the different agencies of the state that is supposed to implement them, the intervention is bound to fail.64 Another often discussed problem with the Supreme Court intervention is its many inconsistencies. A question that came up several times in my interviews is why production of charcoal has been allowed to continue without restrictions: “Does it matter whether a tree is felled for timber or for charcoal?” Charcoal production, it has been suggested, can even be more environmentally harmful, as it can use the tiniest trees. The timber contractor and president of the influential lobby group the Meghalaya Land and Forest Owners’ Association, Mr. Kawang K. Panbuh, stressed this point when we met. As he told it, they only take trees with a girth of at least three to four feet, “whereas the charcoal people take anything.”65 During a tour in the West Khasi Hills, I happened upon a place where extensive charcoal production was going on. I saw several pits were the wood had been burned, some of them still smoking, and all the trees around had been cut.66 This was an area that seemed

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Plate 7  Planks loaded into a taxi

to have been stocked mainly with minor trees, and judging from the size of the stumps most of the trees had hardly been above ten centimeters in circumference, that is to say, mere sticks. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Vinod K. Nautiyal (who succeeded Balvinder Singh in the post), told me that the Forest Department was very concerned about this problem and was working on new rules to restrict the making of charcoal. As I understood it, however, this was a delicate matter. Charcoal, unlike timber, was mainly for use within the state, and Meghalaya, he said, was even importing charcoal. Paradoxically enough, the largest consumer of charcoal was a private company located in the Byrnihat industrial estate, operating with a subsidy from the Meghalaya government. In view of the difficulties the Forest Department already has in enforcing the ban on timber, it appeared that the Principal Chief Conservator was not expecting any move on charcoal in the near future. As he told me in 2006, the department had now started to issue felling permissions in areas under approved working schemes. I asked whether this was motivated by the recovery of the forest. “Not really,” he said, “but we have to give some outlet to people, otherwise they just turn to illegal fellings.”67 I have met Mr. Nautiyal three times and although he supports the Supreme Court intervention, each time we have met he has brought up new problems with it. He mentioned, for instance, that he had taken part in the initial discussions in 1996 and had already understood then that this would come as a real “bomb.” The Supreme Court, he said,

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had acted without proper knowledge of the complex situation in the Northeast. As he put it, the Northeast had in fact just appeared as a footnote in the initial case pertaining to Tamil Nadu but had been included in the Order because of pressures from environmental organizations. At the time the Order was to be implemented there were still major uncertainties pertaining to its interpretation. There had not been enough time to sort things out, he said. The definition of forest according to its dictionary meaning was one such problem. He said that he had tried in vain to argue against this definition, saying, “What is forest in Rajasthan is not forest here in Meghalaya.” Also that it was too inclusive. “Even your backyard becomes a forest; the Governor’s garden could also pass as a forest,” as he put it with a smile.68 But once the Order is given, you have to accept it; to criticize or oppose such a ruling would be “discontent against the Court, which is punishable.” As he told it, the Forest Department was still struggling with some of the legal complexities in the Order, and this made it difficult for them “to pursue their mission with full force.” The major problem relates to the forest under the district councils: “Is it really the government’s job to enforce the Supreme Court Order there—we are seeking judicial clearance on this.” He then mentioned the Forest Department’s earlier problems in trying to close illegal sawmills, saying that this should actually be the responsibility of the district councils, but because they did nothing the Forest Department had to act. And as before, when it did so, it had to face fierce opposition, above all from the Meghalaya Land and Forest Owners’ Association.69

Owning the Forest Throughout my research the Meghalaya Land and Forest Owners’ Association has appeared as the most vocal opponent of the Supreme Court ban, organizing large protest meetings, issuing demands, and filing petitions against it. For example, in a 1999 letter to the Minister of Environment and Forests (Government of Meghalaya), the organization states that the government has failed to protect the “fundamental right of our people” and goes on to argue that “even our Private property is now at the mercy of the Government—Forest Department.” The letter further states that jhuming and charcoal production are a much larger environmental problem than logging is, and that the forest owners select only mature trees and are very active in afforestation.70 When I met the president of the organization in 2005, he also told me that the Supreme Court had exaggerated the destruction of forest in Meghalaya. As an example of this, Mr. Panbuh said that the Court had referred to the denudation of Cherrapunjee—as an instance proving that widespread deforestation was going on—but according to him, “There have never been any trees there.” Cherrapunjee is an interesting case which I will come back to

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presently, but for the moment let us note the very existence of “land and forest owners” as a distinct interest group, a group concerned about its private property rights and asserting itself as prudent resource managers. What this narrative reveals is a situation radically different from the popular perception of community ownership and management of land and natural resources in the northeastern hills. This brings me back to my previous critique of A.C. Sinha’s argument that the alarming deforestation in Northeast India proves the failure of communities as resource managers. I have suggested that, on the contrary, communities cannot be held directly responsible because they lack effective control over the forest due to the increased privatization of that forest. Those who have been able to claim ownership or in other ways assert control over village land have exercised the right to sell or exploit whatever natural resources are available. It could be said that the forces of extractive capitalism have operated almost without any restrictions. This speaks to a general failure of governance, the responsibility for which rests mainly with the state government and the district councils. Neither of these formal structures of governance has proven capable of or interested in sustainable management of the forest. The reason for this is obviously the large profits that are involved in logging. The political elite is itself part of the powerful landed class that has enriched itself through the timber business. And apparently, the primary interest of these resourceful groups is to allow sawmills and timber export to continue unregulated. While the Supreme Court intervention has reduced the scale of the timber operations, whether this has had any larger positive impact on the environment is more questionable. There are few signs of increased environmental awareness among people in decision-making positions or within the state bureaucracy more generally. The Court’s decisions also reveal a lack of trust in the capacity of the state administration, particularly as it established a new institutional mechanism, the High Power Committee, to oversee the implementation of the new regulations. This three-person committee was given certain operative functions as well, for example, the responsibility for licenses for sawmills, veneer mills, and other wood-based industries (a function previously under the jurisdiction of the district councils). The Court also made the central government’s Ministry of Environment and Forests the final authority for approving the new type of working schemes required for any future felling of trees. In this way, the Supreme Court, as it explicitly stated its intention to be, has raised the final authority over the forest to administrative bodies outside the state. This is yet another example of how the Northeast is governed through a parallel structure of administration, one that is under the direct control of New Delhi, superseding the powers of the democratically elected state governments. This is problematic, even if

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the locally elected bodies have failed fatally in exercising responsible environmental governance. Protection of the forest has support from various groups in the state, but even so, most people view the “ban” as an unjustifiable imposition on local self-determination. And because of the many problems with the ban, it is not unlikely that the long-term legacy will be a general distrust or resentment of environmental regulation in any form. But what, then, should be done? The most likely answer would be what most international institutions and experts engaged in forest and nature conservation have been advocating for the last decade or so: turn to the community. Mobilizing and empowering people at the local level, utilizing the existing institutions of natural resource management as well as the traditional environmental knowledge within these communities; this is the recommended way ahead in maintaining the forest and building a greener future. Though there are critics, most development initiatives with a focus on livelihood would still adhere to such a framework, or would at least state this as official policy (see Mosse 2005; West 2006). In the World Bank/DONER study discussed in chapter 1, the special report on the forest in Northeast India also proposes this. The forest report is written by Mark Poffenberger of Community Forestry International along with a group of prominent scholars and senior government officials, forming what is known as the Community Forestry Working Group for Northeast India. The working group notes in its report the failure of previous government actions, including the Supreme Court intervention, to safeguard the forest, arguing that these not only “have placed major impediments to livelihood generation” but also “have had a perverse impact creating disincentives for sustainable forest management” (Poffenberger et al. 2006: 70). The question of the working group is not if but how communities should be empowered as resource managers. External support is required, it is argued, and in its concluding recommendations the working group suggests that capacity building and technical assistance (in resource mapping, planning, and monitoring) are critical to strengthen the “indigenous community institutions” (ibid.: 68–72). Except for the ongoing IFAD livelihood project and initiatives by some smaller NGOs, such support is absent so far in the Northeast, according to the working group. To get an idea what this kind of support might imply, let us look at some of the few cases where these ideas have been put into practice. I will start with the attempt to revive the sacred forest of Meghalaya, which Poffenberger’s organization, Community Forestry International (CFI), has taken a particular interest in. Sacred forests or sacred groves have gained a reputation in India and beyond for being a “unique and invaluable traditional conservation institution,” and a great deal of attention has been directed towards using these practices more generally

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to involve communities in forest and biodiversity preservation (Garcia and Pascal 2006: 199). CFI has chosen two project sites in Meghalaya, one where the sacred forest has been abandoned and is highly degraded and another which has been well maintained by the community. The latter is the iconic Mawphlang sacred grove. As the organization mentions on its website, it has trained community facilitators who have taken the leading role in mobilizing the community. This is described as a “success story.” In Mawphlang a special community committee has been set up with responsibility for the management of forests. Rules regarding the sacred grove have been formalized, and a larger network for the surrounding villages has been established with the goal of reviving and protecting other sacred forests in the area. These experiences are recorded in a film by the organization (see chapter 1). CFI further says that it has also assisted the community in applying for state development funds, which has resulted in funding for a tree-planting project under Joint Forest Management scheme of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and for an ecodevelopment project from the North Eastern Council, the latter alone being a US$34,000 project.71 I will come back to this presently, but let me first provide some context for the sacred forest phenomenon.

Re-enchanting the Forest During my stays in Shillong, whenever I told someone that I am interested in forest issues a common response was to ask if I had visited the Mawphlang sacred grove. The grove has grown in fame during the last decade and has become a major tourist attraction as well as a source of pride for the educated Khasi middle class. A replica of the grove has even been made at the National Museum of Mankind in Bhopal, in central India.72 Mawphlang is especially famous for the large number of plants and trees—several of which are rare or extinct elsewhere—that can be found in the grove. For instance, the grove is said to harbor as many as four hundred different kinds of trees. This is especially remarkable considering that the size of the grove is (only) about seventy-five hectares—though, for a sacred grove, this is a most impressive size.73 The biodiversity richness in sacred forests is commonly attributed to centuries of strict community protection through their sacrosanct status. It is said that according to folk belief if someone just cut a branch, plucked a flower, or in any way disturbed the grove, the person would fall ill or even die. Like many of the other sacred groves in Meghalaya, the Mawphlang sacred forest is largely surrounded by grasslands and the boundary is clearly marked through the decisive rupture in the vegetation. Hence one gets the impression that had the forest not been under this special sacred status it would quite likely long since have

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been turned into a similar type of barren grassland. I have visited the grove several times, with different people and for different reasons, and each occasion has reminded me about the extraordinary (albeit varied) significance people attribute to it. It has become, one could say, an environmental icon.74 I was once in Mawphlang with two local geographers from NEHU (North-Eastern Hill University, based in Shillong) who had been given permission to conduct a limited botanical inventory/survey. With the help of a GPS they made a transect through the grove, counting all the species within the designated 5x5-meter plots they made along this line. As we carried out the work, they kept coming back to the question of whether the large pine trees we found scattered here and there actually belonged to the indigenous vegetation of the grove or were to be regarded as an invasive species. I could not make out why this kept bothering them, as it seemed to have nothing to do with their study. When I thought about this later, it struck me that the question was entangled with concerns of the Khasi nation. It is commonly stated in the literature on sacred forests that these are remnants of the original or primeval forest of that particular region, a kind of replica of the type of vegetation that existed in earlier days. NEHU professors Tiwari, Barik, and Tripathi, for example, in their survey of the sacred forests in Meghalaya write that the sacred forest “represents the remnants of climax vegetation of the area” (1999: 14). Some scholars have started to question this, but the climax vegetation idea still seems to stick.75 Based on this, the Mawphlang sacred grove would thus reveal the indigenous nature of the Khasi people. This, I believe, was the reason why the stray pine trees were of such importance to my geographer friends, who are also heavily engaged in cultural matters.76 Pine trees dominate the present landscape around Shillong and in other parts of the upper hills, but the tree seems still to have a somewhat disputed place in the national order of nature. The success of the pine seems to be at the expense of other, culturally more significant, species; not least the oak, which is the most important tree in Khasi rituals and mythology. The colonial ethnographer P.R.T. Gurdon notes in the early twentieth century that the numerous sacred forests in the Khasi Hills were predominantly stocked by oak and rhododendron trees (Gurdon 1906: 7–8). Pine, in other words, could be deemed an invasive species, a newcomer in this sacred domain. Be that as it may, the story nevertheless points to the power of the Mawphlang sacred groves as an imaginary realm. The unique nature of the grove is emphasized and evoked through expressions like “a living botanical museum,” “a biodiversity hotspot,” “a gene bank,” “a natural university,” and “an ecotourist site.” Still, the magic spell of the place cannot be explained by the natural properties of the grove alone. It was my wife who led me to think of this. We had been out with some friends

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walking through the forest for about half an hour and when we reached a height on the other side of the grove, from which the entire forest could be viewed, Louise, my wife, turned to me with a confused look on her face and asked, “Is this it?” After hearing so much about Mawphlang, she had expected something more magnificent. Her “much ado about nothing” reaction related above all to the size, hardly a forest for a Swede used to vast forest tracts. The qualitative aspects, for example, the biodiversity richness, escaped her as I guess it would for many other non-specialist visitors. For me, her response opened the question of why indeed sacred groves have become such wonders of nature. The answer to this, I believe, is intimately linked to the idea mentioned earlier that sacred forests can teach us how to preserve biodiversity, that they have been rendered a unique conservation institution.77 As Garcia and Pascal note (2006: 199), the well-known ecologist Madhav Gadgil was among the first in India to make this point in the 1970s. And arguably, the reason this idea has gained so many followers since then is that it signals a complete break with the earlier type of externally imposed conservation. The latter has a colonial ring to it associated with cohesion and an anti-people stand, “a punitive guns-and-guards approach” (Guha 2003: 151). Such a type of conservation is commonly also identified as a Western export, not suited for countries like India, or in the global South in general, where large populations are dependant on the local environment for their subsistence. During the 1990s a new global consensus emerged regarding the necessity of a “people-oriented conservation,” i.e., that conservation measures need to build on cooperation with the local communities, taking their livelihood needs into consideration.78 The form of conservation relating to sacred groves is an ultimate exemplar here, as it is rooted in native idioms and practices that are sanctioned and perpetuated by the community itself. The advantage of applying this “model” more generally in biodiversity conservation is obvious, not least as it provides external actors with an entry that cannot easily be deemed an imposition. And indeed, what can be wrong in supporting people’s efforts to preserve the nature they hold as sacred? Meghalaya is often mentioned as one of the Indian states with a rich sacred forest tradition.79 The NEHU ecologists Tiwari et al. identified, in their survey, seventy-nine sacred forests in the state. The size and status of these varied significantly. The smallest grove had only four or five trees, whereas the largest was a vast forest area of nine hundred hectares (1999: 24). To evaluate the status of the groves, they relied as usual on canopy cover estimates. Of the total area of the sacred groves, a little more than 1 per cent was classified as “undisturbed” (with 100 per cent canopy cover), 42.1 per cent was “dense” (more than 40 per cent canopy cover), 26.3 per cent “sparse” (10 to 40 per cent canopy cover), and just over 30 per cent was “open” (less than 10 per cent canopy cover) (ibid.:

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84–85).80 I have already noted the difficulties with such figures, but these indicate at least, as the researchers also conclude, that many of the groves are seriously degraded or under heavy pressure. And this, they argue, is because the religious beliefs associated with the groves had become eroded after people became Christians. As I have mentioned, this is also what several people told me as the reason the Shillong Peak sacred forest had been cut. Mawphlang, however, was said to be one of the few sacred forests still “preserved according to traditional beliefs, customs and religious rituals” (ibid.: 64). But considering the general situation, the researchers argue that an “urgent external intervention is inevitable if such precious treasure houses of plants and animals are to be preserved for the future” (ibid.: 88). As far as I know, the first initiative to revive sacred forests was by Desmond L. Kharmawphlang, a well-known Khasi poet and folklorist, who along with a German sculptor, Thomas Kaiser, managed to convince people in Raid Thaiang, a village area under Khyrim Syiemship, to embark on such an endeavor in the mid 1990s. The mission was to revive a sacred grove known as the Law Nongbah that had been denuded by loggers some twenty-five years earlier. The revival was marked by

Plate 8  Mawphlang sacred forest; photo by Emanuel Åström

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Plate 9  Inside the sacred grove; photo by Emanuel Åström

elaborate rituals with dances, sacrifices, erections of monoliths. But as journalists from the Shillong-based magazine Grassroots Options found out revisiting the place five years later, there had been little follow-up work and the saplings planted had not managed to survive, as nobody had cleared the place of weeds and creepers. Also, the related project funds for village development that had been raised through Action Aid had evaporated without any visible traces.81 Other organizations have since taken up the mission to save and revive sacred forests, the US-based Community Forestry International (CFI) being one. When I met Tambor Lyngdoh, in February 2005, he was very excited about everything that was happening with the Mawphlang sacred grove. Tambor is the secretary of the traditional political body of the Hima Mawphlang and is also president of the newly established community forest network in Meghalaya. He is still a young man, in his late thirties. Tambor is one of CFI’s “community facilitators”; he works with

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the special community committee responsible for managing the forest in conjunction with the CFI project, and his enthusiasm for the task is compelling. He mentioned that Rahul Gandhi, son of the late Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi, had visited the sacred grove some weeks earlier and had been lyrical about it. Other prominent guests had also been there; the Governor, for example, had visited the grove three times. Earlier, people could enter the grove by themselves, but now, Tambor said, “We go along with them and tell stories.” And through these stories he and the other village guides explain the importance of preserving nature. During earlier visits, I had also seen a lot of school classes being guided through the grove. As Mawphlang has started to attract outside interest, various agencies have also started to approach the village, not least to offer development assistance. As Tambor said with a smile, “It is not possible to count all the development projects we are getting.” To manage all these schemes, he said, it was critical to begin with “capacity building.” This was also something CFI insisted on. As he explained further, the Mawphlang sacred forest will become the nodal point for the revival of sacred forests in the entire Khasi Hills. He also felt there was strong support from the local villagers, and people were keen not only on preserving the existing grove but also on expanding the area under forest cover, something they hoped to do year by year. I suppose no one could have anticipated, some twenty years back, say, that the old sacred grove would evolve into a major attraction and a driver of development. As Tambor himself pointed out, one reason Mawphlang has received so much attention compared to other groves is its proximity to Shillong, allowing people to come out for a couple of hours and then return the same day. The fields around the grove have become a popular picnic spot on weekends. This has become something of a headache, in fact, as many of the visitors do not respect the place; they play loud music, get drunk, litter, and even light fires on the fringe of the grove. Tambor said that the village committee was considering taking a small entrance fee, which would enable them to employ some of the village youths as caretakers. A year later, in April 2006, I met Tambor again. As before, I was there with my close friend Banlum Blah, who belongs to the founding clan of the Hima Mawphlang. It was late evening and Tambor was busy preparing an application for a one-year Ford Foundation fellowship that would allow him to work full time with the forest projects. As it was now, he had a hard time managing things on the side of his full-time job as a clerk in a government office and his evening work as a teacher. For this application alone, he had already traveled to Shillong a couple of times. This was taxing on his money and time. And on top of everything, the computer was freezing and he could not save the project document he had been working on. The application was already late and he had to

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get it onto a disc to get it printed in town. He was about to give it all up, saying that his chances of getting the fellowship were rather slim anyway. As he told it, this was his everyday life now: applications, reports, budgets, meetings, an ever-increasing workload generated by the various projects the village was involved in. Perhaps it was because he had had an exceptionally bad day, but Tambor’s enthusiasm was all gone. Things had not turned out as he had anticipated and various problems had emerged. The money allotted to the village under the Joint Forest Management scheme was kept by the Forest Department and had so far only gone into building a greenhouse at the range office. He had not received any proper accounting for how the money had been used but was just being told that it was all in order. The money earmarked for individual loans to the villagers had not been released yet. A conflict had emerged relating to registration of land. According to the Forest Department, the land that the village had allotted for afforestation under the JFM project had to be registered with the District Council. The villagers objected to this, arguing that if they registered the land (as being under forest plantations) special working schemes would be required and they would need department permission even to cut bamboo there. A similar problem had also emerged with regard to CFI. Mark Poffenberger had affirmed that CFI would be able to support them in various ways, but before any development schemes could take off the villagers needed to map the land (classify the type and size of different landholdings, list different landowners, etc). This was again unacceptable to people as they feared that such information could end up in the wrong hands, i.e., be misused. As Tambor put it, the villagers felt uncertain about the ultimate motive of the land mapping, whose interests it really served. This, I gathered, had caused a rift and the project had come to a standstill. I enquired about the film I had heard that CFI had recently made about Mawphlang. Yes, the film was ready now and he had copies of it. But the film had also become a source of disappointment. There were a few mistakes in the film, names and some other facts that had been mixed up, but what seemed to bother him most was that he felt the village people had been sidestepped in the process. He said that a number of people who knew nothing about Mawphlang had suddenly appeared as the experts, some of whom had never even set foot there. If this had happened only once it might not been such an issue, but since the villagers had had similar experiences before, this made them start feeling exploited. It was their place, they were asked to do the groundwork, but the credit and expertise were allocated to others. As an example, he mentioned that he had earlier organized village youths to collect specimens for a herbarium. This was a project under the Northeast Network, a women’s organization funded from abroad. The youths had been paid a couple of thousand rupees for their work. But

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even so, the project became a setback as their involvement was not duly acknowledged in the final publication. After our conversation, we sat down to watch the CFI film. Banlum and Tambor knew most of the people who appeared, I had also met many of those who were being interviewed, and we enjoyed seeing the film. Tambor’s good mood returned somewhat and before we left he gave me a copy of the film, Sacred Forests of Meghalaya: Wisdom from the Mother’s Hearth. He seemed happy with it after all. In the car going back to Shillong, I kept thinking about the film. The message was that forests were being revived through the revival of culture. The Khasis were again starting to attend to the wisdom of their ancestors, the wisdom that once rendered nature sacred. Indeed a promising message, but I could not escape the disturbing inkling that even if the film is staged among the Khasis it is not primarily about them. Instead, it is a film about a successful development intervention, CFI in action in the field. As it appeared to me, it is CFI’s expert knowledge of popular mobilization for resource conservation that is being celebrated. Outside agencies like Community Forestry International can certainly provide critical input. But such interventions always come with a context that needs to be spelled out. I will say more about this in the concluding chapter, where I will discuss the respective actors that partake in the politics of nature in the state. At this point, however, I would like simply to note a few obvious features of the development encounter. To empower communities through external intervention is a complicated business that seldom works the prescribed way. The receiver is put in a subordinated position and has to submit to preconceived objectives and conditions in order to get access to development funds. A situation of dependency is thus established that undermines the sovereignty of the local community. The case with the Mawphlang villagers’ objection to the registration of the land under the JFM scheme or to the CFI land-mapping exercise attests to this. Because they failed to comply with the preset project outlines, funds were being withheld (at least temporarily). But why did the villagers resist? This is a complex question, but I think that Tambor’s explanations point in the right direction. Control of land is an extremely sensitive issue in the region, and, as I will discuss in chapter 3, it concerns both external issues relating to ethnic self-determination and internal ones having to do with the increasing privatization of land that has created a large class of landless people as well as a landed elite in possession of huge estates. Planting trees and thus turning land into forests implies, under the present Supreme Court rulings, that the land is placed under state surveillance, something that obviously undermines local autonomy. Tree plantations could also turn communal lands in to private ones. Land and resource mapping is crucial for sustainable resource management, but one needs to be aware of the political implications.

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As we will see, powerful sections of the society prefer to keep land holdings away from public scrutiny. Even if the mapping is done on a local scale, there is an obvious risk that once such information has been collected and “inscribed” it can start to travel and eventually end up in the hands of a critical journalist, researcher, politician, activists, and above all state agencies that will use it to pursue their particular interests. In short, information that in the past was contained within the local community and was largely orally based will now become formalized and public. Sociologist Nancy Lee Peluso, in a discussion of (counter-)mapping projects in Kalimantan, Indonesia, that seek to establish property rights and official documents which indigenous communities can use in negotiations with the state, argues that although this might empower these people, there are also inherent risks involved. She writes: It remains true, however, that once rights to resources are territorialized and mapped or documented in ways recognizable by the state, the state gains a certain power over those resources and the people claiming them. The state becomes a recognized arbiter and mediator of both access and rights. Increased visibility to the state and its disciplining mechanisms carries its own risks, which mappers and their constituencies must remember. (Peluso 2003: 250) The moment of inscribing is itself highly contentious; conflicts might arise within the community over disputed or unsettled lands. But suffice to say, all these complications were apparently not considered by, or a matter of concern for, the external agencies mentioned above, with the consequence that their respective attempts to provide local livelihoods and green the state have been jeopardized. But let us leave Mawphlang and turn instead to another famous place in Meghalaya, Cherrapunjee. In addition to its status as the wettest place on earth—receiving an average annual rainfall of about twelve meters—Cherrapunjee has emerged as the paradigmatic case or an icon of ecological destruction, an illustration of what happens when a place is completely denuded of forests.

The Wet Desert What has aroused so much attention is the peculiar fate of Cherrapunjee, where, despite the excessive rains, people still face an acute shortage of drinking water for large parts of the year. As the common story goes, this is due to the heavy deforestation of the area.82 This is what Sinha alluded to above with “the wet desert of Cherrapunjee.” But again, are things as straightforward as projected in such accounts? Can we take it for granted that, as some have it, Cherrapunjee once upon a time was

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clad in dense tropical forests? If there was once forest, how and when was it lost? And finally, is it because of the loss of forest cover that people face water problems today? Questions like these keep coming back in debates about deforestation. Commonly, it is hard to reach any definite answers.83 But despite uncertainties, decisions are being made and policies are being framed on the basis of particular viewpoints. The president of the Meghalaya Land and Forest Owners’ Association, Mr. Panbuh, arguing that the Supreme Court had mistakenly based its intervention on the destruction of forest in Cherrapunjee, asserted that there never had been any trees there. I have not been able to confirm whether the Supreme Court used Cherrapunjee to legitimize the ban on timber, but the above-mentioned crisis scenario has at least become a widely acclaimed “public truth.” I have not conducted any in-depth research on or in Cherrapunjee, as I had initially intended, but let me nevertheless recall some of the facts presented by others. During his excursions in the Khasi Hills in the mid-nineteenth century, Joseph Dalton Hooker, a famous botanist and close friend of Charles Darwin, found the “Cherra plateau” almost completely barren, writing that “there is not a tree and scarcely a scrub to be seen” (1854: 277). A.J.M. Mills, an officiating judge sent on deputation to the Khasi Hills in 1853, makes similar a comment: “Cherra is one of the most barren spots I have ever seen” (1985[1853]: 2). These observations were made some twenty years after Cherra had been established as the colonial headquarters in the hills. The increase in population and demands for timber and firewood surely added to the pressure on the forest, but it certainly cannot explain how the largely barren landscape Hooker and Mills encountered had come about. Captain R.B. Pemberton writes that one of the reasons Cherra was chosen as headquarters was that an “abundant supply of material for building” such as “lime, timber, and sandstone” was available “in the range of hills which bounds the station on the west” (1979[1835): 249). In other words, forest resources were available but apparently not on the plateau itself. One possible explanation for the denudation of forests could be the iron-smelting industry. Considering that these parts of the hills had been a center of the industry, it seems plausible that Cherra plateau had also been affected by the rather largescale production in the past.84 Iron smelting requires large quantities of charcoal, and as the historian Amalendu Guha claims, iron smelting had been going on in the Khasi Hills from at least the thirteenth century (1991: 35).85 As mentioned in chapter 1, the iron production was reduced substantially in the latter part of the nineteenth century as cheap imports became available on the market. But if one is to believe P.R. Gurdon, colonial ethnographer and author of the influential monograph The Khasis, another contributing factor to the decline of the industry was the lack of trees available for charcoal (1906: 57–59).86

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A more common line of explanation for the barrenness of Cherrapunjee, however, would be to emphasize the negative role of intensive jhum cultivation. Shifting cultivation, in addition to other pressures, over-exploited the forest, causing soil erosion in the fragile hill environment exposed to torrential rains, which eventually created a largely barren landscape. And as coal extraction took off in a big way under the British, the spiral of environmental destruction was further intensified. This, at least, is what is being suggested by several scholars. For example, as explained in a report by an Indian-Polish team of geographers who recently completed a major research project on various aspects of the Cherrapunjee environment: Deforestation and shifting cultivation in the past are other specific features of the Cherrapunji spur which cause accelerated runoff resulting in soil degradation and transformation of former tropical forest into grassland (Ramakrishnan 2001). These grasslands suffer further due to overgrazing and practices of fire. However, degradation of the surface of the plateau is also due to over-exploitation of mineral resources, mainly coal and sandstone in the northern and central part and limestone in the south of the spur. (Starkel and Singh 2004: 91) The researchers refer to the renowned ecologist P.S. Ramakrishnan— who, along with colleagues and students, has been conducting research in the area since the 1970s—and as he describes in several of his publications, Cherrapunjee is “an extreme example of site desertification” (1992a: 386). The well-preserved Mawsmai sacred forest, he writes, is a “a sad reminder of what Cherrapunjee looked like in the past” (ibid.: 387). And he continues: The Cherrapunji ecosystem that now stands desertified due to deforestation inflicted sometime in the distant past … The fact that jhum around Cherrapunji is banned by the village council is suggestive of the part played by this land use in creating the present landscape. The sharp boundary between the sacred groves and the bald landscape indicates that the system will never recover through natural processes of revegetation. Artificially, the cost could be enormous. … Water is a scarce commodity in the dry months … All the water flows away into the plains down below, as here there is no vegetation to hold the water and the soil, and there is no soil to recover the forest. It is a vicious circle! (Ramakrishnan 1992a: 387) Even if Cherrapunjee is an extreme example, Ramakrishnan argues that a similar process of desertification has converted one-third of the Khasi–

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Jaintia Hills in to a “bald landscape” (1992b: 153). And again, he claims that the existing sacred forests give us a glimpse of the type of vegetation that was earlier predominant in these hills, i.e., a mixed broad-leaf type of forest (ibid.). It is beyond my capacity to evaluate the accuracy of the various parts of this explanation, but it appears at least that some of the assumptions could be questioned. For example, as noted earlier, the claim that sacred forests present a primeval “climax vegetation” is not undisputed. From the perspective of “non-equilibrium ecology” I suppose one could say that sacred forests as well as all other local ecosystems constantly interact with and adapt to new circumstances, and consequently change over time.87 Hence, the contemporary sacred forests might be something quite different from what existed some five hundred years back, for instance. But if we assume that the Cherrapunjee area at a certain point in time was covered with forests similar to today’s Mawsmai sacred forest, the question still remains what caused the massive denudation. Could jhum cultivation alone explain this or do we need to add some other major driver of deforestation (as I suggested with iron smelting)? Here again, it is also a question of placing such “disturbances” in time. It appears that most of the forest was already gone before the British established themselves at Cherrapunjee. As the Indian-Polish research team concludes: It is still an open question when this new ‘sterile’ system has come into being. Maybe, it is the effect of several centuries or only the last two centuries. (Starkel and Singh 2004: 95) One of the Polish researchers in the team also stated, in a conference, that their findings suggest that there has not been any significant change of the forest cover in the Cherrapunjee area during at least the last one hundred and fifty years.88 Another group of researchers suggests, in the same vein, that the depletion of forest happened long ago, quoting the eldest man in Cherrapunjee recalling that the forest situation has remained more or less the same during the last seventy to seventy-five years.89 But here, too, one can complicate the picture. A BBC reporter doing a story on the water problem in Cherrapunjee quotes a local environmentalist saying that there has been a rise in deforestation in the area since Meghalaya became a separate state, even arguing that tree felling was “still rampant” around Cherrapunjee.90 Although the plateau is largely barren there are some patches of forest, especially on the steep hill slopes and in the canyons, that might be under pressure. Even so, the scale must be rather nominal considering the obvious lack of forests. The above also has implications for arguments about the present water crisis. If the large-scale deforestation took place sometime in the pre-colonial era, it appears that one needs to add other explanations for

118   Unruly Hills

Plate 10  Cherrapunjee or Sohra town

the more recent water shortage. Could it be that the extensive mining of coal and limestone is the main reason for this? Or that the shortage in fact has to do with social factors like mismanagement, population increase, and changing ways of life? And as some commentators insist, regardless of the underlying causes, Cherrapunjee could have enough water for people to drink if proper forms of rain-water harvesting and storage had been put in place.91 This, then, would be a problem of governance rather than of the “sterile environment” in itself. To conclude this chapter, I would like to draw attention to the two opposing environmental scenarios evoked by the respective stories of the Cherrapunjee “wet desert” and the Mawphlang sacred forest. If the first is a kind of environmental dystopia, what happens when nature is abused, the latter evokes an image of a green past that can teach us how to build an equally green future. To avoid the “doom,” a blend of traditional environmental knowledge, community mobilization, and modern managerial skills is the suggested remedy. But what is commonly lost in such visions of an environmentally sustainable future based on community resource management is the ongoing capitalist restructuring of

Elusive Forests   119 

Plate 11  Waterfall in Cherrapunjee; photo by Louise Bermsjö

the hill societies that seems to push things in the opposite direction. In the next chapter I will focus on one aspect of this process, namely the privatization and commodification of land. Here again we are up against complexities arousing out of the blurred boundary between forest and farmland in systems of shifting cultivation.

120   Unruly Hills

Notes   1. The quotation is from a Supreme Court report entitled “Compliance Report on behalf of Union of India,” regarding Writ Petition (Civil) No. 202/95, dated 1 December 1997.   2. As the name indicates, Jagadish Singh is not a Garo; he came as a young man from the north Indian state of Haryana and married a local Garo woman. In the Garo matrilineal society, Rathan inherited his surname from his mother.   3. Sal timber was preferred in railway building and continues to be for other construction purposes as it is strong, elastic, and durable. See further Flint’s (1998) account of sal forests in India.   4. See Rangan Dutta’s ”Report on the One Man Commission of Enquiry On the Alleged Large Scale Felling of Trees in the Reserved Forests under Dainadubi Forest Range of East Garo Hills District, Meghalaya” (Shillong, 31 January 1997).   5. This is based on detailed ground verification: field teams counted and marked stumps in the two reserves (ibid: 107).   6. Ibid: 58–60.   7. A legal enquiry under Justice T.C. Das was established with the mandate to follow up on the findings of the Dutta Commission. I was informed in 2003 that this enquiry had not yet been completed. I suppose the work must be completed by now.   8. A’king land, briefly, is village land registered under a headman, earlier used for shifting cultivation and hence distributed annually to the villagers (see further chapter 3).   9. Regarding headmanship among the Garos, i.e., first and second nokma, see chapters 3 and 5. 10. These figures are based on a rough estimate and have not been verified on the ground by counting the stumps as was done in the areas inside the reserved forests (Dutta 1997: 108). 11. Delim maps were made for all the villages in the Garo Hills, establishing the borders of each A’king. Rivers and other features in the geography are the most common points of reference in the explanatory text that accompanies each map. These maps were created by the colonial administration as a means to end the great number of boundary conflicts. As I will discuss later, such conflicts are still very common, especially in situations when land compensation is to be settled. The original maps are kept by the District Council and copies at the Deputy Commissioner’s office. 12. Translated from Garo. 13. The advocate, Ms. Anuradha Paul, told me that the case had been handled in a most inappropriate way, and due to state interference in the legal process the rights of the villagers were being denied (personal communication, Shillong, 1 December 2003). 14. Dutta 1997: 78–79. 15. This and the other quotations in the paragraph are translated from Garo. 16. An article by a Kolkata-based journalist traveling to Meghalaya and getting completely carried away by the greenness of the place comes to mind. To quote one passage from his travel report, “Excursions in and around Shillong will treat you to a spectacular display of Nature’s bounties. After returning from such an exposure to Nature in full bloom, we are having a difficult time readjusting to the brick and concrete environment of Kolkata” (“Verdant Jewel of Meghalaya,” The Statesman, 27 January 2006).

Elusive Forests   121  17. See In Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan (Gold and Gujar 2002), a study based on individual memories of a changing landscape and especially the decline of trees. 18. See The Supreme Court of India, “Civil Original Jursidiction,” Writ Petition (Civil) No. 202 of 1995, dated 12 December 1996. 19. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, dictionary online www.oup.com/oald-bin (Oxford University Press 2005). 20. See also Roy Ellen’s article “What Black Elk left unsaid: On the illusory image of Green primitivism” (1986). I will discuss this further in chapter 5. 21. Such thinking also resonates with recent work in the field of “ecosystems ecology,” where ecosystems are understood as “complex adaptive systems” and where much of the earlier focus on “equilibrium systems” and “climax” vegetation is done away with (Abel and Stepp 2003). Nature, in such work, is thus understood as constantly evolving. This is also what is argued by scholars in “new ecology” or what also is known as “non-equilibrium ecology,” which I come back to at the close of this chapter. 22. The twentieth century, with its acceleration and intensification of the processes of industrialization, is an example of such a rupture, with global implications (see McNeill 2000). 23. For a recent comprehensive account of the Indian Joint Forest Management experience, see Sundar, Jeffrey and Thin (2001). As they point out, approximately ten million hectares of forest land are under joint management arrangements between the Forest Department and as many as 36,000 committees (ibid.: 1–2), numbers that indeed are impressive. 24. Regarding some of these difficulties see the Roy and Tomas (2001) study on landscape cover dynamics in Meghalaya using satellite imagery. 25. Personal communication, Professor P. S. Ramakrishnan, JNU, New Delhi, December 2002. 26. See FAO, The Global Forest Resource Assessment 2000: Summary Report, COFO2001/INF.5. 27. The Shillong Times, 21 and 22 January 2000. 28. Grassroots Options is a quarterly magazine based in Shillong that mainly covers environmental and developmental issues in the Northeast. 29. “Fighting for survival,” Grassroots Options, March/April 1999. 30. Nongbri develops her critique of the Supreme Court Order in the article “Timber Ban in North-East India: Effects on Livelihood and Gender,” Economic and Political Weekly, 26 May 2001. I will return to this in a later chapter. 31. The paper Nathan presented, “Timber in Meghalaya,” is also published in the Economic and Political Weekly, 22 January 2000. 32. See the Supreme Court of India, “Writ Petition (Civil) No. 202 of 1995, T.N. Godavarman Thirumulkpad versus Union of India.” 33. Some steps have been taken towards relaxing the ban. The Ministry of Environment and Forests, for example, approved a two-year felling plan for the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council allowing timber to be cut from October 2003. A maximum fixed volume was specified for each of the three Khasi districts (The Sentinel, 30 January 2002). 34. I have not read the actual PIL, but am referring here to information given in the “First Report of the High Power Committee for the North Eastern Region,” submitted 1 May 1997 (para. 22, p.14). I have also discussed the matter with the then KSU President Paul Lyngdoh.

122   Unruly Hills 35. State of Forest Report (1999), Forest Survey of India, Govt. of India, Dehradun. 36. Interview, Shillong, November 2002. 37. www.meghalaya.nic.in/natural-resources/forest.htm, accessed March 2006. 38. On the basis of district-by-district figures, the forest cover of the state would be higher than 38 per cent. 39. Somewhat confusingly, Sarma includes in the total forest cover figure 1.41 per cent “unclassified area,” defined in parenthesis as “fog, cloud, hill shadow covered area” (2003: 157). As I understand it, he is assuming that these areas have a forest cover. 40. Cited in Linda Chhakchhuak’s article “Mizoram’s soft, deadly hills,” Grassroots Option, Monsoon/Autumn 2002: 26. Daman Singh argues in her most interesting book The Last Frontier: People and Forest in Mizoram (1996) that the newly formed village councils in the state have proven to be a successful institution for managing forests. But she also points to a massive increase in the state’s revenue from timber and to large numbers of timber contractors making their way into the forest. The question that comes to mind is to what extent village forests have been drawn into the expanding timber business and the implications this might have. 41. “First Report of the High Power Committee for the North East Region,” 1997, page 21, para. 35, (unpublished report). 42. A syiem is a traditional chief or native ruler among the Khasi. The District Council is empowered to replace the elected syiem with an “acting” syiem (see further chapter 5). 43. With the Supreme Court ban there was, as Chakraborty explains, a sudden collapse of the timber-driven local economy, putting not only the timber traders and the day laborers out of business, but also all those who had made a living from various related services (tea stall wallahs, roadside garage owners, shop keepers, truckers, etc.) (2000: 18–26). 44. In a recent book about Himalayan environment and people, David Zurick and P.P. Karan depart from the discussion generated by Ives and Messerli’s controversial work (1999). They support Ives and Messerli’s critique of the single model to account for environmental changes in the region. The highly diverse environmental conditions make it impossible to claim a universal crisis. But things are far from comforting. As they put it: “The trend of habitat destruction, soil erosion, declining farmland production, and human poverty are so alarming and widespread” that the cumulative impacts “may well have global consequences” (1999: 295). In a particular place, it is crucial to note, one cannot take for granted that (say) deforestation necessarily results in a degraded, sterile environment. Peoples in the Himalayas, they argue, have always changed the landscape, and converted forests into fields, grazing lands, and homes. Recent changes in the landscape, however, are happening at a rate and with an intensity that far surpasses previous changes (ibid.: 8–9). 45. A good example of this is Vasant K. Saberwal’s recent article “Environmental Alarm and Institutionalized Conservation in Himachal Pradesh, 1865–1994,” where he goes so far as to claim that there is no scientific evidence to back up the “popular” idea that deforestation can lead to different types of environmental degradation (like water shortage, soil erosion or floods). The “alarmist degradation discourse,” he argues, is purely ideologically or politically motivated (2000: 69, 79). His claim that the Punjab Forest Department used conservationist arguments to gain control of forest areas at the expense of other state departments as well as local communities certainly seems reasonable, and this has also been

Elusive Forests   123  recorded in many other parts of India. But the fact that there are different interests and actors that benefit from establishing eco-catastrophe scenarios need not imply that all alarmist reports are just a matter of political myth-making. What he seems to forget in his eagerness to deconstruct or renounce environmental alarms is that there are powerful interests today that do everything they can to suppress such alarms. Just think of the Bush administration’s obstruction of the Kyoto Protocol. 46. See also the author Arundhati Roy’s devastating critique of the Supreme Court decision to allow the Sardar Sarovar project in the Narmada River to proceed, a project that will ruin the livelihoods of a large number of people as well as submerge large areas of forest. Roy’s critique also focuses on the way the Supreme Court has misused its valuable time on the ridiculous allegations that she has been guilty of expressing contempt of the Court (Roy 2001). 47. For a background to the autonomous district councils that were established under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, see Gassah (1998), Chaube (1973), and chapter 5 in this book. 48. See, e.g., two recent collections of articles by Jeffrey and Sundar (1999) and Agrawal and Sivaramakrishnan (2000). 49. “Second Report of the High Power Committee for the North Eastern Region,” 12 July 1997, page 21, para. 5.7 (unpublished report). 50. Interview in a village (lost the name), Garo Hills, 6 December 2003. 51. Interview in Mendipathar, Garo Hills, 5 December 2003. 52. This has been conveyed to me in interviews with several District Council officers. 53. See, e.g., the Garo Hills District Forest Act of 1958. 54. Interview with three forest officers at the Garo Autonomous District Council in Tura, October 2003. 55. Discussions in Tura, 3 December 2003. 56. The renowned social activist Walter Fernandez made this point at the seminar when the paper on which this chapter is based was presented. I have also touched upon this point in an earlier paper (see Karlsson 2005: 173–74). 57. See “Monsoon boon for timber smuggling across border,” The Shillong Times, 28 August 2006. 58. “SC ban on tree felling flouted,” The Shillong Times, 26 February 2004. 59. “Wanton felling of trees,” The Shillong Times, 12 February 2004. 60. “Forest staff lack equipment to check timber felling,” The Shillong Times, 20 February 2007. 61. “Militants all out against timber smuggling,” The Shillong Times, 19 February 2007. 62. Interview in Shillong, 16 February 2005. 63. I depend here on reporting in the local press, e.g., “State Government to file jt affidavit against timber felling ban,” “Local body reiterates stand on saw mill closure,” “Govt to implement SC ban on sawmills,” The Shillong Times, 18 May, 12 May, 16 September 2004. 64. Even if the student organisation KSU supported the ban initially, as far as I am aware they did not really pursue this issue afterwards. But the fact that they had made a point about it, gave at least some legitimacy to the Supreme Court intervention. 65. Interview in Shillong, 20 February 2005. 66. See further the interview with a former KSU leader now turned charcoal trader, in “Trees are our only livelihood,” Down to Earth, 31 December 2004. 67. Interview in Shillong, 12 April 2006.

124   Unruly Hills 68. Interview in Shillong, 21 November 2003. 69. Interview, Shillong, 18 February 2005. 70. Letter from Meghalaya Land and Forest Owners’ Association, West Khasi Hills District, Nongstoin, to The Minister of Environment and Forests, Meghalaya Government, dated 20 December 1999. 71. See the report “Community Forestry and Biodiversity: Conservation in Northeast India – 2005–06” and “The Strength of Traditional Institutions in CFM, Meghalaya, NE India,” Stories from the Field, www.communityforestryinternational.org (accessed March 2007). 72. The museum has assembled a large number of such replicas of sacred groves from various parts of India. 73. I refer here to information from the project report “Revival of Sacred Forest and Community Forestry – Through Mawphlang Lyngdohship Community Forestry Level Network,” A project of Community Forestry International, Inc., 2004. 74. See further Slater’s (2003) discussion on rain forest icons and the iconic shadows these presuppose. 75. See especially the recent critique by the ecologists Claude A. Garcia and J.-P. Pascal (2006). As they argue, there is little evidence in the literature that supports the paradigmatic claim that sacred groves are pristine or original forests, a kind of climax vegetation of an area. In their own work on the sacred groves in Karnataka, South India, they also find that the sacred forests there “are definitely not undisturbed patches of climax forests” (2006: 213). Garcia and Pascal further found that the sacred forests showed traces of various types of human activity, i.e., that the groves “are not a space left free of village life (ibid.: 217). In this way, they point to the many misconceptions relating to sacred forests, and as they argue, it is important to realize that these forests are as much “ecological objects as social constructions” (ibid.: 216). Other researchers have also elaborated on a similar kind of critique against many of the ideas surrounding sacred groves: see, e.g., J.R. Freeman’s historical and ethnographic work on sacred groves in Kerala (1999). 76. One of them has been involved in the movement to revive Khasi traditional institutions, which will be discussed in chapter 5. 77. This idea has almost reached the status of an axiom today. As an example of the kind of research that builds on it, see the recent article “Sacred Groves: Traditional Way of Conserving Plant Diversity in Garhwal Himalaya, Uttaranchal” (Anthwal, Sharma and Sharma 2006). 78. See, e.g., the different contributions in the volume Battles over Nature: Science and the Politics of Conservation, V. Saberwal and M. Ranagarajan, eds (2003). 79. See the special supplement on sacred forest in the magazine Down to Earth, available on www.cseindia.org/dte-supplement/forest20031231/what_sacred.html (accessed April 2006). 80. The canopy estimates were carried out in fifty-six of the seventy-nine sacred groves under study. 81. See the special report “Waiting for return of ‘Tiger Spirit,’” Grassroots Options, Winter–Spring 2002/3. 82. See, e.g., “Wettest land having water scarcity,” The Assam Tribune, 11 August 2004. 83. After my first visit to Meghalaya, a one-month reconnaissance tour, I presented my research plan at the South Asia seminar at the University of Chicago, where I was a visiting postdoctoral fellow. I used the example of Cherrapunjee to illustrate

Elusive Forests   125  the type of environmental destruction taking place in the state. Aware though I was of the critique against the often-assumed causal linkage of deforestation–soil erosion–drought/floods, I still tapped in to this mode of explaining the present situation, showing some photographs of the barren Cherra plateau to back up the story. But I did not convince everyone in the audience, and I was warned against jumping to hasty conclusions in tracking long-term environmental transformations. How, for instance, could I be sure that there had been forest on the plateau at a particular point in time, someone asked. This question has been with me ever since, and it has made me much more cautious in assuming particular landscape trajectories and especially in uncritically subscribing to the grand narrative of loss and environmental degradation. 84. The Khasi historian Hamlet Bareh (1997: 419) makes a similar point, arguing more generally that some hill areas on the upper plateau, once clad in dense forest, have been turned into grassland because of the pressure from iron smelting. (It is unclear to me what he bases this argument on, however). 85. Other parts of the world with large production of iron have faced severe denudation of forests; that was the case, e.g., with the iron-producing regions of central Europe in the seventeenth century (Moore 2007: 126–29). 86. The first forest report for the Province of Assam in 1875 also mentioned that iron production was going on, on a limited scale, in the western Khasi Hills and that the widespread use of charcoal in the industry had caused “denudation of the forest” in the area (Progress Report of Forest Administration in the Province of Assam, for the years 1874–75: 7). 87. For an introduction to “non-equilibrium ecology,” or the “new ecology,” and its relevance for political ecology, see Neumann (2005) and Forsyth (2003). The latter gives the following useful definition: “[N]on-equilibrium ecology may be defined as an approach to ecological explanations that emphasizes the variable, and often chaotic, nature of change within ecological systems, at a series of spatial and temporal scales. Such variability means that some commonly held notions of ecological stability, gradual evolution, or a ‘balance of nature’ are no longer tenable as accurate representations of environmental change and ecosystems” (Forsyth 2003: 64). 88. Presentation by the geographer Prokop Pawel at a workshop on mountain environments held at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, 14–15 November 2002. 89. “Development of an Integrated Watershed Management Plan for Treatment of Severely Eroded Watersheds in Cherrapunjee, Using GIS,” paper presented by A.K. Misra et al., at the 8th Annual Conference on Geomatics, New Delhi, 7–9 November 2005. 90. “World’s wettest area dries up,” BBC, 28 April 2003. The quoted environmentalist is Bah Mark West, convenor of the Cherrapunjee Soil Research Society. 91. Professor K.G. Saxena of JNU makes this point, arguing, however, that the problem is that people expect the government to do this for them. See “Water everywhere but none to drink,” Reuters News Service, 21 September 2004.

Chapter 3

Shifting Land Rights Question: What do the Hill Garos expect to get out of this case? Answer: They expect the reserved forests to be thrown open and impressed labour to be abolished. They want to cut trees and bamboos wherever they like … and also to jhum where they please, inside the reserves. They think that their own lands have been taken from them by Government and turned into forest reserves. (Arbuthnott Report 1908) In the quote above, the Garo leader Sonaram R. Sangma is being questioned in court about his role in instigating the Garos to oppose the colonial intrusion into their hills. Deemed a “professional agitator” and “a man of dangerous character,” Sangma had earlier been imprisoned and, at his release, forbidden to return to the Garo Hills. But since he had managed to gain extensive support and triggered discontent among the Garos, the colonial government found it necessary to send a special commission in 1906 to enquire into the alleged injustice done to the Garo tribesmen of these far-away hill tracts. The grievances voiced by the Garos related to three issues: the rights to disputed lands in the adjoining plain areas, the establishment of reserved forests, and the practice of begar—the imposition of forced labor .1 The commission of investigation was led by J.C. Arbuthnott, Commissioner of Surma Valley and Hill Districts, who subsequently presented his findings in a 150-page report containing detailed witness hearings, petitions, and documents relating to the issues at hand.2 The Arbuthnott Report is a most interesting colonial document that will serve as my key source in the opening section of this chapter, a chapter that will address various aspects of how rights in land are negotiated

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and established. Due to Sangma’s skillful legal activism, the Arbuthnott Commission was faced with the complex task of trying to establish a “record of rights” in these rather unexplored and lightly administered jungle tracts where people were living from shifting cultivation and thus not firmly fixed in one place. To complicate things further, the Garos were following a matrilineal principle of descent and inheritance (referred to in the report as a “matriarchal” principle). Is it the village headman, the nokma, who is the legitimate owner of land, or perhaps his wife or, again, her matrikin? Is collection of “land tax,” haul, to be taken as recognition of ownership rights? Can individuals hold land as private property at all in Garo society? Is jhum or shifting cultivation to be regarded as a right or merely a privilege? Such questions run through the Arbuthnott Report and, as we will see, some of them still remain disputed. For Arbuthnott, as I read it from his interrogations in the field, the issue of ownership was intimately related to the question of whether a person was entitled to sell and receive payment for land. But, as we will see, such transactions were rather hypothetical for most of the Garos he interviewed. European notions of proprietary rights certainly differed from those prevailing in Garo society at the time. Though, as is obvious from the claims raised by Sonaram R. Sangma himself, neither were such notions completely absent. Polanyi, as mentioned in chapter 1, points out that the commodification of nature and, in particular, the conversion of land into a commodity is a central feature of the Great Transformation to a capitalistic market society (2001[1944]). And what does indeed seem to have taken place during the last centuries is a transformation towards “a global system of property in land,” where a manifold of different customary land tenure systems are being replaced by or melded into a uniform modern property regime based on individual ownership (Richards 2002: 13–14). The modern state, as James C. Scott puts it, “presupposes a vastly simplified and uniform property regime that is legible and manipulable from the center” (1998: 35)—a means for the state to ensure effective administration and taxation. The historical solution, as Scott suggests, at least in the case of the liberal state, has typically been “individual freehold tenure,” where land is “owned by a legal individual who possesses wide powers of use, inheritance, or sale and whose ownership is represented by a uniform deed or title” (ibid.: 36). In India, as in many other parts of the world, state initiatives to bring about such a transformation have triggered popular opposition or resistance and indeed have unfolded in a much less straightforward manner than is often assumed.3 It is important to add that the transformation to a private property regime is far from complete, and that in most places one actually finds co-existing and competing notions of rights in land and nature (Tsing 2002). There are, as C.M. Hann points out, “powerful countercurrents” (1998: 2). For exam-

128   Unruly Hills

ple, indigenous peoples in many parts of the world resist such ownership rights in land, and even in Western countries like Britain, individual property rights are subject to political and legal regulations (ibid.). The cases we are dealing with here speak of both resistance and accommodation to this new property regime. The hero of the story I open with, the Garo leader Sonaram R. Sangma, skillfully appropriated the colonial language of property rights as well as the modality of claiming such rights. In a most striking manner, he challenged the British “rule of law” on its own terms, submitting petitions and filing lawsuits, backing land claims with written documents, and taking the help of professional lawyers. An opponent the British apparently found it difficult to deal with, Sangma pursued a double agenda, working both for the collective rights of the Garos and for his personal rights, claiming a large tract of land as his own property or, rather, as his wife’s. In this chapter I will discuss the coming of a new rights regime based on European notions of property and the effects this had on the land tenure system in the Garo Hills and other parts of Meghalaya. In the first part, I will concentrate mainly on changes that took place during the twentieth century and thus take the Sangma movement as my point of departure. I will later move to more recent controversies regarding rights to, control of, and ownership of land. Proprietary rights in land can be dated back to the permanent settlement of Bengal in the late eighteenth century, through which the zamindars or landlords were granted ownership of their feudal estates (see Guha 1981[1963]). The permanent settlement was, as Ranajit Guha puts it (1997: 2), a “total rupture” with past structures of landed property in South Asia. The hill areas of the northeastern frontier that were brought under British rule during the nineteenth century were exempted from the land settlement and came instead under special regulations based on the idea of minimal interference and the maintenance of customary laws, a form of “indirect rule.” Above all, this was to avoid further outbreaks of rebellion, which had been rather frequent throughout the nineteenth century. The imposition of house tax, for example, had thrown the Jaintia Hills into two major rebellions in 1860 and 1862. Due to such experiences the colonial government preferred a strategy of interfering “as little as possible with existing institutions” (Mackenzie 1999[1884]: 242) in these sensitive frontier tracts populated by people regarded as savages or, at best, “semi-savages.” Central to this policy was a separation of hills and plains, and demarcation lines were drawn to keep the two apart. In this process, land in the plains that had been controlled by hill people was lost in many cases, as it was for the Garos, and placed under zamindari ownership. The Sangma movement originated in a longstanding dispute over lands between the Garo Hills and the Brahmaputra River that had been placed under the powerful Bijni zamindar but which the Garos

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claimed as theirs. Sangma and his followers had no success in retrieving this land, but as a direct outcome of their campaigning, the colonial government stopped further reservation of forest areas and decided to do away with the hated practice of begar labor.4 The Sangma movement became a milestone in Garo history and is commonly regarded as the first spark of modern political organizing among the Garos and even the beginning of Garo nationalism (see M.S. Sangma 1981: 40; Majumdar 1982: 206; M.N. Sangma 1993: 27–28).5 Sangma’s memory is celebrated annually and his name is invoked today to support claims for a separate Garoland, including the lands in the Brahmaputra plains, now part of Assam. Rather than attempting to give a comprehensive account of this important movement, my aim is more limited and concerns the implications of the legalistic politics pursued by Sangma and his followers. Seeking justice through judicial means can be effective, as their agitation shows, but it might be argued that politics of this type nevertheless has an inherent weakness in that it implies submission to the legal system and institutions of the foreign ruler one seeks to oppose. What I am particularly interested in here is Sangma’s appropriation of British notions of property, where—in line with the logic of the permanent settlement—he projects the nokma, or more precisely the wife of the nokma, as “owner” of village land. In other accounts, as will be discussed, the nokma is described rather as custodian of clan and village lands. Sangma was ahead of his time, and his claim foreshadows later developments, with land increasingly being held as private property. Some researchers, as I will come back to, have highlighted the process of privatization of land in the Garo Hills, but the general perception nevertheless is that the land is still under community ownership and control. Because no comprehensive land surveys or in-depth research have been conducted to date, it is difficult to assess the prevailing situation. However, the Garo scholar Julius L.R. Marak (2000a: 186) claims that the transfer of village, or a’king land to private holdings has gone so far that the entire system of traditional land management is at risk. Other researchers give more modest estimations in regard to how far the privatization of land has gone, but there does seem to be a consensus on the perception that individual ownership is rapidly increasing and that it will have repercussions in the entire social fabric of the Garos. A similar process is taking place in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. This chapter seeks to probe some of the repercussions of this process. But let us begin with the British encounter with the Garos.

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Plate 12  Statue of Sonaram R. Sangma

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Mythical Jungles The Garo Hills appear in the colonial records as the very epitome of the jungle, an inaccessible, wild place infested with tropical diseases, dangerous animals, and savage headhunters. Rudyard Kipling places one of the stories in The Jungle Book (1993[1894]) in the Garo Hills. In this story (“Toomai of the Elephants”), we learn about the catching of wild elephants, the keddah operations that were an important source of revenue from the Garo Hills. But we also encounter a magical jungle, harboring secrets that ordinary human beings know nothing about. Inspired by Kipling, the Baptist missionary William Carey called his account of the evangelization of the Garos The Garo Jungle Book (1919). Drawing on the image of the jungle, Carey says in the opening of the book that, of the wild tribes of the missionary field in the east, none have a “fiercer fame or have a more romantic story” than the Garos (ibid.: 2). He describes the Garo Hills in the following way: The central fastnesses of their hills were held to be more impenetrable, and the belts of “terai” (low, wet land) at their base more deadly, than those of any other region, whilst the people themselves were regarded as the most uncouth and barbarous of all the border tribes. For more than a hundred years after the surrounding country had been peaceably settled under the British rule, this patch of junglecovered crags stood out obstinate and defiant, the secret lair and inaccessible fortress of ruthless and dreaded foes. (Carey 1919: 2) Carey’s account seems rather typical for the time, making both the place and the people wild and untouched by civilization. But as his story unfolds—and with the spread of the Gospel among the Garos (the first conversion took place in 1863) —“[t]he wonderful transformation that was to tame and change the hill tribes soon began” (ibid.: 268). This transformation, however, required that the hills be pacified by the British. The British came in contact with the Garos after the diwani of Bengal was transferred to the East India Company in 1765. John Elliot, who visited the Garo Hills in 1788, was the first Westerner to write about the Garos, and he describes what has become one of the most resilient ideas relating the Garos, their practice of headhunting (1979[1794]: 28).6 Elliot landed in the midst of conflicts between the Garos and zamindars in the plains who were trying to expand their area of control into the hills. Due to the frequency of such skirmishes, the East India Company sent out David Scott, Magistrate of Rangpur, in 1815 to sort out the problems and make the Garos stop their raids in the plains. Scott, who was later made Civil Commissioner, developed the policy of separating the hills

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and plains, formalized in Regulation X of 1822, where taxation and other transactions with the Garos were to be dealt with directly by the British, through the help of Garo middlemen (laskhars), and thereby without any interference by the zamindars. The British also took charge of the frontier markets on which the Garos depended for their trade. But things did not work out as planned, and after decades of continued raids in the plains, countered by sporadic punitive expeditions and the closing down of the frontier markets, the British finally found it necessary to take direct possession of the Garo Hills in the 1860s. The Garo Hills became a British district in 1867, with permanent headquarters established at Tura under a British Deputy Commissioner. After some years, even the last “independent Garos” in the interior areas were pacified and peace thus secured in the entire Garo Hills. In the subsequent regulations formulated for the Garo Hills, outsiders were not allowed to own any land and needed special permission to enter and to engage in economic activities. Responsibilities for taxation (mainly house tax), maintenance of the peace, and minor judicial matters were vested in specially appointed Garo laskhars,7 each of whom was responsible for a number of villages. These rules, under the Garo Hills Act of 1869, were more or less the same as those in the non-administered frontier areas under the “Innerline Regulation” of 1873 (Bhattacharjee 1978; M.S. Sangma 1981). The establishment of British control over these jungle tracts was something that many colonial officers had earlier opposed, arguing that it was too costly to administer these hills, that the area would hardly generate any revenue, and, above all, that the climate was deadly to Europeans. The frequent raids, where British subjects were captured and, supposedly, beheaded, were the official explanation for the annexation.8 “In what became a profoundly symbolic act for later generations,” Robbins Burling writes, “the Garos agreed to surrender the human skulls they had formerly held as trophies” (1963: 23). The skulls were destroyed, “and headhunting came to a decisive end” (ibid.). In this way, the British projected the colonization as a civilizing mission. David Scott had been in contact with the Serampore mission to try to attract its interest in the Garo field, and later government officers followed up his efforts. Finally, the American Baptist Church took up the task and, after the annexation, took only a couple of years to appoint missionaries and establish a new base in the hills (Carey 1919). The American Baptists were given the responsibility of setting up schools and organizing education among the Garos. Getting an education thus became synonymous with becoming Christian. Sonaram R. Sangma was educated by the American Baptists; he studied first in a small village school and later at the mission school in Tura. After his education he was employed by the government in the Public Works Department, engaged in the supervision of road construction (M.N. Sangma 1993: 29). He married Thokje Gabil Momin, who from an early age had been living and

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studying at the Baptist girls’ school in Tura (ibid.). Sangma must have appeared the very embodiment of a successfully civilized savage. But this educated Christian government servant soon turned out to be the Garo most despised by the British. In 1899, more or less the time when his political career took off, or at least came to public notice, he was dismissed from work, allegedly because of misconduct, and also expelled from the Church. Sangma was then about thirty years old.9 But before I continue with Sangma’s story, let us take a closer look at some of the changes the colonial annexation had brought about. Besides cotton and elephants, one of the few things considered valuable or a possible source of revenue from the Garo Hills was timber (Mackenzie 1999[1884]: 266). The Assam Forest Department, under which the Garo Hills were placed, had just started to function and began its inspections of the forests under its jurisdiction in 1870. The inspection of the forests in the Garo Hills was delayed and could not be completed before 1876 (because of disputed claims by zamindars to forest areas in the northern foothills and adjoining plains). According to the findings, two hundred fifty square miles of sal (Shorea robusta) forests were worth reserving (sal was mainly found in mixed forests along with other species of trees). And the not unfamiliar problem in the region was the jhum cultivation that was carried out in most parts of these forests.10 As a consequence, the Annual Forest report of 187611 states that: [T]he whole forest area is thereby subjected to gradual deterioration, which is all the more dangerous, as these people have been only a few years under British rule, and still look on the forest par excellence as their natural and legitimate means for increasing the yield from their fields, by burning and applying the ashes and charcoal as manure; and changes in this mode of cultivation by the Garos can only be brought about very gradually and cautiously. It is interesting to note this warning against trying to abolish shifting cultivation too hastily, something that again and again in the forest reports is said to be inadvisable on political grounds. However, in 1880/1, a proposal to establish eighteen forest reserves was finally submitted. Several reports from the Forest Department at the time acknowledged that all land in the Garo Hills belonged to villages, with clearly defined boundaries between them, and that the establishment of forest reserves would consequently entail that the villages which “owned” the land would be deprived of the “right” to cultivate in them.12 This is an important statement, as shifting cultivators in India were rarely recognized as legal rights-holders, and shifting cultivation, in view of the India Forest Act of 1878, was regarded merely as a “privilege” and “subject to control, restriction and abolition by the local

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governments.”13 The actual formation of the reserves took place during the administrative year 1883/84, when fourteen reserves were established; the remaining ones followed during subsequent years. Toward the end of the 1880s, about 133 square miles (344 sq km) of forest had been reserved, comprising slightly less than 4 per cent of the total area of the district.14 People who were living in these areas were given nominal compensation for their houses and standing crops, but not for the land itself or for the loss of the right to jhum there. The government of India constantly complained that the process of forest reservation was too slow and that future needs demanded an increase in reserved forests in the province of Assam.15 The Forest Department was thus pressured into identifying and proposing new reservations, something it did in the Garo Hills as elsewhere in the province. In the end, however, due to the Sangma agitation, no further reservations could be established, and the forest reserves that were established in the Garo Hills in the 1880s are more or less the same that exist today. Although the total area of reserved forest in the Garo Hills was relatively limited and people were able to continue to jhum in other forests, the reservations and the threat of further reservations became a source of great popular discontent there as elsewhere in India in the late nineteenth century. It was at this juncture that Sangma appeared on the scene and, as is clear from the interviews Arbuthnott conducted with Garos (mainly with nokmas), it was the frustration generated by the establishment of forest reserves that seemed to have led people at large to support his movement.16

The Agitation Sangma, along with a number of other Garo nokmas, submitted a memorandum in 1902 to the Government of India concerning alleged trespassing by the Bijni zamindar on lands the Garos claimed historically as theirs. Later the same year, Sangma led a protest of seven hundred Garos who marched down from the hills to the Brahmaputra River urging tenants in the disputed areas not to pay land rent to the Bijni zamindar. Sangma and some of the other leaders were imprisoned for “rioting.” After his release in 1904, Sangma again mobilized his forces, and the focus now was expanded to include two additional issues. These were, as mentioned earlier, to re-open or else get compensation for areas the government had declared forest reserves and to abolish the hated colonial practice of forced labor (begar). It is argued in the Arbuthnott Commission Report that Sangma had added these issues in order to gain support for the land claim that, in 1906, he had twisted into a personal one. Sangma argued, as the Arbuthnott Report discusses in great detail, that the disputed land not only belonged to the Garos but more precisely to his wife, Thokje.

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And further, that the land should be under his authority as her husband, and nokma. In short, Sangma claimed that Thokje was the heir of Dhansing Lashkar, said to have been a most influential person to whom one hundred and fifty nokmas had paid land rent, or haul (also referred to as “salami”). Sangma referred to Dhansing as a malik and projected him as a Raja-like person, said, for example, to have had two elephants (the royal insignia per se). Dhansing was claimed to be the great-grandfather of Thokje, and the right to collect haul had been passed on through the female line to her, since the Garos follow a matrilineal principal of kinship and inheritance. Even after the land had been taken over by the Bijni zamindar, some nokmas were still paying haul to Thokje, which, according to Sangma, was in recognition of her rights to the land. Since Sangma collected the rent from these nokmas, he called himself the “Head Nokma among the Nokmas.” Based on this, Sangma claimed the entire pargana17 Habraghat in the plains as his wife’s property 18 But he also extended the land claim to the hill areas, where Dhansing was also said to have received land rent from the nokmas (who in turn collected rent from the villagers, keeping half of it for themselves and giving the other half to Dhansing). As stated in the witness hearing with Sangma, this latter claim would amount to roughly half of the Garo Hills.19 But this claim was apparently considered too far-fetched and was not directly addressed by the Commission.20 Important here is that even if Sangma had his personal agenda, he was nevertheless instrumental in organizing the Garo people for a larger cause. Not least, as the Arbuthnott Report mentioned, he inspired hope for the “re-establishment of the Garo raj [kingdom].”21 He also had widespread support in various parts of the Garo Hills, something that is apparent from the accounts presented in the Arbuthnott Report. In 1906, Sangma, along with other Garo leaders, submitted a memorandum to the Viceroy of India, Sir Gilbert John Elliot, addressed exclusively to the issue of forest reservations, requesting that the government restore or give compensation for the lands that had been taken by the Forest Department.22 Arbuthnott found Sangma’s claim to the land in the plains completely groundless. The Garos might have lost some territory in the plains under British rule, but the issue had already been tried in court and the land had been settled as part of the Bijni zamindari. Along with the recommendations of the Commission, the Indian government stated that “the Garos have failed to establish any title whatever to this area.”23 However, it was pointed out that the government would try to influence the Bijni zamindar to use Garos rather than outsiders for collecting taxes to avoid future disputes. The whole issue of Sangma’s wife’s descent from Dhansing was dismissed as pure fabrication. Dhansing had indeed existed, but “appears to have been an ordinary laskhar,” according to Arbuthnott.24 Further, in

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the witness hearing, Thokje had not been able to say with certainty who her father was, which was taken as a proof that the descent line Sangma had outlined was false. Sangma did not give up his claim to the lands in the plains, however, and continued pursuing the case in the Calcutta High Court until his death (M.S. Sangma 1981: 42).25 With regard to the forest reservations and begar question, the Commission was more supportive. The government of India decided that although forest reserves had been established in the same way as in other parts of India—treating the land as “waste” and thus at the free disposal of the government—it could be advisable to pay some compensation to those who had lost land. Further, reserves that had proven worthless could be “dis-forested” (i.e., opened up), and the establishment of additional reserves was advised against unless fair compensation could be agreed upon. The valuable reserves, however, were to be kept, lest they be ruined by jhum cultivation, and twenty years of efforts to manage the forest be spoiled, it was argued. The government also agreed to follow the Commission’s recommendations to abolish begar and use a voluntary “contract system” instead.26

Legal Inversion More than the outcome, what strikes me as particularly significant here is the way in which Sangma contested the British “rule of law” from within, appropriating, as mentioned earlier, the means of the colonial legal system and using notions of ownership and property to claim rights. Today, we know, legalistic politics have come to dominate the rights struggles of indigenous peoples in most parts of the world. Sangma was not the first Garo to claim rights to land through legal proceedings, but he did it in a previously unparalleled manner. Prior to the agitation he went to Calcutta to seek legal advice, and he also hired a British lawyer to assist him. All claims were based on written evidence, and Sangma put great effort into acquiring documents from government offices. He submitted a large number of petitions and brought several cases to court. To finance his activities, Sangma collected subscriptions from nokmas in large parts of the Garo Hills. He had five clerks assisting him in this endeavor.27 Interestingly, he also published a book that was sold in the hills (at 50 rupees per copy). Arbuthnott says of the book, “It is impossible for any one to follow or understand this ill-assorted farrago of disconnected proceedings, resolutions, letters, and orders.” He claims that it is “intrinsically worthless.” According to him, the sale of the book at an “extortionate price” to the “ignorant hill men” had also exposed Sangma’s character.28 The Commission nevertheless seemed to attach some significance to the book; in questioning witnesses it would ask whether the person had acquired a copy and, if so, why. One nokma

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confirmed that he had bought the book for 50 rupees, and that it “contained evidence and proofs as regards our lands as well as about begar.” Another nokma said that he had the book because one of Sangma’s assistants had told him to buy it and hold on to it as proof of their protests against the use of begar labor and appropriation of lands.29 In short, one could say that the book was very much in line with Sangma’s project of collecting documents and other types of written material that could prove useful in claiming Garo rights. The book, in a way, embodies Sangma’s strategy of turning the colonial dominance through law against itself. In Ranajit Guha’s terms, this can be described as an example of the “modality of inversion,” where rebellious peasants derive their means of protest from the very structure of authority against which they are driven to protest. This can be done either by appropriating or destroying the insignia of, in this case, the colonial power. The written word is one example of such insignia and, as Guha points out, there was “hardly a peasant uprising on any significant scale in colonial India that did not cause the destruction of large quantities of written and printed material” (1983: 51). Conversely, the rebel could also try to “appropriate the sign of writing for himself” (ibid.: 53). The Sangma case is of course an example of the latter. And I do not think it far-fetched to assume that for the illiterate Garos, the book in itself carried power and gave authority to Sangma as a leader.30 His assertion was not a rebellion, but a peaceful, non-violent struggle. Yet the British apparently found it more difficult to handle than the previous Garo attempts to fight the colonial intrusion armed with swords and spears. There was, though, an underlying fear of an escalation into a rebellion, and one has to remember that this was not long after the Garos had been “pacified” and finally brought under British rule. Sangma’s movement opened up the difficult issue of rights. Prior to any forest reservation, the government was supposed to establish a “record of rights.” This was done through what was known as a “forest settlement.” The Forest Act regulated what could be recognized as a right, and, as mentioned above, shifting cultivation could at best pass as a privilege. Even so, the implementation of the forest laws and regulations in India was not as uniform as has often been assumed. K. Sivaramkrishnan, in his detailed study of forest management in southwestern Bengal (1999), convincingly argues that there was in fact a relatively large space for negotiations and regional compromise. In the case of forest settlement, he writes, the government of Bengal instructed the officers in charge not only to identify “preferred claims,” but to investigate actual “practices of forest use to assess what customs should be recorded as rights” (1999: 162, emphasis added). The forest settlement thus had to engage with a “more complex and troublesome conception of rights” that could not easily be codified or translated into standardized

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legal categories (ibid.). This applies as well to the situation in the Garo Hills. Again taking the example of shifting or jhum cultivation, Forest Department progress reports under the leadership of Gustav Mann31 refer to jhum as a Garo right. Mann was certainly not an admirer of shifting cultivation, but I have never come across any argument or discussion in the progress reports where he questions this right or where he speaks about jhum as a mere privilege. Arbuthnott confirms this in a special “Note on Forest Reservation” included in the report:32 It is quite incorrect, however, to assert that jhuming is not recognized as a right, but is practiced under the control of the Deputy Commissioner. As a matter of fact, there is no interference whatever and no attempt has ever been made to interfere with village jhuming … In the same note, Arbuthnott equally questions the earlier position of the government of India, and argues that all land in the Garo Hills is owned by the nokmas and that the “assumption that all land is absolutely at the disposal of the Government unfettered by any rights is an erroneous conclusion.” He also states that when the reserves were established, no compensation was paid for “extinguishing rights of shifting cultivation.”33 Interestingly, when the forest reservations were about to be established in the early 1880s there was a proposal to buy land from other villages to give as compensation to those who were about to lose their land.34 But when the government of India finally, in 1908, decided to pay compensation for the reserves, this was said to be as an “act of grace” and thus not compensation for the loss of recognized rights.35 Somewhat surprisingly, the compensation was never paid and Garo leaders later had to approach the government about fulfilling its commitments. F. Beadon Bryant, Inspector General of Forests to the Government of India, conducted an inspection tour in the Garo Hills in 1912. With regard to the previous conflicts, he said that, as he understood it, “it has been decided that the claim of the Garos to have rights of jhuming over the whole forest area cannot be recognized” and that “the wasteland is at the disposal of Government,” which can form reserved forests in the “ordinary manner.” But at the same time, Bryant acknowledges that it nevertheless might be advisable to abstain from forest reservation at the present “owing to the temper of the people.”36 There is little recognition, however, of the rights that Arbuthnott had earlier acknowledged.

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Land Rights The Arbuthnott Commission came up against various difficulties in sorting out the different claims to land. One set of issues related to disputes more or less directly linked to the demarcation or separation of the hills from the plains. Briefly, the guiding principle was that hill people, like the Garos, belonged in the hills, and as a rule their claims to ownership of land in the plains were not recognized by the colonial administration. The specific problem Arbuthnott faced in this case was that the boundary line had not been properly surveyed in the first instance in the early nineteenth century and later had to be re-demarcated. This had created confusion regarding which line to adhere to. The other set of issues concerning land related to the specific situation in the hills, the areas that today are part of the state of Meghalaya. So let us concentrate on these. Arbuthnott conducted a hill tour in which he conducted interviews with a large number of nokmas. Roughly fifty nokmas were interviewed, and the main question he asked was whether they owned the land and, as a proof of ownership, whether they could sell the land, and if so, whether they in person would receive the payment. Arbuthnott also enquired whether the nokmas received or paid any haul (land tax). It is important to note that all of the people who were heard or interviewed by the Commission were men. This was also true of the large number of people, about one hundred, who were heard during the court sessions pertaining to Sangma’s land claim to the areas in the plains. The only exception was the witness hearing with Thokje Gabil Momin, Sangma’s wife.37 More or less all those who were interviewed during the hill tour confirmed that they owned the land and could sell it, although most added that it had to be done with the consent of their respective wives. Several of the nokmas were more explicit on this point, stating in the interviews that it was their wives (and their wives’ relatives) and not themselves who actually owned the land. The money from the sale, however, was claimed to belong exclusively to the nokma and would not be shared with anyone else in the village. But sale of land appeared to have been a rather imaginary transaction. None of those interviewed had bought or sold any land. As the nokma of Darugiri tellingly explains:38 I am the Nokma of my village. I own the land. … The lands within these boundaries [having earlier explained the boundaries] are mine through my wife. If I wished I could sell these lands with the permission of my wife. I could keep the whole of the money myself if I sold the land. … I have never heard of a Nokma selling his land. The nokma of Naphak states similarly:39 I know my village boundaries [explaining these] … The land within these boundaries belong to me. I can sell the land but must get my

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wife’s permission. An ordinary villager cannot sell any land. I have never sold any land. If I sold it I would get the money. I would not give any of it to the other villagers. Another nokma also claims that if he wished, he could sell the village land, but in such a case the villagers would still continue to enjoy the right to jhum there and the purchaser would simply become the new nokma over the portion of land that he had acquired.40 Regarding haul, the interviewed nokmas give a rather uniform answer as well, saying that people from their own village do not have to pay but those from other villagers pay haul in kind or cash.41 And, it appears, such payments would be rather nominal: a basket of rice, cotton, a piglet, or a few fowls would be given annually to the nokma for the right to cultivate on his lands. The interviews are given only in English and have thus undergone a process of translation in several steps (from questions–answers in the field to the actual writing of the report), and we are left without information about the terminology used by the Garos themselves. How, for example, were terms like “ownership” or “to own” translated into the Garo language and how did the respondents understand them? Without assuming a complete incommensurability, it appears that the Garos in general did not perceive land to be a commodity that could be bought and sold; at least, this is the clear impression one gets from the interviews. The Garos were already integrated at that time into a larger economic system in which, for example, they traded cotton with merchants in the hats or markets in the foothills. Garo cotton was very well known, and from the nineteenth century European traders took an active interest, hoping that this supply could be developed into a new source of raw cotton export for the Manchester cloth mills in England (Bhattacharjee 1978: 207–16). But despite the fact that the Garos had been part of such an external market for a long time, and that the economy in the hills was becoming increasingly monetarized as a consequence of the British annexation, not least because of the imposition of house tax and other taxes to be paid in cash, it seems that land was not part of such market transactions at this point, i.e., in the early twentieth century. Interestingly, however, this is what is being projected by Arbuthnott. Not only does he make sale of lands the central theme of the interviews with the hill nokmas—not the obvious choice of topic, given that the two grievances he was set to enquire into had to do with forest reservations and the begar issue—but he also explicitly states that “instances of sales of land are not uncommon.” He mentions this in the opening part of the report, where he discusses the position of the nokma, explaining that the nokma inherits the land which he holds in right of his wife and that to sell the land he needs her consent.42 Why, then, does he claim that land sales are

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not uncommon when his own findings suggest the very opposite, when there is a complete absence of any such cases (none of the interviewed nokmas had sold or bought land, neither do they seem to know or have heard about any other nokma doing so)? But again, Arbuthnott was not alone in making this claim. Major A. Playfair, the Deputy Commissioner of the Garo Hills and a member of the Commission, who later wrote the canonical monograph The Garos (1909), similarly states, “Land may be, and frequently is, sold by a nokma.” Like Arbuthnott, he does add that such sales require prior permission by the nokma’s wife and her “machong or motherhood” (Playfair 1909: 72). But he also says that the nokma “is always looked upon as the owner of the lands of his village,” that he is “thought of and spoken of as the proprietor” (1909: 72–73). That Garos perceive land as property is taken for granted here, proved by its alleged salability. As mentioned earlier, there are reasons to question this.

Disputed Ownership The type of landholding under discussion is what is called a’king land, traditionally under the authority of the nokma and used for shifting cultivation. Most land in the Garo Hills is under an a’king, the major exception being unclaimed land between villages known as a’milam land (Marak 2000a: 177). According to anthropologist Chie Nakane, the a´king is best understood as under communal ownership. She writes: A’king is the land owned by a village: every village has its land which is cultivated by the villagers. This land is cultivated in rotation according to the method of jhum cultivation. The Garo who practice jhum cultivation have no individual ownership of land but each village household has its share in village land. The common ownership of land is vested in the headman’s wife, who maintains the direct local line of the founder of the village. (Nakane 1967: 27) In the village, the nokma thus had formal responsibility for the annual allotment of a’king land for cultivation. Households often claimed the same plots, and therefore after a period of fallow time returned to lands they had previously cultivated. Labor was the limiting factor, and there was no point in a household claiming more land than it managed to cultivate. If outsiders requested it, the nokma could also allot land to them against the payment of a tribute in cash or kind, as discussed earlier. Boundaries between different a’kings were apparently a common source of inter-village conflicts prior to the colonial annexation;43 they continued to be so under the British, but then mainly as litigations to be settled by the appointed laskhars or in more serious cases, by the civil court under the Deputy Commissioner.

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Deputy Commissioner G.D. Walker initiated the work of demarcating the a’kings and issued documents of possession to the respective nokmas. This was carried out in the 1920s, and the map that was drawn for each a’king was accompanied by a detailed description of the boundaries and a genealogical tree tracing the succession or inheritance of the a’king (documents that still hold a very central role in the settlement of land disputes).44 In all, 1,306 a’kings were demarcated and 1,489 nokmas were registered. Commissioner K. Cantlie states in an inspection report in 1937 that due to this “great settlement” of the a’kings, civil work in the district had become much easier. He says that inter-a’king boundary disputes, “formerly so common, have ceased,” but mentions that there were still about 150 “akhing cases” annually related to disputes about “succession to nokmaship.”45 M.C. Goswami and D.N. Majumdar (1972: 68) argue that through the settlement, the nokmas assumed land titles and hence became “absolute proprietors of their a’kings.” And even if this is to overstate the matter, it appears that the nokmas were starting to act increasingly as proprietors, rather than managers, of the a’kings. Nakane (1967: 34) mentions a case in 1928 when the nokma of Rombagiri gave a portion of the a’king to two men in the village as repayment of a personal debt. These men wanted to get the land registered as a separate a’king, but the mahari, the descent group of the nokma’s wife, opposed this and offered instead to repay the debt and keep the land. The two villagers refused this, wanting to hold on to the land. The case was brought before the Court of the Deputy Commissioner, and the officer in charge settled the case some years later in favor of the men, granting them a separate a’king. In this case, the British authority acknowledged the nokma as the proprietor of the a’king with the legal right to dispose of land (even against the expressed wish of his wife’s machong or matrikin).46 Such transactions seem to have become increasingly common during subsequent decades. To quote Nakane again: As a rule, the a’king is village land and no one can hold any part of it as private land. However such cases do occur when the nokma or any other rich person becomes very powerful and uses the a’king as if it were private land to sell, buy or mortgage. The above case is not an exceptional one. Such abuses of the power of the nokma and illegal activities of rich and powerful men have made considerable changes in the traditional distribution of a’king in the Garo Hills. (Nakane 1967: 36) Nakane describes such activities as a misuse of the nokma’s powers. But in this, she fails to take into account the legal shift institutionalized by the colonial administration, to which she had just alluded with the Rombagiri case, where the nokma is given legal sanction to engage in such land transactions.

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The demarcation of the a’kings was a means to avoid further conflicts relating to the boundaries between different villages as well as to the succession of the a’king nokma. But, as mentioned, the latter continued to be a great source of dispute during the 1930s and 1940s.47 Robbins Burling observed during his fieldwork in the 1950s that disputes over land titles continued to cause heated and prolonged disputes between and within villages. According to Burling (1963: 267), the distribution of land titles was “extremely complex in practice” and by establishing official records and issuing written land titles, the colonial administration had imposed an inflexible system that did not correspond with the customary land tenures. In his view, even if the nokma was holding the land title this did not give him any more rights than anyone else in the village to use the a’king land (ibid.: 226). The nokma could sell the land, Burling argues, but land sales, even in the 1950s, were very rare and could only be done with the consent of the other villagers (which would be given only in “extreme circumstances”) (ibid.: 232). Even so, Burling cites several instances where land is being bought and sold between and within villages, even mentioning the existing market price for land. The main difference between Burling and Nakane,48 it seems to me, is that the latter emphasizes the role of the nokma or other influential persons in expediting such actions whereas the former seems to suggest that it is being done with the consent of the concerned villagers. But let me return to Goswami and Majumdar’s claim that the British settlement of the a’kings made the nokmas the “absolute proprietors.” They refine their claim, or even in fact contradict it, by pointing out that the nokma’s right over the land “cannot be treated as absolute” in view of the many claims villagers could make on the land. For example, households had a strong moral claim to the plots they usually cultivated, a kind of usufruct right which the nokma could not transgress without approval from the village council (1972: 71). But above all, Goswami and Majumdar also maintain that the ultimate ownership remained with the mahari of the nokma’s wife. This would imply, in other words, that the British settlement and issuing of land titles did not change this fundamental aspect of the Garo land tenure system. But if this part of their argument remains unclear, they make another, more stringent, observation concerning the changes in the land system, and that is the internal conversion of jhum plots into private, more or less individually owned, land. Burling and Nakane have also stressed this process of privatization of a’king land, where lands are being converted into permanent wet rice fields or orchards for the cultivation of oranges, areca nuts, bananas, or other types of permanent plantations (Nakane 1967: 79–91; Goswami and Majumdar 1972: 72–78). By tradition, if a person planted a tree, it belonged to him or her and nobody else had the right to fell the tree or take its fruits for sale (others could take fruits for personal consump-

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tion) (Burling 1963: 186). By the same logic, a villager could establish an orchard and after continuous use for a number of years the land became his or hers for all practical purposes.49 In the case of wet rice cultivation, the person who used the land soon got full ownership of the land, which was formally acknowledged by the district administration (ibid.: 304–6). And as Goswami and Majumdar state, such lands “could be sold or transferred like any other household property” (1972: 76). Goswami and Majumdar ask themselves why the “owner-mahari” of the a’king accepts or at least does not object to such conversions of lands into permanent holdings. The most likely reason, they suggest, is that this was mainly a question of land that was unsuitable for shifting cultivation and that as such was not perceived as a loss to the community (1972: 75). Perhaps this was the case at an earlier stage, when land was still was plentiful, but as the process has escalated to the degree that shifting lands are a scarce resource in many parts of the Garo Hills, there is reason to believe that the traditional land management system itself lacks institutional mechanisms to cope with this type of land appropriation. Remember that the traditional management regime was designed for shifting cultivation where land was used for only two years and then left to regenerate for a longer fallow period. The nokma, it appears, simply lacks the authority to prevent villagers from, for example, planting fruit trees and thus converting lands to individual holdings. As Burling describes it, the office of nokma-ship does not in itself carry much power. The nokma played important ritual functions, and as the nokma’s household was often among the wealthier in the village, he often enjoyed prestige that at times could be used to influence certain matters. However, this depended on the status of the individual nokma and was not inherent in the office itself. To complicate things even further, a village usually has more than one nokma (Burling 1963: 223–35).50 Besides the a’king nokma, referred to as the first nokma, there are commonly also a second and a third nokma, who represent other influential households with title to land.51 Let us look at how this might transpire today. In the village of Sadolpara there are three nokmas and all of them have formal title to land registered in their own names with the District Council. But under them, a large number of other households are recognized in the village as owners of smaller or larger portions of a’king lands (de Maaker 2006: 50–56).52 Sadolpara is a large village with about six hundred inhabitants. Jhum cultivation is the dominant form of subsistence, though it is under challenge from population increase as well as the general process of conversion of a’king land into permanent gardens and rice fields discussed earlier. As Erik de Maaker, whose contemporary ethnography I draw on here, describes it:

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The House that has initially claimed the land as swidden, maintains the right to its usufruct as long as the paddy rice field or plantation is being worked. The usufruct of such field can even be transferred among Houses, as a gift or though sale. Consequently, once a paddy rice field or a plantation has been created the land becomes virtually inaccessible to the House that holds title to the a’king on which it is located. (de Maaker 2006: 67) In other instances, the right to a’king land is “primarily with the House that holds title to it.” But even so, the closely related households, or “Houses” as de Maaker puts it, also seem to enjoy moral claim to the revenue generated from the a’king. As an example, he mentions an instance when the a’king nokma sold a large quantity of bamboo to a contractor, earning a handsome amount of money. He gave a substantial portion of the money to the Houses of his sons-in-law and smaller amounts to some other villagers. According to de Maaker, the sharing of revenue acknowledges and reinforces the relationships Houses trace to each other. Similarly, if coal is discovered on someone’s land, the House with title to the land is recognized as the owner of the deposit but is expected to share with other closely related Houses (ibid.: 63). Who will get what, though, is apparently largely in the hands of the House holding title to the land, and this, as de Maaker points out, commonly leads to disputes in the village. During one of my stays in the Garo Hills, in 2000, we gave lift to a man in his late twenties who was on his way to start a coal-mining business and, as he smilingly said, to earn a lot of money. Coal mining is a lucrative business, and much of the coal in the Garo Hills is extracted from small-scale (“rat hole”) mines, owned by villagers like our young passenger (see further chapter 4). He was anxious to get started, since there had been a prolonged judicial process establishing who actually had the right to the land and thus to the coal asset that had been discovered within his village’s a’king. The matter had been settled in court in his favor.53 Like Arbuthnott some hundred years earlier, to figure out how he regarded the land (as his private property? as something else?), I asked him whether he had to share the profits with other members of the household, relatives, and, possibly, others in the village. “No,” he replied without hesitation. Whatever he earned would be his money. To sum up, the process of privatization of land clearly escalated during the second part of the twentieth century, not least due to government development projects supporting the establishment of tree plantations, wet rice cultivation, and smaller plantations of tea, coffee, rubber, pineapple, and other cash crops with the aim of reducing dependence on jhum cultivation. In this way, more and more a’king lands have been coming under the control and ownership of individual households. As I

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have been told, many people today even take part in such development schemes as a strategy to claim village land.54 After a plot of land has been used continuously as a garden for a couple of years, the villager can apply for what is called a “no-objection certificate” from the nokma, and with this—which is given in most cases—the land is registered with the District Council as his (it is apparently mostly done by men) private land. But to get an official patta or land title, the person has to pay a fee to the District Council and also start paying land tax. Most privately held land is therefore not registered, but only held under an agreement with the concerned nokma.55

Gendering the Land As land is being privatized, other aspects of social life are also being affected. Robbins Burling sees the increase of private land ownership as a major threat to the traditional family system. He writes: If property continues to be inherited by a single daughter, some women will be much wealthier than their sisters, and wealth differences might rigidify. That, in turn, could increase the social inequality among households. In a society where people have been accustomed to reasonable economic equality, however, serious inequality among siblings might cause considerable strain. (Bunting 1997: 349–50) This process also takes place on a larger societal level, where certain sections of the population have acquired substantial landholdings.56 I have touched upon this in chapter 1 and will come back to it later. But there is also an important gender dimension to the conversion of jhum land into personal property. Economist Bina Agarwal (1994) argues that women’s position in society is heavily interrelated to whether women hold independent rights to and control over land. In her extensive survey of women’s land rights in South Asia, she also discusses the situation among matrilineal societies, taking the Garo and Khasi in Meghalaya as one of her main examples. Having the formal title to land is one aspect of such rights, but more important is whether the woman actually exercises control over the land (ibid.: 292–315). As has been pointed out earlier, even if it is women among the Garos who are recognized as the formal owners of land as well as other inherited property, it is men who have the ultimate control: the husband, as head of household, and the senior men of her matrilineage or machong. Even so, women in Garo society, as Agarwal points out, nevertheless have a rather strong standing. Agarwal looks at things like general attitudes towards girl children, norms related to sexual behavior, whether a

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woman can choose her marriage partner, post-marital residence, whether women can remarry, and whether a woman has any independent source of income, and on all these fronts the situation of Garo women comes out in a favorably compared to that of most of their South Asian sisters (ibid.: 133–52, 100–9). But with the changes in the landholding system, the position of women is being undermined. Agarwal writes: To sum up, over the past century, traditional Garo society has been subject to a wide-ranging set of policies and influences, leading to substantial economic, social, political, and ideological shifts. Today it exhibits a considerable erosion of the communal basis of landholding, cultivation and control, and a slow but sure undermining of the basis of matrilineal inheritance and matrilocal residence. There have been a) substantial shifts away from jhum to settled wet rice cultivation, usually also involving a shift from hoe to plough; b) an overall decline in female labour input, associated with the decline in jhum and the advent of new paddy cultivation practices and techniques managed largely by men, who provide the greater part of the wet rice labour and control the crop and cash so generated; c) the privatization of land and, alongside it, increasing economic differentiation and landlessness, although in varying degrees across villages; d) the emergence of land as individually inheritable property; e) the growing tendency for parents to retain sons after marriage to help with the new form of cultivation, and for sons to bring wives to live with them (thus promoting virilocality); f) an emergent tendency for parents to pass land to sons, especially via gifts; and g) the enforcement of more restrictive sexual mores. (Agarwal 1994: 164–65) While I endorse the major thrust of her argument, some important qualifications have to be made, especially in relation to points (a) and (b). First of all, Agarwal is overemphasizing the role of wet rice cultivation. It is indeed important, but wet rice is cultivated basically on flat lands in valleys and surrounding plains areas. Irrigation, despite government efforts, remains poorly developed, and initiatives to promote terrace cultivation have made little headway, as Agarwal herself also notes (ibid.: 157).57 In most parts of the Garo Hills—consisting, as the name indicates, of hilly terrain—wet rice thus has not replaced jhum. It is rather a question of various types of permanent gardens and plantations that are supplanting or reducing the land available for jhum cultivation. Consequently, whether we can assume a similar shift in labor input in these instances as in the case of societies going “from hoe to plough” remains an open empirical question (as far as I am aware, no one has studied this in the Garo Hills). Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that with plantations of a few major cash crops rather than the variety of different crops grown

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in a jhum field, men will assume more direct control and claim the main part of the income (as is the case when trees, coal, and other valuable natural resources are being sold). Agarwal emphasizes the influence of colonial and postcolonial state policies as the main driver of the changes in the landholding system. One aspect of this, she claims, is the erosion of the powers of the nokma caused, for example, by the British introduction of the new office of the laskhar and the subsequent introduction of the district council administration after independence. Because of this new administrative hierarchy, the nokma is losing authority and with it the capacity to uphold the communal system of landholding, she argues (1994: 161). While this may be true in some respects, Agarwal misses the point I have been stressing above, that the British also empowered the nokma to act as a proprietor of the a’king. The way the Arbuthnott Commission carried out its investigations is quite telling: even though it recognized that it was women who hold the formal title, it interviewed only men, and in practical terms treated the nokma as the ultimate authority over the village land. But more importantly, the British introduced and institutionalized the very notion of land as property, something that could be individually owned and sold like any other commodity. This, I would argue, is most fundamental aspect relating to the erosion of the communal landholding system as well as the weakening of women’s claim to and control over land. However, it is important to note that this is not a completed process and that there are counter-currents that we need to take into consideration. As Tsing put it in the case of the history of property rights in the Indonesian rainforests, it is still an unfolding story with contested meanings and claims where “one does not yet know the outcome” (2002: 95). One aspect to consider among the Garos is the notion of the nokma as “custodian” of the a’king. In fact, even the British, so obsessed with the idea that land was someone’s property, never really managed to figure out how to classify the a’king lands. Commissioner C.S. Gunning writes in the closing years of the British Raj: I have recently been looking up some of the secretariat and other papers on the subject of Akhing lands. There has been a great deal of writing on the subject but no clear and final decision on the subject of the status of these lands has apparently ever been reached hitherto. It seems that they are held in trust for the village by the Nokma and are not the personal property of the latter.58

Custodian of the Land After Independence it was the District Council that was entrusted to deal with all matters relating to land in the Garo Hills, except in cases

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when non-tribal parties or state agencies were involved. As I will discuss presently, cases of the latter kind could be questions relating to land acquisition by the government for various “public” purposes. The basic idea with the autonomous district councils established in the hill areas of the Northeast was that they should protect the culture and tradition of tribal people, hence that they should be based on customary practices and usages. In the case of land, the traditional landholding system was to be maintained. The Garo Hills Autonomous District Council has passed a series of acts, rules, and regulations since the 1950s that provides the legal framework for the areas under its jurisdiction. The most frequently invoked in the case of a’king land is the “Jhum Regulation of 1954.”59 According to this regulation, “Akhing means—a) any land held by a clan or ‘machong’ under the custody of the head of the clan or ‘machong’ called ‘Nokma’ recognized as such by the District Council” (1968: 17, emphasis added).60 I would like to stress the words “held” and “custody” here, i.e., that land is held by a clan under the custody of the nokma. Ownership is obviously not the preferred term here, and apparently this was how the then members of the Executive Committee of the District Council, passing this regulation, interpreted the customary land tenure system. And we can notice in the practice of law as carried out by the District Council a tangible shift from that of the colonial administration. For example, the title to Ashipara A’king was settled in 1935 by the Deputy Commissioner in favor of a man in the village to whom the a’king nokma had failed to repay a debt. This matter was noticed in 1985 when the mahari holding the original title to the village land wanted to register a new nokma and thus came to know that the a’king had been transferred to another clan. They filed a court case with the District Council and the case has since then bounced back and forth between the High Court in Guwahati and the District Council authorities in Tura. In 2003, the District Council finally settled the matter in favor of the original mahari and registered the man they had selected as the new nokma as holder of the title to the a’king. The rationale for the decision, given in the judicial order, was that according to Garo customary laws the “husband is only a guardian and manager of his wife’s properties and as such cannot dispose of them nor enter into any liabilities without explicit assent of the mother of the house and other female members of the family and other important members of the family group.” And as no proofs could be presented that the nokma’s wife and her mahari had given their consent to the debt or to the subsequent sale of the a’king in 1935, it was argued that the previous order by the Court of the Deputy Commissioner had “no legal sanction in Garo Customary Law” and as such was “void ab initio.”61 This judgment might open up a flood of similar litigations—cases questioning the legality of previous transfers of a’king land approved or

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settled by the British62—but the judicial basis in Garo customs nevertheless seems impeccable. The principle of nokmas as custodians or managers of the land appears to have strong public appeal today. For example, the newly established “Council of the Nokmas,” which works for the empowerment of traditional institutions (see chapter 5), describes the “A’king Nokma” as “the head of a clan or ma’chong who holds land as a custodian on behalf of the clan.”63 But custodianship is also a social principle that is applied more generally. The youngest daughter, who inherits family property as per the customary laws, is commonly described as the custodian of this property. This is the case not only with the Garos but, as we will see later, also among the Khasis and Jaintias. Regardless of its salience in everyday life, we can at least note this as an important ideological principle. And as such, custodianship evokes a different temporality than ownership. Being a custodian implies, ideally, a social responsibility over time (an inter-generational responsibility), which among other things puts moral restrictions on sale, transfer, and use of inherited, ancestral “property.” Put differently, custodianship speaks to a moral economy other than that of individual ownership. To return to the particular situation of the nokmas, it is obvious that many have not shouldered the responsibilities of a custodian and have acted in a short-sighted manner, arguably driven more by personal profit than the interests of the mahari or the village at large. In chapter 2, I referred to cases in which nokmas sold off or leased out entire hills to timber contractors who clear-cut the areas. In chapter 4, I will cite similar examples of how coal contractors have been given a free hand by nokmas to exploit coal deposits, often with devastating environmental consequences. In this chapter, we have seen how nokmas have sold off land64 and how they have been unable to prevent alienation of a’king land. Although personal shortcomings on the part of individual nokmas play a role here, the conjuncture of capitalist and state intrusions into community life has placed custodianship in a structural impasse. Even so, I think it is premature to consign this principle to the historical dust bin. Custodianship might well have a new lease on life, particularly as it resonates with contemporary assertions of indigeneity and claims that indigenous people inhabit the world in a different and more ecologically sound way. I will say more about this later. The a’king lands are under pressure not only from internal capitalization, but also externally through land appropriation by various state agencies. The areas that were declared reserved forests by the British are still under government ownership and control. Land required for government offices, for infrastructure projects like roads, schools, military compounds, and for other “public purposes” is still being acquired by the state under the auspices of the “Land Acquisition Act of 1894.” Through this Act, the state is empowered to acquire any amount of land

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it requires by paying compensation to the concerned landowners. As one can imagine, this is bound to lead to disputes of various kinds. One of the most spectacular cases of land acquisition in the Garo Hills relates to the establishment of the Balpakram National Park. This case stands out because of the huge area involved, initially planned to be about five hundred square kilometers but ultimately, because of irregularities in the process, about three hundred and fifty square kilometers. (Remember, this latter figure equals the total area of all the reserved forests established by the British in the Garo Hills in the late nineteenth century.) The case is also especially interesting due to the extraordinary frauds taking place in the acquisition of the land—the “Balpakram scam” as it came to be popularly known.65

Land Acquisition In a pamphlet by the Wildlife Wing of the Meghalaya Forest Department it is said that plans to create a national park had first emerged in the 1970s, but that it took until the mid 1980s before the plans could materialize.66 The major hurdle was to raise sufficient funds for the land acquisition. The compensation level set by the District Council at the time was 750,000 Rupees per square kilometer. This, it is said, was beyond the financial capacity of the government. The then Chief Minister Capt. W.A. Sangma intervened, and “the owner communities could be convinced to part with their land on receiving a lumpsum compensation of Rs. 1.5 lakhs per sq. km” (or 150,000 Rupees per sq. km). With this significantly reduced compensation rate (one-fifth of the initial level), the government acquired two hundred and twenty square kilometers of land in the administrative year 1985/86 and initiated a further process of acquiring adjoining areas to reach the set target of a national park of about five hundred square kilometers, an area claimed necessary to provide a “viable habitat for the existing fauna.”67 But as the additional acquisition was underway in the mid 1990s, it became obvious that things were not being done according to the book, and soon a “scam” was declared by the local press. In short, the money to be given as compensation to the landowners concerned ended up in the pockets of the forest officials and the local administration carrying out the land acquisition. This resulted in a vast discrepancy between the area that was declared “acquired,” hence under state ownership, and the area where the acquisition had actually been carried out. In other words, this turned out to be a too-familiar case of corruption and loss of government money.68 The case has since taken numerous twists and turns that make it almost impossible to keep up with. As with most such cases, it drags on forever until the public loses interest and becomes preoccupied with other, more burning issues. As far as I am aware, no government

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officer involved in the “scam” has been convicted, uncertainties still remain regarding the size of the area acquired for the national park, and the villagers who lost their land are still awaiting proper compensation. Let us follow up on that last point. One of the key people involved in the land acquisition and the controversial survey of the areas was Divisional Forest Officer J. Dutta. As he explained to me in 2003, the compensation level worked out at 200 Rupees per bigha,69 saying that this is “very low” indeed and that “nobody would sell land at that price.” But the involved nokmas had agreed to it and so had the District Council, which, as he told it, got a share of the compensation money. “There were no complaints then, but suddenly ten years later they all have started to complain.” The reason for this, he argued, was that there had been other recent cases in which the High Court had approved a higher compensation rate than what the involved parties had initially settled for. The compensation level now being discussed in the Balpakram case was as much as 5,000 Rupees per bigha, and should this be granted, the government would face great problems raising such a “huge amount,” he explained.70 More than twenty a’kings are affected, and villagers have lost smaller or larger (even entire) parts of their jhum lands in the different rounds of acquisition. After individual nokmas had filed cases with the High Court for proper measurement of the areas lost as well as for an increased level of compensation, they founded an organization in 2002 called Balpakram Akhing Nokma Social Welfare Association under which they now collectively pursue their legal struggle. As the association put it in its petition to the Gauhati High Court, the government has not followed the mandatory procedures in cases of land acquisition, as laid down in the Land Acquisition Act. Contrary to the story told by Dutta, it is stated in the association’s writ petition that “the unsuspecting illiterate Nokmas were made to sign on blank paper which was purported to be an Agreement.” And further, that they were not informed about their rights to question the compensation level decided by the government, which was “abnormally” low. The rate fixed by the District Council has not been followed, nor has the value of standing trees, mineral deposits, etc., been considered.71 In short, the Association claims that the compensation rate fixed at 165,000 rupees per square kilometer (or 200 rupees per bigha) of land is unacceptable. And indeed, going by the Land Acquisition Act, where it is stated that compensation should be determined on the basis of the market value of the land and that standing crops and trees should also be compensated for,72 such a claim is clearly justifiable. This brings us back to the pamphlet by the Meghalaya Forest Department stating that it was the then Chief Minister Capt. Sangma who “convinced” the land owners to part with their land for the set sum, a compensation that remained fixed even though the market value increased substantially during the

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ten-year period of land acquisition. This issue, as far as I can make out, has not been considered to be an aspect of the scam. How did this happen? By which legal provision did the then Chief Minister intervene in setting the compensation? If it is correct that he did intervene, as stated in a government publication, how is it that his actions have never been discussed? The Land Acquisition Act is frequently criticized for being an “archaic” piece of colonial legislation, and critics commonly describe it as “draconic,” giving overriding powers to the state at the expense of local communities and individuals. As the Act is commonly applied in controversial development projects involving the displacement of large numbers of people—in mega-dam projects, for example—environmental and human rights organizations are fierce critics of it.73 But the Act is also criticized by groups that favor secure and inalienable private ownership rights. Here it is argued that the state often misuses the Act and in so doing violates the basic constitutional “freedoms” to hold property and pursue a particular occupation or trade based on such possession, i.e., a peasant requires land to farm.74 There have also been discussions recently about what “public purpose” in the Act actually means and thus when the Act could be applied.75 Similarly, the procedure for establishing the compensation to the land owners has been debated.76 According to the Act, it is the District Collector, usually the Deputy Commissioner of a given district, who settles the compensation rates. Among other things, this arrangement has proven vulnerable to corruption.77 Except for corruption, none of these principal objections to the Act, as far as I am aware, have figured in the debate around Balpakram National Park. The pleading association of the nokmas seeks merely legal recompense within the parameters of the Act, making the issue primarily a question of getting adequate compensation. Although such a strategy might be the only feasible one at this juncture—or the one with the greatest chances of success—the flip side of the coin is that the very loss of land is being omitted or silenced in the process. Recall that for the Garos who protested against the reservation of forests some hundred years earlier, the issue was to get back their land. Getting fair compensation (beyond the few rupees the British gave to those who lost their houses and standing crops) did not figure at all. Further, the entire community—not just those who were directly affected—seemed to have been enraged by the colonial appropriation of land. This is not the case today. There seems to be an almost complete absence of debate regarding the very establishment of the national park. One would think that, if not in the 1980s, this issue would surface today with the increased debate about “anti-people conservation” in India and elsewhere. Not only are we talking about a vast geographical area, but perhaps even more important, a place of particular significance to the Garos. As men-

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tioned, Balpakram is one of the most (if not the most) sacred places of the Garos; it is the place people go after death. And making it a national park implies that Balpakram is no longer under the ownership and management of the Garo community. As we know from elsewhere in the world, state intrusion into sacred lands of indigenous peoples has triggered fierce opposition.78 As an example of this silence, I would like to mention Julius L.R. Marak’s book Balpakram: The Land of Spirits (2000b). Marak merely states that the government has acquired two hundred and twenty square kilometers to establish a national park, announced as such in 1986 (and inaugurated a year later by the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi), but beyond this there is no discussion of how this critical event unfolded or about its possible cultural significance (that the place is no longer under Garo authority). I find this quite remarkable, especially as Marak conducted interviews for the book in 1996, at the very climax of the public recognition of the “scam.” It is hard to believe that none of the fifty or so people Marak interviewed, many of whom must have been directly affected by the land acquisition, had anything to say about the matter. And if indeed this did come up in the interviews, the question arises why Marak chose not to discuss it in the book. Should we read his silence as an approval of the way in which the government established the national park or, perhaps, that as a government servant he is hesitant to address such sensitive matters? Be that as it may, it is not unlikely that other Garo intellectuals and activists will have more to say about this in the future. When I visited Balpakram, one of the things that struck me was the large concrete platform—a helicopter landing pad, I was told—that had been constructed for the inauguration ceremony with Rajiv Gandhi. The helipad was built right on the Balpakram plateau, at a beautiful spot with a view of the great canyon below and close to several of the most sacred sites (places with particular mythological significance to the Garos, as recounted by Marak). One would think that alternative arrangements more attuned to the sanctity of the place should have been preferred. But this was obviously not a concern for those in charge of the inauguration. The event is long past, but the concrete platform remains, a reminder that Balpakram is now under the management and ownership of the state.79 In 2000 I went to see people in one of the villages that had lost its entire a’king to the national park and had been relocated to a new place.80 People there no longer had any land to jhum and depended mainly on areca nut plantations and temporary labor.81 In light of the present-day debate about “people-oriented conservation” as discussed in chapter 2, Balpakram is exactly the scenario to be avoided. In addition to the injustice done to the people who have been displaced or lost their land, establishing a national park has not prevented major illegal logging in the area. Here, as in the case of the

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Plate 13  Balpakram National Park; photo by Pankaj Sekhsaria.

reserved forests discussed earlier, it is claimed that forest officials, hand in glove with other government servants and senior politicians, have played a leading role.82 Let us set this aside, however, and stay with the question of land acquisition. One can of course debate what a legitimate “public purpose” or “interest” is, but I suppose that most people would agree that there are instances in which the state should have the right to acquire land even if the land owners are unwilling to part with it. This could be for things like schools, hospitals, roads, and certain infrastructure projects that benefit people at large. We have to recall that a commonly expressed grievance in the state, and especially in the Garo Hills, is lack of “development.” And as some would have it, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet—i.e., the state has to acquire land to provide development. But again, this can obviously be done in different ways. To apply the Land Acquisition Act, as in the Balpakram case, is to employ the coercive powers of the state. This not only signals a failure

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of democratic governance but is also a direct violation of the customary laws and practices that are supposed to prevail in areas under the Sixth Schedule. When the Act is applied it is not a matter of consulting people and seeking their assent, but merely a declaration of intent in which those who hold the land to be acquired by the state are faced with a fait accompli. They can question the compensation rate in court, but this is a risky path where they might end up spending enormous sums on legal assistance in a judicial process that drags on for years (or, more likely, decades). Suffice to say, new modalities attuned to the traditional land tenure system, that respect indigenous rights in land, must be worked out. Although it is outside the purview of this study to provide policy recommendations, I think the principle of “custodianship” could be especially critical to consider in this context. Several of the processes pertaining to land discussed in the case of the Garo Hills can also be noted for other parts of Meghalaya. Let us look at some of the basic features of the situation in the Khasi Hills. Unlike the Garo and Jaintia Hills, the Khasi Hills were never brought under direct colonial rule (with the exception of a few areas). The traditional Khasi states retained a semi-independent status—referred to as “Native States”—during the colonial period. To obtain land, the British commonly bought or entered into lease agreements83 with the syiems, the chiefs or rulers of these states. This was the case, for example, when Shillong was established as the new colonial headquarters (transferred from Cherrapunjee) in the second part of the nineteenth century.84 This type of land transaction has since percolated down in Khasi society and has brought about radical changes in the traditional land tenure system, as we will see.

Land in the Khasi Hills To enter the Khasi Hills is in many ways to enter a radically different territory than that of the Garos. The traditional political system is different, and so is the land tenure system. The different colonial trajectories have also accentuated some of these differences. Even so, there are important similarities to take note of, not least those related to matrilineal descent, where women among the Khasis also hold title to and inherit land. In addition, the general process of privatization of land, loss of community land, and concentration of land in the hands of elite groups is a significant similarity. The basic categories of land in the Khasi Hills are Ri Raid, common land, and Ri Kynti, private land (held by individuals or clans). The first type can be used by any member of the community, and it reverts back to the community if it is left unused for more than three years. When land was used for jhum it would normally be left to regenerate after it had been cultivated. But as with a’king land, if a person makes a permanent improvement on the land, by planting trees, for example,

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he or she can assert individual rights over it. Thus, as Tiplut Nongbri writes, “occupancy rights get gradually transformed into ownership rights” (2003: 127). Ri Raid land becomes Ri Kynti land. And as Nongbri explains, it is mainly the resourceful persons with access to capital and labor—and I would add, political influence—in the community who have availed themselves of the opportunity to take possession of communal land in this way (ibid.). Ideally, in earlier times everyone in a village would have access to land, whereas the contemporary situation is one of increasing numbers of people without access to land. Village studies have revealed an almost total disappearance of communal land and, as a result, alarming figures of more than 50 per cent landless households and in some places even as much as 80 per cent (Dutta 1987: 87; Nongkynrih 2002: 50).85 Such figures fly in the face of those who continue to promote the idea that land in Khasi society is communal and available to all. The sociologist A.K. Nongkynrih, one of the few scholars who have studied the process of land alienation, claims that if things go on as the way they are now, there will probably be no communal land left in the Khasi Hills within twenty to thirty years. The radical remedy, Nongkynrih suggests, is a land ceiling, where land held by individuals above the set limit would be distributed among those without land.86 This is a very controversial issue that has hovered over Khasi society for quite some time but still seems to lack any wide popular support. There are some small openings in that direction, as in the recently proposed bill by the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council authorizing the Executive Committee of the council the right to fix a ceiling on how much Ri Raid land an individual or a family may hold.87 Or to be more exact, authorizing that the Executive Committee “may” set such a land ceiling. So even if the bill is finally approved, it is still an open question whether the council’s Executive Committee will avail itself of such a possibility. Nor is this a new idea; the Land Reforms Commission suggested some thirty years ago that there should be a limit on how much Ri Raid land an individual could hold.88 Shortly after Meghalaya became a separate state, the governor appointed a commission to investigate the past and present land tenure system in the Khasi Hills. The basic motive was to bring clarity and hence ensure effective administration. The report of the Land Reforms Commission is still one of the most comprehensive and commonly quoted sources relating to land in the Khasi Hills. Yet at the time, the Commission had a hard time convincing people of its noble intentions. As stated in the report, the general perception among people was that the Commission’s work would pave the way for various state regulations and infringements on their traditional land rights—for example, that a land tax and a land ceiling would be imposed—particularly since the Commission’s name signaled “land reforms” (Rymbai 1974: 1–2). The

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Commission was to come up with recommendations regarding the codification of customary laws and to enquire whether cadastral maps and records of rights in land were desirable. And the Commission reached the conclusion that codifying the laws on land tenure and inheritance was most urgent, as was a complete survey of all classes of land and the preparation of cadastral maps and records of rights (i.e., registration of land titles) (ibid.: 46–51). The Commission argued that such steps would be in the interests of the public, above all for avoiding prolonged legal litigations and protecting the interests of the weak under pressure from unscrupulous land grabbers (ibid.: 50). Although the codification of customary laws (see chapter 5) and cadastral mapping come up in discussions time and again, still, thirty years later, none of the Commission’s recommendations have been expedited. Nongbri remarks of opposition to land-mapping ventures that it is based on popular suspicion of the state, a fear that such measures would pave the way for state appropriation of land and land-based resources (2003: 123–24). While this might be correct, I think that her complementary explanation, that such fears have been stirred up by the influential landholding elite who seek to prevent all attempts to survey and register land as this would expose their assets (ibid.: 155–59), seems equally plausible. Codifying customary laws or establishing maps and land documents inevitably leads to simplifications and to freezing evolving patterns at a particular point of time. One can argue of course that this primarily serves the interests of the state and the dominant groups in society, whose interpretations and claims would be formalized in the process. But one still cannot dismiss the claim of the Commission that this is in the interests of the public, especially the less resourceful parts of it who lack the means to pursue lengthy land disputes. And land disputes are almost on an epidemic scale in the Khasi Hills. Almost all my friends in Shillong have a story to tell, and whether or not there is a happy ending, the bottom line is the sheer exhaustion of having to pursue the case for decades. For instance, there is Pam. Land belonging to her family was claimed in the 1970s by a woman who had suddenly turned up in the village along with her husband, arguing that she had received this land as a gift. As Pam explained, this was really a non-case and should have been disposed of straight away. The couple had no evidence whatsoever to back their claim. But even so, it had taken the District Council Court about twenty-five years to establish that the land indeed belonged to her family. One of the difficulties for Pam’s family was that they had no written land deed to prove their ownership. The land had been given to her grandmother in the 1950s as compensation for land she had lost to the Umiam Hydel Project when the river was dammed. This transaction had been based on an oral agreement with the headman and the village durbar (council), and since many of the elders who could confirm

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this had passed away during the drawn-out litigation this was hard to establish. Apparently, the headman of the village had been bribed by the couple. As Pam told it, her family had spent a fortune on lawyers and trips to the village, besides the trouble of attending court hearings and following up the case with the district council authorities. It had been a real nightmare for them, a mockery of justice, she argued.89 “No wonder,” as the chairman of the Land Reforms Commission R.T. Rymbai comments in an article, “people say that Shillong is an uneasy paradise for lawyers” (1979: 108). To return to the process of privatization and concentration of land in the hands of the elite, Nongbri (2003: 127–28) argues convincingly that the traditional hierarchical nature of Khasi society along with the British intrusion are crucial factors in explaining that process. Briefly, she holds that the Khasi polity is ordered in a three-tier structure with the syiem (chief) at the top, the notables belonging to the founding clans in the middle, and the masses or ordinary citizens at the bottom. The syiem is the elected head of the state but has no claim to the land in that capacity. However, the British, when they arrived, “treated the Syiem as the territorial head, and dealt directly with him whenever they wanted to acquire land”(ibid.: 128). As a consequence, the syiem and the notables assisting him in the administration of the state emerged as “key players” in the regulation and distribution of land (a position they used to their own benefit). The British bought land, entered into lease agreements, and issued land deeds to individuals, practices that have since become institutionalized. Not only did this undermine the traditional land tenure system under which everyone had access to land, but it also led to a general “commodification of land” (ibid.: 130). The postcolonial state has perpetuated this process by appropriating land for development purposes (ibid.: 152–55). Even if scholars like Nongbri and Nongkynrih and a few local organizations point to the urgency of tackling the increasing concentration of land and the subsequent rise in landless households,90 such problems are still overshadowed to a large extent by the primary concern of preventing “outsiders” or non-Khasis from taking over lands in the Khasi Hills. As discussed earlier, this concern is entangled with the larger question of ethnic survival: losing the land is commonly equated with the demise of the Khasi nation. One of the main tools to prevent this from happening is the Meghalaya Land Transfer Act (1971), a piece of legislation that was among the first to be passed by the newly elected state assembly in 1972. The Act encompasses earlier regulations by the district councils.91 The main point, as mentioned earlier, is that the Land Transfer Act prohibits the sale or transfer of land in the state to “non-tribal” persons. And although such transfers still take place (through various forms of benami arrangements),92 the Act has arguably served this purpose rather well.

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The massive loss of tribal lands that is being reported from various parts of India has not happened in Meghalaya. No wonder the Act is attributed such immense importance. Since its inception, the Act has been amended several times (mainly minor adjustments), but in the buildup to the 2003 elections for the Meghalaya State Assembly a proposed amendment to the Act became an especially hot potato. The proposal related to clause 2 (e) of the Act, which deals with how the term “tribal” is to be applied and thus which communities should be covered by the Act. The debate that followed centered largely on the question of who should be recognized as the “indigenous tribes” of the state.

Indigenous Lands The government, under the then Chief Minister F.A. Khonglam, claimed that the proposed amendment was a means to delimit the number of communities entitled to own land, but the many political and social organizations in the Khasi Hills that objected strongly to the proposal understood it on the contrary as an attempt to include new tribal communities under the purview of the Act. Critics argued that the Act should apply only to the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo, said to be the only genuine “indigenous tribes” of Meghalaya. Allowing, as the government suggested, the Hmar, Biate, Mikir, Karbi, Koch, Boro (Bodo), Rabha, and Hajong also to have the right to buy land would put the indigenous tribes at risk of being ousted from their own homelands, the vocal critics asserted.93 Even rather balanced commentators found it necessary to beat the war drum. The acclaimed journalist Patricia Mukhim, for example, stated that the irresponsible shortsighted political leaders, for the sake of attracting voters, were ready to give away land to “people who are not indigenous tribes of Meghalaya.” She argued:94 If the Land Transfer Act is amended now to allow land to be transferred to the aforementioned tribes, what we will have twenty years hence are ‘spheres of influence’ created by these people. Meghalaya will subsequently be governed by not by the indigenous tribals for whom the state was carved out from Assam, but by other sundry tribes who have created those spheres of influence. While Mukhim’s statement illustrates well the dominant sentiment expressed in the debate, there were also those, of course, who welcomed the proposed amendment. For example, D.B. Koch stated in a letter to the Meghalaya Guardian that the Khasi NGOs that opposed the amendment on the grounds that the concerned communities are “outsiders” or “non-indigenous” were expressing a “hegemonic attitude” and should take a proper look at the history of the Garo Hills before they speak. As

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he writes, the “Koch, Boro and Rabha are known to have inhabited these hills since the early BCs” and are thus by all means to be regarded as “indigenous tribes” of Meghalaya.95 I have noted the increased importance of being indigenous, but the way the debate developed is still a bit surprising. The Land Transfer Act makes no reference to “indigenous tribes” but is built rather on the two categories “tribal” and “non-tribal.” The purpose of the Act, as it states it, is “to regulate transfer of land in Meghalaya for the protection of the interests of the Scheduled Tribes therein.” The Act defines “tribal,” as “a person belonging to any of the Scheduled Tribes pertaining to Meghalaya” (as specified in the Constitution Order of 1950). There is even a specific reference to the Rabha and Kachari, that they are also covered by the Act. Later, in an amendment of 1977, the Koch were also added as a beneficiary of the Act. So at least in these three cases, it is hard to understand why there should be a discussion at all. And consulting the Constitution Order of 1950 listing the Scheduled Tribes of Meghalaya (as presently amended), one will further find that all of the communities that are being debated, with the exception of the Karbi and Biate, are included and therefore would already enjoy the right to hold land. There are in fact as many as seventeen different tribal communities that are listed as Scheduled Tribes in Meghalaya. And all of these, as far as I understand, are as equally covered by the Act as the Khasi, the Jaintia, and the Garo. While the rationale for this can certainly be questioned, it is those who claim that only “indigenous tribes” should enjoy the right to hold land that are up against a complete revision of the Land Transfer Act. In the end, the proposal was dropped and the matter has been set aside, at least for the time being.96 The fear of losing land is also turned inwards, engaging various controversial issues regarding the boundaries or the delineation of the collective self. In short, this is a question of who can legitimately claim to be a Khasi. The particular sensitive issue here is whether the offspring of a mixed marriage should be considered fully Khasi and hence entitled to inherit land. In a matrilineal society, as this is, a child acquires kinship status and ethnic belonging through his or her mother. Thus, if the mother is Khasi, the child would be Khasi and so for all legal purposes be understood as such. Now, though, this is increasingly a subject of debate. Organizations like the Khasis Students’ Union and the Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai have advocated a more exclusive definition that considers only children of two Khasi parents to be proper Khasis (Nongbri 2003: 236–64; Baruah 2005: 183, 186–87). This debate, as discussed in detail by Nongbri (ibid.), is intertwined with a gendered male agenda to exercise power over women, not least over their sexuality. Control over the woman’s body becomes a community affair, a question of maintaining ethnic purity as well as avoiding alienation of landed

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property. Some organizations even favor a turn to patriliny as a means to safeguard community control over land and natural resources (ibid.). I have several times been told that outsiders purposely target the youngest daughters of Khasi families for marriage—the ka khadduh, who are entitled to inherit the ancestral property—as a means of getting hold of land. It is beyond my capacity to evaluate whether there is any substance to such allegations, but it is at least perceived this way by many of the educated, Shillong-based Khasis with whom I have been interacting. One such case, which I experienced close up, was a family who used to stay at the same guest house I did. The man had grown up in Shillong, but his family hailed from North India. The woman was a Khasi and the youngest daughter in the family. They had two children. The man was a sales representative of a larger company and traveled a lot. He told me he had a house in Delhi, where he spent most of his time. But the wife and children remained in Shillong with her relatives. When he was visiting (which could be for weeks at a stretch), the wife and children came to stay with him in the guest house. This arrangement naturally aroused much curiosity and speculation. When I asked him about it, he told me that he had been threatened by some Khasi boys in the neighborhood where his wife’s family lived and that they put up at the guesthouse for security reasons. His wife’s relatives lived in an almost exclusively Khasi locality, a part of town known for being a stronghold of pro-Khasi activists. But as I later learned, his being an outsider was not really the issue. The main difficulty was with his in-laws, who apparently thought that he was just exploiting her, and only after the ancestral property she was due to inherit as the ka khadduh of the family, and they had made it clear to him that he had better stay away. I could never make out what the wife felt about this predicament, but she clearly seemed relieved every time her husband left town and she could return to her family house. In chapter 5, I will address the sensitive matter of how community membership is being delineated among the Khasis. To conclude this chapter, I will turn to a more recent concern, and that is how India’s liberalization policies are affecting the land tenure system in Meghalaya.

Liberalizing the Land According to the neoliberal dogma, any state regulation that restricts the free movement of capital should be scrapped. It is a question of opening the economy up to attract private investments, foreign or domestic. As mentioned earlier, Meghalaya also seeks to join this race and promotes the rich deposits of minerals and other natural resources as its unique selling point.97 The Land Transfer Act obviously goes against the grain of such a policy with its restriction on the purchase of land by outsiders. One of the few “indigenous” persons I have come across who directly opposes

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the Act was a Garo man in his forties who was working for the Indian Reserve Bank. He told me that the Reserve Bank had tried to convince the Meghalaya government that it had to let go of the Act as it was the main cause of the credit deficit in the state. Bank lending in Meghalaya and the other northeastern hill states was the lowest in the entire country, he said, and this was because the banks were prevented from making loans with land, commonly the only realizable asset, as security. Under the Act, a bank is regarded as a non-tribal judicial subject, hence cannot execute a mortgage or take over mortgaged land. Some banks still give loans with land as security, but in such cases this serves merely as a kind of psychological pressure on the lender, he explained. And thus, his argument ran, with no access to capital, people could not invest and the economy remained stagnant.98 During our discussion I came to think of Hernando de Soto’s controversial and at the time much-discussed book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2001). De Soto’s central thesis is that the poor economic performance of many Third World countries is due to their inability to produce capital, stemming from inadequate property arrangements with secure, documented titles. People, as he puts it, “have houses but not titles” (ibid.: 7). In the case of Meghalaya, then, there would be the dual problem of lack of secure, documented titles to land and legislation that prevents people from using their chief economic asset to obtain bank credit. De Soto would certainly agree with the man working for the Reserve Bank that the Land Transfer Act is a major impediment to the economic development of the state. Getting rid of the Act, however, is not a move that would resonate with popular sentiments. For a government to propose the cancellation of the Act would be political suicide. But what is happening instead is a gradual modification of the Act to accommodate private investments by “non-tribal subjects.” One such measure is the establishment of “industrial areas” where land is allotted for industrial purposes outside the purview of the Act. The Export Promotion Industrial Park at Byrnihat was the first initiative of this kind and was followed by the declaration of a number of similar areas as “industrial estates.” The government, under Chief Minister D.D. Lapang, applauds itself for such relaxations of the Act, describing these measures as a liberalized industrial policy that will help the unemployed youth of the state get jobs.99 And further initiatives along such lines are under consideration.100 In addition, individual companies seeking to invest in Meghalaya can make use of the so-called “single window agency,” a government body (chaired by Chief Minister Lapang) empowered to facilitate land deals and clear other hurdles for outside entrepreneurs. Several private cement plants have been established in recent years through this channel.

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In the next chapter, I will discuss the controversies surrounding the land lease granted to the French transnational corporation Lafarge for the extraction of limestone and the construction of a giant conveyor belt to transport the limestone to its cement plant in Bangladesh. There are several complicated twists to this case, but one that has aroused the most public debate recently is the mortgage of this land to foreign banks, among them the Asia Development Bank, to finance its 25-million-dollar project.101 Various organizations in the Khasi Hills are now asserting that Lafarge is violating the Land Transfer Act and that the lease should be terminated. This is most unlikely to transpire, not least because it would be a serious blow to the government’s attempt to project Meghalaya as an investment-friendly state. A more cynical observer might remark, what could you expect? To criticize Lafarge for capitalizing its assets is like blaming the tiger for being a tiger and killing animals. And indeed, inviting private investments from outside is bound to have repercussions on the land tenure system. Regardless of by which arrangements land is being allocated to these investors, the end result will be transfer of land to non-tribal subjects (if not permanently, then at least for a considerable period of time). If we further consider that outside investors are attracted to the state because of the natural resources, it is not just a matter of getting land to set up industrial units, but of getting hold of larger areas where these resources can be extracted. This, then, might add up to sizeable areas of land. Lafarge, for example, has taken a thirty-five-year lease on one square kilometer of land for the mining area and approximately another fifty hectares for the corridor of the conveyor belt, the mine infrastructure, and a green belt surrounding the mine.102 The other controversial mining venture, which will be discussed in the next chapter, is the proposed uranium mining project, which, besides all the other aspects, concerns a proposed long-term lease of about one square kilometer of land.103 As the uranium ore is expected to be distributed over a larger area, estimated at about ten square kilometers, it is not unlikely that further leases could be considered. And foreign investors are indeed lining up. Recently, the Australian High Commissioner in Delhi has announced that several Australian companies are interested in starting to mine for uranium, limestone, and coal in Meghalaya.104 In a longer perspective, the liberalized policies to attract outside investments might thus lead to a major transfer of land to “non-tribal subjects.” This development, it appears to me, is far more critical to discuss than whether children of mixed marriages or individuals belonging to “non-indigenous tribes” should have the right to own land. In this chapter I have sought to elucidate the key features pertaining to land and land tenure in Meghalaya during the last century. Of particular salience is the move away from communal or community-based land tenure, where basically everyone had access to cultivable land. The

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colonial encounter, in introducing the notion of land as private property, is a most critical event in this history. The land tenure has since been increasingly molded into a modern property regime based on individual ownership. This shift has had far-reaching social consequences, leading above all to a significant class differentiation and the weakening of women’s position in society.105 But even if we have come a long way away from the land tenure system that existed prior to advent of the British, it is not a question of a total rupture or break with these past land regimes. For example, while land has been commodified in many respects, i.e., been brought into a market sphere where it can be sold or traded, such transactions are still under various social restrictions. Land can be sold only under certain circumstances and to certain approved persons. Ownership is in itself the subject of debate and social negotiation. Even though an individual might hold title to land, she or he commonly requires approval from a wider group of people (the household, lineage or clan, the district council) to be able to sell it. Considering these limitations, a more correct way of putting it is that land has undergone a process of “restricted commoditization” (Kopytoff 1986: 74). On a normative level, the principle of custodianship is still cherished. Even if this principle does not prevail in individual land deals, for the community custodianship marks indigenous land as different and inalienable. And this, as we have seen, is of immense importance in Meghalaya.

Notes    1. The British used begar labor in many hill and forest areas in India. Local people were forced in this way to carry the luggage of visiting colonial officers, build roads, and perform other types of pressing work.    2. Arbuthnott Commission Report, Government of India, Dept. of Revenue and Agriculture, 1908. The quotation that opens this chapter is from the witness hearing with Sonaram R. Sangma, Appendix A: 11.    3. See, e.g., Sanjib Baruah’s revealing account (2001b) of Assamese peasants’ opposition to the attempt of the British colonial government to introduce long-term leases in land during the last decade of the nineteenth century.    4. Begar or impressed labor was to be abolished for road building and other infrastructure projects and be replaced by a contract system. It was found necessary to retain the system for carrying the luggage of officers on tour, but in such instances the villagers were to get full payment and efforts were to be made to see that the work caused the laborers as little harm as possible (R.W. Carlyle, Secr. to the Govt. of India, letter to the Chief Secr. to the Govt. of Eastern Bengal and Assam, included in the Arbuthnott Report). On an inspection tour in the Garo Hills in 1910, the Commissioner notes that begar was still being used for road construction because no contractor had come forward with an offer for the job (Inspection Note on the Deputy’s Office Tura, by Commissioner Assam Valley Division, February 19, 1910). Later, in 1916, it is reported that road work is being done by contract labor and that begar has been abolished (Inspection Note on the Tura Revenue Office, recorded by Hon. Lt-Col. P.R. Gurdon, Commissioner Assam Valley Division, 17–18 April 1916).

166   Unruly Hills    5. In his recent Ph.D. thesis on the Sangma movement, the historian Tharsush K. Sangma stresses the nonviolent nature of the agitation, something that should stand as a reminder to the Garo organizations that invoke Sonaram’s name today in their armed struggle for a greater, independent Garoland (2002: 205–6).    6. In an early agreement with the East India Company, a number of Garo nokmas agreed in the mid 1830s to abstain from committing murder (article 1) and to give up their custom of hanging human skulls in their homes (article 2) (see Appendix A, Sangma 1981: 47–49). During the pacification, British troops destroyed the human skulls that were kept by the Garos, and in one village as many as two hundred skulls were burnt at that time (Playfair 1909: 23). Headhunting is emphasized in the British representations of the Garos at the time of annexation, but in earlier accounts there are also more positive descriptions of the Garo as honest and trustworthy people (Buchanan Hamilton 1963[first compiled 1807–1814]: 85–96).    7. A laskhar is a person appointed by the government to collect taxes and settle minor disputes between villagers. The laskhar was commonly a nokma or some other influential person. In the Garo Hills there was a total of fifty-eight laskharships at the turn of the nineteenth century.    8. The Arbuthnott Report states that the annexation of the Garo Hills had become a necessity because of the frequent raids, and that it is in this context that the separation of hills and plains should be understood (op. cit.: 23).    9. For more details on Sangma’s life, see M.N. Sangma (1993: 27–40).   10. For a more comprehensive account of jhum cultivation in the Garo Hills, see the article by Bela Malik (2003).   11. Progress Report of Forest Administration in the Province of Assam, for the year 1875– 76 (1876: 3), Calcutta.   12. See, e.g., Progress Report of Forest Administration in the Province of Assam, for the year 1881–82 (1882: 2, 21), Calcutta.   13. See, e.g., Explanatory Notes on Forest Law (1913: 31–32), by the Imperial Forest College, Dehra Dun.   14. Progress Report of Forest Administration in the Province of Assam, for the year 1887– 1888 (1888: 2), Calcutta.   15. As in many other parts of India, the civil administration in Assam reacted very strongly against what it saw as the Forest Department’s attempt to put too much land under its own jurisdiction. The Chief Commissioner of Assam argued that the Forest Department should not be allowed to interfere with the expansion of cultivation in the province, be it by European planters or ordinary cultivators. Here the Chief Commissioner even asserted that reserved forests should be appropriated if needed (Resolution from the Chief Commissioner in Assam, in Progress Report for the Province of Assam, for the year 1895–96, Calcutta). The government of India, which, as mentioned, had pressured the Conservator of Forest to extend the reserves, intervened and stated that it agreed with the Chief Commissioner that unclassed forests with little tree cover could be opened for cultivation, but strongly emphasized the need for reserved forests, particularly in view of the future needs of the province. The policy to which the government subscribed was thus “great liberality as regards unclassed forests and their produce, and the most scrupulously conservative treatment of the reserves” (letter from Secr. to the Govt. of India to the Chief Commissioner of Assam, Progress Report for the Province of Assam, for the year 1896–97, Calcutta).

Shifting Land Rights   167    16. See Appendix C and D in the Arbuthnott Report.   17. Pargana is an administrative unit, a system introduced under Muslim rule and later replaced by the British. Certain areas, however, have continued to be refered to as pargana.   18. Arbuthnott Report (1908: 12).   19. Arbuthnott Report (Appendix A: 17, 23).   20. This claim concerned an area from the Brahmaputra plains right across to the Mymensingh border in the Bengal plains. It was unclear whether Sangma claimed it as a “semi-independent sovereign, or as a zamindar,” as Mr. LeMesurier, Chief Secretary to the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam, points out. He goes on to argue that the claim is “absolutely preposterous and dishonest,” hence nothing that requires further discussion (letter to the Secretary to the Government of India, prefacing the Arbuthnott Report).   21. Arbuthnott Report (1908: 21).   22. My account of Sangma draws first of all on the Arbuthnott Report and also on M.S. Sangma (1981: 40–42), M.N. Sangma (1993), and Sinha (1993: chap. 5). Sinha has included the mentioned memorandum to the Viceroy in an appendix.   23. Letter from R.W. Carlyle, Secretary to the Government of India, to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam, dated 20 March 1908, p. 2 (added to the Arbuthnott Report).   24. Arbuthnott Report (1908: 13).   25. After Sangma’s death in 1913 (or 1914) the case was taken over by other Garo leaders and continued until the Second World War (Sangma 1981: 42).   26. See note 4.   27. It is mentioned in the Arbuthnott Report, and confirmed by Sangma himself, that he had collected more than 100,000 rupees, which was a substantial sum of money at that time (and, in fact, still is).   28. Arbuthnott Report (1908: 14).   29. Arbuthnott Report (1908: 67, Appendix C, relating to “Deposition of Witnesses Examined in Connection with Hill Tour”).   30. It is naturally hard to assess to what extent Sangma’s leadership was supported by the Garos. Some nokmas involved in the controversy with the Bijni zamindari apparently started to distance themselves from Sangma and around 1910 began to pursue legal land claims without his involvement (see M.N. Sangma 1993: 31).   31. Gustav Mann was in charge of the Assam Forest Department from 1875 to 1890, and was promoted to the post of Conservator of Forest in 1881/82. For more details on Mann and his role in the history of forest administration in Assam, see A. Saikia (2005).   32. Arbuthnott Report, “Note on Forest Reservation,” (1908: 4).   33. Ibid.: 1 (emphasis added).   34. Ibid.: 10.   35. Letter from R.W. Carlyle, Secretary to the Government of India, to the Chief Secretary to the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam, dated 20 March 1908, p. 2 (added to the Arbuthnott Report).   36. “A Note of Inspection on some forests of Assam,” by F. Beadon Bryant, Calcutta,1912, p. 2..   37. Her name was given as Thokje Garoani in the Arbuthnott Report, p. 49.   38. Arbuthnott Report (1908: 80, Appendix D).   39. Ibid.: 67, Appendix C.

168   Unruly Hills   40. Statement by the nokma of Romphagiri (also laskhar over four villages), Arbuthnott Report (1908: 81, Appendix D).   41. The most commonly used term for land rent or tribute given to the a’king nokma by outside villagers is otherwise a’wil.   42. Arbuthnott Report (1908: 10).   43. After the colonial annexation there was a marked process of households moving out to the fields and establishing new and smaller hamlets, something that is attributed to the ending of inter-village feuds (Playfair 1909: 40).   44. On the basis of this material it would be possible to establish with some accuracy the extent to which land was being sold in the early twentieth century. So far, this has not been done, and based on my own experience of trying to look at a few of the a’king maps, the undertaking would require a great deal of time and diplomatic skill or good contacts with the people in charge of the maps in the District Council office or the Deputy Commissioner’s office (but doable nonetheless!).   45. Inspection Report by K. Cantlie, Offg. Commissioner, Assam Valley Division, Gauhati, 26 April 1937.   46. Mahari is usually described as an “extended kingroup,” which includes the members of a particular matrilineage/“motherhood” or machong and those that has married into it (see C.R. Marak 2007). Above the mahari is the larger descent group or clan, the chatchi, which is the supreme unit of descent in Garo society. It is important to note that these terms are used in different and sometimes confusing ways in scholarly literature as well as in official documents. Some writings use the English term “clan,” which might then refer to any of these levels of matrilineal descent. For more details on this, see especially Burling 1963; Nakane 1967; Goswami and Majumdar 1972; M.S. Sangma 1981; de Maaker 2006.   47. In 1944/45 there were 84 “Ahking cases” and in 1945/46 as many as 191 such recorded cases (Inspection Note on the Revenue Office, Tura, 9th January, 1947, reported by C.S. Gunning, Commissioner of Divisions, Assam).   48. Nakane carried out her fieldwork in the Garo Hills in the 1950s.   49. P.C. Kar (1982) gives a detailed account of how this process unfolded in Darengiri, a village situated in the vicinity of Tura. In this village more or less all lands had been claimed by individual persons, either as permanent rice fields, as areca nut or banana plantations, or as extended homestead plots. The larger argument of his study is that Garo society was undergoing a far-reaching transformation from collective ownership to individual rights in land.   50. See also Nakane 1967: 60–62.   51. The term nokma can also be used in a more inclusive way to refer to any man of influence who belongs to a well-to-do or prestigious household (Sangma 1981: 61–66).   52. The Dutch anthropologist Eric de Maaker conducted extensive fieldwork in Sadolpara between 1999 and 2001. Although his work concentrates on death rituals among the Songsarek Garos, those who are followers of the indigenous faith, he provides in-depth information on various aspects of contemporary Garo society (2006). Sadolpara has recently been incorporated into the IFAD project and as part of that, a documentary film has been made about the traditional environmental knowledge of people in the village. The film is entitled Still, the children are here and is made by Mira Nair.

Shifting Land Rights   169    53. The District Council Court; I will later discuss the functioning of these courts, which are under the respective autonomous district councils of the Garo, Khasi, and Jaintia Hills (see chapter 5).   54. This is something I have been told several times during my stays in the Garo Hills.   55. I have discussed this matter with several knowledgeable persons, among them Daniel Ingty, coordinator of the IFAD project in the Garo Hills (September 2002), and the well-known author Julius L.R. Marak (November 2002). But as with many aspects concerning the present land regime in Meghalaya, the legal status of the patta still remains unclear to me. Marak, for example, argued that even if a person gets patta he still cannot sell the land to anyone else without the consent of the nokma.   56. This is the case not only in the Garo Hills or in Meghalaya, but seems to be a more general process in the northeastern hills. Xonzoi Barbora (2002) gives a telling example from the North Cachar Hills in Assam, where a wealthy businessman living in town managed to get an individual land title or patta for seven hundred acres of land (almost three sq. km) in his natal village for the purpose of making a tea plantation. As Barbora explains, the village headman forwarded the request to the District Council, which granted the man individual patta for the land. The headman belonged to Congress Party and as the council was Congress dominated, it did not object. Consequently, the villagers lost a large portion of land previously used for jhum cultivation, collection of forest produce, and to graze livestock. The justification for approving the request was that it would enhance development of the village, i.e., provide employment. This did not happen; most laborers were brought in from outside.   57. Lack of irrigation and failure in promoting terrace cultivation is even noted on the government web pages of the three districts of the Garo Hills (see Districts at http://meghalaya.nic.in, accessed July 2007).   58. Inspection Note on the Revenue Office, Tura, dated 15 January 1945, recorded by C.S. Gunning, Commissioner of Divisions, Assam (emphasis added).   59. The actual purpose of this regulation is the control of jhum cultivation, and it provides the District Council with far-reaching powers, e.g., to exempt land from jhum, to fix the jhum cycle, and even to settle land in the plains for wet rice cultivation or to allot land for tree cultivation. As with many of the other acts, the District Council rarely exercises such powers or does so in a rather random way. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the District Council has a very elaborate forest regulation which has hardly been activated.   60. Sub-clause (b) of this regulation says that “Akhing” could also mean “any land held collectively by a particular community of a particular village or group of villages which is under the custody of the head of the said community or group of villages called ‘Nokma’ recognized as such by the District Council.” This seems to be a less prevalent situation, however.   61. I am quoting from the Judgement and Order, dated 14 July 2003, passed by E.A. Sangma, Executive Member, I/C Land Revenue, Garo Hills District Council, Tura: 3, 5. The case was originally registered as Misc. No. 130 of 1984/85.   62. In the abovementioned case, the order of the District Council stated that neither witnesses nor any written evidence could be produced to prove that the nokma alienating the a’king had acted with the consent of his wife and her relatives. Considering that the transfer of the a’king took place in the 1930s, one can assume that other parties that have acquired a’king land in this period would

170   Unruly Hills

  63.   64.

  65.   66.   67.   68.

  69.   70.   71.   72.   73.   74.   75.   76.   77.

  78.   79.

also face difficulties procuring written documentation or witnesses who were alive at the time. “Memorandum Seeking Constitutional Recognition and Protection of the Traditional Institutions of the Garo Race,” by the Drafting Committee Council of Nokmas, Tura, 2002 (emphasis added). One especially remarkable case, which I have learned of from several people, concerns the nokma holding title to the a’king of Tura town. I have not investigated this case, but as the story goes he was a drunkard who sold out land left and right, taking all the money for himself and spending it recklessly. The mahari tried in vain to get him removed and even took the case to the High Court. The High Court, however, turned down the case, and the nokma was able to pursue his most irresponsible sell-out of the a’king (personal communications, Professor Milton S. Sangma, 19 October 2003, and advocate Mr. Uday Rimsu, 24 October 2003). See the detailed account and chronology of the “scam” by the journalist Linda Chhakchhuak in Grassroots Options, 1999 (Autumn). The pamphlet is entitled Introducing Balpakram National Park, Meghalaya Forest Department, Wildlife Wing (undated). Ibid.: 2–3. See the report by S.B. Singh, Chief Conservator of Forest, whom the High Court in 1996 assigned to re-survey the areas acquired. Singh states as his conclusion that the personnel of the Forest Department acted with “criminal intent to defraud” the Government (inflating the area measurements) and “thereby huge amount of money of the government was lost” (“Report of the Verification Survey of the Land Acquired for Creation and Extension of Balpakram National Park,” dated 11 December 1996). Bigha is the most common local land measure; one bigha is roughly equal to onethird of an acre or 0.13 hectares. Interview in Tura, 27 October 2003. Writ Petition (C) No. 315 (SH) of 2002, Gauhati High Court, Shillong Bench, 4 September 2002: 7. The Land Acquisition Act, 1894, Part III, para. 23. See, e.g., the discussion in Sharma (2003). Cf. Fundamental Rights Article 19, the Indian Constitution. The establishment of so-called Special Economic Zones by using the provisions under the Land Acquisition Act to procure land has been the subject of very heated debate in recent years, not least in the state of West Bengal. See “Social cohesion and land acquisition,” column by N.K. Singh in the Financial Express, 21 April 2007. See, e.g., Amita Singh’s study of the expansive townships of Faribad and Gurgaon in the state of Haryana. Singh argues that since the Deputy Commissioner was the sole authority in setting the rates of compensation for lands taken over by the state, to have a posting in this office dealing with land issues was most attractive because of the “enormous money inflow.” The chief ministers in power during the last decade placed their own people in these lucrative positions (2006: 368–69). In the case of North American Indians, see, e.g., Kurkiala (2003) and Hornborg (2005). Few tourists find their way to the park. It is located in a remote part of Meghalaya, in the vicinity of the border with Bangladesh. The roads are bad and accommodation is a problem. In addition, the area is a famous hideout for militants and is not considered safe.

Shifting Land Rights   171    80. Divisional Forest Officer J. Dutta told me that there were only three villages, comprising thirty-two households in all, that had been displaced by the national park (interview in Tura, 27 October 2003). I have not been able to confirm the accuracy of these figures.   81. The name of the village somehow escaped my attention at the time.   82. Several of the forest officials with whom I have spoken agree that illegal logging is a large problem in Balpakram, but claim that its proximity to Bangladesh makes it difficult to check; timber is being cut and smuggled across the border at night. Patrolling the area at night is said to be almost impossible considering the large number of elephants and armed rebels in the area.   83. Some of these lease agreements are under judicial trial, as the clans that own the lands, and have received annual rent payments from the British as well as from the postcolonial state, want to reclaim the land. These claims are of greatest importance and concern large parts of Shillong as well as the “green belt” of planted forests surrounding the town. See, e.g., Review Petition No. 5 (SH) of 1998, between Nongkhlaw Clan Vs. Union of India, The state of Meghalaya and others, in the Gauhati High Court, Shillong Bench. The main issue here is whether these agreements are to be regarded as leases or sale deeds. The clans argue for the former, the Meghalaya government for the latter (personal communication, advocate M. Ahmed, 24 January 2003). I hope to return to this extremely complicated matter in a later publication.   84. For the establishment of Shillong as administrative headquarters, see Hussain (2005) and Kennedy (1996). As Kennedy explains, the British needed to get full legal rights to the land before they invested resources in a hill station (1996: 10).   85. This process was noted already during the colonial period. The civil servant David Roy, in a note on land tenure included in Cantlie (1974: 121), describes how people with cash bought up village lands and excluded everyone else from access to it, thus converting Ri Raid land to Ri Kynti land.   86. Nongkynrih made this statement in the seminar on forest and the timber ban (discussed in chapter 2) at the Pinewood Hotel, 7 February 2000.   87. See the proposed Regulation “Allotment, Occupation or Use or Setting Apart of Land,” para. 12 (Bill 2005, the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council). The bill still awaits approval by the Governor of Meghalaya, which might take several years.   88. Report of the Land Reforms Commission for Khasi Hills (Rymbai 1974: 46, para. 4).   89. Personal communication, 11 October 2003.   90. This issue is discussed in the local press from time to time; see, e.g., “Rich tribals’ land deal spree hits poor hard,” The Shillong Times, 28 June 2007.   91. Outsiders are not allowed to buy and sell land in any of the areas placed under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution (this also holds for Fifth Schedule areas).   92. Land is held in the name of a “tribal” person, but actual control or de facto ownership is with a “non-tribal.”   93. The local English-language newspapers Meghalaya Guardian and the Shillong Times, as well as the northeastern sections of the Telegraph and Asian Age, carried a large number of articles on the issue in November and December 2002. E.g., “Land Transfer Act to be amended,” The Shillong Times, 13 November; “Govt. decision to amend Land Transfer Act draws flak,” The Shillong Times, 14 November; “Uproar over Khonglam Land Plan,” The Telegraph, 15 November;

172   Unruly Hills

  94.   95.   96.

  97.   98.   99. 100. 101. 102.

103.

104. 105.

“SSSS opposes Govt. move to amend the State Land Act,” Meghalaya Guardian, 26 November; “Lapang for land rights only to genuine tribals,” Asia Age, 21 December; “Govt. justifies move to amend Land Transfer Act,” The Shillong Times, 21 December; and so on. “So much land to give away,” article by Patricia Mukhim in the Shillong Times, 15 November 2002. “Legitimate rights of the indigenous minority,” letter to the Meghalaya Guardian, 26 November 2002. The Land Transfer Act has immense emotional and symbolic significance, but even so one cannot obtain published copies of the Act. I had to get my copy from the Meghalaya Secretariat and then not as an updated version with the amendments inserted, but the original Act as one document and all ten or so amendments as separate documents. Getting the complete, updated version of the Act into circulation would certainly be useful. See Meghalaya government website http://meghalaya.nic.in. Private communication, Tura, 27 October 2003 (I met this person by chance at the house of a friend and did not conduct any formal interview; hence I prefer to keep him anonymous). The Congress-led government with Lapang as chief minister was voted out of power in the 2008 state election. To what extent the change of government will affect the liberalization policies remains to be seen. See, e.g., government press release No. 150/06, dated 27 February 2006 (http:// meghalaya.nic.in). “Has Lafarge violated State land laws,” The Shillong Times, May 24, 2006. I draw here on information from the report by the consultancy firm ERM India Private Ltd. “Elevated Conveyor Belt, Meghalaya: Social Impact”, dated 2002, and a study by Vincent Darlong, Ministry of Environment and Forests, entitled “A Case Study of Environmental Monitoring of Limestone Mining Project at Nongtrai in Meghalaya, N.E. India”, dated 2002. The size of the area varies. According to some sources it might even come to about 2.5 square kilometers; see “UCIL take first step for uranium mining in Meghalaya,” 23 February 2007, OneIndia News (http://news.oneindia.in, accessed April 2007). Zee News, 21 May 2007 (http://zeenews.com—Indian edition). An important gender aspect that I have not discussed is the different inheritance rules applying to ancestral and self-acquired property. In the case of the former, traditional matrilineal inheritance applies. In the case of the latter there is greater flexibility; for example, houses and land can be given though a will also to sons. As more and more land is exchanged through market relations, such land is being moved from the domain of ancestral property to that of selfacquired property. Thus, for example, a salaried person who buys land from his own earnings would be the owner of such land and is free to pass it on to his sons. This has become especially common among people in urban areas. See further chapter 5.

Chapter 4

Mining Matters With cooperation of certain States, the country should aim to mine enough uranium. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, (then-) President of India 1 Our people cannot suffer because India wants our uranium ... For us, it is our people first and India comes after that. Paul Lyngdoh, politician and former KSU president2 In this chapter I explore the politics of mineral extraction in Meghalaya. Mining of coal and limestone is a critical source of income for the state government. The large deposit of uranium in the state stands in turn to be exploited, but such plans have come up against stiff opposition by various organizations. I begin with a story from the field.

April 2006 Mr. H.S. Shylla, Chief Executive Member of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council at the time, greeted me with a friendly handshake as I entered his spacious office in Shillong. He was in a good mood, just returning from a visit at the Jadugoda uranium mine in Jharkhand and several other atomic energy institutions elsewhere in India. The trip was part of a series of study tours organized by the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd. (UCIL) with the aim of informing politicians, government

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officials, land owners, and other concerned citizens of Meghalaya about the benefits of nuclear energy and dispelling the fears expressed with regard to the proposed mining of uranium project in the state. Shylla was highly impressed by the advances India had made in the field of nuclear science, which he had learned about during the tour. He had received a DVD with a PowerPoint presentation that was running on his laptop. He showed me a few of the slides that concerned different uses of nuclear technology, for example, in medicine, in food preservation, and not least in power generation. He also showed me the radiation detector that had been presented to him and made a joke to one of his colleges saying that they should have a display in the office showing the current radiation level. He was fully convinced that radiation was harmless and that all talk about health risks was baseless. As he put it, radiation is there in nature itself and we are all exposed to it as background radiation. Coming to the issue of uranium mining in Meghalaya, he explained that it would be open-cast mining, which would minimize the radiation exposure of the workers. In Jadugoda, the mining is done deep under the surface, but even then the people working in the mines for twenty to thirty years showed no sign of being affected by radiation. The workers there were all perfectly healthy, he argued. Why then should we have problems with radiation here, he asked rhetorically, as if this contentious issue were of no concern.3 Shylla told me that the District Council had given its support to the proposed mining project.4 It was a matter of saying yes to development and giving the local people a chance to cash in on the precious resource nature had bestowed upon them. As Shylla put it, “How can poverty and uranium go together—people in the area are sitting on millions and yet they are poor.” To emphasize his point, he told me the uranium deposit was considered the best in India if not in Asia as a whole. And as he has put it elsewhere, people would benefit not only in Meghalaya but also in the entire nation, and those in Meghalaya should be proud of their “contribution to the country’s nuclear strength.”5 Indeed, on visits to Meghalaya both President Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had stressed the national importance of the project. In the presidential address to the nation quoted above, Dr. Kalam referred to the need for increased uranium mining as a crucial aspect of the country’s energy security. In view of the internal political opposition to the IndoUS nuclear cooperation deal at the time (mainly by the parties on the left), the urgency of acquiring uranium from domestic sources has obviously also increased.6 And with the government’s having endorsed the ambitious plan of reaching a target of 20,000 MW from nuclear power by 2020, the problem of fuel has become a major constraint.7 In view of this, one can understand Shylla’s optimism and apparent confidence that the mining will eventually be realized. Shylla also said that the land owners

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were in favor of the project, that UCIL had financed a road project in the mining area, and that the construction work had already started. “It is now up to the state government,” he concluded. “It is they who have the final say in the matter.” In the course of the previous year Shylla had become the most outspoken supporter of uranium mining in Meghalaya, and he seemed increasingly impatient with the opposition camp. The day after our interview he told the press that that the NGOs opposing uranium mining were “anti-development and anti-national” and “should be put behind bars.”8 Perhaps this was his way of responding to earlier allegations against him for corruption and administrative irregularities in relation to the mining area’s road project. In any case, by sticking his neck out in this way, Shylla has invited fierce criticism, and some commentators have applauded his courage in taking a clear stand, something few of the prominent politicians in the state have done. Maghalaya’s Chief Minister D.D. Lapang, who few think will go against the wishes of the Prime Minister and his Congress Party comrades in New Delhi (on whose continued support his political survival depends), plays it safe and maintains that the issue should be thoroughly studied before any decision is arrived at. The most recent maneuver is to appoint an allparty commission to look into the matter. Meanwhile, the anti-mining camp is gathering strength, spearheaded by the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) along with the Hynniewtrep Environment Status Preservation Organisation (HESPO), the Meghalaya People’s Human Rights Council (MPHRC), and the Langrin Youth Welfare Association. Though no longer in the limelight, the person who perhaps is most of all identified with the cause, who has most consistently opposed uranium mining, is the veteran politician Mr. Hopingstone Lyngdoh. Lyngdoh explained to me, when we met in April 2006 (just a few days after my meeting with Shylla), that his aversion to the use of nuclear energy goes all the way back to the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As he learned about this terrible event, he realized the intimate link between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Being a resolute opponent of nuclear weapons, he became equally critical of the use of nuclear energy. Hence his opposition to the proposed uranium mining project in Meghalaya.

Opposing Uranium According to Lyngdoh, the history of uranium in Meghalaya goes back to the 1950s when the atomic energy mining division came for the first preliminary explorations. New explorations followed in the 1970s and 1980s, eventually leading to the discovery of uranium deposits in a number of different places. The village of Domiasiat in the West Khasi Hills was one of these sites, and it was close to the place where the Atomic

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Minerals Directorate9 finally started explorative mining and processing of the ore to produce so-called yellowcake. Lyngdoh said that he had opposed these activities from the very beginning in his capacity as an elected member of various political bodies.10 He also started receiving information from people in and around Domiasiat that fish were dying in the nearby rivers and that dogs and cows were going mad. Strange diseases had also begun to emerge. It was then he started to mobilize people against the uranium mining on a larger scale. Because of the vigorous protests, the exploratory mining was stopped and all operations in Domiasiat were shut down in the 1990s. Lyngdoh said that 650 tonnes of contaminated tailings (mining waste) had been left unprotected at the mining site. Eventually, the Directorate was made to put the waste back in the pits and seal them with concrete. But already it was clear that the atomic energy authorities were determined to pursue their mining plans. As Lyngdoh explained, he and others active in the campaign had been under strong pressure ever since to alter their stand and allow the mining to proceed, but if anything, he has only become more convinced in opposing the project. Over the years he has had contact with other organizations around the world that pursue a similar struggle against nuclear energy/weapons in all forms. He mentioned the terrible fate of the Navajo Indians in the United States, whose lands had been devastated by prolonged uranium mining, leading to deaths and enormous suffering for the people, who often had no option but to continue living in a contaminated environment. Preventing the same thing from happening in Meghalaya was another major reason for Lyngdoh to oppose uranium mining. While the threat of uranium mining has been hanging over Meghalaya for a long time, the central government and the atomic energy lobby appear more determined now than before to go ahead with the project. Now it is a matter of convincing people of the benefits of mining, and according to Lyngdoh, this is done to a large extent with the help of bribes. Large sums, he said, had been handed out to land owners and people in decision-making positions. In this connection, he mentioned the study tours arranged by UCIL for people to visit the mining sites at Jadugoda (supposedly involving monetary “gifts”). Major projects commonly involve illicit flows of money, but whether kickbacks have been paid in this case is of course hard to tell. Be this as it may, the nuclear lobby has clearly had some success in convincing certain key groups of the benefits of the project. Lyngdoh mentioned in particular Shylla’s recent statement that the District Council had approved UCIL’s mining proposal and, further, that he (Shylla) wanted all those who opposed the project to be arrested. Lyngdoh laughed at this, saying that they could not possibly put them all in jail. The KSU was on his side and they were all determined to stop the mining, come what may.11

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The question of whether to mine or not to mine the rich near-surface deposit of uranium in the West Khasi Hills has been haunting the state quite directly, then, since the early 1990s. H.S. Shylla and Hopingstone Lyngdoh are two important persons in this controversy, but there are several other prominent voices to be heard. As is obvious from the preceding pages, the positions are irreconcilable. There seem to be no points of convergence, no openings for a real dialogue between proponents and opponents. For example, the UCIL and other representatives of the atomic energy sector are claiming, like Shylla, that radiation does not pose any problem in the project. Mining would be carried out in a scientific manner, taking all precautions to protect the health of laborers as well as local villagers and the environment more generally. The opponents argue, like Lyngdoh, the very opposite. Both camps use the existing uranium mining facilities in Jadugoda to prove their case. The first group argues that the health record of laborers and people living in the vicinity of the mines reveals no increase in cancer or other ailments that could be related to the mining and milling operations. This is what Shylla has been saying since his visit, and Meghalaya’s Minister of Mining and Geology Prestone Tyngsong says likewise. At a press conference, Tyngsong told the gathered audience that the feared health hazards from radiation were unfounded. As evidence he mentioned that he had seen parents sending their children to the school inside the UCIL premises, a risk they would not have taken had there been any “health hazards.”12 Tyngsong’s predecessor, Deborah C. Marak, said similarly after her visit to Jadugoda in 2004 that she was convinced that uranium mining has “no adverse effect on human life.” She backed this claim with assurances by then-President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, saying that she trusted him, as a famous defense scientist, rather than the NGOs rallying against mining.13 Shylla has referred several times to the Supreme Court decision to turn down a Public Interest Litigation filed in 1999 relating to alleged health effects caused by radiation waste in Jadugoda,14 and he has accused the anti-uranium campaigners of contempt of court because they continue to stress the health risks involved in uranium mining.15 And indeed, the latter camp continues to refer to reports that speak of premature deaths of laborers, high frequencies of cancer, miscarriages, sterility, children born with various deformities, and high infant mortality in the Jadugoda area. The award-winning documentary Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda has been screened during meetings as part of the anti-mining campaign.16 This film gives a chilling portrait of the gross negligence, arrogance, and cynicism of the UCIL authorities vis-à-vis the local adivasi or tribal population. Villagers pass through and graze cattle in and around the tailing ponds that should be properly fenced and secured. Children play with scrap from the mine and mill areas; leaking barrels with highly radioac-

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tive material are lying around unprotected in public areas; laborers work in the mine without proper safety equipment. Trucks carry the uranium ore uncovered on public roads, passing through villages, leaving clouds of dust behind them. Villagers tell of their failing health, deaths, and misery, and medical experts working in the area confirm that many of their ailments are directly linked to their continued exposure to radiation. The representatives of UCIL interviewed in the film dismiss all such claims, insisting that these ailments are related to poor hygiene and nutrition standards and to high alcohol consumption among the male population in the area. One villager, a man in his early thirties, sums up their wretched conditions by stating that the mining of uranium and bauxite found on their lands has become a “curse” for them. Many people who have visited Jadugoda convey a similar message, of a place marked by sorrows and sufferings.17 Representatives from the principal anti-mining organizations that were part of a delegation from Meghalaya to Jadugoda in 2004 returned with such a view. Dino D.G. Dympep, Secretary General of the Meghalaya People’s Human Rights Council (MPHRC), told me that they were treated like VIPs during the visit but were not allowed to move around freely. Some of them nevertheless managed to slip out and interact independently with the local people. Dympep showed me some pictures of children with various deformities, photographs they had taken during their unauthorized detour.18 In a letter to the Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Dympep, with KSU President Samuel Jyrwa and HESPO General Secretary S.S. Syiem, wrote that villagers told of various health problems, above all congenital deformity, something the visitors could also see for themselves. They further claimed that there were no traces of the development facilities that UCIL had said at one time or another would come along with the mining. Instead, they asserted, the mining project would lead to a large-scale influx of outsiders, which would pose a “threat to our culture, customs and traditions.” They concluded by stating (in boldface type in the letter): [W]e as organizations … have been opposing the proposed uranium mining from the very beginning of its inception. Now after visiting Jadugoda and seeing the reality behind we are more convinced to our previous Stand and … we will not part even an inch of our ancestral land to the foreigners who we consider that they are our enemies. 19 The last sentence marks an important discursive twist, portraying UCIL as a foreign impostor. A similar sentiment is expressed in the chapter epigraph by Paul Lyngdoh, which frames the uranium mining issue in terms of “us” (the Khasi people) versus the “foreigner,” the outside exploiter represented by the Indian state. The Khasis will stand to suf-

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fer, while the benefits will go elsewhere. As discussed earlier, this trope is central to the autonomy discourse in Northeast India, commonly evoked in debates about extraction of the region’s natural wealth. While proponents of uranium mining stress that it will bring development to the state, the opponents frame it as yet another example of neocolonial exploitation and violation of indigenous rights. In sum, the opposition to uranium mining draws on several registers of protest. On the one hand, it is a matter of a particularly hazardous form of mining that poses great risks for human health and environmental contamination. On the other hand, it is a matter of ethnic sovereignty, of keeping land and resources in the hands of the community, of protecting livelihoods and customs endangered by the foreseen influx of outsiders.20 Consequently, for some it is a matter of choosing a different type of development or, as a female protester put it, “We do not want the development that comes from uranium.”21

Mining and Development As the tension in the uranium mining conflict builds, the mining of coal and limestone is being carried out on an ever-increasing scale. These mining activities too have their contentious issues, at times leading to protests, but here the question has never, as far as I am aware, been whether or not to allow the extraction to proceed. Also, the history of these undertakings goes back a long way, to the colonial period in the case of coal and further back to the pre-colonial period in the case of limestone. The mining is carried out by the individual land owners, or by private contractors that have obtained mining leases directly from the land owners. The state government and district councils exercise little control over the mining beyond the collection of royalties. For coal, the annual royalty collected by the state government has almost doubled in the last five years and for the fiscal year 2006/7 was just above 1 billion Indian rupees. The royalty from limestone shows a sevenfold increase during the same period and was 74 million rupees for the year 2006/7.22 Of this, the state government allocates 25 per cent to the respective district council. The central government earns a substantial income as well, from customs tax on the minerals that are exported to Bangladesh. The coal traders have emerged as a wealthy and powerful group in the state, and pressures from this influential lobby group seem to be one important reason why Meghalaya still lacks effective mining regulations. The most common depiction of mining in Meghalaya has to do with its “unscientific” nature, i.e., that neither environmental precautions nor any safety measures for the miners are observed (see Das Gupta, Tiwari and Tripathi 2002). Some commentators even argue that the economic benefits of the enterprise are outweighed by the adverse effects on the environment and on the health of laborers and local people.23

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The Meghalaya coal mines were exempted from the 1973 Coal Mining Act, a piece of legislation that, most importantly, nationalized more or less the entire coal sector in India. Considering the relatively small amount of coal mining that was going on in Meghalaya at the time, and the fact that the coal fields had no accessible rail connection, the national interest was, one can assume, rather limited. In any case, coal mining in the state was considered a small-scale cottage industry that to date remains outside the purview of any central government regulation.24 Earlier, in the 1950s, the Assam government had made an attempt to take control of the major coal fields in the Khasi Hills, with a view to leasing them out to industrialists. The legendary politician, the late B.B. Lyngdoh (2004: 6–7), described this event as the “coal war.” As he put it, according to Khasi customary laws, land—with all the trees upon it and minerals underneath—belongs to the people, be it the community, the clan, or the individual land owner, hence not to the state. Taking away these customary rights was unacceptable, and people in the Cherrapunjee area where the mines were located rose in mass protest. The Assam government tried to crush the agitation by heavy-handed means, but finally, as Lyngdoh put it, had to give up its attempt at “taking away the coal mines from the people” (ibid.: 7).25 And indeed, the general perception in Meghalaya seems to be that, as with land and forest, ownership of the mineral resources is with people and not the state. This is obviously not an uncontroversial assertion and is clearly not in line with the official, Indian view. The website of the Department of Mines, Government of India, has a section on frequently asked questions of which the first is, “Who is the owner of minerals in India?” The answer states that it is “the State Governments that are the owner of minerals located within the boundary of the State concerned.”26 There is no reference to any particular Act or regulation to back this claim, but one can assume that it is based on the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act of 1957, which is the main piece of legislation concerned with mining.27 In this Act, however, one will find no direct formulation regarding ownership of minerals. Through the Act, the Union Government “takes under its control the regulation of mines and development of minerals,” as stated in the first paragraph (para. 1.3). The Act subsequently establishes the rules under which mining in India is to be carried out. For example, it states that no exploration or mining operations can be done without a license or lease, in accordance with the conditions laid out in the Act. It is the state governments, after clearance from the central government, that grant mining licenses or leases in the case of “major minerals” such as coal and limestone. For “minor minerals,” like sand and stone boulders, central government approval is not required. The state governments are further entitled to the royalties from the mining, according to rates set by the central government. On the basis of these few points, it is obvi-

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ous that mineral rights are vested primarily with the state governments. And following from this, it seems plausible to derive the view of the Department of Mines, quoted at the start of the paragraph, that it is the state government that owns the minerals. The High Level Committee, Government of India’s Planning Commission, argues similarly that “Minerals are the property of the states.”28 And further, “Conceptually, royalty is payment made by the mining lessee to the state as owner of the mineral.”29 Here then we have two contrary views, one based on customary laws and one on more recent national legislation. The first claims minerals as property of the community, clan, or individual land owner; the other, dominant, view is that minerals are national assets that belong to the state. Although the latter seems to have the support of existing laws, things are not as straightforward as one might think. One major legal contention relates to mineral rights in scheduled areas. In the historic Samatha Judgement,30 the Indian Supreme Court nullified mining leases issued by the Andhra Pradesh government to private mining industries in scheduled areas.31 The Supreme Court stated that the principle object of the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution is not only to prevent land alienation among the tribals, but also to ensure that the “tribals remain in possession and enjoyment of the land in scheduled areas.”32 The Supreme Court thus stated that minerals, rather than being mined under leases to non-tribal persons (private companies, industrialists, etc.), should be exploited by the tribals themselves, either individually or through cooperative societies “composed solely of the tribes with financial assistance of the state.”33 The Supreme Court judgment does not entirely prohibit mining by non-tribals in scheduled areas, but it clearly stresses its overriding concern that this not be done at the expense of tribal rights. It is stipulated, for example, that if such leases are granted, 20 per cent of the net profit should be set aside for a development fund for the local communities. In addition, the private lessee should improve the educational, health, and economic infrastructure in the area to compensate for the infringement on tribal lands. One commentator argues that the importance of the Samatha judgment for tribal rights is similar to that of the Mabo verdict in Australia,34 but that the central government as well as the state governments, not least the government of Andhra Pradesh, have obstructed or been extremely reluctant to implement it.35 What the judgment could imply for Meghalaya and other Sixth Schedule areas remains to be seen. But in my reading, the Supreme Court judges seem to lend their support to the position taken by the late B.B. Lyngdoh with regard to the coal mines. In a global context, most indigenous organizations claim similarly that mineral deposits within their ancestral territories, as well as other natural resources, belong to them.36 But the other side of rights is responsibilities, and in the case of Meghalaya none of the local governing bodies, the traditional political

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institutions, the district councils, or the state government, have made any attempt to regulate the extraction of minerals. Beyond concerns for the environment and the safety of laborers, there are also important issues of social justice, i.e., that the profits of the mining should benefit the community at large and not just a few select individuals. After all, a coal mine that pollutes a stream or a body of water might ruin the drinking water for an entire village. The district councils, for example, have the mandate to intervene, as they are empowered to control land use in the areas under their jurisdiction. They also have the power to levy taxes on minerals, beyond the royalties that the district councils share with the state government. Similarly, the state government could as well be expected to take a more proactive stand. The outspoken journalist and social critic Patricia Mukhim laments the passivity of the government, arguing that Meghalaya is the only state in the country where mining laws are nonexistent, giving private mine owners a free hand to pollute the environment and exploit laborers (while the state government remains a silent spectator).37 The uncontrolled mining has stirred up a fresh controversy in recent years relating to preservation of the unique limestone caves in Meghalaya. Most of these caves or cave systems are located in or near the mining areas and risk being ruined through the intensified mining of coal and limestone. In the mid 1990s the construction of a cement plant was proposed in the vicinity of the famous Siju Cave, on the outskirts of the Balpakram National Park in the Garo Hills. The project aroused vocal protests in the state, with backing from international scientists testifying to the value of the cave (not least as the cave harbors a number of rare bats). The Ministry of Environment and Forests finally withheld the required environmental clearance and the project was shelved.38 Now it is the unique caves in the Jaintia Hills—one of which is over twenty kilometers in length, apparently the longest natural cave system in India—that are under threat as two new cement plants have been built in the area. The matter became tense after the Meghalaya Adventurer Association (MAA), which is fighting for the protection of the caves, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) with the Supreme Court to protest the uncontrolled mining in the state. Bearing in mind that the “timber ban” originated in a PIL, this naturally evoked fears among the mining lobby that severe restrictions could be placed on mining as well. To express its discontent, the coal lobby employed what was for it a rather unusual form of protest. In the summer of 2007 the MAA hosted a large international cave expedition, and as they were about to begin their explorations they encountered a large crowd that told them to pack up and leave the area. The protesters were headed by Vinson Pala and Sony Khyriem, two of the most affluent coal traders in Meghalaya; the fortyperson expedition included a number of prominent speleologists from abroad. Throwing them out would of course have given the state bad

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press. After a few days of negotiation, a settlement was reached and the expedition was allowed to continue. The PIL is still under consideration by the Supreme Court, but as MAA President Brian Daly Kharpran told me in September 2007, they were expecting a judgment shortly.39 If the judgment goes in the MAA’s favor, there are bound to be more persistent protests by the coal traders. As Kharpran told me, the MAA is not against mining as such but it does oppose the way mining is carried out today. If there is mining, there should be a mining policy that ensures protection of sensitive areas, particularly where the most important caves are located, and more generally minimizes the environmental impact. As it is now, he said, there is no rehabilitation of mining sites, for example; when a deposit is exhausted, the miners just move on to the next place. The result is complete devastation of the mining areas. Local people suffer but they have no voice. It is the “coal mafia” that controls everything and they have the ears of the politicians, Kharpran said.40 Besides the intrinsic value of the unique caves, the MAA argues, the caves offer a tremendous potential for ecotourism. Meghalaya government officials travel around the world to promote the state as a major tourist destination for nature lovers. But the problem here is that several of these caves are located (quite naturally) in places exceptionally rich in limestone, and these are the very places the cement industry is after. In addition to the already established cement plants, several new projects are in the pipeline, and other organizations in the state have also reacted to the expansion of the cement industry. Recently another NGO, the Wildlife and Environmental Protection Group, called on the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests to stop issuing licenses for new cement plants, making reference to the destruction of caves and monoliths in the region by reckless limestone mining. It is demanding a “blanket ban” on limestone mining in the Jaintia and Garo Hills.41 Lafarge is again the center of attention, now because the company has received government clearance to build a large cement plant in Sutnga in the Jaintia Hills, apparently in a particularly beautiful place that, according to Brian Kharpran, has a cave density that is one of the highest in the world.42 This is Lafarge’s second major investment in the state, the first being the quarry-and-conveyor-belt project to supply limestone to its cement plant in Bangladesh. And even if this is a matter of deep concern for some people, such investments are clearly good news for the Meghalaya government, which is seeking to attract private capital, not least foreign direct investments, to boost the development of the state. If we look at the larger political economy of mineral extraction, though, the development outcome appears rather gloomy. The anthropologist June Nash, in the opening lines of her classic study of tin miners in Bolivia, points to the paradox that although the country is the

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world’s second largest producer of tin and has vast deposits of iron, zinc, bauxite, lead, copper, magnesium, and gold, “it has the lowest indices in per capita income, literacy levels, and life span” (1979: 1). This points to what has since been framed as the “resource curse,” discussed in chapter 1, i.e., that countries with mineral wealth tend to perform poorly in terms of overall societal development. I say “tend to” since the opponents of this thesis seem right in arguing that there are indeed important exceptions. But without getting bogged down in this debate, it seems safe to say that natural wealth has proven to be a mixed blessing, and that mineral extraction does not easily translate into high scores on human development indexes. In India, most of the mineral-rich states remain poor or “underdeveloped.” This is the case, for example, with Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa.43 And within these states, the districts with most of the resources are the worst off.44 The common pattern is that the extracted minerals are taken out of these states without any further processing or value-adding. The respective state governments receive royalties, but beyond this, little is gained. Above all, the local communities get nothing and are left with a polluted environment.45 Despite the burgeoning cement industry, the mineral wealth of Meghalaya, too, is basically exported without any value-addition. Endless caravans of coal trucks, for example, bring the black gold to depots in Assam or Bangladesh. With Lafarge’s newly built conveyor belt, as much as two million tonnes of limestone will be exported annually to Bangladesh. For this, Meghalaya is expected to earn about 80 million rupees annually (to be shared with the Khasi Hills’ District Council). In addition, land owners will receive an annual compensation, and in accordance with the initial agreement 5 rupees per tonne are supposed to be paid in royalty to the village council. A number of local people are also expected to get employment. Such benefits can then be weighed against the expected “costs” of the project in terms of environmental impact, land alienation, and, as some local people told me, the risk that the large-scale extraction of limestone by Lafarge will flood the Bangladesh market and ruin the business for local limestone traders.46 As I probe into some of the key features of mining in Meghalaya, looking especially at uranium, limestone, and coal, my concern in this chapter is not primarily the economic outcome, nor the environmental impact, but rather the politics and social dynamics of mineral extraction. I continue by returning to the ongoing uranium mining controversy, focusing especially on the question of health risks and how consent is mustered and opposed.

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Nuclear Politics Considering the great degree of public interest and the heated debate about uranium mining, I have often been struck by the apparent lack of information about vital aspects of the proposed project. Up until about one or two years back, the mining and milling of the ore was supposed to take place in and around the village of Domiasiat. The project was then known as the Domiasiat Uranium Mining and Milling Project, but now the name has been changed to the more cumbersome Kylleng-Pyndeng Sohiong Uranium Project, also referred to at times as the Mawthabah Project. There is no proper explanation for the change of name other than vague references to a lack of uranium deposits in Domiasiat itself.47 But Domiasiat was never intended to be a mining site, only the place for the processing plant. The area where the earlier exploratory mining took place is about four kilometers away, in an adjoining hamlet known as Nongbah Jynrin. A more likely explanation for the relabeling of the project seems to be the stiff opposition against mining in Domiasiat, especially by one of the main land owners (see interview below). People in the nearby village, Mawthabah, where the milling is now supposed to take place, have apparently been more welcoming. As one of the land owners in Mawthabah, Heasdingland Lyngdoh Sangrin, told a reporter, “Development of the region can take place only when UCIL starts mining here.” He said that mining will bring schools, hospitals, roads, and employment; his main concern was why the government was taking so long to give clearance to the project.48 For UCIL it is critical of course to get a point of entry. Once in place, UCIL will arguably be in a much more favorable position to expand its area of operation and eventually also to convince presently hostile land owners to part with their land.49 The point, however, is that the sudden change of name and the relocation of the milling plant have not been explained and debated. It seems legitimate to ask what the selection of a new primary site for the operations involves for the project’s design and for its social and environmental impact. A related uncertainty is whether the mining areas will remain the same ones as before or if new sites have been selected. The uranium ore is distributed over a large area, several sites are being explored, and a minor relocation to a nearby site need not have any major implications. But people of course need to know what project they are saying yes or no to. For example, would a yes imply an open mandate for UCIL to expand its operations to whatever places in the area have extractable deposits and where land owners agree to part with their land? The lack of transparency in relation to such basic issues is, as we will see, indicative for the entire project.50 The information gap regarding other central aspects of the project is also striking. Because of this, the Khasi Hills Autonomous District

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Council along with other organizations requested in 2005 that UCIL supply a White Paper with all relevant details of the project.51 In February 2007 it was finally announced in the press that UCIL had submitted such a White Paper, together with a number of other project documents, as part of its mining lease application to the Meghalaya government, and several articles in the Shillong Times, the major local English newspaper, have quoted from this White Paper. I have tried desperately to get hold of this document, contacting several well-placed persons in Shillong to help me, but without success. No one seemed to have it, and few even acknowledged knowing that such a document existed. Some referred to earlier project documents that had been distributed by UCIL during public hearings some years back. But even these documents have proven impossible for me to acquire. For an outside researcher like me to have difficulties gaining access to project documents is one thing, but more importantly, it indicates a general lack of access to detailed information for people in the state. Considering further that my principal informants belong to the educated, urban elites—like journalists, scholars, activists, and politicians—supposedly the best informed people, this becomes even more problematic. One of the few key documents I have managed to lay hands on is an environmental impact study carried out by a group of senior researchers from the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), located in Shillong. In the 2003 report, the authors state that “in absence of the data on the project design and other details, it is not possible for NEHU to predict the details of the impact” on the flora and fauna of the project area (Tiwari et. al 2003: 65). Quite remarkable indeed, that not even those who are set to investigate the impact of the project are provided with the required details.52 However, going by the information provided in the press, with quoted material supposedly from the White Paper, these are some of the basic facts: “UCIL proposes to develop an open caste mine in Kylleng-Pyndeng Sohiong where uranium ore deposits having an average grade of 0.085 per cent U308 would be mined, and also to establish a processing plant near Mawthabah,”… The estimated land requirement is about 351 hectare, which will accommodate a mining area (125 ha), initial overburden dump area (39 ha), initial tailing disposal area (10 ha), mine facilities (28 ha), mine plant road (23 ha), plant raw water intake road (15 ha), processing plant (93 ha) and township (18 ha). “The proposed land to be acquired shall be notified as per provisions of Land Acquisition Act of the State government and compensation should be paid to land owners as per rates fixed by the State government,”… The mine has been planned for an annual production of 375,000 tonnes of uranium, while the estimated overburden quantity

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is about 2.5 million tonnes. … Further, the white paper stated that an ore processing plant of 1500-tonne capacity per day would be constructed at a distance of about four kilometres from the mine near Mawthabah village. 53 According to the same source, employment would be set at a ratio of 70:30 between local and non-local people, depending on the availability of skilled workers. In addition to employment, local people would benefit from improved roads and infrastructure in the area, and, further, from new educational and medical institutions and a number of welfare schemes. In a later article, it was said that the estimated annual royalty from the mining would come to about six million Indian rupees annually for the state government and the District Council to share. In addition to annual rents from the land leased by UCIL, land owners are also supposed to get an annual royalty from the project.54 It is a required procedure for major projects of this kind to hold a public hearing in the area affected by the project. The Meghalaya State Pollution Control Board, the official body in charge, organized such a hearing on 12 June 2007, in Nongbah Jynrin, a hamlet close to the site where exploratory mining was carried out earlier. This is a tiny village without any road connection. When the hearing was announced, the anti-mining camp, especially the KSU, opposed it vehemently. Among other things, they questioned the legality of holding a hearing when the project’s environmental impact assessment had not been made public. Why such an out-of-the-way place had been chosen as the venue was also questioned; district headquarters were suggested as a more reasonable choice.55 The state government, on the other hand, declared that the hearing should take place as scheduled, stating that this was a mandatory procedure that would give local people a chance to be heard.56 As the date came closer, the heat escalated. The underground militant organization HNCL joined the critics, saying that it was considering withdrawing its proposal for peace talks if the hearing was not cancelled and the mining project was not stopped.57 The KSU finally declared a two-day strike or bandh, which as usual implies that everything (offices, shops, transportation, etc.) remains closed. The state responded by applying the Meghalaya Preventive Detention Act, which empowers the police to detain persons considered a threat to public order. The KSU leaders went into hiding, but a number of activists were arrested. This led to protests throughout the Northeast by student organizations, which also expressed their support for the KSU’s struggle against uranium mining. The state was on high security alert when the day of the hearing finally arrived. A company of armed police was present at the hearing, with additional police forces stationed nearby. But to the surprise of many, the hearing proceeded peacefully and a crowd of about seven hundred

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people attended. Except for the few officials who arrived by helicopter, those who attended had to get there on foot, walking for hours on slippery trails in pouring rain. According to West Khasi Hills Deputy Commissioner Freeman Kharlyngdoh, the majority of people objected to uranium mining, referring mainly to fears about health hazards, while about 25 per cent welcomed the project.58 Among the latter, the majority belonged to villages closest to the project area. Photographs of the event show people waving black flags to express their opposition. But it is the organizer, the Meghalaya State Pollution Board, that will formally evaluate the event and submit a report to the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India (though, strangely enough, not directly to the Meghalaya government and the other concerned parties in the state).59 The KSU, though opposing the hearing, was quick to declare it a confirmation of its own stand. As put in a statement by KSU President Samuel Jyrwa, “The overwhelming support from the people has made us determined to oppose uranium mining at any costs.”60 After pressure from various organizations in the state, the arrested KSU activists were soon released from Tura jail and returned to Shillong as victorious crusaders. Paradoxically, the KSU seemed to have benefited most from the hearing, not least because the event had shown that the majority of local people were behind it. The argument that the protesters consisted only of vocal political activists in Shillong had thus lost some of its credibility. I will say more on this later. Another event that stirred up heat in the mining controversy was the stone-laying function for the road between Wahkaji and Mawthabah. The road, as mentioned, is financed by UCIL and built by the District Council. The chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Anil Kakodkar, was invited to inaugurate the construction work on 9 May 2006. UCIL portrayed the fact that the road-building was starting before final clearance was given for the uranium mining project as a kind of goodwill gesture, that is, that the road would be built regardless of whether or not the mining happens. But for the protesters, building the road was a step towards the realization of the mining project and therefore had to be stopped. The inauguration ceremony thus became a symbolically significant event for all involved. The KSU and a number of West Khasi Hills organizations issued warnings that they would physically prevent the ceremony from taking place, sending a large number of activists to the area. Because of this, Dr. Kakodkar and the UCIL officials found it wise to stay away. In the end, the district administration would not even allow the district council delegation to proceed to the area for fear of problems with law and order. Mr. Shylla declared afterwards that they would not bow down to threats from the KSU and other NGOs and that he would soon go ahead and personally lay the foundation stone of the road project.61

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The Geography of Trust According to KSU President Samuel Jyrwa, the main reasons the Khasi Students’ Union opposes uranium mining are threefold: the hazards to health, the influx of outsiders, and the alienation of tribal lands. Regarding the last point, which appeared to be the most important, he told me that according to the original project plan about 745 hectares of land would be appropriated, saying that this would be a substantial loss for the Khasis in view of their present shortage of land. A UCIL map from 2002 confirms that the original plan was for 748 hectares (to be exact), which is more than twice the size of the present project outline.62 Jyrwa also questioned the argument that uranium mining would bring development, citing the absence of development in Jadugoda. Jyrwa said that he had participated in the World Social Forum meeting in Mumbai in 2004 to muster support for the anti-uranium protest. But other than that, he argued, seeking international backing for the cause could be risky; uranium is a strategic national issue and the Indian government could claim that the protests were instigated by foreigners.63 A representative of the Meghalaya People’s Human Rights Council told me similarly that the Indian government regarded the protests as a security matter and that the MPHRC had heard that the organizations involved are to be put under surveillance. The sensitivity of the matter is accentuated, he argued, by the fact that the uranium deposits are located in proximity to the Bangladesh border. As he put it, he even considered it possible that the Indian government might send in the army to take control of the area.64 However far-fetched this might sound, the central government is empowered by the Atomic Mineral Act of 1962 to acquire any land for the purpose of working atomic minerals like uranium, and in a situation of prolonged protests, compulsory acquisition through the use of force cannot be ruled out.65 So far, though, the united message of all central government representatives is that popular consent is required for the project to take off. As Chairman Anil Kakodkar of the Atomic Energy Commission put it, for example, “We shall never take up mining against the wishes of the people.”66 Past consultant for UCIL in Meghalaya, Mr. Chesterfield Lyngdoh, told me that the modus operandi would be fully democratic; the land owners would be free to decide whether they would give their land or not. “No one can force them to do so,” he said. When I met him, he no longer worked for UCIL. He did not want to discuss this, but I have been told by others that he resigned after receiving several threats from assumed militants.67 Lyngdoh nevertheless remains a resolute supporter of uranium mining. He said he was convinced that mining could be conducted in such a way that people would be exposed to no risks, pointing out that the latest technology would be applied in the project. “DDT

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is harmful for people,” he said, “but properly used it helps eradicate malaria. So is it also with uranium, if you take precautions it is safe.” He argued that the opposition exaggerated the risks and spread false rumors; it had been claimed, for example, that people were already suffering from cancer because of the project, but how could this be the case when no mining had taken place? He also found it hard to understand what the real issues were and what the protesters were really up to. The KSU have the numbers, but do the students really know what they are shouting about? he asked. And why the distrust of UCIL, when after all, it is a government corporation that “will give maximum profit to the people.” Like several others, he also raised the issue of why there was such an outcry against uranium mining, when hardly anyone spoke out against coal mining, which posed such obvious problems to health and the environment. Look at the situation in the Jaintia Hills, where all the surface water has turned acid and not a single fish can survive, he argued. But despite the safe methods to be used by UCIL, ultimately it was question of making “a compromise between environment and development.”68 Lyngdoh clings to the position, expressed by all who are engaged in the project as well as by those who support it, that with the use of modern mining technology the radiation exposure would be negligible and hence pose no threat to human health. The protesters think otherwise. Among them, one can detect two main arguments. The first is that uranium mining in itself, regardless of how it is carried out, will contaminate the environment and have a negative effect on human health for generations to come. The other is more concerned with UCIL’s expected performance, questioning whether the necessary precautions and safety measures will be applied. Here it is argued that UCIL is interested in getting the uranium out at the lowest possible cost and will hardly bother about the well-being of a few tribals in the area. The fact that the mining will take place in a far-off corner of Meghalaya, and safely away from the gaze of the national press, adds to such fears. In this context the Jadugoda experience gains further salience. If UCIL performs badly there, why should it be different in Meghalaya? Among the few people in Meghalaya who can speak with scientific authority on the effects of radiation on human health is Professor R.N. Sharan of the Department of Biochemistry at the North-Eastern Hill University. Professor Sharan has conducted long-term research on the effects of low-dose radiation and was the president of the Indian Society for Radiation Biology. When I met him, he said that he had once been invited to a public hearing on uranium mining arranged in Shillong by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The idea of the meeting, he said, was to convince people of the harmlessness of uranium mining. Sharan said that he was personally in favor of the project, arguing that India

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needs nuclear energy if they want to maintain their living standard. At the meeting he had only raised a couple of questions concerning the practical problems of mitigating the radiation risks for laborers and local people. This had aroused irritation among the organizers, however, and afterwards, at a dinner, he was told by a senior representative of the AEC not to worry people with unnecessary questions. Since then, he has not been called to any further meetings or consultations on the project. For Professor Sharan, this event points to a major structural problem with the nuclear energy establishment, i.e., the lack of involvement by independent institutions. He said that he has been advocating that researchers based at universities should play a larger role. Such researchers have a greater degree of independence than those working for the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), which presently conducts all investigations of the effects of radiation on people in project areas. The research center is part of the Atomic Minerals Directorate, which is responsible for the mining. Further, the research unit is directly financed by the mother organization and hence, he argued, cannot claim to be an independent body.69 He added with a smile that this was not to say that university-based radiation researchers are the most outspoken lot. People are concerned about getting grants or worry about their promotion and “don’t like to come out as enemies of the state.” This is the case not only in India, but also elsewhere in the world, he said.70 That radiation affects human beings, that it attacks living cells and can cause cancer, seems a rather undisputed fact. But when such dangers appear—at what type of exposure, at what levels, for how long, under what circumstances, and so forth—is less than clear. Most countries have their own regulations concerning permissible doses or levels of exposure, and various international bodies issue such recommendations as well. The recommendations differ greatly, have been readjusted over time, and are a matter of dispute.71 It goes without saying that none of the recommended safe levels can claim undisputed scientific backing. In the end, all types of environmental or health regulations are settled politically, reflecting a compromise or balance between safety concerns and the economic and other interests involved in pursuing the activity in question. That the nuclear industry, in many countries tied to the military interest of developing nuclear weapons capacity, has a major influence on how safety standards are being set and enforced seems obvious. It is a particular feature of nuclear activities that a vast time span must be considered in assessing the various risks. In the case of nuclear waste storage, for example, we are talking about almost inconceivable periods of tens of thousands years. All risk assessments, as Ulrich Beck puts it (2002: 41), are a matter of “calculating the incalculable.” But with things like nuclear waste disposal we are up against completely “unpre-

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dictable” and “uncontrollable risks” (ibid.).72 In addition to the temporal aspect, radiation effects are also unbounded in space. The European Committee on Radiation Risk states in a recent report that the “present cancer epidemic is a consequence of exposures to global atmospheric weapons fallout in the period 1959–63 and that more recent releases of radioisotopes to the environment from the operation of the nuclear fuel cycle will result in significant increases in cancer and other types of ill health.”73 Chernobyl is a chilling reminder of this. The credibility of the nuclear industry took a severe blow with this accident, but to the surprise of many, the industry seems to be flourishing again as much as it did before. Part of this can be explained by rising oil prices and nuclear energy’s new image as a “green technology” that will help combat climate change.74 Still, the public distrust of the nuclear industry appears to be significantly higher than with other industrial sectors. Most people prefer not to have any nuclear installations in their “backyard,” regardless of official assurances that these are perfectly safe.75 The type of distrust expressed by people in Meghalaya regarding the alleged safety of uranium mining can be observed more or less universally, and this also holds for related activities in the nuclear chain. The other main site in India where UCIL hopes to start mining uranium is in Andhra Pradesh, and these plans have also unleashed massive protests in that state. Similarly in the US, Canada, and Australia, uranium mining evokes fierce protests, not least among the indigenous peoples on whose lands most of the deposits are located.76 The Navajo nation has called for a total ban on mining on its lands. The Navajo Nation in 2006 hosted the Indigenous World Uranium Summit, with indigenous delegates participating from various parts of the world. In the declaration of the summit, the main demand was a global ban on uranium mining and related activities on native lands. The summit also recalled the declaration issued in Salzburg at the World Uranium Hearing in 1992, that uranium and other nuclear materials must remain in their natural location: “Leave it in the ground.”77 The Green Party in Canada, for example, has lined up with indigenous and environmental organizations demanding a uranium mining ban on the basis that it is “extremely hazardous to the environment and health of mine workers and public.”78 The anti-nuclear movement is increasingly building up transnational alliances, turning the “not-in-my-backyard” politics into a “not-in-anyone’s-backyard” principle, as Harvey put it in a discussion of grassroots environmental justice movements (1996: 391). Around the world there are also citizens’ group pursuing litigation against states or private companies for compensation for injuries inflicted by radiation exposure.79 The most disturbing cases are those related to nuclear weapons tests, as on the islands of French Polynesia and Micronesia, or in desert areas of the US, or in the former Soviet

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Union. Contamination from these tests has shattered the lives of entire communities. Victims often find it hard to make their case, however.80 Psychological “impact” is rarely recognized, and health effects often appear decades later and are hard to prove (see Petryna 2002). As put by Valerie Kuletz in a study on nuclear politics in the United States: It is relatively easy for institutions responsible for the release of radioactive contaminants to hide it because it often takes time for the effects to reveal themselves. This time gap has been used by the United States and other governments to deny causal links between cancer (occurring ten or twenty years hence) or deformities (which occur in subsequent generations) and radioactive contamination. (Kuletz 2001: 251) An additional problem is that victims often lack independent health data to back their cases, having to rely on the investigations and medical records of the agencies that have carried out the operations or caused the contamination. In the case of nuclear test sites, such records are often security classified, hence completely sealed off from public scrutiny. Organizations and persons that seek to gather such information independently commonly face charges of being “unpatriotic” or of working on behalf of foreign intelligence agencies (in the case of Russia, see Garb and Komaraova 2001). When India made its controversial nuclear tests in Pokharan, a desert area in Rajasthan, in 1998, the national press erupted in what Piyush Mathur (2001) calls “nuke journalism,” celebrating this as a great moment in which the nation was showing its strength and technical superiority, hailing the nuclear scientists as heroes.81 Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was the leading scientist who orchestrated the tests, an achievement that most likely made him India’s president in 2002.82 The fate of the villagers in the test area, however, was completely silenced. A number of villages were being evacuated, on false premises, only three hours prior to the blast, and dust from the explosion spread over their lands and houses. Neither these blatant human rights violations nor any other social and environmental aspect of the event on the local level were addressed by the principal media. Interestingly, the international press also relegated such concerns to oblivion, focusing instead on the diplomatic and defense-related consequences of the blast (Mathur 2001: 10). This, again, illustrates how people and landscapes affected by radiation contamination are rendered “invisible” (see Kuletz 2001). As the nuclear authorities, to cite Mathur again (2001: 12), “flatly denied any radiation leakage owning to the May 1998 test,” it is hardly surprising that the more mundane activity of extracting and processing uranium is similarly claimed to cause no harmful radiation exposure for laborers and local villagers. But can the authorities be trusted?

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Considering the lack of independent health monitoring of Indian nuclear establishments, there is an obvious confidence gap here, as mentioned earlier. The anti-mining organizations in Meghalaya have also made this point, stating, with reference to the situation at Jadugoda, that the UCIL officials “effectively act as legislature, Judge, Jury, and police over their own activities.”83 The complete denial that there could even be a legitimate concern for radiation hazards—say, if something goes wrong—reveals a managerial arrogance that resonates badly with the norms of democratic governance. During a public debate in Shillong, S.K. Malhotra from the Department of Atomic Energy brushed aside the expressed health concerns as a mere “fear psychosis,” saying these were based on fictions and not facts.84 But if we look at how uranium mining is perceived and debated elsewhere in the world, such a position seems obsolete. Canada, along with Australia, is the largest supplier of natural uranium in the world. Health Canada, the federal agency responsible for health monitoring, gives the following account of the health concerns of uranium mining: Whether or not mining is conducted in open pits or underground, there are environmental hazards and impacts to workers and general public that need to be considered. These include radiation hazards from radon gas, radium, thorium, and non-radioactive contamination from dust and heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, and nickel. After uranium ore is mined, it is processed into yellowcake, a complex semirefined concentrate of uranium. … External gamma radiation, tailings, slurry, and wastewater are the main areas of health concern at this stage. (Health Canada 2004: para. 5.4.2) Here the concerned state agency acknowledges the potential health risks of uranium mining and processing, which at least opens up a space for critical debate and democratic decision making. The geophysical or environmental features of Meghalaya appear to make uranium mining especially hazardous. It is well known that the region is seismically active, and predictions point to the possibility of another major earthquake like the one in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills in 1897 (magnitude 8.7) and the slightly milder one in 1950 (magnitude 8.5).85 Further, the weather conditions are rather extreme, with exceptionally high levels of rainfall. In addition, it is a hilly area, with several turbulent rivers that often overflow during rainy seasons. This, one would think, poses special risks that tailing dams might crack or overflow, leading to leakage of contaminated slurry. Similarly, with an open surface mine, the ore will be exposed to the heavy rains and strong winds that presumably increase the risk of contaminating surface water sources and dispersing radioactive dust over large areas, contaminating crops and

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entering into the food chain. Uranium mining accidents do occur and have been reported from mines in Canada and Australia as well as those run by UCIL at Jadugoda.86 Compared, say, to an oil spill, radiation contamination is difficult—in many cases impossible—to contain or clean up, and the effects will be there for generations to come. The transport of the yellowcake through this hilly terrain on poorly maintained roads also seems risky. The trucks have to cross Meghalaya from south to north and supposedly be loaded onto trains for further transport all the way to the fuel processing plant in Hyderabad. Besides accidents, security is a concern here. The transports as well as the nuclear facilities themselves could be a target for insurgency groups. Oil and gas pipes, for example, are regularly blown up in Assam. Such risks call for tightened security and thus a strengthened military presence in the state. The project is polarizing local society and causing tension that already seems on the verge of violence. There are, in other words, a number of complex and multifaceted concerns to be scrutinized before an informed decision can be made. The combined effect of the lack of project information and the reluctance of the concerned state agencies to engage with such concerns undermines democratic decision making and mocks official assurances that mining will not take place against the wishes of the people of Meghalaya.

Local Consent But again, whose voices should count? Who should be consulted or have the legitimate right to decide? The increasingly cherished idea globally is that people directly affected by a project should have a major say, that is, should be properly consulted and give their consent. For example, the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Article 32, para. 2) hold that: “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to approval of any project affecting their lands or territories or other resources.” Here, however, one is still up against the problem of defining who the concerned people are and what the relevant decisionmaking institution should be. If we start with the latter issue, the relevant decision-making bodies to be consulted, on one level it seems correct to claim that this is a concern for the entire state. Meghalaya is a “tribal state” with a democratically elected government consisting (with a few exceptions) of people who belong to the tribal or indigenous communities in the state. However, there are two other levels of governance that also have to be considered: the district councils and the traditional political institutions. The district council is a modern institution with politically elected rep-

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resentatives, but it is supposed to function in accordance with customary laws and practices, and its very raison d’être is to safeguard tribal interests from outside exploitation. The traditional political institutions among the Khasis are organized basically as a three-layer structure with the durbar or council of the syiem (the ruler of the traditional Khasi states) at the top. Though the traditional structure has lost importance with the coming of the modern political structures of governance, it still plays a significant role and has public recognition and legitimacy. In principle, any activity—say, if someone wants to build a house (even in an urban area)—has to be cleared by the local durbar. But because the district council is empowered to remove representatives of the traditional councils—a headman or a syiem, for instance—their room for maneuver is curtailed. As I will discuss in greater detail in chapter 5, there are conflicts and confusion regarding the functions and authority of respective structures of governance. Decision making therefore becomes anything but a straightforward or transparent process. In the case of uranium mining, the formal decision to issue the mining lease rests with the state government (though this has to be cleared by the central government). The state government, as mentioned, is still considering the matter. The Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council has no direct powers here, but it has nevertheless given its support to the mining project. The position of the traditional bodies remains more unclear. Like the district councils, these bodies have no formal powers over mining leases, but without their approval a major project like this would lose popular credibility. I have not been able to reach a clear understanding of how the respective durbars relate to the mining project; interestingly, this has not been an issue emphasized in the debate. Instead, the main focus, beyond the state government and the district council, has been on whether or not the concerned land owners have given their consent. This can be explained with a view to the traditional land tenure system in Khasi society, which accords the owner of land absolute authority. But one has to be wary of conflating the position of land owners with that of the local community. As discussed in chapter 3, a large number of families in a village do not own any land, and the main land owners might no longer live in the village (i.e., they are absentee landlords). UCIL and pro-mining advocates like Shylla claim that the land owners have already agreed to give their land on lease. Some of them obviously have, though whether most have done so remains disputed.87 This is simply hard to know, due to the lack of transparency regarding the project outline itself, i.e., what exact areas are to be acquired, and to whom the land belongs. Land ownership, as mentioned, is an extremely complex matter in the Khasi Hills. There are a number of different classes of land, and due to the lack of a land register it is sometimes hard to establish to whom the land actually belongs (an

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individual, a clan, or the community). In cases of land acquisition, where monetary compensation is to be paid to the concerned land owners, it is relatively common for disputes to arise. In any case, one land owner who has taken a particularly consistent stand against the mining project is Mrs. Spilliti Lyngdoh Langrin in Domiasiat village. In a way, she has come to embody the local resistance against it. When I met her in 2005, she said that she had initially given permission for exploratory mining, but with all the people and commotion that the mining brought with it, the village soon decided to oppose uranium mining. Mrs. Langrin said that it was one of the drivers for the company who first made her aware of the hazards of uranium. The driver had said that he thought Khasis were educated people, “But how then can you be so stupid that you allow this to happen?” As he explained to her, all their lands will be taken over by UCIL. He had seen that happen in Bihar where he used to work. And he said further that when mining

Plate 14  Mrs. Spilliti Lyngdoh Langrin

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starts they will come to suffer from a number of diseases. Mrs. Langrin then started thinking that something strange was indeed going on, as the company officials had fences around all their houses and the staff went into Nongstoin (the administrative headquarters of the district) to buy chickens and other foodstuffs. The local cows had also acquired some strange illness and a few people in the village had become sick. There had been no mining in their village, but extracted ore had been brought there and reloaded onto trucks for further transport. Her husband, Bah Niar Thongliong, joined the discussion, saying that everyone in the village opposed mining. He said that this was a peaceful place and they didn’t want people from outside to come here. Mining is dirty, he said. The headman in the village, Mr. S. Dkhar, gave a similar explanation for why they opposed mining. There had been about two hundred laborers in the village for the exploratory mining and all of them were outsiders. The laborers often got drunk and created all kinds of problems, not least by chasing the women. If they bought firewood from someone in the village, they never paid the full price. C.F. Lyngdoh from UCIL had come to Domiasiat in 2003 trying to convince them to say yes to mining. Lyngdoh had told them that besides a hospital, school, and road, the village would also receive a large sum of money. But it was unclear to the headman if the money was supposed to be distributed to people in the entire area or was meant just for the village. His conclusion, however, was that Lyngdoh was only trying to bribe them. And as to the promises of getting a school and hospital, he argued that these were for the UCIL staff. Besides, there was already a school in the village. He also objected to the road, arguing that this was all private land and the land owners would not allow it to be built. Earlier, people from Mawthabah had also tried to convince them to agree to the project. UCIL had also taken some people from Mawthabah to visit the uranium mines in Jharkhand. When they returned, they all said that uranium mining was good. The headman was skeptical about the entire trip, however, saying that most of those who had gone to see the uranium mines were illiterate and could just as well have been taken somewhere else.88 Domiasiat is a small village, consisting only of some eight or nine households. The nearby village of Nongbah Jynrin, where exploratory mining had been carried out earlier, is more or less the same size. During my brief one-day visit to Domiasiat, we also went down to see the mining site and speak with people in Nongbah Jynrin. It was mid-day and we only had a chance to talk to two people. One was a young woman in her late twenties and the other a slightly younger man. Both were reluctant to speak to us about uranium mining. The woman just said that she was afraid of the mining and that it was only the land owners who wanted it. She was home with her two children, so my friend asked whether she didn’t want a school to be built in the village as had

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been promised. “No,” she bluntly replied. There was already a school in Domiasiat and some of the children had also gone to Nongstoin (the district headquarters) to study. The young man was a bit more talkative. He was more positive towards mining, but added that this was not really up to them to decide since no one in the village owned any land in the mining area. The land there belonged to people from Mawthabah, and they had all approved mining. In fact, no one who lived in his village owned any land, he said, explaining that all the lands they cultivated in the entire village belonged to Bah Bryan Lyngdoh, who was living in Mawthabah. He said further that he did not know much about the mining project. The Governor of Meghalaya had recently visited them, but he spoke in English (without anyone translating) so nobody understood what he was saying. I had gone to Domiasiat just to get a sense of the place. It is clearly off the beaten track, and few of the people I know in Shillong have ever set foot there. It is a long, hard journey and we had great difficulties reaching the village even though we were traveling in a sturdy old jeep. This was in February, when the mud trails are dry. I can only imagine the difficulties people face during the rainy season. People had already been promised a road back in the 1970s, but nothing had happened. With the uranium project, such a road connection suddenly became highest priority. A villager from Wahkaji told a reporter from the Shillong Times that they had been waiting so long for the road that for him it didn’t matter whether it was built by the government or UCIL.89 But again, for many others it is not just about a road. This brings us back to the initial question of who should decide about the uranium project: how to define or delineate the local people directly affected by the project who thus, at least morally, should be the ones to give their consent first. In development parlance, this could be rephrased as a matter of identifying the local “stakeholders.” This might sound relatively unproblematic, but it in most cases it is not. Large and controversial project interventions like this reshape or reproduce the local in radically new ways. Communities are being refigured and new alliances, divisions, and interests emerge, making it difficult to identify the legitimate or “authentic” local voices. Women and youths are largely outside the formal decision-making bodies, be they the traditional councils or the modern party-based political institutions. To be heard, they have to speak from other platforms. Here, for example, the Langrin Youth Welfare Association has emerged as one of the leading local organizations opposing the uranium project. The newly founded West Khasi Hills Students’ Union—not to be confused with the main student organization, KSU—is similarly active in the controversy, although as supporters of the project. There are also a number of other organizations that seem more or less directly to be offshoots of the conflict. For an outsider like me, it is difficult to evaluate the standing of these organizations locally.

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An argument I heard often is that local people are largely in favor of uranium mining, whereas it is mainly people in Shillong who oppose it. A mining engineer working for the Meghalaya government told me, for example, that it is just a handful of urban activists that are making all the fuss (so why bother about them!).90 Similar arguments are often made in relation to environmental conflicts, i.e., that middle-class activists who have their livelihood secured by other means can afford the luxury of objecting to projects that offer employment and infrastructure development for poor villagers. Although the main anti-mining organizations have their base in Shillong, as is obvious from the above there is also a locally grounded opposition. In short, there is no local voice speaking in unison either in favor of the project or against it. And again, this is the usual situation with major project interventions. Benefits and losses will be unequally distributed, and it goes without saying that people also respond differently to any project of that sort, be it a large dam, an industrial plant, or a uranium mine. Getting local opinion on your side is still critical as a means to claim moral legitimacy for your side. In this case, both the supporters and the opponents of uranium mining claim to be working on behalf of and in the interests of the local community: the former by providing development, the latter by safeguarding the environment, people’s health, and local control of indigenous lands and resources. What will eventually transpire remains uncertain. Considering the national (security) interest in pursuing mining, it is hard to imagine that New Delhi will let the uranium stay in the ground. Nor can one expect the anti-mining camp just to back out and allow UCIL to go ahead with the mining. There is an obvious risk that things might turn violent. Five HNLC militants said to be on a mission to assassinate Shylla were recently rounded up in Shillong and killed by the paramilitary special police. The police claim that the militants opened fire when the police tried to stop their car. This has been questioned by several organizations, which argue that this appears to be another case of a fake encounter, where the paramilitary brutally killed the youths instead of arresting them.91 In this context, though, I would like to make a note on HNLC’s engagement with the uranium issue. The underground organization has been severely weakened in recent years, and by taking up this cause— the struggle to keep the land of the Hynniewtrep nation a nuclear-free zone—one can assume that it is seeking to regain public legitimacy. If the state is going to apply coercive measures to pursue mining, the methods of the militias to oppose it will certainly also gain social recognition. To use B.B. Lyngdoh’s terminology in describing the struggle over the coal deposits in the 1950s as a “coal war,” Meghalaya might then face the risk of a more serious “uranium war.”92

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Resource conflicts are extremely volatile, and intimidation, threats, and violence are never far off. In the case of the other major mining controversy, the Lafarge limestone mining project, things initially appeared to be moving in that kind of direction. Lafarge’s conveyor belt was set on fire in December 2005, shortly before it was to be completed. During the repair work, one employee of Larsen & Turbo (the company in charge of the construction work) was found dead, supposedly killed by those who had sabotaged the conveyor belt.93 After these events, however, the opposition to the project has been pursued mainly though judicial activism. The main allegations, as mentioned, relate to Lafarge’s acquisition of tribal lands and the subsequent mortgage of the lands to foreign banks. Several parallel cases are being brought to court questioning the legality of these measures. Human rights organizations in the state have also brought the matter to the United Nations. Now, in an unexpected move, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) has also jumped onto the litigation bandwagon against the project. A forest officer discovered during a visit to the Lafarge project site in 2006 that a large part of the leased land was forested and that a large number of trees had already been cut in the course of the limestone extraction. This was in violation of the Supreme Court order banning all felling of trees. The MOEF, which had given environmental clearance to the project back in 2001, demanded in April 2007 the complete shutdown of all mining operations and forwarded the case to the Supreme Court. As I write this in November 2007, the case is still pending and Lafarge is prevented from extracting and exporting limestone to its newly built cement plant in Bangladesh. Without raw material, the plant cannot produce any cement. Hence one of the largest private investments in Bangladesh is being jeopardized. This is not only bad news for Lafarge, but clearly it also strains Indo-Bangla relations and undermines India’s efforts to build regional economic cooperation under its “Look East Policy.” 94 But let us backtrack and see how Lafarge got itself into this mess.

Conveying Limestone In an article in the company newsletter Crescendo, Lafarge explains the many hurdles it faced in realizing the new cement plant at Surma in Bangladesh, a project described as one of the largest the company has ever been involved in. The article, entitled “How do you build a facility under extreme conditions?” relates that the project started back in 1998 and that the first challenge was to obtain the necessary permits for building the conveyor belt across the border between India and Bangladesh. After two years of negotiation this was settled and a special border crossing was to be set up for the project. The next step was to convince the “chiefs” of the local communities on the Indian side about the ben-

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efits of the project and thus “convince them to sell their lands.” The main problem here was that lands were in “tribal zones” and subject to specific regulations and customs. It took the company another two years of negotiations to settle this. The “final hurdle” was to convince the financial organizations taking part in the project that their environmental requirements would be honored. Only after all these “administrative problems” were resolved could they get down to the business of building the plant and the conveyor belt, which was a demanding task in itself. But eventually, in 2006, the mission was completed and the first sacks of cement could be rolled out of the factory. From a corporate perspective, one understands that this was quite an achievement. The festive mood, however, did not last long, as the Indian side cut the supply of limestone. The administrative hurdles were not settled after all. In April 2006 I managed to get a brief talk with Narayan Sharma, the head of Lafarge’s office in Shillong. He was most reluctant to speak, saying that he was not authorized to answer any questions without prior clearance from head office. But if I did not take any notes he could give me a short briefing. Sharma said that the project had been cleared at all levels: the land owners, the local durbars, the district council, the Meghalaya government, and finally the Union government. Still, it had received a lot of negative press lately. He did not want to comment on any of the contentious issues, and asked instead if I had heard about the mobile health clinic Lafarge had set up recently. The company will also arrange for schools and other facilities in the project area. Normally Lafarge builds its plants in the same country as the raw material deposits. This case was an exception. The production, however, was solely for the Bangladesh market. Sharma further explained that the conveyor belt was still under repair due to the “accident.” He said it was unclear whether it was a matter of sabotage or just a series of unfortunate mishaps. Limestone in Meghalaya is almost inexhaustible, he explained, so a shortage of raw material was not a concern for the company. Lafarge will use gas in the production process and hence will not be importing any coal from Meghalaya. Although he relaxed a bit during our talk he remained suspicious and ended by saying that I could mail him my questions, but repeating that he needed to clear these with his superiors before responding.95 That Lafarge was under great pressure at the time was obvious. One of the people spearheading the campaign against it was Dino D.G. Dympep of the Meghalaya People’s Human Rights Council (MPHRC), who was also in the forefront of the anti-uranium campaign (KSU had not taken up this issue at the time; it did so later in 2007). According to Dympep there were several issues of concern. The normal procedures of land acquisition had been bypassed in this case. Lafarge, through its local partner Lum Mawshun Minerals, had negotiated directly with land

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owners for a thirty-five-year lease, a lease that Lafarge later sought to transfer to its subsidiary Lafarge Umiam Minerals, which would do the actual mining and transport of limestone. No proper lease document had been issued. Lafarge had also illegally encroached on the land of about forty persons. Further, the environmental assessment report and other clearance documents had not been made public. Nor was there any land rehabilitation plan to show what would happen with the land once the thirty-five-year lease had expired. Dympep further questioned why the state government had eased the Land Transfer Act for Lafarge, since this was not for an industrial establishment but merely an extractive undertaking. As Dympep argued, Lafarge had also negotiated a significantly lower export rate for the limestone compared to that of local exporters (he said that the rate for Lafarge was set at US$3.50 per tonne while local exporters paid a rate of US$5.75). The most sensitive issue, however, was the mortgage of the leased land to international banks, among them the Asian Development Bank. As Dympep put it, MPHRC’s strategy was now to bring the issue to international forums and among other things put pressure on those financing the project. He had recently been to Geneva to address the United Nations Human Rights Commission and was now planning to submit a complaint to the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Issues, Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen. MPHRC’s take was that serious human rights violations had been committed through Lafarge’s appropriation of indigenous lands.96 As usual, projects like these create conflicts and divisions at the local level. My local guide during a one-day visit to the project site was one of the functionaries of the village durbar (council) in Shella. Because of the tensions, he told me not to reveal his name in writing. At any event, the story he told confirmed many of the misgivings raised by Dympep, above all the lack of transparency in the process of land acquisition. In the case of Shella, the land in question was for the conveyor belt, not the mining area, which falls under the neighboring Nongtrai village. As he explained, the villagers had signed a deal with the local company Lum Mawshun Minerals and not with Lafarge. But what they actually had signed remained obscure for many. Had they sold the land or just leased it to the company? Such issues had come up later. The roughly eighty land owners had negotiated individually for compensation; the durbar wanted to control this initially, but when the land owners saw the money they could get they wanted to settle the deal themselves straightaway. But now, he said, when problems have started to emerge they come back to the durbar and complain. One of the land owners had refused to part with his land and the company had surveyed a new route for the conveyor belt, bypassing the land of the resistant owner. With the new route, plots belonging to an additional fifteen land owners came under the project, but these land owners had not been duly compensated and had just filed a

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legal complaint with the High Court. As my local informant commented, “There is always a problem with the company, they never do things properly.” He narrated another example of a controversy that had ended up in court, a minor case relating to one plot of land. The plot was owned by two persons, but the compensation money had only been paid to one of them, forcing the other to seek justice through legal means. Recently, he said, Lum Mawshun Minerals had approached the land owners asking them to transfer the land deal to Lafarge, i.e., to sign a new deal directly with Lafarge. This did not make sense to people and so far none of the land owners had agreed, the main argument being that a local company would be easier to hold accountable, whereas Lafarge might just disappear one day. They were demanding access to all the papers regarding agreements Lafarge had with the state government as well as the district council; without these they would not consider signing new contracts.97

Plate 15  Lafarge conveyor belt under construction

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The whole matter is getting increasingly complicated, not least the legal litigations involved. In 2007, a Public Interest Litigation was filed by the Shella Joint Action Committee questioning the legality of the land acquisition and subsequent mortgage of land by Lafarge. The Meghalaya government is accused of approving the transfer of land to Lafarge, which is clearly a “non-tribal” subject prohibited from owning or holding land under the Meghalaya Land Transfer Act of 1971. In a related case from 2006, a group called Rally of Shella Natives filed a writ petition suing the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council for its approval of the sale of land to a private company under dubious conditions. I am not aware of the details in the case, but it is worth noting that 26 per cent of the company in question, Lum Mawshun Minerals, is owned by two Khasis, while the remaining 74 per cent is owned by Lafarge Surma Cement, which is a registered private company in Bangladesh (and owns the cement plant at that end of the conveyor belt).98 I would suppose that the transfer of land to such a company is taken to be an instance of alienation of tribal land, or that it could even be considered a benami transaction (land taken over by a non-tribal but registered in a tribal name, see chapter 3). Be that as it may, the petition is pending at the Guwahati High Court. The important point here is that the main controversies relating to the Lafarge project concern land and not the mining per se. As aptly summed up in an article by Grassroots Options: Transfer of land to any one other than a local tribal has always been a controversial issue in the state let alone land transfer to a company, that too a foreign one. Mortgaging local land by a foreign company to foreign banks has made it even more contentious. 99 Lafarge has arguably made a number of strategic mistakes that seriously undermine its credibility in the state. The company is now trying to rectify some of these mistakes, saying, for example, that it is now considering releasing the mortgage.100 With the recent intervention of the MOEF, however, more problems have been added to the imbroglio. But how should we understand the MOEF’s sudden awakening and its discovery of the forest in the mining area? The trees had surely been there all along, but they had apparently been missed by the forest officers working for the District Council and the state Forest Department, both of which were supposed to have inspected the area. It is stated in the MOEF environmental clearance of the mining project that “no diversion of forest land” is involved.101 As the story goes, it was a former Chief Conservator of Forest in Meghalaya, Mr. B.N. Jha, who alerted the Ministry to the violation of the Supreme Court order. He had been visiting the mining area in May 2006 when he discovered that it was thick with natural forests. Telling a reporter from the magazine Down to Earth,

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“You don’t have to be an expert to see that it’s forestland,”102 Jha put the blame on the divisional forest officer for having falsified the facts and also on the private consultancy firm that had done the environmental assessment stating that it was all “waste land.” But what about the MOEF itself? Should not the Ministry have sent someone to check the reality on the ground? This is, after all, a major project with obvious environmental implications. And if the Ministry did inspect the site but missed the trees, this seems an even bigger blunder. The criticized consultancy firm, ERM India, does confirm the presence of trees in the mining area, at least in the final environmental assessment report from 2002 where it states that, “Trees like” (giving a long list of trees) “are very frequent in this area.”103 The report further lists the “dominant shrubs” in the proposed mining area. On the basis of this document, anyone who can read would realize that there are indeed forests in the area that will be lost due to the extraction of limestone. But this too was apparently missed by the MOEF. Later, the Ministry also gave environmental clearance to Lafarge for yet another mining lease in an adjoining area under Shella village. This 67.92 hectare lease is for shale and siltstone mining, minerals also used in cement production, and the MOEF approved the project as late as December 2006, i.e., after Mr. Jha had alerted the MOEF to Lafarge’s destruction of forest in the limestone mining area. In this lease too the Ministry states that, “No forest land is involved.” The shale mining project remains obscure to me. The environmental impact assessment study carried out by the consultancy firm Ghosh, Bose and Associates talks about a mere 4.9-hectare shale mining project and states that the lease is for Lum Mawshun Minerals. The environmental clearance letter from the MOEF, however, names Lafarge Umiam Mining as the leaseholder.104 I have not been able to confirm this, but it appears that Lafarge no longer needs to go via a company (partly) owned by Khasi tribals and can have the lease directly with its India-registered firm Lafarge Umiam Mining. The mandatory report on reclamation of the mine is made by yet another consultancy group, the Centre for Environment and Development, and here it is stated that the 4.9-hectare shale and siltstone mine is “predominantly forest land” (para. 3.2).105 Although I lack the details on this latter mining lease, it appears that the MOEF has again missed the trees. The Supreme Court judges set to decide whether Lafarge is involved in illegal deforestation ought also to take a closer look at the MOEF’s (possibly illegal) actions.106 Lafarge will most likely be allowed to resume its limestone extraction (perhaps with some added environmental conditions); a counter decision would have severe financial and diplomatic repercussions for the Indian government.107 India is trying to attract foreign companies to invest in mining, and to block a major project that had already been sanctioned and made operational would be a serious blow to such efforts. Also, as

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mentioned, India’s relationship with Bangladesh and the policy of integrating Northeast India economically with its eastern neighbors would equally face a major setback. Lafarge also seeks to build a new giant cement plant in Meghalaya, plans which I imagine would be shelved then. The Meghalaya government clearly does not want that to happen. On the other hand, it faces an internal opposition that frames the Lafarge issue as a case of a multinational corporation, backed by international finance institutions, exploiting indigenous people’s land and resources. Limestone, through the expanding cement industry, has become a resource in high demand. It is a bulky commodity, and its transport from the mines in the foothills to the main markets in the plains has always posed a problem; this was true prior to the establishment of an international border separating the two.108 In the past, limestone was commonly used for making lime, through a rather simple process in which the limestone is burned with firewood in kilns. Such small-scale production is still going on, mainly in the southern parts of the Khasi Hills. With the conveyor belt, the transport problem is sorted out, as are the practical problems of having to cross an international border—frequent closures of border crossings as well as harassment by border officers on both sides. (The latter is a constant headache for the coal exporters, whose trucks may be stuck at the border points for days.) However, the conveyor belt has put the local limestone traders in a disadvantaged position, and they risk losing their businesses. In that case, the ultimate outcome might be not unlike the situation in the eighteenth century when Robert Lindsay, the Collector of Sylhet, managed to get an almost complete monopoly of the lucrative limestone trade. This was also the case later, in the mid-nineteenth century, when Henry Inglis and Co. controlled most of the limestone quarries (Oldham 1984[1854]: 54). Besides limestone, coal is the other major mineral in Meghalaya and, as mentioned, by far the most significant economically. The British took a keen interest in the coal deposits, placing them under government control in the nineteenth century and granting mining leases to private British companies. But to the disappointment of the government, the private companies largely failed to put any major mining operations in place; most of the coal that was mined was carried out by local people, who had the right to extract coal on their own account (Oldham 1984[1854]: 68–69). Since Independence, the coal business has been largely outside both state and corporate influence. Some coal traders, however, operate on a relatively large scale and make a substantial income from it. Coal was initially worked on the Cherrapunjee plateau, but since the 1970s the coal fields in the Jaintia and Garo Hills have become the major sources. Through an acquaintance, I was once invited to the wedding of the only daughter of a Jaintia lady considered to be one of the wealthiest in the coal business. It was a most extravagant event, with several thousand

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invited guests. Lavish food by chefs from the main hotels in Shillong was served to the many VIPs invited (ordinary guests were treated in a separate section), a truckload of flowers had been brought from Calcutta, and the stage where the newlyweds received the guests looked like the chamber of a royal durbar. The display of wealth and the conspicuous consumption stood in sharp contrast to the roughness of the place—an inhospitable and depressing town in the center of the Jaintia Hills coal fields. As mentioned, the fortunes generated from coal come at a high price for the environment and for the miners risking their lives in the badly maintained pits.109 The first time I heard about coal mining in Jaintia was during my fieldwork among the Rabhas in West Bengal. A group of young men had gone to work in the coal mines, lured by the prospect of earning fast money. But things did not turn out as they expected. Although they worked long hours in the mines, they had to spend all their money on food and lodging in the mining camp and ended up with a large debt to the camp manager. A friend of mine was asked to help them out and arranged a rescue operation through which the boys managed to escape undetected, but by leaving their few belongings behind. When they finally arrived home, not one had a single rupee in his pocket. I will close this chapter by looking at the extraction of coal, not least the “shadow” economy flourishing around it.

The Shadow of Coal As one coal trader explained to me, transport is the key if you want to make big money in this business. It is not only a matter of having your own trucks but also of working out the logistics involved in transporting the coal from the source to the depots in Assam or the border crossings with Bangladesh. There are a number of difficulties involved, and a number of people who claim their shares. Because of this, many people who own coal mines prefer either to lease them out or just to sell the coal in situ. My informant, a woman in her late thirties, had been successfully engaged in coal export for a number of years. She had her own coal fields in the southern parts of the West Khasi Hills but said there was no point trying to work them because the militants controlled the area and would demand too much in commission. Instead she had been working in the Jaintia Hills, buying coal from others and exporting it to Bangladesh. She had the necessary export license. In Bangladesh she would get almost three times the amount she would be paid in Assam. Even so, some people preferred to take the coal to Assam, avoiding the export hurdles and the frequent closures of the border station at Dawki. The Assam depot was always open.110

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The main coal exporter working from Dawki is Mr. R.D. Pala. I met him briefly at his home in 2003. Pala said that he had no coal fields of his own but concentrated on the transport and export part of the business. He owned thirty trucks and exported about fifty truckloads of coal a day to Bangladesh. Things were going fine, but there was a dark cloud on the horizon; the Bangladesh government was again considering putting a ban on coal from Meghalaya because of its high sulfur content. That would of course be a complete disaster for him and other traders. As we touched upon environmental aspects of coal, I asked about the effects in the mining areas. To my surprise, Pala spoke readily about this, saying that coal mining was devastating for the environment in the Jaintia Hills, polluting rivers, ruining drinking water sources, and making agricultural land barren in the mining areas. It took some time for me to realize that this was something he felt he had no part in (as he was just buying and selling coal).111 Another coal exporter, a Khasi man in his early forties working in the Garo Hills, told me he had taken a large area of approximately one square kilometer on lease, paying an annual sum of 100,000 Rupees in rent to the land owners. He had labor gangs to dig out the coal and load it onto the sturdy old Shaktiman trucks that took the coal up to the main road. From there it was reloaded onto ordinary trucks for transport to the depot he had close to the border. Depending on demand, the coal

Plate 16  Coal trucks being unloaded

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was again loaded onto a new set of trucks for transport over the border where the importers took over, when they had to get the coal onto their trucks. All this shuffling of coal on and off the trucks is done manually. Exporting coal was still rather easy, he argued. Every year the traders’ association from both sides would fix the price, which has been around US$40 per metric tonne in recent years. The biggest problem was how to deal with the militants. As he put it, “It is not a regular affair, you cannot just give a fixed sum—they are hard to predict, it depends on the situation how much they will demand,” adding that the militants are well informed and keep close track of the coal business.112 Yet another coal trader told me he had quit the business because of the difficulties he faced with the militants. As he explained, “After the ANVC came in and started to demand money the whole thing became too complicated.” This was also a Khasi man in his forties, who had been engaged in coal mining in the Garo Hills up to the mid 1990s. His mode of operations was straightforward, as he narrated: I just went to the villages where I knew there was coal and discussed with the nokma (headman). We arranged a feast, slaughtered a pig and offered liquor. Then we offered money to the nokma and the other elders, and they convinced the other villagers. As soon as money was given, everything went easy. Either the a’king land was divided between villagers, who were free to make a deal for the coal on their land, or we paid all the money to the nokma, who divided it among the villagers. I brought in laborers, mainly Nepalis, Bangladeshis, and sometimes local people who took the coal out through simple tunnels, through what we call “rat-hole mining.” After this it was just to load the coal onto jeeps or Shaktiman trucks which would take it up to the nearest road, and from there we would carry the coal on regular trucks. It was all very easy, and we did quite a good profit. The coal trader had a very low opinion of the ANVC activists, saying that they had no “cause,” that it was only a matter of extortion. According to him it had all started with Naga militants coming in and training and arming the Garos, and then demanding a 50 per cent share of whatever money was collected. But he also contradicted himself, saying that the Nagas had convinced people ideologically that “they must take control of their own land,” that it was only “outsiders that make all the money and you don’t get anything.” Youngsters with a romantic idea about the life in the jungle, being a rebel with a gun in your hand, had been attracted by this and joined the militants. From being nobodies these young men could now get respect, power, and money. The coal trader also made an interesting comparison between the ANVC and the HNCL, saying that the Garo outfit is mainly bush-based, whereas the

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Khasi militia is town-based (even if they also have camps in the bush). The reason for this, he said, is that money is in rural areas in the Garo Hills and militants there get their main funds from coal and timber traders in the field, whereas the Khasi militants stick to extorting businessmen who live in towns, preferably in Shillong.113 Several other people I talked to have made similar reflections on the connection between insurgency and resource extraction, both coal and timber, in the Garo Hills. A woman living along the major coal route to Assam told me, for example, that the ANVC came into being after coal had started picking up in a big way. As she explained it, the militants, who hide most of the year in camps in Bangladesh, enter the Garo Hills during the coal season, which starts in November. They collect money from the toll gates that are set up by the District Council and auctioned out to a private contractor. Every coal truck thus has to pay a set fee, out of which ANVC would get its share. The militants also tax the wine shops, whose sales are flourishing due to the coal trade.114 In the Jaintia and Khasi Hills the modus operandi seems to be somewhat different. There the major coal traders seem to pay an annual sum to the HNCL. This is commonly referred to as the “coal trader–militant nexus,” and a number of traders who have been named in the press are presently under police investigation for their alleged monetary “donations” to the HNCL.115 That such donations are a regular attribute of the coal business is something everyone I have spoken to would readily confirm, and extractive industries like mining and logging are known to be favored targets for insurgency groups around the world. Some scholars argue that the very availability of taxable natural resources is the main explanation for why such groups come into being, describing them as “greed” driven. Others would prefer explanations that also take political motivations—“grievances” or ideological agendas—into consideration (see Berdal and Malone 2000). I will say more about this in the concluding chapter (see also the discussion in chapter 1). But let us dwell a bit longer on the political economy of coal in the Garo Hills. Most of the coal traders active there are non-Garos.116 Some of the traders, like the two Khasi traders mentioned above, are from other parts of the state, but as I understand it, most are non-tribals from the plains. The militants also use this fact to legitimate their taxation of the coal business and to morally justify occasional kidnappings of coal traders.117 As with the timber trade, even though the largest sums of money end up with those connected to the outside market, local people too make a substantial income from coal. The anthropologist Erik de Maaker gives a telling example of how the extraction transpires locally. He writes: Sadolapara a’king has a number of shallow subterranean deposits of coal, which were apparently located by government surveyors. The

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sale of the coal makes good profits. The coal is bought by Bengali traders, who transport it to Assam and Bangladesh. A deposit belongs to the House that holds the title to the particular stretch of the a’king, but it needs to share these revenues with related Houses. Before a deposit is mined, it is divided into portions that are large enough to dig a tunnel. Each of these portions is allocated to a different House, which become the owner of the coal that is dug from it. Since a deposit can only accommodate a limited number of tunnels, disputes about their allocation are prone to occur. (de Maaker 2006: 63–64) In the case of smaller deposits, and those located in difficult terrain, people would have to carry the coal in baskets up to the main road where the traders pick it up. In traveling through mining areas, you see coal dumps all along the roadsides. In some places the ground is completely blackened by leftover coal or spills. During the heavy rains, the mine waste is swept along hillsides and enters into rivers and bodies of water. The coal extraction leaves distinct marks in the landscape; the otherwise lushly green hills on the southern slopes of the Garo Hills are increasingly being intercepted by black sores of abandoned or stillworked mine pits. Trees are being cut and the steep hillsides are being exposed to severe erosion, which adds to the risk that mines will collapse (Chaulya 2004: 70). Some of the major coal deposits are in the vicinity of the major biodiversity hotspots, the Nokrek Biosphere Reserve and the Balpakram National Park. Coal mining is eating into the buffer zones of these reserves, posing a threat to the unique flora and fauna,118 and conservationists are increasingly concerned that coal mining along with logging and jhum cultivation are severely fragmenting or destroying wildlife habitats of elephants and other threatened species.119 It seems inevitable that at some point the local authorities concerned will have to address the question of how to balance the economic interest of pursuing coal mining with other interests like that of nature conservation or environmental protection more generally. In view of the PIL filed with the Supreme Court, demanding a more environmentally responsible mining industry in the state—which among other things has put pressure on the state government to act—it is not unlikely that some type of mining regulation will be imposed on them anyway. It seems most unlikely that this would be in the form of a “ban,” as in the case of timber. That would not only be a major impediment for the economy of Meghalaya but would also go against the grain of major national interests, i.e., the stated need to enhance mineral extraction to meet domestic industrial demands as well as to enhance export revenues. Coal is in ever-greater demand, not least for use in energy production.120 Here it is worth noting that the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation, a central government

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enterprise, is in the process of setting up two coal-based thermal power plants in Meghalaya, one in the South Garo Hills and one in the West Khasi Hills. The first one alone will consume 2.5 million tonnes of coal annually.121 Coal mining transforms not only the natural landscape, but perhaps even more the social landscape. The anthropologist Henry Lamin (1995: 82-87) describes how coal has completely transformed Jaintia society in the mining areas. First of all, the traditional land tenure system is fast eroding. Land has become a commodity, concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy families. It is mainly men who are buying up the coal-bearing lands, and through this, land becomes a self-acquired property in the hands of men rather than under the control of women as the ultimate owners and inheritors of ancestral property (see chapter 3). Disputes over land have also become more frequent, and instead of being settled by the village elders or the durbar, such conflicts tend to end up in higher courts. Community institutions are quickly eroding and there is a more general deterioration of social and moral norms—money has come to dictate everything, according to Lamin. Theft, murder, violence, drinking, and gambling have followed with the mining boom. But again, some of the Jaintias have made a fortune in the process. The coal elite self-consciously marks its class position apart from that of its less fortunate tribal fellows (ibid.: 83). Journalist Rupa Chinai gives a vivid account of this, writing: The rain of money has created an elite class in Jaintia society. It has seen the mushrooming of ‘cassata ice cream’ villas—front porticos plastered with black and gold bathrooms tiles—a nouveau riche fantasy. These moneybags are buying up property worth crores of rupees in Shillong. Flashy cars roaring on the highway are among other visible signs of wealth from coal.122 This exposure of wealth stands in sharp contrast to the misery of the mining laborers, who live and work under appalling conditions (Tiwari 1996: 472–73). The fate of the coal miners, however, is granted little sympathy or recognition by the general public in Meghalaya. Most of the miners are from outside the state and if anything, they would be portrayed as unwanted illegal immigrants. When ethnic sentiments run high, coal miners are often identified as a legitimate target of communal rage. As mentioned in chapter 1, three Karbi coal laborers, for example, were killed in the wake of the anti-Karbi surge in 2003. The entire coal industry operates in a kind of legal vacuum. Coal is classified as a major mineral in India, which among other things implies that the central government should approve all mining leases. According to the Coal Mining Act of 1973, only public-sector ventures are entitled to mine coal. But this and all other aspects of national legislation concern-

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ing mining are obviously bypassed with reference to Meghalaya’s Sixth Schedule status and the categorization of mining as a small-scale cottage industry. Exactly how this has been settled remains unclear to me. The trade is indirectly under state control, however, through taxation by the central government and above all by the state government. One can argue that this bestows a legal status on the private, non-licensed mining operations in Meghalaya. Still, a somewhat feeble one. It is here that the notion of “shadow” makes sense. The anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom (2004) uses shadows to describe economic and political linkages that move outside of formally recognized “state-based” channels. In common terminology these would be referred to as illegal transactions relating to the black market, smuggling, or criminal mafias. But as Nordstrom puts it, in reality many of these flows of goods and services “cross various divides between legal, quasi-legal, and downright illegal activities” (ibid.: 106). Nordstrom is mainly interested in the global circuits of goods in war-torn societies, but there are nevertheless crucial resemblances with the geographically more confined coal trade that we are dealing with here. Besides the ambiguous legal position of coal mining, I have also mentioned the illicit taxation by insurgents, but the shadow of coal extends far beyond this. A coal truck is entitled to take a load of fifteen metric tonnes, but everyone knows that none of the several hundred trucks that ply the roads in Meghalaya would keep to this limit. The normal load is almost double the limit, somewhere between twenty-five and twentyeight tonnes. The overloaded trucks frequently break down, overturn, or get into accidents. The state has a number of weight bridges that are supposed to prevent overloading, but again it is common knowledge that the truck drivers get away by paying a set bribe to the officers in charge.123 A coal truck would have to pass through a number of toll gates before its reaches its destination. Besides the main District Council gates, there will also be gates run by the traditional heads and by the municipalities through which the trucks must pass. Whether a syiem, for example, is legally entitled to collect money from trucks remains disputed. But there are a number of other agencies that also erect toll gates along the highway, some obviously without legal sanction. Such gates are regularly removed by the police but tend to reappear again after a time.124 The coal brought to Assam would be sold at the main depots run by SULFA, i.e., former members of the outlaw insurgent group United Liberation Front of Asom.125 The depots, as a trader explained to me, had earlier been under the Gandhi group, a family-based business (the family heads originally from Gujarat), but the SULFAs wrested control of the lucrative trading monopoly away by killing one of the Gandhi brothers. As the trader explained it, the takeover makes no difference for the common coal trader. In the end, he said, the middleman would

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always get the largest profit.126 A government servant working in the Department of Commerce told me similarly that through its monopoly position SULFA would earn somewhere around 100 to 150 rupees per tonne. This is not much below the 165 rupees per tonne collected in royalty by the Meghalaya government. Considering that most of the coal is being transported from Assam by rail, which is run by the state, alternative arrangements to bypass this illegitimate control of the trade could of course be worked out. But as the government officer told me, “Everybody gets their share and keeps quiet.”127 For the coal that is exported to Bangladesh the problem is instead with the border security forces on both sides. These forces exercise an almost sovereign rule of the borderland. They also demand a share of both the licit and illicit trade going on between the two countries. Strangely enough, they do this with what appears to be complete legal impunity (van Schendel 2005). The frequent closures of the border crossings, like the one in Dawki, are commonly done to enforce or serve their vested interests.128

Legal Fetishism Anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff note an interesting paradox of many contemporary postcolonial societies. While disorder and violence seem to reach unprecedented levels, these very societies “seem to make a fetish of the rule of law” (2006: vii). By this they are referring to the increased “dispersal of politics into the law,” that the judiciary is set to deal with issues which would previously have been understood to be within the realm of the political (ibid.: 40). What the Comaroffs point to seems to hold true also for India, and not least for the northeastern frontier areas under discussion here. The resource conflicts relating to forest, land, and minerals that I have discussed in the last three chapters are all marked by this paradox. On the one hand, we have seen how existing laws are regularly ignored by the involved parties, not least by those in positions of power, like the most senior government officers or the political elite that enriches itself on illegal timber, mineral extraction, or shady land deals. Yet, on the other hand, there seems to be an almost magical belief in the capacity of the judiciary to set things right. As we have seen, complex issues like how to obtain sustainable management of forests or whether human health is endangered by radiation from uranium mining are to be settled by Supreme Court judges. The triumph of the judiciary obviously signals the failure of the other domains of governance. When things end up in courtrooms, democratic decision making loses. The Public Interest Litigation mechanism under the Supreme Court empowers citizens to redress state or corporate ills. The Meghalaya Adventurer Association (MAA), for example, has availed itself of this avenue as part of its efforts to protect the unique caves in the

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state. The state government has obviously failed miserably in regulating the mining industry, with severe consequences for the environment as well as public health. And the promised “comprehensive” mining policy has ended up in limbo after Chief Minister D.D. Lapang had the officer in charge removed just when he was about to present a finished draft.129 Even if the Supreme Court steps in and rules in favor of MAA’s appeal, it still lies with the state administration and the Meghalaya government to enforce or put such a ruling into practice. In that respect, the “timber ban” can hardly be described a success story. The anti-uranium mining campaign has taken instead to direct political action, trying to put pressure on decision makers in the state. The campaign has at least given the Meghalaya government cold feet, postponing the final approval of the project. But whether such protests will be successful in the long run remains to be seen. A recurrent problem that figures in most of the cases discussed here is the lack of public influence or participation in resource management decisions. As mentioned in chapter 2, the international consensus in forest management today is that active participation by the communities concerned is a necessity in achieving long-term sustainability. Imposing environmental regulations from above tends to alienate people and only undermines the efforts to preserve forests. In the next chapter, I will turn to an attempt to rebuild the tribal society’s capacity for self-governance. This is a call for the re-empowering of the so-called traditional political institutions, which are claimed to be superior—genuinely democratic— to those imposed by the Indian state. One aspect of this issue is how to make customary laws applicable to present-day concerns. By strengthening indigenous forms of governance and law, the local communities can arguably reinsert some measure of control over their lands and resources. Indigenous people, as we know, are commonly said to have a unique relationship with nature. I will end the chapter by addressing this very claim.

Notes    1. The President’s address to the nation on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of Independence, 17 July 2006. Dr. Kalam ended his term as President in 2007.    2 See “Tribes dig in to fight uranium,” BBC News, 5 May 2003, http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3000991.stm, accessed June 2006.    3. The interview with H.S. Shylla took place in Shillong, 11 April 2006.    4. Before Shylla assumed office, the District Council had declined to grant final permission to the uranium mining project. For example, Shylla’s predecessor, the late David Lyngwie, maintained a much more ambivalent stand, as he told me during several of our meetings. See also “Keep off! Uranium rich Meghalaya tells mining PSU,” Down to Earth, 31 July 2003.    5. Quoted in “Uranium mining in national interests: CEM,” The Shillong Times, 2 March 2006.

Mining Matters   217     6. Another related factor is the increasing price of uranium on the world market; the spot price more than doubled between January 2006 and January 2007, jumping from US$35/lb to US$75/lb (and has since continued to increase). See “India trying to beef up its uranium production,” The Times of India, 23 September 2007. As I revise the book manuscript in November 2009, the mentioned Indo-US deal has been approved and India has now access to imported uranium. Such uranium, however, can only be used for civil energy purposes and hence not for India’s military nuclear programme (see further the book Indo-US Nuclear Deal: Seeking Synergy in Bilateralism, ed. Chari (2009)).    7. See “Nuclear Power: Uranium Crises,” Frontline, vol. 22, no. 27, 2006.    8. Cited in “KHADC clears uranium mining proposal,” The Shillong Times, 13 April 2006.    9. The Atomic Minerals Directorate is responsible for exploration, while the Uranium Corporation of India, Ltd. (UCIL) carries out the actual mining and milling operations.   10. Mr. Lyngdoh has been a member of the Legislative Assembly since 1956, sitting altogether for forty-nine years. In addition, he has been member of the Executive Committee of the District Council for thirty-six years and was a member of the Indian Parliament in 1977–79. Lyngdoh said that he has now withdrawn to a large extent from party politics and sees himself more as a social worker.   11. Interview with Hopingstone Lyngdoh in Shillong, 15 April 2006, and with H.S. Shylla, 11 April 2006.   12. See “UCIL yet to furnish land acquisition details,” The Shillong Times, 13 February 2007.   13. Quoted in “Govt to hold rally on uranium mining in Dec.,” The Shillong Times, 11 November 2004.   14. The Public Interest Litigation, no. 188 of 1999, was filed by advocate B.L. Wadehra against the Union of India and others. As far as I have been able to make out, the Supreme Court dismissed the PIL on the basis of an affidavit by the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission stating that it had taken adequate steps to contain the radiation arising out of the uranium waste. To claim, like Shylla, that the Supreme Court has hereby established that uranium mining poses no health risks seems highly questionable. But as I have been unable to access the Supreme Court decision, I leave this for others to evaluate.   15. See “Pleader’s notice against anti-uranium campaign,” The Shillong Times, 4 May 2006; and “We just don’t trust UCIL,” Grassroots Options web portal http:// grassrootsoption.com (accessed 4 October 2007). Among others, Shylla has accused Bremley Lyngdoh, a Ph.D. student at the London School of Economics, of contempt of the Supreme Court. For a response, see “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” posted 29 May 2006, on Lyngdoh’s webpage, http://bremley. blogspot.com (accessed October 2007).   16. The film is made by Shriprakash (A Kritika and Birsa Production, 1999). For further views on the alleged health effects on local people, see “Uranium Production: Villages and Woes,” Frontline, vol. 16, no. 18, 1999; and “Jadugoda Tragedy: Price of Superpower Ambitions,” by S.K. Vidyalaya, September 2007, http://www.jadugoda.net/reports/anumukti.html (accessed November 2007).   17. See, e.g., “Children of the Poisoned Valley,” by Peter Popham, The Independent Sunday, 20 May 2001; “Thousands at risk of poisoning from ‘India’s Chernobyl,’” by Julian West, The Sunday Telegraph, 25 April 1999; and “Living next to India’s uranium mine,” by Mark Whitaker, BBC News, BBC India, 4 May 2006.

218   Unruly Hills   18. Interview in Shillong, 16 February 2005.   19. Letter to the Chief Minister, Government of Meghalaya, dated 18 March 2004.   20. In a recent article, the Australian scholar Duncan McDuie-Ra (2007) argues that the opposition to uranium mining in Meghalaya is solely a matter of opposing “outsiders,” i.e., control by an outside agency and influx of non-locals, and that it has nothing to do with environmental and health effects, nor with protection of indigenous lands and livelihoods. While, as I argue throughout this book, the outsiders issue is crucial, this very matter is linked directly to the issue of preventing alienation of indigenous lands. And further, that health and environmental issues would play no part is equally intriguing; it seems not to be an option here that individuals and organizations can act out of a set of different motivations and interests, nor that the opposition can harbor a variety of positions and strategies. In almost all resource struggles, environmental concerns are entangled with other aspects of community sovereignty (Ballard and Banks 2003: 299).   21. Cited in “WK Hills strongly divided over uranium,” The Shillong Times, 8 June 2007.   22. Directorate of Mineral Resources, Government of Meghalaya.   23. See, e.g., “Danger Ahead,” guest column by sociologist Anita Roy, The Telegraph, 24 January 2003.   24. I have been unable to obtain any detailed information on how this happened, i.e., how Meghalaya managed to get its coal sector classified as a small-scale cottage industry.   25. According to B.B. Lyngdoh, the “coal war” became a prelude to the Hill State Movement and the demand for a separate state outside Assam (2004: 8).   26. See http://mines.nic.in (accessed September 2007).   27. The central government is empowered by the Indian Constitution (Seventh Schedule, List I, Entry 54) to regulate mining.   28. See “National Mineral Policy,” Report of the high Level Committee, Government of India, Planning commission, New Delhi, December 2006 (page 84, para. 3.30).   29. Ibid:120, para. 6.3, emphasis added.   30. Samatha vs State of Andhra Pradesh, Supreme Court Judgement, 11 July 1997.   31. The areas concerned in Andhra Pradesh are under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, whereas the tribal areas in the Northeast are under the Sixth Schedule.   32. Supreme Court Judgement, para. 111.   33. Ibid.: para. 110.   34. In the historic 1992 Mabo judgment, the Australian High Court recognized for the first time an indigenous or native title to land. For a discussion of the significance of this judgment, see Webber (2000).   35. “Mabo and Samatha,” by R. Dhavan, The Hindu, 9 March 2001. See also Rebbapragada and Bhanumathri (2001) and Vagholikar, Moghe and Dutta (2003), especially chapter 6.   36. See, e.g., the edited volume Moving Mountains: Communities Confront Mining and Globalisation, ed. Evans, Goodman and Lansbury (2002) and Al Gedicks’ Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations (2001).   37. Editorial, “Evils of private ownership of land,” The Shillong Times, 9 February 2007, and also “Welcome to the land of environmental predators,” The Telegraph, 14 February 2007.

Mining Matters   219    38. Personal information, Vincent Darlong, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Shillong, 13 February 2005.   39. According to information in the press, the Meghalaya Adventurer Association was supposed to have withdrawn its PIL in 2006 after getting assurances by the Meghalaya government that a comprehensive mining policy would be worked out (see, e.g., “PIL Regarding Preservation of Meghalaya Caves Withdrawn,” 2 August 2006, Indlaw.com, http://www.indlawnews.com, accessed Nov. 2007). However, this is not the case.   40. Personal communication, telephone interview, 28 September 2007.   41. See “Blanket ban on limestone mining sought,” The Shillong Times, 4 October 2007.   42. A number of Indian corporations also seek to invest in cement production in the state. For example, Adhunik Cement Ltd. is presently seeking environmental clearance for a cement plant and a coal-based power plant, to be built in the Jaintia Hills. The company plans to build a conveyor belt four kilometers long to transport limestone from the quarry to the plant. See the environmental impact assessment report posted at the Meghalaya state portal, http://meghalaya.nic. in/index.php, accessed Dec. 2007..   43. This problem, that the mineral-rich states remain poor, is discussed in the previously mentioned report “National Mineral Policy,” by the High Level Committee, Government of India’s Planning Commission (2006). Besides lack of value addition, the mineral royalties paid to the states are said to be “very meagre” (ibid.: 112, para. 5.3).   44. This condition was the subject of a recent conference, “Mining, Environment and People,” arranged by the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, April 2007.   45. See, e.g., the discussion in the UNDP Human Development Report for Chhattisgarh (2005), available at http://www.undp.org.in (accessed Dec. 2007).   46. Interviews in Shella, 21 February 2005.   47. See “Domiasiat project renamed to Kylleng-Pyndemsohiong-Mawthabah uranium mining project,” The Shillong Times, 14 March 2005.   48. Quoted in “Nuclear Power: Uranium Crises,” Frontline, vol. 22 no. 27, 2006.   49. I owe this point to journalist Sanat K. Chakrabarty; based on a telephone conversation we had on the subject in September 2007.   50. Hopingstone Lyngdoh told me that the project’s name change was just a trick by UCIL to confuse people.   51. “District Council to seek White paper on Domiasiat project,” The Shillong Times, 8 March 2005.   52. What the assessment report provides is rather, as stated by the authors, “baseline environmental data” on things like quality of air, water, soil, hydrogeology, and biodiversity (Tiwari et al. 2003: 5). Basic information on the socioeconomic conditions of the villages surrounding the project site in Domiasiat is also provided.   53. From “Atomic reactors to be fed by State’s uranium: UCIL submits white paper on mining project to State Govt.,” The Shillong Times, 31 January 2007 (the quotation marks are in the original, thus indicating direct quotations from the White Paper).   54. Information cited in “PM pushes State for early uranium mining,” The Shillong Times, 21 May 2007.   55. “HSPDP to oppose public hearing,” The Shillong Times, 27 May 2007.

220   Unruly Hills   56. “MDA ignores KSU threat on uranium,” The Shillong Times, 3 June 2007.   57. See, e.g., “HNLC threatens to spoil peace efforts in Meghalaya,” oneindia, 27 April 2006, http://news.oneindia.in.   58. “Around 700 people attend three-hour-long peaceful public hearing: Majority says ‘no’ to uranium mining,” The Shillong Times, 13 June 2007.   59. This report was allegedly submitted in July 2007, but as far as I am aware it has not been made public.   60. Cited in “KSU vows to continue mining stir,” The Shillong Times, 14, June 2007.   61. “Shylla dares NGOs on mining project,” The Shillong Times, 16 May 2006.   62. I have a copy of the map, titled “Proposed Layout of Domiasiat Mining and Processing Project,” prepared by A.C. Kundu and A.K. Saranoi, ref. no. UCIL/ GEO/DOMIA/1/02. On this project map, the two mining areas come to 295 hectares, the milling area 200 hectares, the tailings pond 200 hectares, the colony area 28 hectares, and additional area for other facilities 25 hectares, i.e., a total of 748 hectares.   63. Interview in Shillong, 17 February 2005. Such allegations have in fact been made. In an article in the magazine Frontline, V.P. Raja, Additional Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, is quoted as saying that some of the uranium mining protesters are “acting as mercenaries of outside forces” (see “A Nuclear divide,” Frontline, vol. 22, no. 27, 2006). The Governor of Meghalaya, M.M. Jacobs, similarly argued that some of the NGOs opposing uranium were working for “another country” (quoted in “Jacob trashes NGOs,” The Shillong Times, 10 May 2006).   64. Interview in Shillong, 16 February 2005.   65. To interpret legal text is difficult for a layman, but as I read the Atomic Mineral Act of 1962, the central government is empowered to take possession of land with deposits of specified “atomic minerals” regardless of whether land owners or local government bodies give their consent. This is also what several persons in Meghalaya have told me and how it is understood by other commentators (see, e.g., the editorial in Economic and Political Weekly, “Uranium Mining: Questionable Decision,” 11 November 2000).   66. Cited in “Atomic Energy panel visits Meghalaya,” The Assam Tribune, 6 June 2004.   67. This is also reported in the press, e.g., The Shillong Times, 18 October 2004.   68. Interview in Shillong, 14 February 2005.   69. During a public debate in Shillong in 2004, Professor Surendra Gadekar, a physicist at IIT Kanpur, raised a similar concern, saying that it is a “myth” that UCIL and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) are two independent organizations, claiming that they are one and that the latter does not even have an office or staff of its own. See “An Open Interactive Discussion on Uranium Mining and its Effects: A Proceeding,” 15 July 2004, posted on the Mines and Communities website, http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Country/ india16.htm (accessed 18 November 2004).   70. Interview in Shillong, 30 October 2003.   71. The European Committee on Radiation Risk has recently issued recommendations that are significantly lower than those of most other international bodies, setting the total maximum permissible dose at 0.1 mSv for members of the general public and 5 mSv for nuclear workers. See ECRR 2003 Recommendations: Executive Summary, available at http://www.euradco.org/2003/execsumm. htm, (accessed Dec. 2007).

Mining Matters   221    72. Beck is referring to a US commission with the task of finding out how to communicate the dangers of stored nuclear waste to people ten thousand years in the future. The commission reached the conclusion that this was simply not possible. However, as he points out, it was obviously taken for granted that the US would still exist then (Beck 2002).   73. See ECRR 2003 Recommendations: Executive Summary, para. 10 at http:// www.euradco.org/2003/execsumm.htm.   74. As an increasing number of scholars argue, the world has already passed the peak of oil production and the decline is inevitable, again making other sources like atomic energy more attractive (see Deffeyes 2005). The nuclear industry has also cashed in on global warming, talking about a shift from “fossil to atom” as a critical move to arrest climate change.   75. See, e.g., Gusterson (1996) on the distrust in relation to US nuclear weapons facilities.   76. For Australia, see the booklet Yellowcake Country: Australia’s uranium mining industry, published by Beyond Nuclear Initiative, 2006, available at Friends of the Earth’s webpage, http://www.foe.org.au/resources/publications/antinuclear/yellowcake.pdf (accessed Dec. 2007).   77. See “Leave It in the Ground: Indigenous Peoples call for Global Ban on Uranium mining,” by Brenda Norrell, Counterpunch, 8 February 2007, www.counterpunch.org/norrell02082007.html, (accessed Dec. 2007).   78. “Green Party renew call for uranium mining ban,” press release, 18 September 2007, http://www.greenparty.ca/en/release/18.09.2007b (accessed Dec. 2007).   79. See, e.g., “Navajo Utah Commission tries to help radiation victims,” Gallup Independent, 11 January 2007, and “Chernobyl victims still fighting for compensation,” The World Today, 26 April 2006.   80. For a most gripping account of nuclear victims’ silent sufferings, see journalist Svetlana Alexievich’s book Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (2005).   81. Arundhati Roy’s essay “The End of Imagination,” in Frontline, 14 August 1998, is a forceful critique of the event.   82. For more details on the history of India’s nuclear bomb program, and Dr. Kalam’s role in it, see Kapur (2001), Perkovich (1999), and Abraham (1998).   83. An open letter to Chief Minister D.D. Lapang, “Say No to Uranium Mining in Meghalaya,” dated Shillong, 10 September 2004, signed by Dino D.G. Dympep, MPHRC, and Samuel Jyrwa, KSU. The letter is based on a meeting that the KSU and MPHRC organized in Umdohlum village with land owners and traditional heads in the project area. About forty participants also signed the letter.   84. See “An Open Interactive Discussion on Uranium Mining and its Effects: A Proceeding,” 15 July 2004, posted on the Mines and Communities website, http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Country/india16.htm (accessed November 18, 2004).   85. For the 1897 earthquake, see the account by Reverend Robert Evans (reprint 2003).   86. For instance, on 24 December 2006, a tailings pipeline broke at Jadugoda, allegedly spreading radioactive tailings into a tributary of the River Subranarektha.   87. For example, in a press release from a meeting in a village near Domiasiat it is stated that Dr. Kakodkar, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, had wrongly issued a statement that land owners had accepted the mining proposal. This was simply false information, claimed to have been fabricated by the then

222   Unruly Hills

  88.   89.   90.   91.   92.   93.   94.

  95.   96.

  97.   98.

  99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104.

105.

mining adviser C. F. Lyngdoh, (see press release by Hynniewtrep Movement Against Uranium Mining, 7 June 2004). Interviews in Domiasiat, 18 February 2005. “Leave us alone to decide our destiny, cries Wahkaji,” The Shillong Times, 10 May 2006. Interview with Sunil Kumar, Shillong, 17 February 2005. “Whiff of foul play in HNLC ‘encounter,’” The Telegraph, 1 November 2007. In November 2009, as I make the final revisions of the book manuscript, things have become even more tense. KSU have arranged several demonstrations to protest against the state governments push for the project. “Death of L&T staff smacks of rivalry,” The Shillong Times, 19 January 2006. Here I must add that these incidents remain obscure and whether they were a matter of sabotage or merely accidents is not fully clear. For the most recent events, I rely on news information, e.g., “SC puts on hold Lafarge’s plea to ferry limestone,” Zeenews.com, 2 November 2007; “SC has put French cement giant Lafarge’s $255 million plant in Bangladesh in difficulty …,” The Times of India, 20 October 2007; “Meghalaya limestone quarries closed,” Down to Earth, 15 August 2007; “Lafarge limestone quarries in Meghalaya closed” and “No relief for Lafarge till July,” Grassroots Options web portal, www. grassrootsoptions.org (accessed November 2007). Personal communication, Shillong, 12 April 2006. Interview in Shillong, 16 February 2005. Dympep was later back in Geneva, again taking up the Lafarge case along with other matters at the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Working Group on Minorities, 12th Session, 30 May to 2 June 2005. Interview in Shella, 21 February 2005. I have earlier used the name Lafarge in a generic sense, covering the variously named subsidiaries like Lafarge Surma Cement. How exactly this latter company is related to the French mother company Lafarge, or to put it differently, how the larger Lafarge group is organized, is beyond the scope of this work. “Curb on Lafarge tribal land mortgage,” Grassroots Options web portal, www. grassrootsoptions.com (accessed 6 November 2007). See “Tribal row may force Lafarge to free Meghalaya lands,” Grassroots Options web portal, www.grassrootsoptions.org (accessed 6 November 2007). Letter to Shri S.G. Lyngdoh, Director M/s Lum Mawshun Minerals Pvt. Ltd., No. J-11015/10/2000-1A II(M), Government of India, Ministry of Environment and Forests, dated 9 August 2001 (quote from para. 1). “Meghalaya limestone quarries closed,” Down to Earth, 15 August 2007. See “Comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment of Limestone Mine, Village Nongtrai, Meghalaya, India,” by ERM India Pvt Ltd (August 2002: 112). Unfortunately, I do not have access to the preliminary report that has been cited in the press. See letter to M/s Lafarge Umiam Mining Pvt Ltd, No. J-11015/6/2005-IA.II(M), from Govt. of India, Ministry of Environment and Forests, dated 4 December 2006. It can be mentioned that Lum Mawshun Minerals and Lafarge Umiam Mining have the same office address at Hotel Polo Towers in Shillong. The reports by the Centre for Environment and Development and by Ghosh, Bose and Associates are at the time of writing available at www.ifc.org (see Shale Mine Project at Shella).

Mining Matters   223  106. With this I refer to the possibility that bribes have been involved in MoEF’s environmental clearance of the mining projects. 107. The Supreme Court decided on 23 November 2007, that Lafarge would be allowed to temporarily resume the limestone extraction. In November 2009, the “temporary” extraction still continues. 108. The colonial gazetteer by Allen et al. gives an interesting account of the limestone trade at the turn of the twentieth century, mentioning the great difficulties of transporting the stones from the quarries, rolling them down to the river banks, loading them onto boats for transport to the lime kilns situated on the river banks in the plains. The 1897 earthquake is said to have made the transport even more difficult (Allen et al. 1979: 491; see also Oldham 1984[1854]: 55). 109. “They load 16 tonnes only to face death,” by Linda Chhakchhuak, The Times of India, 13 October 2003. 110. Interview in Shillong, 19 November 2003. 111. Interview in Dawki, 23 January 2003. 112. Interview in Shillong, 8 December 2003. 113. Interview in Shillong, 10 October 2003. 114. Interview in the northern Garo Hills, 5 December 2003. 115. See “Police mull action against coal exporters” and “Donation to HNCL: Police claim evidence against coal traders,” The Shillong Times, 30 June and 5 July 2004. Nothing much seems to be happening with these cases and none of the traders have so far been convicted. 116. As I mention in chapter 2, some of the Garo businessmen who were earlier engaged in the timber trade shifted to coal after the timber ban. 117. A spokesman for Liberation of Achik Elite Force told the media after the kidnapping of a coal trader in the Garo Hills that it would no longer tolerate outsiders exploiting the mineral wealth of the Garos and that it would make them pay a “hefty sum” in compensation (cited in “Militants release abducted person in Garo Hills,” The Shillong Times, 10 June 2007). 118. In the case of the Nokrek Biosphere Reserve, see the doctoral dissertation by K. Sarma (2002). 119. Regarding threats to the habitats of the Hoolock Gibbon, see Choudhury (2006). 120. For a further discussion on the present role of coal, see Lahiri-Dutt (2007). 121. See NEPCO’s webpage, http://nepco.gov.in/future.htlm, accessed Dec. 2007. 122. “Coal calculations,” by Rupa Chinai, Frontline, vol. 23, no. 13, 1–14 July, 2004. 123. In a Meghalaya Legislative Assembly hearing in 1999, Minister in charge of Transport Sujit Sangma was asked about the function of the weight bridges. The minister stated that overloaded trucks should pay a penalty of 4 rupees per tonne over the limit of 15 tonnes. But as the three weight bridges had been nonfunctional during the last five years or so, no such penalties had been collected. Why these had not been repaired, and why they still remained fully staffed, were not addressed. One need not be a Sherlock Holmes to figure out that something odd was going on here. See Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, Questions and Answers, 6 April 1999. 124. In the Meghalaya Assembly Debates, 14 December 2006, the issue of illegal toll gates came up again. Here the question of government involvement in the illegal collection of money from trucks was raised. It was alleged that a truck commonly ends up paying 1,800 to 2,000 rupees for passing through the state

224   Unruly Hills

125. 126. 127. 128. 129.

along the national highway. The Minister in charge of Transport was asked to pay a visit to observe this for himself, as it was carried out openly. The S in the acronym stands for Surrendered. Many of the SULFAs are allowed to carry arms and have managed to establish control over a number of economic activities in Assam. Interview in Shillong, 8 December 2003. Interview in Shillong, 17 February 2005. See, e.g., “Coal import ban result of BRD interference” and “Halt in coal export after BSF interference,” The Shillong Times, 1 September 1 and 7 November 2004. According to information in the Shillong Times, Chief Minister Lapang was under pressure from the coal lobby to derail the work on the mining policy. The new Minister of Mining and Geology for Meghalaya (they keep changing the person in this post), Mr. Nehlang Lyngdoh, himself reputed to be a rich coal businessman, is said to have been instrumental here (see “Coal lobby scuttles mining policy drafting?” 28 November 2007).

Part III Culture

Chapter 5

Indigenous Governance We are hoping that the association with Gore would bring global attention to the predicament facing the people of this remote corner of earth. Robert Kharshiing, member of Indian Parliament1 Robert Kharshiing and the other leaders of the grassroots democracy movement in Meghalaya managed to hit the right publicity button by bestowing a green award upon former US Vice-President Al Gore for his campaign against global climate change. Several national and international media picked up the story, with imaginative headlines like the one by the Associated Press, “Tribal kings in remote Indian state give environmental award to Al Gore.”2 The BBC journalist Subir Bhaumik reported: “The award will be handed over at the second Dorbar Ri (People’s Parliament) on 6 October near a sacred forest at the village of Mawplang, which has been preserved untouched for more than 700 years.”3 As he and other reporters further explained, climate change was a great concern for the tribal people in the state as they could observe a drastic reduction in rainfall, which was having severe repercussions on their livelihoods. But global warming could also indirectly affect them by triggering a major influx of immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh as the costal regions there became submerged. Al Gore’s possible visit to Meghalaya to pick up his award became big news locally as well. A friend from Shillong called me and said this was something I shouldn’t miss. His enthusiasm rubbed off on me and I instantly decided to head over. However, getting an Indian visa in Tbilisi, Georgia, turned out to be too complicated. I missed the event. Eventually, so did the main attraction; Mr. Gore himself could not make it, citing security reasons. With this, the attention of the media was lost. Still, the organizers, who sought political recognition for the traditional

228   Unruly Hills

governing institutions, had skillfully managed to link their grassroots democracy movement with the global agenda of halting climate change. Locating the “people’s parliament” in the famous sacred forest of Mawphlang conferred legitimacy and authenticity on the green agenda. (It was perhaps less media savvy to bring the fear of being swamped by environmental refugees from Bangladesh into the picture.) At any rate, the image of tribal chiefs joining hands with world leaders to safeguard nature obviously resonated with public sensibilities around the world. The meeting also managed to draw a huge crowd of more than two hundred thousand people according to the local organizers.4 As with the first Durbar Ri, which was held in 2004, the main concern of this meeting was to strengthen the role of traditional chiefs and their councils as governing bodies. This “movement,” if that is the correct term, is a well-organized urban elite initiative that is increasingly becoming a visible political force in the state. As the argument of the spokespersons goes, the “traditional institutions” have always been there and they have proven over time to be effective (their very survival is cited as proof of their efficacy), but they have been undermined by the new administrative setup under the state government and the autonomous district councils. Because of the poor performance of the modern institutions of governance, it is high time to recognize and empower the traditional or customary ones. This is to be done by granting constitutional protection to the traditional political institutions as well as providing direct funding to and through them. In this chapter I seek to interrogate this call for grassroots democracy. It is difficult to assess the social significance of a movement like this. There is a lot of debate about the traditional institutions in Meghalaya, not least within the academic community.5 During my visits, alone, there have been several workshops and seminars on the theme. It is clearly a highly politicized debate, where ethnic loyalties are commonly read into the positions taken by different scholars. For others, the present hype about reviving traditional institutions is basically a non-issue, an ephemeral agenda soon to pass. For example, some of my well-informed journalist friends in Shillong dismiss it as yet another instance of cynical political maneuvering—an attempt by certain individuals to create a constituency and enhance their personal political ambitions. Though personal political careers are certainly at stake, I will nevertheless maintain that there is more to the story. Several contemporary actualities might make this a more lasting and politically significant event: the previously mentioned widespread ambivalence towards the state and its institutions, resentment against outside influence, the present crisis of governance (rampant corruption), and the state’s inability to deliver the promised goods of development (lack of improvements in the basic infrastructure of communication, health care, sanitation, education, and employment). At the same time, the insurgency groups have lost most of their public legitimacy and

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the traditional political institutions offer a possible nonviolent route to enhanced sovereignty. In conjunction with this, albeit on a different level, the emergence of indigenous peoples as actors in the global arena is critical. Within the discourse of indigeneity, there is a general appreciation of tribal modalities that, in the case of governance, entails the celebration of non-Western or pre-colonial forms of political organization as alternatives to the bureaucratic workings of the modern state.6 The turn to indigenous governance also has a resonance within the globalized “project society,”7 for example, among larger NGOs and international aid agencies that seek ways to channel funds directly to communities (thus bypassing often inefficient government bureaucracies). Such projects commonly have a livelihood orientation that seeks to enhance environmentally sustainable solutions, as discussed in chapter 2. This is of significance, as the leaders of the movement hope to attract domestic and foreign funding for an ambitious grassroots development scheme they have prepared with the help of a well-connected consultancy group, Tata Consultancy Services, in Mumbai (Bombay).8 The scheme was adopted at the first Durbar Ri, which brought together around forty thousand people at Smit, in Hima Khyrim,9 in January 2004.10

Plate 17  Durbar Ri at Smit; photo by Grassroots Options

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The Smit assembly was the grand finale of an active phase of campaigning, and the explicit intention was to show the world that the traditional institutions had the backing of the people, that it was a popular force to be reckoned with. This has since been followed by the second Durbar Ri, mentioned above, which was held in Mawphlang in October 2007. In late 2003, I went along with the leaders to some of these campaign meetings, did follow-up interviews with them, and also listened to talks they had given in other contexts. On the basis of this and the printed materials they shared with me (reports, colonial documents, and newspaper articles), I will give a condensed account in the next section of how these leaders make their case.11 In the second part of the chapter, I will look into the bewildering situation of parallel and competing legal structures. On the one hand, there are the “tribal courts” under the three district councils, which are supposed to be based on customary laws and usages. On the other, there are the state courts under the Deputy Commissioners, which follow the general Indian laws.12 Both structures can appeal or redirect cases to the Gauhati High Court. Both structures are also meant to function in a simple and straightforward manner, “freed of procedural technicalities.” As most legal practitioners I have talked to have been quick to point out, the courts should hence be guided only by the “spirit” (but not bound by the letter) of the Civil and Criminal Procedure Codes applied elsewhere in India.13 The District Council Courts are empowered to deal with all intra-tribal civil matters and minor criminal offences. When a non-tribal person is involved, cases come under the jurisdiction of the Meghalaya state courts. This also goes for all major criminal cases. A general problem with both legal structures is that there is no clear separation of judicial and executive functions or powers in either one. The Deputy Commissioner, for example, is the administrative head of a district and is thus in charge of both executive and judiciary work. This is also the case with the “tribal” courts under the district councils. The Indian Supreme Court has recently ordered the Meghalaya government to reform the legal system and separate the judiciary from the executive. While this has been a longstanding issue in Meghalaya that has regularly come up for debate, perhaps this time, with the pressure from the Supreme Court, some changes will take place.14 My focus here, however, will be on the special problems relating to customary law, which is the legal basis of the “tribal” courts under each district council. How to interpret and apply customs in a rapidly changing world has proven anything but easy.15 The District Council Courts are extremely slow in delivering judgments, as with the land disputes discussed in chapter 3, for example. Complicated cases are commonly forwarded to the High Court. In many instances, the High Court will make recommendations and transfer cases back to the District Council

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Courts for disposal, as the latter are the recognized authorities on customs. Legal practitioners keep calling for the codification of customary law, i.e., for these laws to be standardized and put in writing as a means to make the legal process more efficient, transparent, and predictable.16 More or less ever since Meghalaya achieved statehood, codification has been described as most urgent.17 Several commissions have looked into the matter, but nothing has emerged so far. The North Eastern Council has taken an interest in the matter and in recent years has supported a very ambitious project to study the customary laws in about two hundred tribal communities in the Northeast. The main focus of the project is on customary laws pertaining to land rights. Codifying the different land tenure systems is claimed to be extremely urgent for achieving a boost in the economic development of the tribal areas. The Law Research Institute at the Gauhati High Court is entrusted with the task of doing the actual research, as the Institute has been involved in the past in similar studies of customary laws among selected tribal communities in the region. As we will see, transcribing and codifying orally based customs is anything but a straightforward exercise. It is a project fraught with politics and clashing interests. I close the chapter by engaging with the claim that indigenous governance not only strengthens democracy at the grassroots level but also offers a path to environmental sustainability. This touches on the much debated issue of indigenous peoples as natural-born “greens,” protectors of Mother Earth, as it were. Here I also begin to build towards the concluding discussion in chapter 6.

Awakening of the Grassroots When I talk about the leaders of the grassroots democracy or traditional institutions movement (henceforth the TI movement), I am referring in fact to only a handful of people, of whom two are the most active on the ground. These two are Laborious Manik S. Syiem, President of the Federation of Khasi States and also the syiem of Hima Mylliem (though presently under suspension, as will be discussed later), by profession a college lecturer, and John F. Kharshiing, spokesperson of the Federation and previously a youth leader and social worker, from a well-known Shillong family. The latter is the younger brother of Robert Kharshiing, a member of the Upper House of the Indian Parliament, who also is a prominent champion of the cause. Robert Kharshiing presided over the Smit assembly, he has set up an advisory body on traditional institutions in New Delhi, and he has allocated money from his MP fund18 to finance projects related to strengthening these institutions, for example, the building of a meeting house for the nokmas, the village headmen, in the Garo Hills. In addition, one has to mention Purno A. Sangma, the

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most well-known political figure from Northeast India, past speaker of the Indian Parliament and previously one of the topmost leaders of the Congress Party. Sangma, who left the Congress Party in 1999 in protest against Sonia Gandhi’s leadership,19 has become a vocal advocate for empowering the traditional institutions as well. Sangma is also a member of the Indian Parliament (he was re-elected in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections as one of the two MPs from Meghalaya). In his capacity as Member in Charge of the Commission to Review the Working of the Indian Constitution for the Northeastern region, Sangma also has a special importance here. The mandate of the Commission relates to the effort in India to delegate powers to local governing bodies, the panchayats (elected village councils). Political analysts familiar with these names would most likely note personal motives for them to fish in these waters. It could be pointed out, for example, that the Kharshiing brothers tried to make way for John’s ambitions to win a seat in the Indian Parliamentary election in 2004.20 Or that P.A. Sangma, who has been losing ground since leaving the Congress Party, similarly needs to secure renewed electoral support and is trying to get this through the TI issue. And Laborious Syiem, like other traditional heads, of course has the most to gain by strengthening the powers of the traditional offices. He was, and still is, also fighting to be reinstated as syiem. While one can always assume personal agendas in the pursuit of politics, we are still left with the question of why leaders try to capitalize on certain issues—and not others—at a particular moment.21 To understand this, one needs to consider the larger social and historical context in which these assertions are being made or through which certain modes of action are made possible and desirable. Good or successful leadership might be described as a capacity to detect and explore contingent social processes, to capture things that, so to speak, are already in the making. Further, it is a general sociological premise that one should be wary of reducing the significance and meaning of human actions to the intentions or interests of the actor. Actions, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt reminds us, always exceed the actor’s intention.22 The role of traditional chiefs and their councils has been a contentious issue since the independence of India, but it has gained an unforeseen actuality during the last decade. The significance of this is what I seek to explore here. Laborious Manik S. Syiem gives the following account of how the TI movement has developed.23 According to him, things started to build up in 1993 with the United Nations Year of Indigenous Peoples. This became the “eye-opener,” as he puts it. “We realized the need to maintain the traditions in order to move ahead, hence our slogan, ‘Revival for survival.’” Dressed up in turban and traditional clothes, along with a group of young boys, he went on a tour around the Khasi Hills with

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the message of reviving the traditions.24 But the time was not ripe to push things then. As he explained, “People wanted me to go ahead at the time, but we knew that the government would clamp down on us.” It took until the year 2000 for the movement to take a more definite shape. After a series of consultations they arranged a meeting or durbar25 in his hima (native state) to discuss whether people still wanted to follow the customs and traditions and, for example, keep the institution of syiem-ship. “Should the traditional institutions be kept, or simply be done away with? This was the question we asked.” And the answer of the Durbar Hima (i.e., the meeting of the people in the state) was one of full support of the traditions.26 “From there,” he continues, “we thought first about going directly to Delhi, but then realized that to gain strength we need to have the whole state behind us and thus also get the support of people in the Jaintia and Garo Hills.” Further, he states, “In the year 2000, the Commission on the Constitution also came up, and we decided to try to influence them rather than approaching the Parliament.” As he recounts it, the Commission (with the mandate to review the workings of the Indian Constitution, in the case of Northeast India with particular focus on the Sixth Schedule) was surprised to find such “a wonderful thing” as the syiem and his durbar, and “after hearing this they told us that there are in fact not two but three institutions that are governing the state of Meghalaya” (more on this later). These developments relate to what Laborious Manik S. Syiem describes as the first phase of the movement. After this, as he expected, the District Council in the Khasi Hills intervened and in 2001, as it is empowered to do under the Sixth Schedule, it managed to get him suspended from his office and replaced by an “acting syiem.” As Laborious Syiem explains it, the District Council wanted to kill the movement by cutting off the head, and this did lead him to withdraw for a time. Some of the other syiems got frightened, fearing that that they would meet the same fate of suspension. But as the Federation of Khasi States continued to support Laborious Syiem and urged him to pursue his movement, he was soon on the move again. To quote him once more: This is our second movement. We call it now “People’s Movement for Grassroots Democracy.” The political parties can show that they have the ballot box. Our movement is people’s movement, not that of the ballot box. So, how can we show Delhi that we have people’s support? The Durbar is our base. This is us. This is what we will show Delhi. The show of strength was then to materialize at the meeting or “People’s Durbar” at Smit and the later one in Mawphlang, which in terms of numbers could indeed be described as successes. As he describes it, it is

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not only a question of grassroots democracy, but of Khasi democracy, a unique system that they are proud of and which they want to preserve and develop not only for the well-being of the Khasi people but for others to learn from. Central in this system is that power is firmly grounded with the people through the durbar, which again is an arena free from party politics that strives for consensus and transparency in all its dealings.27 The first objective of the movement is to gain constitutional recognition of the traditional governing bodies, which will then pave way for the second objective of getting direct government funding to these bodies. As a way of establishing the necessity of such recognition, John F. Kharshiing has narrated the following anecdote at several meetings during the campaign: I have just returned from USA, where I had been invited to discuss grassroots democracy: All over the world people are talking about grassroots democracy. A Red Indian Chief asked me what we were following. I said, “The Indian Constitution.” “Are you mentioned there, are your chiefs and councils named there?” he continued to ask me. “No,” I said. “If you don’t exist in writing, you don’t exist at all,” he then told me. According to Kharshiing, the present invisibility of the traditional institutions derives from a “constitutional anomaly,” and this is the “root cause” of the matter.28 This brings us back to the complexities relating to the inclusion of the native Khasi states in the Indian Union. As Kharshiing explains, the end of British rule over India on 15 August 1947, did not bring the desired freedom for the Khasi people. The twenty-five Khasi states (himas) had started before Independence to “prepare themselves for their own form of governance,” first of all by organizing themselves into the Federation of Khasi States. What took place, however, in Kharshiing’s words, was nothing but a “betrayal,” that they had been “made to believe” that the Khasi states would be able to maintain sovereignty and political autonomy upon the lapse of the British paramountcy, but that in the end they lost all of this and became part of the province of Assam. The key events in the story, and this goes for Khasi historiography in general, are the shady dealings surrounding the signing of the so-called “Instrument of Accession” and in addition, the pressures on the Khasi states to sign the “Instrument of Merger.” The states ultimately did agree to sign the first but not the latter, and thus, as the story goes, in legal terms they have never fully joined India. The Khasi states objected further to the Sixth Schedule, and by introducing it without their consent the Indian government violated the terms laid down in the Instrument of Accession. It is here we have the “constitu-

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tional anomaly,”29 which is said to have haunted the Khasi people ever since and out of which the present violence and insurgency in the state emanates. As expressed in a memorandum by the Federation of Khasi States to the National Commission for Review of the Working of the Constitution: This “anomaly” has today created confusion and conflict among the Khasi people. It is therefore necessary to give immediate due recognition and status to these Institutions and to protect and preserve their status as functional Traditional Institutions constitutionally.30

Accession, Merger and the Sixth Schedule Before we can proceed, a bit of historical background is required here. The Instrument of Accession was a last-moment solution through which the British negotiators under Lord Mountbatten tried to handle the delicate issue of how to deal with the six-hundred-odd princely states that, like the Khasi native states, had maintained some form of (semi-) independent status under the British Raj (a status which they were eager to maintain or in some cases even to strengthen with the end of colonial rule). The nationalist movement under the Congress Party was deeply skeptical, to say the least, towards such aspirations, which naturally were perceived as a threat to the unity of the country. According to the deal, which eventually gained the approval of the Congress Party leaders, the princely states were to give up their sovereignty (“accede”) in respect of three areas only: defense, foreign affairs, and communications. The princely states would be free to decide at a later stage whether they would like to join or secede from the Indian Union that was in the making. With a combination of his alleged diplomatic skills as well as various forms of threats and pressures, Mountbatten tried to convince the princely rulers to sign the Instrument of Accession (Copland 1999: 253– 61). The Khasi states, out on the far-off margin of the empire, were naturally of little importance compared to the large and powerful princely states in mainland India. In the case of the Khasi states, it appears that it was merely a matter of getting them to sign, without delay. There are various interpretations of these crucial events in circulation, and the historical research is rather thin and somewhat confusing. But as I understand it (mainly from accounts by Khasi historians), although there was a general preference for linking up with India—rather than with Pakistan, which was the other main alternative at the time31—the Khasi rulers who were called upon to sign the Instrument of Accession were reluctant to do so, fearing that it would undermine their independent status and put their political survival at risk (Giri 1998: 244–45). On Independence Day, they had already signed the so-called Standstill

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Agreement, which was supposed to leave all existing arrangements intact for two years, or until new ones could be agreed upon. The syiems were informed on 2 December that they were to appear at a meeting in Shillong on 15 December for the purpose of signing the Instrument, and thus had no time to consult the people in their respective states, i.e., to conduct a durbar. Even so, twenty of the twenty-five syiems agreed to sign the Instrument of Accession (and the related Annexed Agreement) at that meeting on 15 December 1947. Three syiems who were absent from the meeting because of illness signed shortly afterwards, but the syiems of Nongstoin and Rambrai refused to sign, claiming that they were not entitled to do so without the approval of their respective durbars. A government mission, with military escort, was sent out to make these two states comply and sign, and in mid March 1948, they did so. As the historian David R. Syimlieh writes, there is “no doubt” that Nongstoin, the last to sign, “was pressurized into acceding into India” (1989: 199). The Nongstoin syiem had sent out his nephew, Wickliffe Syiem (who was the deputy syiem), to negotiate with Pakistani authorities, which made the Indian side suspicious.32 It is also said that they approached the United Nations in New York to seek support for right of the Khasi states to maintain their sovereignty.33 Wickliffe Syiem objected to the accession and stayed in exile in East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, until his death. Due to this, Wickliffe Syiem has become a celebrated hero for the Khasi nationalists who strive for independence and, not least, for the underground organization HNLC, which has its camps in Bangladesh. However, the Instrument of Accession was only the first step towards the full integration of the princely states. As the historian Ian Copland writes, “No sooner had the ink dried on the princes’ IOAs, than Patel and Menon34 began to plot their downfall” (1999: 262). The following step was the so-called “merger” through which the states were pressured, by force and by offers to princes for generous annual pensions and other private benefits, to succumb. To cite Copland again, “By November 1949 only 6 of the 552 states that had acceded to India … remained as separate entities within their old boundaries” (ibid.: 263). In Northeast India, both the Tripura and the Manipur kingdoms were made to sign the “Instrument of Merger” in September and October, respectively, of 1949 (Chaube 1973: 92). In the case of Manipur, Maharaja Bodh Chandra’s signing is surrounded by disturbing circumstances. He was called to a meeting in Shillong with the governor of Assam and during the following days of negotiations the Maharaja was detained in his summer residence, without any chance to communicate with the outside world, and thus without possibilities to consult the elected representatives of the newly established State Assembly or the Manipur State Council. The Maharaja finally gave in, and with his signing of the Instrument of Merger on 21 September 1949, Manipur “ceased to be an

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independent monarchy and became part of the Indian Union” (Nag 2002: 192, see also Rustomji 1971: 107–9). As in the case of the Khasis, this historical event is an extremely contentious issue among the Manipuris today. As Sanjib Baruah puts it: The circumstances attending Manipur’s merger with India haunt the politics of the state to this day. A number of insurgent groups regard the merger as illegal and unconstitutional, and many among the Manipuri intelligentsia are bitter about the way it was effected. (Baruah 2001: 1) But in case of the Khasi states, there was no such formal “merger.” Neither the Federation of Khasi States nor the individual syiems gave their consent or had any direct say in the process that eventually led to the inclusion of the Khasi Hills in the province of Assam. It was instead the rival political organization, the United Khasi–Jaintia Hills Federated National Conference, under the Reverend J.J.M. Nichols Roy, which facilitated that development. Nichols Roy was a member of the Indian Constituent Assembly, while the Khasi states lacked any representative, and he was also one of the architects of the Sixth Schedule. In addition, Nichols Roy was a vocal critic and bitter enemy of the Khasi syiems, whom he managed in the end to marginalize through his new administrative design. To cut a long story short, when the Indian Republic and the new Constitution were inaugurated on 26 January 1950, the Khasi states had been amalgamated into a district, the Khasi and Jaintia Hills District, under the Indian state of Assam, albeit with a different type of administration under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule (see Chaube 1973: 84–97). What, then, are the central features of the Sixth Schedule? It can be described briefly as an institutional mechanism developed for the hill districts of Assam, allowing a certain amount of political and financial self-governance while at the same time bringing the different hill peoples of these geopolitically sensitive frontier tracts firmly under the larger Indian administration. “The basic objective,” writes the political scientist Jyotirindra Dasgupta, “was to introduce the new political institution without disturbing the tribal way of life connected with land, forests, agricultural practices, and modes of settling disputes” (1997: 364). In principle, it anticipated Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous policy of letting the tribal people develop along the lines of “their own genius.”35 The so-called “autonomous district council” (ADC), with most of its members democratically elected and only a handful directly nominated by the governor to safeguard minority interests, is the key institution of the Sixth Schedule. The ADC has powers over a large number of

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subjects relating to public administration and use of land and natural resources, and it is entitled to collect taxes, run its own courts, and make laws. The district council is further empowered to appoint or replace chiefs or headmen, something which, as we will see, remains highly controversial. The governor of the state, however, has the ultimate power and can, for example, temporarily adjourn an ADC, and he controls the financial allocations to the councils. Laws passed by a district council must be approved by the governor. The governor is appointed by the president of India; and thus the ADCs are placed under the control of the central government in New Delhi. More or less from its inception the Sixth Schedule has been the subject of criticism and debate. For some commentators, it is a very progressive attempt to grant self-determination to tribal or indigenous peoples, while others see it as a circumscribed form of autonomy, circumscribed largely because of the powers vested with the governor and the state government. There is consensus, however, regarding the very poor performance of the ADCs, i.e., that the councils have not been able to function in a satisfactory way. Charges of corruption or misuse of funds and “bad leadership” in general, for example, are common—that the elected members of the councils bother more about their political careers than the welfare of the people.36 The region’s political developments prove that the ADCs did not satisfy the aspiration of hill peoples for self-determination, as movements for statehood soon sprang up in various parts of the northeastern hills.37 An important trigger for the consolidation of such aspirations to autonomy was the decision of the Assam government to make Assamese the official language of the state. The non-Assamese-speaking communities took this as a great injustice and protested vehemently. Developments during the 1960s, with increased violence, apparently made it necessary for the central government to reorganize Assam and subsequently to make the hill districts into a number of separate states (see chapter 1). As part of this process, Meghalaya came into being as a separate state in 1972, at the time comprising three ADCs: the Khasi Hills, the Jaintia Hills, and the Garo Hills, each with its district council.38 When the Khasis, Jaintias, and Garos got their own “tribal” state, the question then arose whether the district councils had become obsolete and should be dismantled.39 The ADCs remained in place, however, and this has led to a rather confusing situation with multiple and overlapping layers of governance.

Multiple Governance The report on Northeast India by the earlier-mentioned National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution points to an “overlap of authority” and “conflict of interest” between the state assem-

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bly and the district councils in Meghalaya.40 For example, local issues such as road repair, electricity supply, and waste disposal are said to be shuffled back and forth between the state and the district council administrations. More interestingly, the report further also acknowledges the existence of a third tier of governance, i.e. the traditional ruling systems in Meghalaya, represented by the syiems in the Khasi Hills, the dolois in the Jaintia Hills, and the nokmas in the Garo Hills. With the traditional tribal governing institutions, as the Commission report puts it, “there are not two but three competing systems of authority—each of which is seeking to ‘serve’ or represent the same constituency.”41 The result is “confusion and confrontation.”42 The existence of a three-tier structure of governance and the administrative chaos it engenders is a recurrent theme in public debates in Meghalaya, and something people commonly cite as a major obstacle to progress in the state. The Commission recommends a strengthening of the traditional political institutions as a measure to ensure self-governance and to thwart militancy. “For this to happen,” the report states, “the traditional systems of governance will have to be included and given specific roles and opportunities, instead of being marginalised as they have been for decades.”43 This statement is of great political significance, in that it supports and confirms what the TI leaders are saying. As mentioned, the Commission for Northeast India, whose report I refer to here, is chaired by P.A. Sangma, who has taken a public stand in favor of the empowerment of the traditional chiefs and their governing bodies. In Meghalaya, favoring the traditional institutions is commonly taken as a criticism of the district councils, since these two types of bodies have been in conflict since the latter came into being. With the district councils, the powers of the chiefs were radically reduced, as discussed above. The traditional chiefs, as political scientist L.S. Gassah puts it, are today treated by the ADC as “its subordinate officials” (1998: 7). That an ADC is empowered to appoint and remove chiefs and headmen is and has been one of the most contentious aspects of relations between the two bodies. B.M. Pugh, prominent Khasi educationist and Chief Executive Member of the Khasi–Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council in the late 1950s, describes in his autobiography how he was instrumental in getting the syiem of Mylliem removed from office. But as he narrates, this made him extremely unpopular, and the people of the hima (native state) distanced themselves completely from the ADC after the syiem was suspended. As Pugh writes, the “tussle” between the district councils and the chiefs has continued ever since. In his view, the “princely chiefs” represented an “outmoded feudal system” which had no place in modern India, and he writes that he had even suggested to Nehru that “the princes” should be “pensioned off” (1976: 107–8).

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From the perspective of the traditional bodies, appointments or removals of chiefs and headmen are matters exclusively for the respective durbar to decide. The ADC should have nothing to do with this. But as things stand today, the “Appointment and Succession of Chiefs and Headmen Act, 1959,” passed by the Khasi–Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council, authorizes the district council to intervene in this process. Laborious Manik S. Syiem calls this Act “a draconian piece of legislation,” of which he himself is the latest victim. His suspension has been taking ever-new turns in recent years and is now awaiting a settlement by the High Court. Without going into the many intricacies of this case, it appears that Laborious Syiem’s political engagement plays an important part here. The Executive Committee of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council has recently issued a warning against involvement by traditional chiefs in politics, and particularly in any “anti-district council activities.” The Executive Committee states that such involvement is illegal (referring to the above-mentioned Act) and could lead to the removal of the chief. In this context, the district council authorities even threaten the syiems for their membership in the Federation of Khasi States, claiming that once the Sixth Schedule was introduced the Khasi states ceased to exist, and that the continued activities of the Federation go against the Indian Constitution.44 The Executive Committee’s sudden targeting of the Federation obviously has to do with the fact that Laborious Syiem is the current president of the Federation and that John F. Kharshiing is its official spokesperson. As mentioned, the district councils are under pressures from various sides, and I think it is correct to say that there is general dissatisfaction regarding the performance of the three ADCs in Meghalaya. The ADC is likened to a white elephant, an aberration that is neither attuned to needs on the local level nor a professional administrative body that functions effectively on a higher level. For example, in the case of forest management, as discussed in chapter 2, the district councils have completely failed to shoulder any of the responsibilities with which they have been entrusted (under their own elaborate Forest Acts). Their engagement has been limited principally to collecting as much revenue as possible from the lucrative timber business. The ADCs are under great financial stress and have enormous difficulties even paying salaries, let alone conducting development work. In this situation it is understandable that the elected members of the district councils feel threatened by and react against the political mobilization of the traditional leadership. The leaders of the TI or grassroots democracy movement claim that once they gain constitutional recognition and the financial capacity to carry out development initiatives, real change will take place. When the TI leaders from the Khasi and Jaintia Hills visited the Garo Hills, as guests of honor at the 4th Annual General Conference of Nokmas in Tura, the message they

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wanted to convey was wrapped up in the slogan “Power to the Nokma is Power to the People.”45 This slogan can perhaps sum up the principal claim of the TI movement as a whole, which is that by empowering the traditional chiefs you empower the people, and by doing so you ensure “good governance” which eventually will put an end to insurgency in the state and lead to development and prosperity.46

Traditional Institutions There are certainly many who would not go along with such reasoning and in different ways refute the governing potential of “tribal chiefs,” but before addressing some of the most common objections let me give a bit of background about what traditional political institutions involve in this particular context. To begin with, it is important to note that “traditional institutions” is a term that is used by the actors themselves (thus not a theoretical or analytical concept introduced by me). Most commonly it is applied in a generic sense without any details about how these institutions actually function. This is obviously not the place to provide such details, just some basic notions.

Plate 18  Stone lying function in Tura with MP Robert Kharshiing

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In the case of the Garos, the nokma, roughly equivalent to a village headman,47 represents the traditional institutions, as in the slogan above. If we look at the anthropological accounts, of which there are few recent ones, the Garo headmanship is a rather complicated and amorphous institution. The nokma is commonly likened to a “representative of the village” (Nakane 1967: 61). On the one hand, the nokma-ship is said to be neither vested with any political powers nor linked to any direct economic advantages (see, above all, Burling 1963: 223–35). The nokma is the ceremonial head of the village, which among other things involves duties to perform religious sacrifices, hold feasts, and entertain guests. In this respect he has several obligations, and if they are performed successfully the nokma will gain prestige and reputation, which can translate into both political and economic power. On the other hand, as the nokma, or to be more precise the a’king nokma, holds the title to village lands on behalf of his wife and her matrikin, the office in itself also carries great importance. With the coming of British colonial rule, the office of nokma was vested with a number of administrative functions, such as collection of house tax, which further strengthened the position of nokmas in their respective villages.48 The Garos, like the Khasis and Jaintias, are matrilineal; hence both descent and property follow the female line. In simplified terms it can be said that the nokma is married into office. Commonly a nokma would try to get a nephew from his own lineage to marry his daughter, and hence inherit the office after the death of the nokma. The headmanship thus remains within a particular matrilineage in the village. Importantly, however, ownership of the land, and in many respects real power, is with the wife’s matrilineage, rather than with the inmarrying lineage of the nokma (see further chapter 3). The nokma’s room for maneuvering is further circumscribed by the village council, which consists of all the senior male villagers (Majumdar 1980: 138; Sangma 1981: 61–66). The TI movement in the Garo Hills is working through the newly formed Nokma Council, which like its Khasi–Jaintia counterparts is seeking constitutional recognition and the empowerment of headmanship. As President Skylance G. Momin of the Nokma Council asserts, the nokma is the person best suited to facilitating development and preventing land alienation as well as to controlling insurgency and maintaining the peace in his respective village.49 In other words, the same claim that the other leaders of the TI movement make. The traditional political institutions invoked in the case of the Khasis are more elaborate.50 There are important variations, but in general it is a question of a three-tier system spanning the village council (durbar shnong),51 an intermediate level (durbar raid), and the level of the native state (durbar hima). At each level there is a presiding officer: headman or rangbah shnong on the village level, sordar on the raid level, and syiem on the hima level. As with the Garos, the village council consists of the

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adult male members in the village, preferably one from each household. Women do not participate in the village durbar or the higher-level durbars. Even though much has been written on these institutions, it is difficult to find any detailed ethnography or accounts of how the durbars actually function today. What we commonly get instead is elaborate outlines of how they ought to function or supposedly functioned in the past. A commonly highlighted feature is the centrality of the durbar, that decisions are taken by the durbar and not by the presiding officer, be it headman or syiem. As the historian David R. Syiemlieh puts it: The highest decision making bodies in the political and administrative set-up among the Khasis were the Durbars. There is no written law about the functions, composition and working of the Durbars, for they work according to Ka Riti, a constitution which has grown out of past usages and practices. Every stage of administration from the village to the state has its own Durbar. The Khasi Durbar even today is a solemn affair. There is no walking out of a Durbar. Decisions are unanimous. Should there be a disagreement the issue is dropped. (1989: 5–6) On each level there are a number of different functionaries, which like the presiding officers are appointed by the durbar. The procedure varies in different parts of the Khasi Hills, but in general it appears that most positions are reserved or prioritized for persons belonging to certain clans or lineages, commonly the original or founding clans in that particular area (Nongkynrih 2002: 75–76). The exclusion of women and the reservation of executive functions within the durbars to persons from certain clans are often quoted as examples of the democratic deficit of the traditional institutions. Particularly the first is used as an argument against the TI movement: how can the traditional institutions provide an avenue to grassroots democracy when half the population, the female half, is excluded from these bodies?52 The common response by TI leaders is that the traditional institutions are flexible, they allow change and are indeed changing, and hence women have started to participate in the durbars.53 This is still, however, an exception. But again, it is important to note here that lack of female participation is not solely a problem for the traditional institutions but is a more general social feature that applies to the ADCs as well as the state legislative assembly. As the sociologist Tiplut Nongbri argues, even if women in the matrilineal Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo societies have a better position in several aspects than Indian women in general, there is nevertheless a strong ideological prejudice against their being involved in politics. She gives the example of the Khasis, where it is said of a woman who dares to speak up in public that “a hen has crowed.” Crowing hens are an “unnatural phenomenon,” as

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according to the laws of nature “it is only the cock (male) that crows” (Nongbri 2003: 204–5). Another point of criticism against the present functioning of the traditional governing bodies is lack of transparency and accountability. For example, in financial matters it is said that the taxes, royalties, and fees that these bodies collect are never accounted for. How, in this “age of scams and corruption,” the journalist Patricia Mukhim asks, can the durbar be “exempted from public auditing?”54 Several people have raised this point with me in private discussions, giving plenty of examples of headmen who have accepted bribes or in other ways enriched themselves questionably without any intervention by the public. In such a situation, it is pointed out, how can the traditional institutions be entrusted with development funds? Another problem people have raised is that many of the local headmen lack the education and appropriate skills to function in a modern bureaucratic setting. Those headmen who do have education often choose to leave their villages and settle in urban areas. This is the case, for example, with the president of the Nokma Council, Skylance G. Momin, who lives and works in Shillong. Most of the local people who express criticism of this kind would still maintain that the traditional institutions do have a place and a role to play, particularly as governing bodies at the local level. It is then more a question of transforming these institutions, of making them more inclusive and thus allowing women as well as persons from other communities to play an active part in the durbars, and further, of making the durbars accountable and open to public scrutiny. An interesting exception to this, as well as a more fundamental rejection of the governing potential of the traditional institutions, is in the recent work of Apurba K. Baruah, professor of political science at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong.55 Together with some colleagues, Baruah is conducting a research project on the functioning of these institutions at the local level. The project is a collaboration with the Crisis States Programme of the London School of Economics, within which Baruah has published two working papers. The overall argument presented in these papers relates to the undemocratic nature of the traditional bodies, that besides excluding women and “non-tribals” in general, they are based on communitarian principles that are incompatible with “modern liberal democratic values” (2003, 2004).56 In a more preliminary working paper in the same series, LSE researcher John Harriss pursues a similar argument, stating as a point of departure that “the traditional political institutions are not democratic” (2002: 5). As Harriss further reasons, these institutions can be seen as “local associations” of a kind having to do with “tribal identity and separateness” and, as such, drivers of “separatism” and “conflict” (ibid.). I find it highly problematic to conceptualize a research project in such one-sided terms, foreclosing, if you like, more positive aspects of

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these institutions. Baruah also turns the tables and goes on to question the very “traditionality” of the traditional institutions,57 pointing out that they have adopted modern organizational and bureaucratic forms, and that even women are represented nowadays in the durbars (and even hold executive positions in them) (A.K. Baruah 2003: 10, 2004: 13–16). The traditional institutions are thus criticized both for not being modern (enough) and not traditional (enough). In a telling formulation, Baruah describes the resurgence of the traditional institutions as an attempt to “revive virtually defunct tribal chiefsdom” (2003: 1, emphasis added).

Self-governing The report of the Commission to Review the Working of the Indian Constitution states that the political future of Northeast India hinges on people choosing “self-governance” rather than “separation.”58 In the case of Meghalaya, the report, as mentioned, recommends that the traditional system of governance be strengthened to achieve the former and thus preempt militant separatism. This, then, is basically the opposite of what Baruah and Harriss argue.59 The discussion of traditional institutions is commonly framed in rather simplistic either/or terms of this sort—whether the traditional institutions are good or bad, democratic or autocratic, fuelling or containing separatism, and finally, something worth preserving or something to be discarded altogether. My take is different, and rather than making any value judgments of this kind I have tried to understand why the traditional political institutions have become such a contentious issue today. As I indicated at the outset, there are several larger processes behind the turn towards “indigenous governance,” that is, towards seeking sovereignty through traditional governing institutions. The most important of these processes are the overall crisis of the developmental state (its failure to deliver) and the overall questioning of the state as a benevolent regulator of social life,60 and, coinciding and resonating with this, the emergence of the global indigenous peoples’ movement and the increased international recognition of indigenous rights. The primary aspiration today of indigenous peoples worldwide is self-determination, in most cases through peaceful means and within the parameters of existing nation-states. As Ronald Niezen argues in a recent book on international indigenism, self-determination is largely to be achieved through “constitutional reform and the implementation of treaties and agreements between indigenous and state governments” (2003: 194). This is also true for the TI movement in Meghalaya, which sets it apart from the insurgency organizations in the state that seek self-determination through armed struggle. The TI leaders in the Khasi Hills stress the need to rectify through constitutional reform the injustice following

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from the violation of past agreements between the Indian government and the native chiefs, that is, recognition of the traditional political institutions in the Indian Constitution. According to Niezen, the main issue for indigenous leaders is not whether their people will be led “wisely or foolishly,” but rather whether their people will be able to determine their own future or “will continue to be ruled by outside powers” (ibid.: 195). Governing oneself is thus the prioritized goal, regardless of whether this would turn out to be the most effective or liberal form of governance. The TI leaders also stress the need for self-rule, which they hope to ensure through the traditional political institutions, but along with this they further hold these institutions to be the most effective and democratic ones. According to them, the durbar represents a superior form of governance, free from the deceitfulness of modern party politics. The headman and his council are said to be closer to the grassroots and thus better placed to address the needs and aspirations of the people. One can certainly question these claims and, as mentioned, read the turn towards indigenous governance as a worrying sign that spells further social cleavages and ethnic conflicts in these troubled northeastern borderlands. But there are also other contingencies to be explored. It can be argued that an unforeseen outcome of the TI movement could be a shift of focus from ethnic territoriality and the politics of boundaries to what the historian Arif Dirlik (1999) calls “place-based imaginations” and a more locally grounded form of politics. The traditional councils, the critics stress, need to be reformed and made more inclusive in order to gain democratic legitimacy, and if such a change does eventually come about, the empowerment of these institutions can indeed bring about a widening of civic space in Meghalaya. The point here is not to argue for any of these scenarios, but merely to suggest that the revival of traditional institutions is a more complex and socially significant event than most commentators and scholars seem to believe. Harriss is right in suggesting that the durbar has to do with tribal identity. To state this is to state the obvious. The pertinent question, however, is what this entails. Here, I believe, there are reasons for the academic analyst to move cautiously. For example, the Durbar Ri is a novel institution that brings together people from the three major tribal groups in Meghalaya. This, at least, signals an ambition to build networks across exclusivist ethnic polities. But let us now turn to another critical matter of indigenous governance, customary law.

Codifying Customs The twofold structure of the judicial system in Meghalaya, and other areas under the Sixth Schedule, is to large extent a continuation of what

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existed under colonial rule. Minor issues would be dealt with by the villagers themselves, according to the law of the land, i.e., their customs. And only more serious cases needed to be settled by the colonial officer in charge of the district. The principal novelty for the postcolonial period is that now the district council is in charge of the pursuit of “tribal justice.” There are some minor differences in the design applied by the three respective district councils in the state, but basically there is a hierarchy, with village courts at the bottom, then one or two intermediatelevel courts, and finally the main District Council Court at the top. The Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council has a specially assigned judge to preside over the District Council Court, whereas the other two District Council Courts only have assigned judicial officers sitting as judges. All rulings are to be based primarily on customary law. For example, the Garo Hills Autonomous District (Administration of Justice) Rules, 1953, stipulate that a “Village Court shall try all suits and cases in accordance with the customary laws of the Village,” and further, that the court should “try all cases in open Darbar” (paras. 39 and 40).61 As mentioned earlier, these courts have authority mainly over civil cases like marriage and the inheritance of offices and property, and criminal cases of a “petty nature,” i.e., those that do not lead to punishment by imprisonment or payment of fines above the sum of 50 rupees (paras. 14 and 15).62 Judgments by the village court can be appealed to the higher District Council Court, where lawyers or legal experts are employed. It is interesting to note that many of the practicing lawyers are non-tribals. I have been told that, at most, five of the thirty-five practicing lawyers in the Garo Hills are Garos.63 These lawyers have no special education in customary law and rely almost solely on written sources in conducting their cases, and, paradoxically, the sources that carry most weight are written by outsiders. In case of the Garo Hills, Father Costa’s The Garo Code of Law from 1954 (republished in 1975) and Major Playfair’s monograph The Garos from 1909 remain the most authoritative.64 The situation is similar with the Khasis, where Sir Keith Cantlie’s Notes on Khasi Law from 1934 and the colonial monograph The Khasis by P.R.T. Gurdon from 1906 have an almost canonical status. The judge of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council Court, Mr. Moonlight Dkhar, told me, for example, that the sole authority on Khasi customs was Sir Cantlie’s book, despite the fact that it was not a complete account. I asked him if the Court ever consulted living authorities on Khasi customs and he laughed, saying there are none.65 This is quite an astonishing statement, to grant almost complete authority to a written (colonial) source at the expense of contemporary interpreters of Khasi customs. Obviously, not everyone would agree with this. Kong Sweetymon Rynjah, who is a highly respected expert on Khasi customs, pointed out to me that it is a mistake to rely too much on Cantlie,

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saying that his work is not genuine. First of all, she argued, people could not fully explain the customary practices to him. As she pointed out, a primary problem here was his lack of language competence, not least when it came to the various dialects spoken in different parts of the Khasi Hills. Secondly, Cantlie was a colonial administrator and saw things from a particular vantage point. For Sweetymon Rynjah the issue was obviously a matter of reasserting indigenous authority in cultural matters. Her husband is president of Seng Khasi, an organization that was established more than one hundred years ago with the aim of preserving the traditional culture and faith of the Khasis. Mrs. Rynjah told me that Khasi customary laws were not yet codified but that she was part of a commission working on this; at the time of our conversation in 2002, they were engaged with the issue of codifying the appointment of syiems.66 Professor Milton S. Sangma is one of the most acclaimed authorities on Garo culture and history, with a large number of books and articles to his credit.67 Professor Sangma is active in the TI movement in the capacity of adviser to the Nokma Council. He also chaired a commission set up in 2003 by the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council to make recommendations for the codification of Garo customary laws. As he told me at the time, the High Court was pressuring them to go for codification. As it is now, the High Court judges have enormous problems dealing with the cases forwarded to them and, as mentioned earlier, cases often end up bouncing back and forth between the different courts, something that ultimately undermines public trust in the judiciary. “There is no ending to court cases, even lawyers say cases usually drag on for ever,” Sangma told me.68 The commission he headed consisted of seven members, two women and five men, all retired persons like him. They had one year to complete their work. The first step was to develop a questionnaire for distribution to prominent persons and NGOs in the Garo Hills. They also went out into villages to discuss matters with people. After processing the data, the commission would make its recommendations, to quote Sangma again, on “customary laws that should be kept, those that needed to be modified and those that should be abandoned altogether.”69 Here, in other words, was a matter not merely of codification but rather of evaluating the relevance of these customs and refashioning some of them. Eventually, it would be for the Garo Hills District Council, which has the authority to legislate on these issues, to act on these recommendations. This is not the first attempt to bring clarity to customary laws; in the 1970s the district council commissioned another study with the aim of codifying customary laws.70 But as far as I am aware, none of these attempts have made much headway so far. As I understand it, the Milton Sangma Commission was not part of the larger venture by the Gauhati Law Research Institute to study customary laws pertaining to land tenure. I happened to run into the direc-

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tor of the Institute, Dr. Jeuti Barooah, and two junior anthropologists who were conducting interviews at a meeting held by the TI movement in Cherrapunjee. The junior anthropologists, both Khasis (a man and a woman), were in charge of the study of Khasi customs and were just making the last round of interviews before finalizing their report. They asked if I was interested in participating in the workshop the Institute was arranging a few weeks later in Shillong (a kind of public consultation to get feedback on their report). It was a two-day event, the first day devoted to discussing the Khasi study and the second to a report the Institute had already prepared on Jaintia customary laws. Dr. Barooah opened the workshop (this was in November 2003) saying that the very purpose of these studies was “to preserve the customary laws, make them authentic, for the use of future generations.” The Institute had invited village people, traditional heads, advocates, and intellectuals to give feedback on the findings (as it happened, only a handful of the roughly sixty participants were women). The chief guest was A.H. Scott Lyngdoh, Chairman of the Meghalaya State Law Commission. Barooah also explained that it was the North Eastern Council (NEC) that had initiated and financed the project, recognizing the urgency of codifying customary land laws as part of its efforts to enhance economic development in the region. Scott Lyngdoh was then given the floor and started by pointing out that though Khasis are proud of their “matrilineal society,” they are up against the problem of how to relate or adapt it to the changes that have taken place in presentday society. He then went on to lament the lack of progress in codifying customs in the state, saying that there was only one subject that had been codified, and that was the law on self-acquired property. But a major issue like “who is a Khasi, Garo, and Jaintia has not been codified yet.” This, he continued, has opened up space for people to misuse the privileges given to tribals. Scott Lyngdoh then pointed to the report’s first paragraph, “Who is a Khasi?” Here the researchers had suggested the following definition: A Khasi is the one whose parents descended from time immemorial from the descendants of the people inhabiting in Ka Ri Khatar Doloi, Ka Ri Laiphew Syiem (Khasi Land), or one who has adopted Khasi Socio-Political Customs and way of life, conducts and comforts himself as a Khasi, speak Khasi language, follow a matrilineal system and in the case of male adult have a right to take part in traditional Durbars of the Khasi in the place where he lives or to take part in the election of hereditary chiefs in his Elaka or Hima, where popular elections is held in which woman cannot take part, and is accepted by the rest of the people as belonging to their Tribe.71

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The next paragraph stated further that being Christian, hence not a follower of the traditional Khasi religion, does not debar anyone from being a Khasi. That this definition had originally been proposed some three decades earlier by the Land Reform Commission (Rymbai 1974: 15) was not mentioned. And more or less the entire first day (which was set aside to discuss the Khasi study) came to dwell on the various problems with the proposed definition—this despite repeated appeals by the young anthropologists to move on to the other aspects that had been covered in their report. Let me give a brief excerpt of the type of issues raised in the heated exchange. The first question came from an older man in the audience, saying that the formulations in the first paragraph were unclear and that he failed to understand whether it was enough for a person to adopt a Khasi way of life to become a Khasi, without having any biological inheritance or physical Khasi connection. In response to this, the male anthropologist began by saying that there were different categories of citizenship, but he was soon interrupted and was eventually made to agree that there had to be “Khasi genes” as well. Another man added that one could indeed become a Khasi through marriage. But in that case it was necessary for the man, at the time of marriage, to make a statement or declaration that their children would get their rights from the woman and not in accordance with his own customs. He ended by saying that, in view of this, they should first of all look at the marriage act. A third person, also an older man, again pointed to the many unclear formulations in the definition. It was extremely important, he said, to be exact in order to avoid misunderstandings. He urged the researchers to question all the misconceptions circulating about the Khasis, saying that “foreigners who do not know anything about us have written books, claiming that ‘this is the land where women reign.’”72 With regard to who is a Khasi, the man said that it is the clans who decide who would be regarded as Khasi in their area, adding, “They do not bother what the court is saying.” Scott Lyngdoh picked up on this point, referring to a decision by the High Court in which it was established that a person lacking biological kinship might be regarded as a Khasi. However, he said, this was a most complex question which still remained unresolved. Professor L.S. Gassah of North-Eastern Hill University joined the discussion, saying that much of the problem stems from the word “adopts.” “What do we mean by ‘adopting’ Khasi customs or way of life?” He further stated that one needs to make a distinction between the original clans and the newcomers, pointing out that the latter could not, for example, be elected as a syiem. The female researcher again requested the audience to move on to the second point of the report, but Scott Lyngdoh asserted that they needed to sort this out, as the definition is “the core of the matter,” saying that “if this becomes the law of the land it will be

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too late to change it.” A woman then asked whether a Jaintia should be regarded as a Khasi. A man in the audience responded to this saying that the term Hynniewtrep is appropriate as it points to the unity of Khasi and Jaintia. A third person, an old man added, “We are one as a Khasi, but some people try to create political mileage by dividing us.” The discussion went on like this, with most people stressing blood relations either though the mother or the father, and others pointing to various aspects of the additional criteria like speaking the Khasi language and in general following a Khasi way of life. Scott Lyngdoh referred several times to the High Court judgment regarding Nicholas Roy, the legendary politician (one of the architects of the Sixth Schedule), whose mother was an American and whose father was a Khasi. Political rivals had questioned Roy’s Khasi identity in court, but the judgment came in his favor, stating that he could be regarded as Khasi and hence a tribal.73 According to Scott Lyngdoh, no one had really questioned this judgment and it has come to be like a law. One person, reacting to this, said, “We have to define ourselves who is a Khasi; we cannot leave it to the court.” The controversial Khasi Social Custom of Lineage Act, 1997, was mentioned a couple of times that day but no one referred to the definition given there about whom to regard as Khasi. This Act was adopted by the District Council in 1997 but did not come into power until 2005 (after its mandatory approval by the Governor). This Act approved that a person born to a non-Khasi mother married to a Khasi man can be regarded as a Khasi, provided that he or she speaks the Khasi language and in other ways upholds Khasi customs and tradition. In cases where the mother is a Khasi but the father is a non-Khasi, the offspring also need to prove cultural competence as a Khasi to be recognized as such. No consensus could be reached on the definition of a Khasi at that workshop, and this question has also been an extremely contentious political issue in recent years. It is the District Council’s Lineage Act that has been the direct cause of these contentions. Nongbri (2003: 229–64), for example, is highly critical of the Act, arguing that it goes against the Khasi matrilineal customs, in which a child would automatically be regarded as a member of the mother’s clan and hence be a Khasi. Who the father is, whether the couple is legally married, whether the child speaks Khasi, and so forth, should not affect this in the least. Nongbri, herself a Khasi, points to an underlying male agenda to assert control over women’s bodies and hence their sexuality. The Act, she argues, was worked out without any participation by women. As she notes further, the public debate on the Lineage Act was dominated by a male lobby that wanted to push things a step further and, in the name of preserving the Khasi people from degeneration, had advocated a transformation of the matrilineal system that would strip children of mixed marriages between a Khasi mother and a non-Khasi father of their identity and rights as

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Khasis. This argument recently regained actuality after a recent Supreme Court judgment regarding a case in Madhya Pradesh, debarring a man born of a tribal mother and a non-tribal father from tribal status.74 The Meghalaya government has argued that this judgment does not apply to the state of Meghalaya in view of the matrilineal system followed by the main tribal communities. This was also the initial position of the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council, but surprisingly, the council soon changed its mind and drafted a bill to amend the Lineage Act in accordance with the Supreme Court judgment.75 The Chief Executive Member of the District Council, Mr. Shylla, explained this sudden change of heart by the danger mixed marriages pose to Khasi society and that it was in the interest of the public.76 The Khasi Students’ Union expressed its support of the proposed amendment, but the Seng Khasi, along with women’s organizations like the Khasi Women Welfare Association and the Hynniewtrep Indigenous Women Society have condemned it. The latter two argue that such an amendment would threaten the customary matrilineal system of the community. That the District Council, established to preserve tribal culture, is spearheading an attempt to radically transform this custom is held to be especially troubling.77 As we can see, the issue of codifying customs has come to focus on defining ethnic membership and hence regulate individuals’ access to economic and political resources. And obviously, the major contention relates to the most basic institution of Khasi society, the matrilineal system. For the critics of that system, the problems arise when Khasi women marry outside the community and the offspring of such mixed marriages have full rights, for example, to inherit land and to hold offices reserved for the indigenous tribes of the state (see chapter 3). Not only does this inflate the number of people who avail themselves of tribal entitlements, but it also undermines the “ethnic purity” of the Khasi tribe, critics claim (see Baruah 2005:186–87). A lot is at stake here, and women seem indeed to be on the losing end. But again, transforming or, as some suggest, even scrapping the matrilineal system would undermine assertions of cultural difference (upon which the political struggle for recognition and sovereignty is based) that usually draw on the unique traits of the Khasi matrilineal kinship system which sets the community apart from the patrilineal peoples in the plains. What the eventual outcome of the proposed amendment to the Lineage Act will be, and what the ongoing attempt to codify customs will bring about, remains to be seen. Here it is interesting to draw a parallel with earlier attempts by the colonial administration to codify customs. Historian Neeladri Bhattacharya (1996) gives a telling account of how this transpired in the case of Punjab. In the second half of the nineteenth century the colonial administration moved from a textual to a practice-oriented approach. Instead of Sanskrit pundits, it was now the village elders who were con-

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sidered the most reliable sources for obtaining information on immemorial customs (the underlying assumption being that customary practices were maintained and reproduced via the mediation of the village headman and other elders). But in the process of acquiring and processing this information—working out enquiries, interviewing elders, scrutinizing answers, sorting out anomalies and ambiguities, and finally, in producing a written account—these customs were remolded by the tacit understandings as well as the explicit interests of the British officials who carried out the work (ibid.: 30–36). Further, while the colonial officer was in control, the native informants exercised agency as well. The people interviewed were almost always male and obviously of some age and standing in society. As a result, Bhattacharya argues, the customs recorded were “male constructs” that suppressed the rights of women, youth, and subordinated groups (ibid.: 47). Matrilineal societies posed a particular problem to the colonial officers. As historian Praveena Kodoth argues in the case of nineteenthcentury Malabar (2005: 192), the British were up against especially “difficult” or “peculiar” customs that went against their own commonsense (patrilineal) notions. Much of what passed as genuine custom was based on preconceived notions rather than the actual practices these officers were confronted with among the matrilineal communities in Malabar. For example, even though it was found that women could hold authority and ownership over land this was deemed an exception to a general rule that ascribed such rights to the senior male of the matrilineal joint family. As a consequence, Kodoth suggests, the possibility that these matrilineal families, unlike the patrilineal ones, might have had “more than one node of power and a plural authority structure” was never considered (2005: 208). In light of this, it seems fitting to call for a similarly critical scrutiny of the colonial discourse on the customary laws of the Khasis, Jaintias, and Garos. To what extent did Cantlie, Gurdon, and Playfair really grasp how the matrilineal system functioned among these communities? Here I am thinking especially about the authority of women when it comes to decisions and control over land and other resources. When Arbuthnott tried to understand the land rights among the Garos at the turn of the twentieth century, he only consulted the village headman. This seems to be the general rule, i.e., that men are considered the sole interpreters of customs. And this has been repeated in the postcolonial period. As Nongbri mentions, the Land Reform Commission in the 1970s consulted only men to establish what the customary land system of the Khasis looked like. The workshop of the Gauhati Law Research Institute was also dominated by men. This obviously has repercussions for how customs are understood, applied, and eventually codified. Adhering to tribal customs is one of the main appeals of the TI movement, and even

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if the durbar is a male-based institution, matrilineal kinship contains features that can work to the advantage of women. The turn to indigenous governance is thus not of necessity something that will work against the rights of women, but this depends, of course, on the extent to which women manage to assert their voices in the ongoing debate on how traditional institutions and customary laws are to be interpreted today. It is well known that ethnic groups struggling for sovereignty tend to downplay internal divisions like those based on class or gender: once independence or self-determination is achieved and the colonial yoke has been lifted, one can address other issues like women’s rights, etc., but not before, as this would divert or muddle the struggle. Put differently, ethnic sovereignty is commonly pitted against women’s emancipation in this way. This has been reported from various parts of Northeast India as well as other parts of the world.78 Andrea Smith (2005) gives a most compelling account of how this has transpired in the case of Native American Indian sovereignty struggles in the US. Smith points, for example, to a case in the late 1970s, when a native woman sued her tribe under the Indian Civil Rights Act for sex discrimination, as the tribal council had decided that children born to female tribal members who married outsiders lost their tribal status, while children born to tribal men who married outsiders did not. The US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not interfere in matters relating to tribal membership, i.e., that it was part of the sovereign right of the tribe to settle this issue (ibid.: 123). While the ruling was welcomed by supporters of tribal sovereignty, for indigenous women activists it pointed to the particular predicament of indigenous women suffering under both colonial and male oppression. According to Smith, indigenous women activists have since started to articulate new versions of sovereignty based on “relatedness and responsibility.” Instead of “chauvinistic nationalism” they speak of an inclusive sovereignty that considers and respects all people’s rights as well as the rights of creation as a whole (animals and trees are also regarded as nations). The activists posit this as an alternative to the conventional nation-state view of sovereignty, which according to them is based on “domination and control.” “Our sovereignty is related to our connections to the earth,” as some of the activists interviewed expressed it. “We are not free unless all are free” (ibid.: 128–30).79 Women’s rights and respect for nature are thus central facets in the process of achieving indigenous sovereignty—not something that can be adopted at a later stage. Whether one would find similar types of alternative ideas regarding sovereignty among women activists in Meghalaya and in Northeast India more generally is unclear to me. That would require another research project. Through my interactions and interviews with women in the region, however, I have sensed that this might be the case. I still remember one of the first interviews I made in Shillong with a highly

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respected social worker, who among other things was involved with various women’s networks. I had been introduced to her through a friend who works for the Copenhagen-based indigenous peoples’ support group IWGIA (the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs), and our discussion came to dwell on the notion of indigenous peoples and their right to self-determination. “You all support the wrong people,” she began by saying. And, she argued, people like me (presumably Westerners engaged with these issues) tend to listen only to those who speak about self-determination, stressing this as the sole issue. But what do these organizations that call for self-determination really do? Do they carry out any work for the betterment of their communities—for “development,” as she put it? She was once asked to represent her ethnic community at the UN Working Group on Indigenous Issues in Geneva, but when she told the leaders that she would do this only if she could make her own statement rather than just stressing self-determination as they wanted her to, they were no longer interested in sending her. For her, development, or improving the living conditions of the people, was the first priority. And only if a separatist organization is sincere in working for that would she support its demands for self-determination, she said.80 Several women’s organizations in the region are also concerned by the increasing level of domestic violence, which is linked among other things to male assertiveness that seems to flourish with the politicization of ethnicity.81 This, it seems to me, suggests a tension or a somewhat ambivalent position vis-à-vis the dominance of ethnic politics. I also sense such ambivalence in the writings of Khasi female intellectuals like Tiplut Nongbri and Patricia Mukhim. The most recent claim of the TI movement relates to nature, the association of indigenous governance with environmental stewardship. In the case of the Khasi Hills, the sacred forests have gained particular significance. Though many of these forests have been severely degraded (see chapter 2), the ones that remain have become a source of great pride, not least for people of the urban middle class, who regard them as a valuable part of their cultural heritage as well as an important aspect of their present identity as “indigenous.”

Indigenized Nature The notion of indigenous peoples is intertwined with questions concerning nature or the environment. It is more or less universally claimed by indigenous peoples today that they have a particular relationship with nature and thus a particularly close attachment to the land and territories they inhabit. This relationship is often cast in terms of deep ecological knowledge as well as an ethical-religious worldview of respect for life and the entire creation.82 This claim is of great political significance to

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the global movement of indigenous peoples, giving to their struggle for rights to ancestral lands, forests, and natural resources—i.e., to selfdetermination—a moral justification. Environmental stewardship, it is argued, is thus best vested in indigenous peoples as they have the knowledge and ethos required. And there is certainly rather widespread popular support of the indigenous cause that draws on similar types of ideas (see Brosius 2000). Alongside this, however, a more critical discourse has also gained momentum. Summed up under such labels as “green primitivism” or “the noble ecological savage,” it argues that indigenous peoples’ closeness to nature or their ecological wisdom is nothing but a myth. If this argument had some critical edge to it, say in the mid 1980s when Roy Ellen published his provocative and pioneering article “What Black Elk Left Unsaid: On the Illusionary Images of Green Primitivism” (1986), it is by now a rather well-established fact that smallscale societies of hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and shifting cultivators can also pursue unsustainable livelihood strategies and thus in the long run cause environmental degradation or permanently change the natural landscape. As mentioned in chapter 2, forests and other ecosystems that might popularly appear to be pristine or truly “natural” have in fact often evolved in relation to human practices. We are, in other words, encountering a nature that is marked or manipulated by human beings, what Marx called “second nature,” or, in more recent takes, “hybrid natures” (Escobar 1999). “Nature,” as the historian William Cronon (1996: 25) puts it, “is not nearly so natural as it seems.” In a similar way, the peoples inhabiting these places are no longer thought of as self-contained, timeless social entities. In fact, most anthropologists today agree that peoples in even the remotest places are part of larger social, economic, and political networks that shape their way of living and thinking. Cultures and knowledge are thus products of contact and travel, and, as such, constantly evolving or in the making (see Clifford 1997). But what does this imply for the claim of indigenous people that their culture and way of life is closely attuned to nature and as such intrinsically bound to their ancestral lands? Is this mere political ideology and thus strategic use of a “myth” to gain control over (disputed) lands and resources? Many researchers today seem to think so. It is certainly important to question popular simplifications and pursue a critical inquiry into these matters, but disclosing the “illusion” of green primitivism is, at least academically, a straw-man issue today. There appear in fact to be political motivations behind the promotion of the counter image of indigenous peoples as being as bad (or good) as anyone else at preserving the environment. The historian Sumit Guha’s recent book, Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200–1991 (1999), is an example of this. Here Guha sets out to reconstruct the history of forest communities, and his main objective is to dispute what he

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describes as the dominant theme in popular and academic writings portraying forest dwellers or “tribals” in India as pristine peoples living in “timeless harmony with nature” (1999: 21). Guha stresses rightly that these communities have not been cut off from the larger world and that the forests they inhabit are not at all pristine jungles but are to a large extent an environment infested with human history. But in his eagerness to show that the life-ways of forest peoples like the Bhils and Gonds have been shaped by their participation in a regional political economy, Guha completely eschews the possibility that these people may have developed knowledge and understandings of nature that differ significantly from those of the majority population in the plains. It is as if he can only conceive of two opposing lines of reasoning; the forest communities are either thought of as “relic populations” living in “relic forests” without any outside contact, or, alternatively, as populations fully integrated into larger polities and cultures. Guha goes to great lengths to prove the latter. Guha’s analysis becomes disturbingly onesided. His readings of the historical sources appear driven by his explicit aim to dispute claims of indigeneity that, according to him, would have “explosive consequences” (ibid.: 203). Contesting these communities’ closeness to nature thus becomes a way of contesting their assertion of rights as indigenous peoples or adivasis (original dwellers). Guha describes such assertions as the handiwork of “international experts” who classify tribal communities as indigenous “quite regardless of their actual histories” (ibid.: 4). He leaves no room for subaltern agency or for claims to an indigenous status that is a self-chosen identity and part of these forest communities’ contemporary struggles for survival. What is lacking above all in Guha’s account, as historian Vinita Damodaran points out in a review of the book, is an engagement with the forest communities’ own “understandings of landscape, their stories of nature, [and] their lived histories” (2000: 4). Such a move might reveal that forest communities’ particular engagements with their landscape have developed into “sophisticated knowledge of the jungle environment” (ibid.: 5). “To say this,” to quote Damodaran again, “is not to romanticize these communities and their relationship to nature” (ibid.: 4). Tim Ingold, one of the leading scholars in ecological anthropology, offers a useful opening here. Ingold has for some time argued for what he calls a “dwelling perspective”: a perspective that situates the human being in an “active engagement with the constituents of his or her surroundings.” He focuses on “skills” that develop through the “performance of particular tasks” (Ingold 2000: 5). Ingold’s work concerns mainly hunter-gatherer and pastoralist communities, people who today are often defined as indigenous peoples, and here he identifies a common “relational” understanding of themselves and their life-world. For indigenous peoples, he writes, “it is in their relationships

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with the land, in their very business of dwelling, that their history unfolds. Both the land and the living beings who inhabit it are caught up in the same, ongoing historical process” (Ingold 2000: 139). This might appear like a confirmation of present-day claims by indigenous peoples’ movements of being one with nature and their ancestral land. In a way, yes, but Ingold also takes a critical stance vis-à-vis contemporary assertions of indigenousness. To him, the whole notion of indigenous peoples has come to be based on a mistaken “genealogical model” that emphasizes descent instead of active dwelling. Being indigenous has thus become a question primarily of whether people are descendants of some original inhabitants, and further, that such descent supposedly endows persons with certain cultural traits regardless of their present livelihood (ibid.: 150–51). It is how you live and not who your ancestors are that determines your relatedness to nature. To Ingold, then, a settler born and raised in the countryside becomes more attuned to the land than urbanized or displaced persons in the tribal diaspora. Even if Ingold’s take on the indigenous peoples’ movement is deeply problematic—missing, I would say, that this movement is often a political mobilization that stems from experiences of people losing their lands and traditional livelihoods, i.e. dispossession and displacement, and that seeks to restore or regain control over lost territories83—I still find his dwelling perspective useful in thinking beyond the impasse of green primitivism or the noble ecological savage. In its most basic form, the dwelling perspective reminds us, for example, that people who live in and of the forest will acquire skills and perceptions of the environment that differ from those of people living under other circumstances. And as “enskilment” is an ongoing process of learning through active engagements with one’s surroundings, these skills and perceptions change as people’s life circumstances change. To take the example of shifting cultivation, which particularly in the Garo Hills serves as the basis of people’s livelihoods in rural areas, it can be argued following Ingold that this form of dwelling has a great bearing on people’s way of being-in-the-world and thus on how they relate to the environment. Shifting cultivators like the Garos by necessity acquire specialized knowledge of the particular hill environment they inhabit. In recent years the stained reputation of shifting or swidden cultivators as one of the main destroyers of precious tropical forests is also being re-evaluated. Contemporary research shows, for example, that shifting cultivation maintains a diversified forest ecosystem and aids the regeneration of forests, and further, that shifting cultivation requires “in-depth knowledge of the environment and a high degree of managerial skill to succeed” (Warner 1991: 2; see also Chandran 1998). But it is equally stressed that under contemporary circumstances, shifting cultivation is becoming more and more unsustainable in many

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parts of the world. The reasons for this are the well-known problems of increasing populations and competition from loggers, settlers, industries, and wildlife interests, resulting in a scarcity of swidden land that results in ever-shorter fallow cycles.84 In other words, the very process we have observed in Meghalaya.85 To such external pressures, one must of course add people’s own aspirations for a “modern” life and all the material goods of present consumer society. Such aspirations, as we know, tend to generate modes of living that can be described as less “green.” The extraction of timber and minerals discussed in this book, which has caused tremendous destruction and pressure on the environment, certainly does not bring forth an image of people striving to live in harmony with nature. Patricia Mukhim puts this in a forthright manner while confronting the coal mafia’s rampage in the state. She writes: As a community the Hynniewtrep people pride themselves on being upholders of a very noble philosophy which is to honour mother earth (burom ia ka mei rame). But today that philosophy stands on its head. Money has replaced all the noble ideals installed by our ancestors. 86 What Mukhim points to here relates to what I initially described as the commodification of nature, nature turned into a resource for capitalistic extraction and market exchange. As capitalist resource extraction becomes prevalent, earlier modes of dwelling retreat or lose out.87 Even if this cannot be described as a move from “harmony” to “destruction,” the human impact or imprint on nature is clearly of a different kind. In this study I have focused on resource extraction, but however dominant this sphere has become, one has to remember that this is not the only “show in town.” If my focus had been instead on, say, a rural community engaged in agriculture, things would certainly come out differently and would probably also involve stories about environmentally sound practices and concerns for nature. As Mawphlang and the other sacred forests have become powerful images of traditional environmental knowledge and indigenous identity, such practices might also be encouraged and eventually translate into a greater public concern for the advancement of sustainable livelihoods. In Mawphlang, the traditional political institutions have indeed proven that they have the required skills to manage nature in a sustainable way. But in other places, as with the sacred forest of Shillong Peak, it was the traditional head, the syiem himself, who paved the way for the total denudation of the hill. There are no simple truths to be told. By applying a political ecological type of analysis, I seek in the concluding chapter to untangle the key features of the ongoing resource struggles in Meghalaya. In so doing, I also hope to open the way for further discussion on where

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to locate sustainable alternatives. As I noted earlier, the principle of “custodianship,” maintained by customary law, seems to hold a key to such a future.88

Notes   1. Quoted by Biswajyoti Das, Reuters, “India tribe to honour Al Gore on global warming,” 29 August 2007.   2. Wasbir Hussain, Associated Press, Yahoo News, India, 31 October 2007, http:// in.news.yahoo.com/070830/210/6k4ag.html.   3. “Al Gore wins Indian tribal award,” BBC News, 30 August 2007.   4. E-mail correspondence with Tambor Lyngdoh, who was one of the local organizers in Mawphlang, November 2007.   5. Traditional institutions are likewise a subject of debate in several other states of the Northeast. For example, among the Nagas there are scholars and activists who favor a return to indigenous customary institutions, presenting them as an alternative to the Indian system of party politics (See, for example, Dolly Kikon, “Carnival of Nationalism From the Northeastern Frontier of India: Interpreting Naga Nationalsim, Questioning Indian autonomy and Three Suggestions for the Indo-Naga Peace Talk”, paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Regional Autonomy and Ethnic Minorities”, at Uppsala University, 10–13 June, 2004.).   6. For some observers, the demands for self-determination by the world’s indigenous peoples call the existing nation-state system into question and, if taken seriously, would require a radical restructuring of the same. See, e.g., discussions by Young and the other contributors in Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Ivison, Patton and Sanders (2000).   7. I draw here on the anthropologist Steven Sampson’s (2003) notion of the “world of projects” or the “project society,” which refers to the global structure of development assistance through which resources, ideas/ideologies, and personnel are being channeled from center to periphery.   8. The total cost of the proposed project amounts to 934.3 million rupees, roughly equivalent to US$23 million.   9. Smit is something of an epicenter of Khasi culture. It is, for example, the place where the most famous Khasi festival, the Nongkrem Dance, is celebrated every year (an event that attracts a huge gathering). 10. See, e.g., “Meghalaya tribal lobby in fund hunt,” The Telegraph (Northeast Section), 16 January 2004. 11. English is the official administrative language in Meghalaya and since the state is multi-ethnic, English is also the link language, and it dominates much of the public debate, except for issues that only concern particular communities. Thus, most of these documents are written in English. 12. Meghalaya is divided into seven districts, and subsequently equal number of Deputy Commissioners with their respective court. 13. There is no really comprehensive study on how the legal system in Meghalaya functions in practice, but for a general overview, see, e.g., Judicial System with Reference to Meghalaya, by Wilfred Khyllep (2002); The Administration of Justice in Meghalaya by O.D.V. Ladia (1993); and Administration of Justice in Meghalaya edited by Jeuti Barooah (2001).

Indigenous Governance   261  14. In a debate in the Legislative Assembly in 1978 the question was raised whether the state government had any plan to separate the judiciary from the executive. The Minister in Charge of Law replied that they were considering a proposal to reorganize the courts (Proceedings of the Budget Session of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, 20 June 1978). 15. For a general overview of some of the issues debated with regard to contemporary relevance of customary laws, see the report by the Minority Rights Group (Roy 2005). 16. This has been conveyed to me in interviews and discussions with lawyers and district council officers. See also the contributions in the edited volume Administration of Justice in Meghalaya (Barooah 2001). 17. For example, the Land Reform Commission (Rymbai 1974: i) urges the codification of customary land laws in the Khasi Hills. 18. All members of Parliament have a specially earmarked development fund to be used for schemes in their respective constituencies. 19. The main issue was Sonya Gandhi’s foreign origin, thus that a non-native Indian who was leader of the largest opposition party could become Prime Minister of India. 20. John F. Kharshiing did run as an independent candidate—said to have been nominated as a “consensus candidate” for the traditional institutions—in the parliamentary elections that took place in April 2004, but he withdrew his candidacy prior to the elections. Patricia Mukhim argued in a column before the election that Robert Kharshiing’s push for direct funding to the TIs was probably a way to “boost up his brother’s” chances to get an MP ticket. In her view, the election could then be seen as a test of whether people really respected the traditional institutions and thus would give their electoral support to John F. Kharshiing (see Editorial, The Times of India, 6 March 2004). Withdrawing from the election, I suppose, could then be taken as evidence of lack of such support. But I heard from other well-informed sources that Kharshiing withdrew because there was a risk of his being charged with legal actions, as the traditional chiefs are not entitled to take part in politics and supporting a particular candidate could then be found illegal. This point will be discussed later. 21. It is not only P.A. Sangma and his party that have tried to cash in on the traditional institutions issue, but other parties as well; e.g., the Hindu-nationalist BJP has made statements in favor of empowering the chiefs and their councils. 22. Arendt says that the person who acts “never quite knows what he is doing, that he always becomes ‘guilty’ of consequences he never intended or even foresaw” (1998[1958]: 233). 23. Interview in Shillong, 8 December 2004. 24. Laborious Syeim also hosted a large celebration to mark the UN year, and as one can read in the festschrift of the event, he wanted the younger generation to be aware of the threats to their community —to their rights in land, their economy, and culture. As he is quoted saying: “[O]nly when we cherish our traditional system and values and make use of them, only when we have strong roots, can we march ahead with hope” (cited in the foreword to Lest We Forget, Indigenous Peoples Year 1993, by the Khasi National Celebration Committee, 1994). 25. Durbar, or dorbar, refers to meetings of the traditional councils that are organized on different political levels, as will be discussed later. Durbars of this type have little in common with the elaborate court rituals associated with the Mughal

262   Unruly Hills durbars, which the British later transformed and made use of to assert symbolic authority over their Indian subjects (see Cohn 1983). 26. According to estimates, as many as many as five thousand people representing seven hundred villages were present at the durbar (see, e.g., a later report in Grassroots Option, Monsoon/Autumn 2002). 27. This latter was a central theme of a talk that Laborious Manik S. Syiem gave at a seminar on “Urban Governance and Traditional Institutions” at NorthEastern Hill University in Shillong, 2 December 2003. See also his paper “Khasi Democracy: an unwritten constitution” (unpublished, dated 15 June 2001). 28. The citation is taken from a paper entitled “The Struggle for Recognition,” which John F. Kharshiing presented at a workshop in Shillong, on 31 May 2001, and later presented a copy of to me. Most of these themes have also been brought up during the campaign, though in a less elaborate form. 29. “Constitutional anomaly” was first used by Mohammad Saadualla, who pointed out in a meeting of the Constitutional Assembly in September 1949 that placing the Khasi states under the Sixth Schedule without any settlement with the Khasi chiefs who had signed the Instrument of Accession amounted to a “constitutional anomaly” that needed to be remedied (see Syiemlieh 1989: 201–2). 30. “Memorandum,” 22 July 2000 (p. 4), signed by President Laborious Manik S. Syiem (Syiem of Mylliem) and Secretary Dr. B.S. Syiem (Syiem of Khyriem). 31. Some states wanted to maintain close relations with both India and Pakistan because, for example, they had important economic links with both the Assamese plains and the Bengal plains (what became East Pakistan, and subsequently in 1971, Bangladesh). 32. For a compelling account of the events relating to Nongstoin’s accession, see B.T. Rymbai’s “Integration of the Khasi States: The Untold Story,” a three-part report in The Shillong Times, 21, 22, and 23 April 1997. Rymbai, a government official and member of the Nongstoin mission, gives a detailed account of what took place there. Nari Rustomji, adviser on tribal affairs to the Governor of Assam, points out in his account of these events that there were “pro-Pakistani elements at work,” making the Khasi states “a delicate problem” (1971: 88–89). The issue for the Indian side was of course to prevent any of the Khasi states from joining Pakistan (ibid: 110–11). 33. According to one version, it is even said that Wickliffe Syiem personally went to New York to appear at the United Nations General Assembly (see Nongbri 2003: 101–2). 34. Sardar Vallabhai Patel and V.P. Menon were prominent Congress leaders, the first being Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Department of States with responsibility for issues relating the princely states, and the latter being Secretary of the Department of States. 35. Nehru’s “tribal development policy” is known as the Panchsheel and is first outlined in the foreword to Verrier Elwin’s book A Philosophy of NEFA (1959). 36. For a wider discussion, see Chaube (1973: 96–98) and Dasgupta (1997: 364–65). In the case of the particular situation in Meghalaya, see also the report by the commission on the functioning of the Autonomous District Councils (Dutta 1984). 37. The Naga leaders rejected the Sixth Schedule outright, holding to their demand for full sovereignty. 38. The Khasi Hills and the Jaintia Hills were initially under one district council, but this was later (in 1967) divided into two.

Indigenous Governance   263  39. When Mizoram became a Union Territory in 1972 (later, in 1986, it was granted full statehood) the Mizo District Council was annulled. There has been strong opinion in Meghalaya in favor of dismantling the district councils (see Dutta 1984). Mizoram is also different from Meghalaya in regard to the role of the traditional institutions. With the establishment of the district council in Mizoram, chieftainship was abolished in phases, due largely to public discontent with the autocratic rule of the chiefs, and was replaced with elected village councils (see Singh 1996; Malsawma 2002: 14–35). 40. The report or Consultation Paper by the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution relating to the Northeast is entitled “Empowering and Strengthening of Panchayati Raj Institutions/ Autonomous District Councils/ Traditional Tribal Governing Institutions in North East India,” dated 21 December 2001 (available at time of writing on the Internet, http://lawmin.nic.in/ncrwc/ finalreport/v2b2-9.htm). 41. Consultation Paper 2001, para. 2.2.30 emphasis added. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid.: para. 2.2.37. 44. See the Shillong Times, 9 March 2004. 45. The meeting took place on 25 October 2003. The TI leaders spoke in English, which then was translated into Garo. 46. The earlier mentioned Vision 2020 report by DONER also note the importance of traditional institutions for the proposed people’s based development process that eventually will bring insurgents over to the mainstream (2008: Vol. II, p.10 (available at time of writing on http://modoner.gov.in)). 47. Nokma has also a more general meaning, referring to a wealthy or influential man. There can be several nokmas in a village, and the most important is the a’king nokma, i.e., the nokma who through his wife holds title to the lands under the particular village (the a’king). 48. The British also introduced a new office, that of the laskhar, where a particularly influential nokma was appointed as legal and fiscal officer for a larger cluster of villages (an administrative unit known as elaka). It could be said that the laskharship has become part of what is commonly regarded as the traditional political system of the Garo Hills. 49. Interview in Shillong, November 2003. 50. Due to space limitations, I omit the Jaintias from this schematic account. There are important similarities, but also differences, between the traditional ruling structures in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. One important difference is that the top level, the syiem-ship, is absent in the Jaintia Hills, a consequence of the subjugation of the Jaintia kingdom by the British and their subsequent removal of the office of the Raja or syiem. The province, or elaka, instead became the highest level, with a doloi as its administrative head (see further Gassah 1998). 51. In many places, in fact, one can speak also of a fourth tier consisting of a subvillage or locality within a village (see Nongkynrih 2002: 68–69). 52. This has been the main point of discussion in most of the seminars and workshops on traditional institutions in which I have participated and is also something people have communicated in private discussions. 53. Laborius Manik S. Syiem has made this point on several public occasions, for example, as well as in personal discussions/interviews with me. 54. Editorial, “Traditional Institutions—a critique,” The Shillong Times, 3 October 2003.

264   Unruly Hills 55. Apurba K. Baruah also wrote one of the background papers for the National Commission to Review the Working of the Indian Constitution (see earlier discussions of the Commission report for Northeast India). 56. The research group organized a workshop in Shillong (2 December 2003) in which more or less the same critical objections were made. 57. Anther member of the LSE project, Professor Manorama Sharma, has also pointed to this, arguing, for example, that the terminology of the traditional institutions, words like “durbar,” apparently are non-Khasi terms that have been taken up at some point of time, indicating that there might have been great transformations of these institutions and that they need not be as ancient as most local scholars seem to believe (see Sharma 2003: 12, 2004). To state that traditions change, are “invented,” as it were, is to state the obvious. The fact that traditions are made out of stuff from near and far, I would argue (along with many other scholars), does not render them inauthentic or less traditional (see further Karlsson 2000: chapter 8). 58. National Commission to Review the Working of the Indian Constitution for the Northeastern region (2001: para. 1.6). 59. This is indeed interesting, since Apurba Baruah, as I mentioned in an earlier note, has taken part in the Commission’s work. 60. For a larger discussion on present challenges of the state, see, e.g., Hansen and Stepputat (2001) and Friedman (2003). 61. There are identical formulations also in the case of the rules for village courts under the Khasi and Jaintia Hills District Councils. 62. This sum has been adjusted to 150 rupees in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, but still remains ridiculously low (equal to two to three days’ wages for a day laborer). 63. Interview with the experienced lawyer Uday Rimsu in Tura, 14 October 2003. 64. The more recent and detailed books The Garo Customary Laws, edited by Milton S. Sangma (1989), and Garo Customary Laws and Practices by Julius L.R. Marak (2000a), are gaining increased recognition in the courts, however. 65. Interview in Shillong, 23 December 2002. 66. Interview in Shillong, 15 December 2002. 67. For a full list, see Appendix B in Momin (2003). 68. Interview with Professor Sangma in Tura, 19 October 2003. 69. Interview in Tura, 11 November 2003. 70. P.C. Kar mentions this in the preface to the new edition of Costa’s The Garo Code of Law (1975: xxxi). 71. This quote is from the Executive Summary of the (draft) report “Customary Laws of the Khasi people of Meghalaya with special reference to their landholding system” (p. 1), presented at the workshop in Shillong, 28 November 2003. 72. The study referred to is Secret Lands Where Women Reign (1958) by Gabrielle Bertrand. I have not read the book, but according to a review by Robbins Burling it is a kind of adventure account of her travels in the Khasi Hills and neighboring areas. As Burling puts it, Bertrand is obviously under the impression that “women rule in the matrilineal societies” (1959: 143). And this was apparently something our speaker at the workshop was upset with. 73. A.S. Khongphai Versus Stanley D.D. Nicholas Roy (1963) 27 ELR-16 (see further Dev 2004: 31–36). 74. Supreme Court of India, decision, 14 February 2006, in Arjan Kumar Versus Union of India and Others, Civil appeal No. 6445 of 2000. In this ruling the Supreme Court judges argued that since the appellant, Arjan Kumar, had grown up in an a Forward Class atmosphere (his father’s status) and hence had not been

Indigenous Governance   265  subject to any disadvantage, he should not be granted the Scheduled Tribe status he had appealed for. 75. The new bill is called the Khasi Social Customs of Lineage Act (First Amendment) Bill, 2007. 76. Quoted in “KHADC Lineage Bill sent to House Select Committee,” The Shillong Times, 26 October 2007. 77. See “NGO decry move to amend Lineage Act,” The Shillong Times, 17 September 2007. 78. See Linda Chhakchhuak’s article “Customs made” in which women activists in Northeast India describe how the sovereignty struggles in the region affect their lives, directly through the violence that these struggles cause but also more indirectly through impositions on how they dress, whom they marry, and what they do. For example, a woman who marries an outsider is commonly regarded as a traitor (Grassroots Options, Winter–Spring 2002/3). 79. Smith’s interviews were conducted in 2001 and most of the activists belonged to the two organizations Women of All Red Nations and the American Indian Movement. 80. Interview in Shillong, 25 January 2000. 81. See Nongbri (2003: chapter 8) and again the previously mentioned article by Chhakchhuak in Grassroots Options. 82. In the case of the Khasis, see Mawrie (2001). 83. Nathan Porath (2000: 176) aptly refers to such lost indigenous territories as “landscapes of dispossession.” See also James Clifford’s (2007) compelling argument that “indigenous” and “diasporic” experiences in fact have much in common, though they are commonly thought of as opposites. 84. For the debate about shifting cultivation and its impact on nature in Thailand, see Laungaramsri (2001). 85. For a recent overview of the marginalization of shifting cultivation in the northeastern hill region, see Choudhury and Sundriyal (2003). 86. Editorial, “Is Meghalaya mortgaged by the coal lobby?” The Shillong Times, 30 November 2007. 87. As Brian Morris put it (personal communication), this could be described as a move from “control and management of nature to dominance over nature.” 88. Some researchers insist on customary laws as an important vehicle for “sustainable development” (see, for example, Orebech et al. 2006).

Chapter 6

Political Ecology at the Frontier I began this book by suggesting that the resource struggles discussed in it can best be understood in relation to a larger history of capitalist expansion into southern hinterlands, and I end by returning to this proposition. By way of conclusion, I also sum up the principal arguments developed in the previous chapters, organizing this summary around four interrelated themes. First, I revisit the thesis of the environment as trigger of violence; second, I recapitulate why I believe frontiers, and more particularly resource frontiers, are central to the argument; third, I address the complex notion of nature turned into a commodity; fourth, and finally, I return to the question of local communities as sustainable resource managers.

Violent Forests The FAO’s State of the World’s Forests, 2005 observes that forested areas in poor countries are prone to violent conflicts and war. Forests, it is said, offer a hiding place and a source of revenue for insurgents, hence the presence of forests can become a motive for engaging in war or forests easily turn into “breeding grounds for violence” (FAO 2006: xiii). The arguments presented in the report build on the increasingly popular claim that the abundance or scarcity of natural resources has become a major driver of armed conflicts in the world today. As explained in the report’s final chapter, “Forests and war, forests and peace”: Forest regions in poor countries usually have many of the characteristics associated with the locations where violent conflicts occur. They tend to be remote and inaccessible. They often have valuable timber, petroleum, land, ivory, diamonds, gold and other minerals, which insurgents can exploit or tax. Forest dwellers frequently resent that outsiders benefit most from these. Governments have tended to see forested regions as peripheral places with few people and little politi-

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cal importance or economic value, and have only focused on them to extract timber and minerals. Thus, forested regions have traditionally been poorly integrated into national political processes and receive few public services. Dominant ethnic groups have marginalized indigenous and tribal people in forested regions who also compete with migrants from other areas over resources. Given the limited employment opportunities in many forested regions, taking up arms can seem like an attractive way to earn a living. (FAO 2006: 117) This statement seems to sum up well the situation in Meghalaya and the related hill states in Northeast India that I have dealt with in this book. The Northeast appears in fact to be the perfect textbook case, matching all the criteria for a forested region prone to violence and armed conflicts. But at as I have argued in chapter 1, the type of reasoning that links insurgency to particular environmental conditions, be it scarcity or abundance of natural resources, is deeply problematic. To begin with, it allows little scope for ideology and political aspirations on the part of the groups that take up arms and their actions appear instead to be driven or triggered by features of nature. Further, history is relegated to the backseat in these types of explorations. As suggested earlier, violence, armed conflicts, and war are intrinsically complex phenomena that require multifaceted explanations. Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts argue similarly, in a critique of the resource-scarcity thesis, “We see violence as a site-specific phenomenon rooted in local histories and social relations yet connected to larger processes of material transformation and power relations” (2001: 5). In looking more closely at the explanation given in the FAO report it becomes clear that it is not primarily an environmental condition that generates violence, but rather a political predicament of marginalized people in resource-rich peripheries who are under pressure from outside interests that seek to exploit their land and natural resources. This is a situation faced by indigenous peoples around the world. That such pressure can cause resentment and frustration among these groups of people, which in certain situations can translate into armed resistance, can hardly come as a surprise. In most instances, however, indigenous people are seeking recognition and rights through negotiations with the respective nation-state of which they are part. In the case of the Northeast, the Nagas have been very persistent in their struggle for national sovereignty, wanting to stay outside the Indian Union. It was only after this demand was denied that things took a violent turn. The Naga struggle has in a way set the stage for other tribal or indigenous groups to seek recognition as nations with the right to political selfdetermination, albeit most of the other groups asserting such rights have been more receptive to political settlements within the parameters

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of the Indian constitution. Forests no doubt offer a hiding place and a means to finance the armed struggle for several of the insurgency groups in Northeast India, but taking this as a general point of departure in explaining why the region is haunted by violence is obviously not very helpful. As I have suggested instead, the political dynamics relating to how these relatively independent polities were constituted as a colonial frontier and later were more firmly incorporated by the evolving structures of the Indian nation-state are especially critical. Thus the colonial and postcolonial history of the region needs to be addressed. Even if the majority of people in Northeast India seem to accept the fate of being Indian citizens today, it still remains a frail identity riven by alternative national imaginaries that are nourished by collective narratives of past and present injustices committed by the Indian state. Along with this, the heavy military presence and the rule through appointed governors— Baruah’s “parallel political structure”—reveal distrust on the part of the central government regarding the loyalty of people in the Northeast. Agamben’s notion of a “permanent state of emergency” seems fit here. Exceptional measures like the frequently applied Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act allow military and paramilitary units to operate with immunity. Military force is also routinely applied in situations that would normally be handled by the civil administration. The crackdown on the student demonstration in the Garo Hills that led to the tragic massacre of unarmed youths is an example of this. Violence, in short, has to do above all with aspects of nation- and state-making rather than with the rich gifts of nature in the region. To say this is not to deny that control of land and resources is a central part of the story. On the contrary, as I have been arguing, the politics of nature and nation are intertwined. To claim the status of a nation or a people with the right to political self-determination is above all a means to assert rights over a particular territory and the resources available in it. As with the Khasis, land rights are linked to ethnic membership. Only those who can claim full ethnic membership, those considered proper Khasis, are supposed to be eligible to own land. Even if land and landbased resources are to a large extent privately owned, they are commonly spoken of as a collective good, something that ultimately belongs to all members of the ethnic group. Why should we give “our” uranium to India, opponents of the uranium project argue? The dominance of ethnic arguments explains the difficulty of addressing the internal stratification and unequal access to land and resources that currently prevails within these societies. A discursive field structured by “us–them,” “insiders– outsiders,” and “indigenous–non-indigenous” offers limited space for a critique of the land and resource grabbing by the indigenous elites. It is obviously easier to target migrants in search of land or outside actors

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like the cement giant Lafarge or the Uranium Corporation of India (UCIL) seeking to extract minerals in the state than it is to oppose similar activities by powerful locals. But despite this, assuming that ethnicity is the only game in town would be a mistake. The burgeoning criticism of the reckless mining of coal by the native “coal mafia” in Meghalaya is a case in point. Similarly, despite the opposition to the Supreme Court timber ban, a number of organizations and individuals in the state support it. Nor can being against uranium mining be explained merely as a matter of resenting the activities of an outside agent. Different rationales and interests are at play in the respective resource conflicts, but as I have insisted, in all cases—be it land, forest, or minerals—the question of nation surfaces. By this I mean that a key concern is whether ownership, control, and benefits eventually go in favor of those considered insiders, hence not to those depicted as outsiders. People who support uranium mining, for example, would commonly stress that it will bring development— i.e., jobs, roads, social services, and revenue—to local people and thus benefit the state as a whole. Opponents dispute such claims, arguing instead that Meghalaya will only get peanuts and will be left to suffer the consequences of a contaminated environment. The latter type of claim ties in with a more general argument about an unequal and exploitative relation maintained by the Indian state. In the more radical language of insurgent groups, this is described as a colonial relationship. From such a perspective, Indian independence did not open a new era of freedom, democracy, and prosperity but came instead to entail a new form of domination. Without embracing the insurgent narrative, I nevertheless think that there is a point in stressing the problematic structural relationship that exists between the center and the periphery that works to the disadvantage of the latter, i.e., people in the Northeast. It is here, I think, that the notion of a “frontier” makes sense.

Frontiers A frontier marks a relationship with a dominant, expansionist center. Obviously, it is the center that renders a place a frontier. As the East India Company started to reach out from its original base in the Bengal plains, the frontier moved outwards as well. In the late eighteenth century Sylhet was described as a frontier province (Ludden 2003: 6), but as the Ahom kingdom was brought under imperial supremacy with the defeat of the Burmese in 1826, Assam became the new frontier par excellence. Alexander Mackenzie, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, in his book History of the Relations of Government with the Hill Tribes of the North-East Frontier of Bengal, published in 1884, gives the following delineation of the frontier as he perceived it towards the end of nineteenth century:

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The north-east frontier of Bengal is a term used sometimes to denote a boundary line, and sometimes more generally to describe a tract. In the latter sense it embraces the whole of the hill ranges north, east, and south of the Assam Valley, as well as the western slopes of the great mountain system lying between Bengal and independent Burma, with its outlying spurs and ridges. I propose to trace … the political relations of the Indian Government with the tribes inhabiting these hills. (Mackenzie 1999[1884]: 1, emphasis added) What I find particularly striking here is that the frontier is now pushed forward to encompass, above all, the particular terrain of the hills and the tribal people living there. The Assam valley itself, in his view, was apparently no longer part of the designated frontier tract. The reason for this, I assume, is that colonial rule was by this time, around the 1880s, relatively secure in the valley, whereas the hill areas remained in many ways unsettled territories.1 Mackenzie describes the hill peoples as “savage races” or as “savage and warlike tribes,” thus stressing their violent inclination (ibid.: 1, 7). Several of the hill peoples continued to resist the colonial intrusion with arms well into the second half of the nineteenth century. The British responded with punitive expeditions, burning villages and arresting those identified as “ringleaders,” thus forcing troublemakers into submission. One major source of contention was the British policy of pushing the hill tribes up into the hills, alienating them from land previously under their control and granting such land, formally declared “wasteland,” to tea planters and immigrant peasants from Bengal. The hills, on the other hand, were declared off-limits for land transfers to non-tribal outsiders. This policy was formalized in 1873 under the so-called Inner Line Regulation stipulating that land beyond the designated inner line was to remain exclusively under tribal ownership in accordance with the customary land tenure systems of the respective tribes. Outsiders could not even cross this line without first getting permission from the colonial administration. The hills thus became “excluded” and “partially excluded areas” within which a special type of light administration was put in place. As a result, the frontier dynamics evolved quite differently in the plains and the hills. For example, the massive land alienation to immigrants that took place in the Assam plains has largely not happened in the hill areas, as discussed in chapter 3. The plains experienced a more dramatic and complete transformation, a process that in the case of the hills has been much more protracted and continues to unfold. The latter, in fact, still retain frontier qualities of unmapped and unsettled space today. To depict Northeast India and especially the hill areas as a frontier tract is commonplace among contemporary scholars and commentators.

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Acclaimed journalist B.G. Verghese, for example, opens his book India’s Northeast Resurgent in the following manner: “History and geography have combined to make the Northeast, homeland to Mongoloid India, a remote frontier” (1996: xi, emphasis added). And as he points out a few lines later, the “political management of this sensitive region” is a most delicate and difficult task. Verghese’s perspective is state-centric, the Northeast perceived primarily as a problem of government.2 In this, he follows in the tradition of colonial officials like Mackenzie engaged in the administration of the frontier.3 Verghese is not the exception that stands out here; his take or outlook is rather common in writings on Northeast India. The notion of the Northeast as a frontier, it seems, perpetuates a state-centric mode of thinking. But as argued earlier, frontier stresses a relationship between a center and a periphery, and the term can be used as a heuristic device to turn the perspective around and begin looking at things from the perspective of the periphery. I see this book as an effort to contribute to the development of such a direction. What I am suggesting, then, is that the legacy of Northeast India as a frontier helps explain contemporary processes like, for example, the politics of nature that I am concerned with.4 It is in this sense that I refer to Northeast India as a “resource frontier.” The northeastern resource frontier is a highly differentiated space. It would perhaps be more correct to talk about it in the plural, that is, as several different frontiers with rather varied experiences of colonial and postcolonial resource struggles. For example, some of the people inhabiting areas well beyond the inner line remained to large extent unaffected by British rule. The anthropologist Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, appointed in 1944 by the colonial government of India as a special officer with a mission to “establish friendly relations with the unadministered hill-tribes,” gives a telling account of his first approach to his destination, the Apa Tani valley, in today’s state of Arunachal Pradesh: From a peak of about 7,000 feet we had a magnificent view over all the outer ranges. From valleys veiled in blue mist spurs and slopes swept up to summits as high as the peak on which we stood. Even through my binoculars I could not discover a single patch of cultivation; there was nothing but forest clad hills as far as the eye could reach. No wonder that the tangle of rugged and uninhabited ranges had been an effective barrier between the Apa Tani country and the plains of Assam. (Furer-Haimendorf 1990: 100) Once there, Furer-Haimendorf discovers a society that is completely independent and where money transactions are absent.5 If Apa Tanis accept silver rupee coins, he writes, these will be used as ornaments (ibid.: 95–96). It would still be decades until the logging frontier

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started reaching to these tracts. But eventually, in the 1980s and 1990s, Arunachal Pradesh became the scene of extensive timber extraction, something that was made possible by the construction of roads in the state. Anthropologist Alexander Aisher, who carried out fieldwork in a neighboring area some sixty years after Furer-Haimendorf, describes how people have begun leaving villages to settle along the main roads, to avail themselves of the prospects of a modern life. Large areas around these new settlements have been completely denuded of trees, though interestingly, in the deserted interior areas, the forest is now reclaiming old jhum fields (Aisher 2007). As Arunachal Pradesh, like Meghalaya and the other states of the Northeast, has been placed under the Supreme Court timber ban, logging is no longer a major source of revenue for the state. The state government is seeking instead to cash in on the immense potential of hydropower generation. As discussed earlier, hydropower from Arunachal Pradesh is a key to the resource-led development strategy proposed by the World Bank/DONER team. Several large dams are in the process of being completed and several more are in the pipeline. Water, in other words, will mark the politics of the Arunachal resource frontier in the coming decades. In this study I have made no elaborate attempt to compare the different experiences in the region. But I would still suggest that there is a common frontier dynamics at work that allows for certain generalizations. One such aspect concerns the increased dominance of a “capitalist” nature regime that undermines earlier livelihoods, land tenure systems, moral codes, and epistemologies. To put it differently, this has to do with a mounting “commodification of nature.”

Commodification of Nature Geographer Noel Castree (2003) argues in a recent review essay that much contemporary work on the “commodification of nature” suffers from a troubling vagueness. Many scholars who seek to address this phenomenon—both those firmly within a Marxian tradition as well as the more eclectic ones (like myself)—do so without really clarifying what they are referring to. Castree points to three basic questions that need to be addressed. First, what is commodification and how does capitalist commodification differ from earlier pre-capitalist forms of commodification or appropriation of nature? Second, what “nature” is being commodified; does it matter whether we talk about “external nature,” such as trees, minerals, and soil/land, as in this book, or “human nature” in terms of organs and genes, or again aesthetic aspects of nature as in the sense of “pristine wilderness” (commodified by the ecotourism industry)? Finally, is commodification of nature by necessity a bad and objectionable process? (Putting a price-tag on nature, as in the

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case of the carbon trade mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol, is a form of commodification that seeks to prevent environmental destruction or, more directly, to arrest global climate change.) Below I will address some of these important questions. As Castree states, the most elementary aspect of a commodity is its quality of being “exchangeable.” The exchange of things, as he rightly notes, takes place in all kinds of societies, and to get at what is distinctive about capitalist commodification we have to qualify this as “moneymediated exchange of things.”6 This is still too general, and Castree asks us to look at a number of interrelated aspects that give a particular type of exchange a “capitalist colouration”; these are “privatization,” “alienability,” “individuation,” “abstraction,” “valuation,” and “displacement” (ibid.: 277–83). Briefly, privatization relates to the establishment of legal titles with more or less exclusive rights to the individual, group, or institution that has been assigned such title. Alienability refers to the possibility of selling or parting with a particular thing, and is related to individuation, which has to do with the possibility of separating this thing or entity from its surroundings. Abstraction is also linked to individuation but concerns how specific properties of this thing/entity are turned into characteristics of a larger category: a place covered with trees, say, becomes a “forest” equal to or replaceable by other “forests.” Valuation refers to the process of how things/entities are being valued, in this case, attributed a monetary value or a price. Displacement, finally, is perhaps the most abstract aspect and relates to Marx’s notion of the “fetish,” i.e., “something appearing, phenomenally, as something other than itself” (ibid.: 282). Hence the spatio-temporal separation of producers and consumers conceals the exploitation of labor and ecological degradation that takes place in capitalist commodity production. In other words, the social and environmental relations that are contained in a commodity, say, a diamond, are displaced or concealed. By considering all these aspects together, Castree argues, we can begin to understand how the process of commodification works and subsequently distinguish what is unique to capitalist commodification. In the extreme case of “pure” capitalist commodification, all commodities would be “subject to the six aspects of commodification highlighted without any material and moral resistance” (ibid.: 283). But we also have to pay attention, Castree argues, to specific material properties of different “natures,” i.e., that the materiality of a particular type of nature (trees, human organs, etc.) might have profound implications for how the process of commodification unfolds. “[S]ome natures ‘resist’ complete commodification (physically and morally), while others are more readily subsumed” (ibid.: 289). All of this comes under Castree’s second question, “What nature is being commodified?” Let us stop here and relate this examination of the commodification of nature to the cases I have discussed in the book. I begin with the issue of land.

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Land as a Commodity As I have shown in chapter 3, land has undergone a radical transformation during the last century. If the sale of land was a basically non-existent transaction in the Garo Hills in the early twentieth century, for example, it has become a regular feature today. Land that was used for shifting cultivation, thus cultivated for only two years at a stretch, has increasingly been converted into plots permanently held by individual persons. Even if ownership of such plots has rarely been formally recognized through legal titles or official land documents, in practical terms these are being recognized more or less as the private property of the persons holding them. Such plots, for example, can be sold to others or inherited within the family. I have also described a similar process in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, where common land previously accessible to anyone in the village has been converted into private lands. The most significant aspect of this process relates to the concentration of land in the hands of an affluent landed elite and the subsequent dispossession of weaker groups in society. Even so, both in terms of privatization and alienability, land remains far from fully commodified in Meghalaya. As I have pointed out, there are important countercurrents that block this process. The principle of custodianship is one important cultural barrier or point of resistance to the commodification of land. For example, even if the youngest daughter—the person who inherits ancestral property (land, house, etc.) among the Khasis—has the formal title, other family members and relatives enjoy a sizeable influence over this property and should usually to give their prior consent to any sale or transfer of land. The ideological underpinning, supported by contemporary interpretation of customary laws, relates to the woman as the custodian of family property. Custodianship, as I have argued, draws on a different moral economy than ownership. If the title holder misbehaves, i.e., fails to fulfill her family obligations or lives what is taken to be an immoral life, her kin can get the property transferred to some other related female.7 Traditionally, women have held title to land. But this is also changing today. As part of the privatization of land, men are increasingly securing land titles in their own names. A man who purchases land with money that he has earned independently can get this land recognized as his personal property. Such land is considered “self-acquired” property, which can be sold or gifted with fewer social restrictions. A transaction that has become particularly common is the transfer of self-acquired property through a will, preferably to sons, who traditionally would not inherit land. The idea of self-acquired property and the use of wills are modern inventions that are still contested; some people regard them as violations of the traditional land tenure system. What has emerged is a most complex situation in which old and new practices and ideas relating to

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land rights coexist. Land disputes are very common and tend to drag on in court for decades; in the end it is often those with political clout, economic means or muscle power who win. The lack of formal land records and cadastral maps adds to this confusion, and although this seems to have enabled the land grabbing by the indigenous elite it is also a practical impediment to the full commodification of land. Banks, for example, rarely accept land as security for loans in Meghalaya because of the lack of proper land deeds. Another important point of resistance is the ethnic marking of land. This relates to the alienability of land. The special Land Transfer Act debars “non-tribals” from acquiring land. In addition, as the Act is popularly interpreted and used, only those who belong to the three “indigenous tribes” of the state are eligible to buy land, and any violation or attempt to liberalize the Act usually encounters massive popular protests. As a means to attract outside capital, the state government during the last decade has given permission to private companies to acquire land, in several cases for the purpose of mineral extraction. The legality of such deals has now been called into question on the grounds that these firms are “non-tribal” subjects that are not entitled to hold land in the state. Control over land is thus closely intertwined with the issue of ethnic identity and the quest for cultural survival, and alienation of land is understood as the principal threat to indigenous sovereignty. Put differently, land is collectively valued as “homeland,” the territorial base of the community. This places a strong moral restraint on the complete commodification of land. But again, this mainly concerns the alienation or selling of land to those considered “outsiders.” What has attracted less public attention is the internal process of land alienation, i.e., the appropriation of land by the indigenous elite and the subsequent dispossession and marginalization of large sections of the population. Land is in many ways a special case. While trees, minerals, soil, crops, wildlife, and other elements of nature can be removed from their original context for circulation on an increasingly global market, land stays put in a particular place. This immobility, it seems to me, in itself restrains commodification. Land remains entangled in a web of social relations, meanings, and historical attachments. Polanyi famously refers to land (and labor) as a “fictitious commodity” because of the simple fact that it was not produced by humans, and neither was it intended for exchange or sale. Treating land as a commodity is an event of historic proportions. In non-capitalist societies land distribution was based on social, commonly kinship, relations. But as land entered the market sphere—started to be exchanged for money—the entire social fabric of these societies started to crumble, according to Polanyi. People’s ways of engaging with or relating to the environment also changed with this move from an “embedded” to a “disembedded” market economy (Polanyi 2001[1944]).8

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Though colonial rule came to propel such a transformation, I would be hesitant to conclude that this process necessarily worked in accordance with a conscious imperial design. As Gunnel Cederlöf convincingly argues in a study on contesting rights to land in the Nilgiri Hills in South India, “colonial rule in the early 19th century was not primarily or intentionally concerned with introducing autonomous, private property in land” (2008: 245). If there was an overarching colonial interest at the time, she argues, it was to secure sovereign rule. A crucial facet of this was to establish the superior territorial rights of the sovereign, the British Crown. Land belonged ultimately to the Crown and not to subjects, though the latter could be granted land titles by the former. European settlers and businessmen who had managed to secure large private landholdings in the Nilgiri Hills by purchase directly from the local people became, paradoxically, a major impediment to the establishment of colonial sovereign rule. In any event, as a result of the colonial expansion into the Nilgiri Hills, if not of the colonial intent, land did end up becoming a commodity that was bought and sold. This with the qualification, Cederlöf notes, that land was not “to be exclusively or autonomously held by the holder; in other words, the property in it was not entirely private” (ibid.: 246–47). This latter point has significance in India more generally. As colonial rule became more firmly established and unified towards the later part of the nineteenth century, the sovereign’s superseding right in land was manifested, for example, in the Land Acquisition Act of 1897, through which the colonial government was entitled to seize any land for “public purposes.” As I have discussed in chapter 3, this Act is still in use in India.9 This is an infringement on private property rights, which arguably blocks full commodification. But again, considering that the state usually compensates the land owner in cash for acquired land, ideally at market value, such transactions are based on a capitalist logic. In Meghalaya, I would say, there is little public recognition of the idea that the state has prior or superseding rights in land. Especially among the Khasis, there is a strong aversion to infringements by the state on private ownership rights in land. As it is commonly argued, according to customary laws the landowner is the absolute authority. Traditionally, the syiem or native ruler had authority only over people, not over land, and he was not entitled, for example, to collect any land tax from his “subjects.” Accordingly, it is claimed today that neither the present Indian government nor the Meghalaya government nor the district council has any right over the lands in the Khasi Hills. Any attempt by the state to acquire land without the consent of the concerned land owner is bound to arouse public condemnation. And further, these absolute rights of the land owners are not related to the land alone, but also to anything that is on the land or under the soil. Recall the outrage against the timber ban

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and the common argument that it was an infringement on indigenous customary rights. Similarly, the “coal war” in the 1950s was sparked by the then Assam government’s attempt to take control of the Khasi coal fields in the Cherrapunjee area. Private ownership rights in land and land-based resources are thus commonly claimed to be part of people’s customary rights. The standard procedures of colonial land settlement—normalizing land ownership—did not take place in the northeastern hills. As part of the indirect rule that was applied in these areas, the existing land tenure systems were to prevail with as little disturbance as possible. However, for various administrative and practical reasons the British came up against the difficult question of how customary rights in land functioned. For them it became largely a question of who owned the land and hence had the right to cede it. Colonial officers had their own predispositions or tacit understandings as well as direct interests that led them to interpret customary practices in rather idiosyncratic ways. Arbuthnott’s attempt to come to terms with the Garo land tenure system is a case in point here. Against the findings of his investigations, he reached the conclusion that it was not uncommon for a nokma or headman in the Garo Hills to sell village land. But for the nokma to do this he had to receive permission from his wife and her kin, said to be the actual owner of the land. The colonial officers never really came to terms with this latter aspect of the Garo (matri-based) land tenure system, and in practice they tended to treat the nokma as the de facto owner and authority over village lands. When the British established the sanatorium in Cherrapunjee in the early nineteenth century and later developed Shillong into a military and administrative center, they negotiated mainly with respective Khasi syiem for the purchase or lease of lands. That the syiem traditionally had no rights over land was apparently of little or no consequence to them. The point I wish to make here is that colonial rule triggered or unleashed a new way of relating to land that was based on the idea of ownership, i.e. land as someone’s property. The question the colonial officers asked—Who owns the land?—prompted an answer, and in dealing with the colonial state, people soon realized the advantage of asserting land claims in terms of property rights. Sonaram R. Sangma was one of the pioneers among the Garos in doing so, and because of his agitation the British found it best to call off their plans to establish further forest reserves in the Garo Hills. Historian Bela Malik (2003: 292) gives a similarly telling example from the Jaintia Hills, where the notification of a forest reserve in the late nineteenth century prompted jhum cultivators to come forward in large numbers to claim private ownership of the land. As she puts it, people in the area responded to the government’s claim over forest lands by “using the colonizer’s language of proprietary

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rights.” Earlier it was access or user’s rights to and not ownership of shifting lands that mattered. Further, in many parts of the hills it was labor rather than land that was the scarce resource. Land was allotted on the basis of needs, basically in relation to size of household, and it simply did not make sense for a jhum farmer to claim more land than the household could manage to cultivate.10 Gradually, however, the notion of land as private property came to percolate through the hill societies, bringing about a major change in how land was being accessed, valued, and claimed. The introduction of new crops and agricultural techniques also came to push this process. Although the colonial government did not ban or put any direct legal restrictions on shifting cultivation, as it did in many other parts of India, it sought to replace jhum with permanent forms of land use such as wet rice cultivation and horticulture orchards. These efforts were later intensified by the postcolonial government. The eradication of jhum was primarily a soil conservation measure, but it was also a civilizing or developmental project of the state. Under various schemes people were made to plant trees, build terraces, and start plantations of new cash crops like coffee and rubber. Although these schemes have failed to large extent to generate feasible economic alternatives for the shifting cultivators,11 participation in them became for some a means to secure private rights in land. As noted, if, for example, a villager plants coffee bushes or a rubber tree on a jhum plot—that is, places it under permanent use—no one else could access it and the plot eventually become the property of that person. The combined effect of such conversion of jhum lands, government acquisitions (forest reserves, national parks, dams, etc.), and increasing population has led to ever-shorter jhum cycles, and this has resulted in declining yields and escalating environmental degradation. In other words, very much the opposite of what the government had hoped to achieve. In both of these examples, there was no explicit aim on the part of the colonial and postcolonial governments to introduce a modern property regime based on individual ownership, but this turned out to be an important consequence nonetheless. In the first case, it was a matter of the state’s acquiring land for its own (public) purposes, and in the second, of “weaning” people away from what was considered an environmentally and economically wasteful form of land use. As land, particularly land in urban areas or containing valuable resources, started to acquire a more direct market value, purchasing land became a major form of investment for the well-off middle class. With the improvement of roads in the late 1960 and early 1970s, the coal deposits in the Jaintia Hills became a real treasure. This triggered a virtual land rush, with villagers claiming and outsiders buying up dry lands that had previously been used for shifting cultivation. The price of land in the coal areas has

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sky-rocketed as a result (Lamin 1995: 81–83). As I have been told, even though the fate of the uranium mining project in the West Khasi Hills still remains uncertain, land speculation has already taken off, with urban people flocking there to buy up land.12 An outside owner would naturally be in favor of the project as that drives up the price of the land. And because such people would be living far from the mining and processing sites, they would not be directly affected by the environmental damage caused by the project. In sum, then, while the process of commodification is still far from complete and land remains subject to competing societal definitions and rights claims, we can conclude that land is acquiring the properties of a commodity, or that the exchange of land is taking on a “capitalist colouration.” One of the drivers of this process is the commodification of other aspects of nature, not least of minerals and trees. In the case of the latter, the sturdy sal wood was a key resource over which the British wanted to secure control, and the forest reserves they established in the Garo Hills were primarily in areas well stocked with sal trees. But even if control of resources presupposes control of land, it need not necessarily require direct ownership of the land. As I have described, coal and timber traders have entered into lease agreements with local headmen that have enabled them to dig out coal and cut trees on village lands for usually a very nominal sum of money. In many cases, such deals involve lands that in fact could be considered commons. The opening story of the Shillong Peak sacred forest is an example of this. Francis Syiem had no private title to the land but could still sell off all the trees to a contractor. Similarly, the common story of Garo nokmas being enticed by contractors to allow large-scale logging and mining within their villages seems to have weak legal standing in customary law. But the timber contractors have also been able to get access in areas under formalized ownership, as in the case of the state forest reserves. The Forest Department not only failed to prevent illegal loggers from clear-felling the reserves in the Garo Hills, but its own staff, apparently all the way to the most senior officials, were deeply involved in the trade. Finally, it is also common for affluent and well-placed people to buy large tracts of village lands as a means of gaining access to the trees or coal reserves available on them.

Timber and Minerals Trees and minerals, discussed in chapters 2 and 4, are turned more readily than land into commodities for circulation on a wider market. However, their materiality, their very bulkiness, has remained a significant stumbling block. Proximity to rivers was a precondition for timber operations before the construction of roads and railways, and inaccessible forest areas were thus spared large-scale exploitation. This was

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also the case with limestone extraction; the main quarries were situated close to rivers and streams, and the stones were loaded onto small boats or canoes for further transport down to the Bengal plains. This kind of transport was feasible mainly during the rainy season with its higher water levels. With roads, trucks have been used as a major means of transportation, and now with Lafarge’s newly built conveyor belt, the scale of operations will of course increase enormously. The coal beds that were discovered in the Cherrapunjee area in the early nineteenth century were of great interest to the British, but due to the difficulty of getting the coal down to the markets in the plains, mining never really took off in the way the colonial administration had anticipated when it handed over mining leases to private British contractors. The extracted coal had to be carried down the hills by “coolies.” Due to uncertainties about the size of the deposit, plans to build some kind of transportation system for the coal were dropped in the mid-nineteenth century.13 Nevertheless, the geographer Thomas Oldham, whose report I refer to above, was right in his prediction, saying, “I fully anticipate, however, that that the Coal of Cherra Ponjee, and of this frontier generally, even though it may not be possible to bring it with profit to the Calcutta market, will turn to great and useful account at some future, and not very distant period” (1984[1854]: 69). With improved road communications in the twentieth century, the mining of coal has developed into a major industry in the area. In the case of the Jaintia Hills, it was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s and the building of the highway that that the coal boom took off. The uranium deposits are located in an area that still lacks proper road communication, and it is therefore understandable that those who oppose the mining project also object to the building of a road to the mining area. The road is being financed by UCIL, the very agency that hopes to carry out the project. Once the infrastructure is in place, the operation of cutting trees, digging out coal, or blasting limestone might be heavy work, but it is nevertheless a rather straightforward exercise; uranium mining is a more complex undertaking that requires specialized technology and knowhow. But in general it can be said of all these undertakings that it is not alienability in itself that is the problem. Here, it is rather the social and environmental effects of the extraction that are at stake, that present a form of “moral resistance,” to use Castree’s terminology. In Meghalaya, either environmental regulations are absent or those that exist are not effectively enforced. The Supreme Court timber ban was an unexpected intervention from outside that stands as an exception. But although the level of timber operations has been brought down significantly because of the ban, reluctance on the part of the state government and the executive wing of the state administration to enforce the court order means that logging is still proceeding on a considerable scale. Moreover, the

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ban was highly inconsistent; it left charcoal production, for example, without any restrictions. Since almost any size or type of tree can be used for charcoal, this can cause even more indiscriminate destruction of forests than the logging industry does. Mining by local people is completely unregulated so far. The state merely collects royalty and taxes from the mining industry. When outside actors venture into larger projects, as in the case of the Lafarge limestone project or the UCIL uranium mining project, prior environmental clearance by the Ministry of Environment and Forests is required. Despite the elaborate procedures that are supposed to be followed in such cases, there are obviously ways of getting around them. In the Lafarge case, the trees that covered large parts of the area leased for mining were apparently not detected. It was only after environmental clearance had been given by all the necessary government bodies that a forest officer chanced to find out that the area was forested, hence that the extraction of limestone would entail the felling of trees, something that was banned by the Supreme Court. This created a major legal impasse with farreaching implications for international relations with Bangladesh, jeopardizing the Look East Policy as well as the Indian government strategy to boost mineral extraction in the country by opening up to investments by transnational mining corporations.14 The environment, the loss of trees, was not the main local concern that stirred up heated sentiments, however. Here, it was the alienation of land that caused tension and protests. Lafarge was charged by a number of influential organizations in the state with being engaged in illegal appropriation of indigenous lands. As a non-tribal subject, it was argued, Lafarge is not entitled to hold land in Meghalaya. The fact that the corporation had also mortgaged the leased land to foreign banks made things worse. In the case of the uranium mining project, the issue of alienation of tribal land is also a major source of contention. That UCIL is a central government corporation, and not a foreign firm, makes no difference for those who oppose the project. Here, too, land would pass into the hands of a non-tribal body. As stated earlier, the opposition to uranium mining also addresses the environmental consequences of the project, especially the risks of radiation contamination. Assurances by various central government bodies, including UCIL itself, that uranium mining can be conducted in a safe manner is simply not trusted by the protestors. The Meghalaya state government makes the abundance of minerals a unique selling point in attracting outside investors to the state, and several large cement plants have been set up in recent years. But as more limestone and coal are mined, the environmental consequences are becoming more obvious. It seems inevitable that at some point the interests of the extractive industry must be balanced against other inter-

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ests. The Meghalaya Adventurers’ Association has taken the issue to the Supreme Court, hoping that an intervention similar to that for timber would put pressure on the state government to impose some kind of regulation on mining. So far, the political clout of the mining lobby has prevented the government from taking any steps in such a direction. The Supreme Court based its decision to ban the felling of trees on reports of alarming rates of deforestation in Northeast India. Though there are different views on the state of the forest, the Supreme Court obviously felt it had enough evidence to intervene. The existing evidence with regard to mining seems even more compelling. There is more or less a consensus on the devastating ecological impact of the mining activities that are going on in Meghalaya. A common depiction in that criticism is the “unscientific” nature of the mining. “Unscientific” here is a catch-all label for everything that is considered bad—the primitive method of rat-hole mining, the lack of safety measures for the laborers, the absence of environmental regulations, the lack of rehabilitation plans, and the overall absence of state control. Even though the situation is appalling, I cannot but wonder what “scientific” mining would entail in this case. Would it, for example, imply that the mineral deposits should be handed over to state and corporate interests that arguably have the capital, technology, and technical expertise to carry out mining in a “scientific” way? But the track record of these actors certainly does not testify to an environmentally and socially responsible form of mining. Quite the contrary, I would say.15 Nevertheless, Lafarge’s limestone quarry and the proposed UCIL uranium mining project are opening a new chapter of corporate mining in Meghalaya. Both of these actors claim to be using up-to-date mining technologies that minimize the impact on the environment as well as on the people who live around the mining sites or work there. But judging on the basis of the sheer magnitude of these projects alone, there seems no way around the fact that landscapes and livelihoods will be severely transformed. Minerals are economically the most import asset of the state. But minerals are a non-renewable resource that will be exhausted at some point, and when that happens, it is difficult to reclaim land for agriculture or other subsistence activities. As stated in a background note to a national symposium on the restoration of mining areas, held in Shillong in 2003: Besides depleting the mineral resources, large-scale mining creates serious environmental problems due to blasting during mining, and transportation, dumping and storage of mined materials and mine spoils. Large-scale denudation of forest cover, conversion of green landscapes into barren lands, transformation of agriculture lands into wastelands, and pollution of soil, water and air are the common consequences of mining. The terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem adjoining

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mines become severely contaminated leading to loss of biodiversity and depletion of other natural resources. Such perturbations exert tremendous pressure on human health and alter the socio-economic fabric of the society.16 The question of whether this is a price worth paying is increasingly being raised in Meghalaya. But with mining as with other forms of resource extraction, gains and losses are unequally distributed. In the concluding section, I will step back and reflect on the role of communities in all this.

Sustainable Communities Political ecology research, as stated initially, commonly revolves around a set of differently empowered actors that assert a claim over nature. In general these actors can be linked to or stem from any of the three basic categories of state, capital, and community. Bryant and Bailey (1997) suggest, for example, the following typology of actors usually at play in conflicts relating to the environment: the state, multilateral institutions, business, environmental NGOs, and grassroots actors. In a venture of this kind there is always a risk of essentialism, i.e., of overstating the internal coherence and temporal consistency of such actors, assuming as it were that they represent a shared interest. As I hope is obvious from the resource conflicts discussed in the previous pages, the state, for example, is anything but a coherent actor with one single interest. The forest case is perhaps the best illustration of the multitudinous and often contradictory interests pursued by various branches or institutions of the state. At close quarters it is even difficult to draw a line where the state begins and ends. Local government institutions, for example, are deeply entrenched in everyday social relations, and to place these institutions as part of the “state” rather than the “society” is highly problematic. The contingency of actors, their fuzzy and multilayered nature, is exactly what present-day political ecology analysis alerts us to, however. This is especially the case with the “community,” as I will discuss below. It is a commonly repeated statement about Meghalaya that land, forests, and other natural resources in Meghalaya are under community control. Such statements are often made in comparisons with the situation in other resource-rich parts of India, where forest and mineral rights are largely vested with the state. And indeed, this is not the case in Meghalaya. But as I have been arguing throughout this book, to speak of community ownership and control is nevertheless misleading. What I have suggested instead is that capital and state restructuring of the hill societies has rendered communities relatively powerless to control the local resource base. Land is more or less a private asset, as discussed

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above. I have invoked the notion of “neo-tribal capitalism” to stress the internal process of capital accumulation that has given rise to an affluent indigenous elite that dominates the economic and political life in the state. This elite has managed to secure private ownership of large areas of land and consequently has also been able to exploit the natural resources available on such lands. The emergence of interests groups like the influential lobby organization Meghalaya Land and Forest Owners’ Association is an example of this. Royalties from timber and minerals are a major source of revenue for the state government as well as the autonomous district councils. To put restrictions on these activities would mean a decisive cutback in their budgets. In addition, those with power within these institutions often have a personal interest in the continuation of these activities, either by being directly involved in a mining, logging, or sawmill business or by getting cuts of the illicit money that surrounds such businesses. The wealth from the resource chains also permeates wider sections of society. Compared to the meager returns from subsistence agriculture, a villager with land that contains valuable trees or coal deposits can make a small fortune by selling the land or the resources to a contractor. As I have recounted, coal traders often cut deals with the local headman to get access to village lands. The extractive industry gives employment to people in the rural areas where other paid jobs are hard to come by. And, as mentioned earlier, the insurgency groups also seize their share of the wealth created by timber and minerals. Where, then, is the community in all this? Can we speak of community as an interest outside or in opposition to the extractive industry? The term “community” is usually applied to denote a restricted social entity—for example, a village or a locality—that is under some kind of collective decision-making mechanism and upholds certain shared norms and rules. Such mechanisms or institutions on the local level not only exist among the ethnic groups discussed here, but have a rather prominent place in society. As discussed in chapter 5, customary laws and practices are supposedly the law of the land. But when it comes to resource management—for example, relating to forest management or jhum cultivation—the formal authority has been vested with the three autonomous district councils in the state and not with the traditional village durbars. In the case of forests, as discussed in chapter 2, however, the district councils have carried out little management beyond mere taxation of the timber trade. This is also the case with mineral extraction. In practice, the private land owners have been free to do what they like; to cut trees, dig for coal, or sell or lease the land to those who have the means to exploit the available resources. In a way, this sort of setup resonates with public sentiments that hold land owners to be the supreme authority. As I pointed out in the case of the uranium mining

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conflict, much of the discussion has focused on whether or not the land owners agree to the project. UCIL claims to have an agreement with the land owners to go ahead. But to take land ownership as the main criterion for local consent or dissent to an intervention of this magnitude is obviously to render a major portion of the local population without a voice. In fact, the only instance where local people more generally have been given a space to speak up was during the one-day public hearing organized by the Meghalaya State Pollution Board in one of the villages in the project area. According to news reports, the majority of those present at the hearing opposed uranium mining. This has been taken up by the anti-mining camp, which consequently claims to have local opinion on its side. The Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council has given its consent to the project and the matter is now to be settled by the Meghalaya government. It is this body, in other words, that will speak for the people of the state. From a community perspective one would think that the traditional village durbars rather than the land owners—or the district council or the state government, for that matter—would be the legitimate local body to settle resource issues where everyone’s livelihoods are at stake. This is also the basic message of the grassroots democracy movement, what I also called the traditional institutions (TI) movement, which has been active in the state in recent years. As the articulate leaders of the movement argue, the headman and the village durbar are best attuned to the needs and aspirations of people at the grassroots level and hence should be empowered constitutionally and financially. “Power to the nokma is power to the people,” as one of their slogans goes. The durbar is claimed to be a superior form of democratic rule, in that it is consensus-based and free from divisive party politics. More recently, the leaders are also seeking to reinvent these institutions as bearers of traditional ecological knowledge, manifested in the practice of preserving sacred forests. The sacred forests of the Khasi have become an important source of indigenous identity, something that people are proud of and like to show to the world. The most famous one is the Mawphlang sacred forest near Shillong, and it was here that the TI or grassroots democracy movement held its second “people’s parliament” in 2007. The choice of location was the ultimate in communicating the greenness of the movement to outsiders, but one should not rule out the possibility that this message also resonates with local sensibilities, that people in the state are concerned about the environment, that they are increasingly becoming what Arun Agrawal (2005: xii) calls “environmental subjects.” However, my point here is that the grassroots democracy movement seemed to capture a collective unease or resentment about how things are being run today. As I point out in chapter 5, this has to do with ambivalence towards the state and its institutions and the inability of the elected leaders to deliver the

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promised goods of development. Armed resistance has lost much of its public legitimacy, and here the grassroots democracy movement offers a nonviolent alternative. It is also the case that several of the movement’s prominent leaders are themselves shrewd politicians with their own personal agendas, and indeed the claim that the traditional institutions are truly democratic is questionable, considering the lack of women and youth representation. But again, the modern elected bodies are no exception to this. The appeal of the movement is instead in the message, that indigenous governance is the way to build a better future. That strengthening community-based institutions is a key for sustainable and equitable resource management is also what most international development agencies claim today. I have briefly discussed the US-based Community Forestry International (CFI) project relating to sacred forests in Meghalaya. What I pointed to there is the paradox in celebrating indigenous environmental wisdom on the one hand and stressing the need for external assistance that introduces a new management regime on the other. Meghalaya is increasingly becoming a scene for various development interventions by international donors and multilateral financial institutions. Some of these obviously do not have sustainable

Plate 19  Woman and child under the spell of uranium

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community management as their prime objective but can be linked rather to the extractive economy. The Lafarge limestone project, for example, has the Asia Development Bank as one of its main financiers. Opening to such investments is precisely what the central government’s Look East Policy is all about and also what the Meghalaya government aspires to. This will of course severely undermine local autonomy and perpetuate further environmental degradation. We are back to the two opposing environmental scenarios for Meghalaya, the green one represented by Mawphlang sacred forest and the other, the dystopia of a ravaged nature, associated with the Cherrapunjee “wet desert”. While most people say they seek the first, things seem to be moving in the other direction. It is highly unlikely that the uranium will remain in the ground as the anti-mining camp wants it to. But again, the matter is still far from settled. Time will tell. Harvey’s notion of “accumulation by dispossession” seems to sum up well the major transformation taking place in the northeastern hills with land and natural resources commodified and privatized. Yet as I have argued there are also critical counterpoints or spaces of resistance that suggest other evolving geographies. Laborious Manik S. Syiem, one of the leaders of the grassroots democracy movement, told me during one of our meetings that they had decided to leave Shillong Peak to regenerate by itself. Planting trees there, as had been suggested, would only lead to future claims of private ownership rights. Some small trees had already begun to spring up and one day there might again be a flowering forest on the peak. If someone sets out to write another book about the politics of nature in Meghalaya, say some thirty to forty years from now, that person might begin by recounting the story of how this happened.

Notes   1. See further Peter Robb’s (1997) account of the different ideas on how to settle the northeastern frontier that were exchanged within the colonial administration during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Robb notes, for example, the advent of C.S. Elliott as the new Chief Commissioner of Assam and his attempt to build a “more regular and representative administration” in the hill areas (ibid.: 257). Hill people like the Nagas, in his view, were now to be treated as “regular” subjects of the British Crown (ibid.: 259). Consequently, the common method of collective punishment through burning villages, for example, was no longer considered appropriate. Obviously, not everyone in the colonial administration shared these ideas.   2. B.G. Verghese has participated in a large number of government commissions and policy studies relating the Northeast, for example in the two mentioned reports under DONER, i.e the World Bank study and the Vision 2020 report (see chapter 1).   3. See, e.g., the fascinating recollections of Nari Rustomji, for ten years advisor on tribal areas to the Governor of Assam, in his book Enchanted Frontiers (1971).

288   Unruly Hills Rustomji narrates how as a young civil servant he was assigned the difficult task of establishing government control in Northeast India.   4. See further Sanjib Baruah’s application of the term frontier, in his recent booklet Postfrontier Blues: Toward a New Policy Framework for Northeast India (2007).   5. The Apa Tanis have become famous for their intricate agricultural system based on rice terraces rather than on shifting cultivation, which otherwise is the most common traditional form of agriculture in the northeast hill areas.   6. Castree refers here to Appadurai’s influential introductory essay in The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (1986). Appadurai applies a more inclusive understanding of commodities, arguing that commodity exchange can take place in “a very wide variety of societies” (ibid.: 6).   7. This can also happen among the Garos. The linguist Caroline R. Marak gives the example of a Garo woman who loses the right to family property—that she had inherited being the youngest daughter—after marrying a non-Garo man (2007: 535). In this case, the property was instead passed on to the middle daughter in the family.   8. Polanyi (2001[1944]: 76) writes: “To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment indeed … would result in the demolition of society.… Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighbourhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw material destroyed.”   9. Also in other parts of the world that have been under British imperial influence one will find similar legal provisions for the government or the state—the new sovereign—to confiscate private land for public purposes like road construction and other infrastructure projects. In the US, for example, this goes under the heading of “eminent domain.” 10. Here again, I would like to draw attention to Sanjib Baruah’s brilliant essay on a nineteenth-century land puzzle in Assam (2005[2001]). The British colonial government, in an effort to regularize land use in the Assam valley, offered peasants decennial land leases instead of the annual leases that had been in use. But to the surprise of the colonial officers, the Assam peasants were most reluctant to take up the offer. In practical terms, a decennial lease would imply permanent title. And as land was becoming increasingly scarce during the latter part of the nineteenth century—being settled by the government with other users like tea planters, immigrant peasants, and the Forest Department—this clearly appeared to be advantageous for the Assam peasants. But not until the 1920s did they start to come forward in larger numbers. Baruah explains the initial reluctance of the Assam peasants as their remaining grounded in a pre-colonial resource regime, where land was plentiful and committing oneself to a long-term lease simply did not make sense to people with a livelihood that combined shifting cultivation with hunting, collecting forest produce, and homestead gardens. It was only gradually, when the material realities of the new resource regime had become obvious, that the peasants started to opt for decennial leases (Baruah 2005: 87). 11. Mr. P.R. Mawthoh, Head of the Soil Department up to 1999, told me that introducing cash crops like coffee, rubber, black pepper, and cashew nuts was a mistake. The department itself lacked the necessary know-how and had to rely on other government bodies like the Coffee and Rubber Board. These institutions had their own bureaucratic modes of functioning and were not attuned to the local situation. The entire thing became technically too complicated. Instead, he argued,

Political Ecology at the Frontier   289  they should have opted for food crops, which people could eat themselves or sell directly on the local market. (Interview, Shillong, 1 November 2003.) 12. Personal Communication, Sanat K. Chakrabarty, September 2007 (via telephone). 13. The British had acquired the right to the coal fields through a lease agreement with the syiem of Sohra. The latter was to receive a fixed share of the revenue. Under this agreement, local people were entitled to carry out mining on a small scale, and apparently most of the coal that was eventually extracted was done by such private parties (see Oldham 1984[1854]: 68–69). 14. Through an interim order by a special bench under Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Lafarge was allowed to resume its mining operations in November 2007. I have not been able to retrieve the actual order and rely here only on news reporting; see, e.g., “Lafarge to resume mining in Meghalaya this week,” The Hindu Business Line, 27 November 2007. 15. Protest again large-scale mining is the order of the day all around the world. The common story is of local communities being deprived of their lands and livelihoods due to reckless mining by large corporations. Whether these corporations are under state or private ownership seems to matter less. The government-owned Coal India, which is the major miner of coal in India, is a case in point here. The global mining industry has recently launched a joint initiative to improve its tarnished reputation, the so-called Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development Project. The stated aim is to bring mining in line with the general framework for sustainable development. Critics, however, see this merely as a green-wash and not a serious attempt to change its mode of operation (see, e.g., Evans, Goodman and Lansbury 2002). 16. Background note by O.P. Singh in “National Symposium on Ecorestoration of Mining Affected Areas,” 15–16 March 2003, organized by the Centre for Environmental Studies, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.

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Index A’chik National Volunteers Council, ANVC 53–55, 73n55, 210–211 Agarwal, Bina 147–148 Ahom kingdom 31, 269 Amnesty International 52, 73n48 anthropology 7–9 Appadurai, Arjun 50, 58, 288n6 Arbuthnott Commission 126–127, 134, 139, 148, 165n2 areca nut 144, 154, 168n49 Armed Forces, Act 24, 50–52, 55, 58, 73n46–48, 268 Arunachal Pradesh 26, 28, 46–47, 70n8, 84, 271–272 Assam, geography 26–29 autonomous district council, ADC 27–28, 63, 79, 88, 95, 98, 121n33, 123n47, 149, 157, 169n53, 171n.87, 173, 196, 205, 228, 237, 239–240, 247–248, 252, 262n36, 263n40, 284–285 Balpakram National Park 11, 68, 151–155, 170n66, 170n68, 182, 212 bamboo 11, 29, 78, 90–92, 112, 126, 145 Bangladesh, map 26 Barbora, Xonzoi x, 169n56 Baruah, Sanjib x, 45–47, 68–70, 72n40, 72n42, 288n10 Bengali 28, 65, 212 biodiversity 38, 77, 84, 95, 106–108, 124n71, 212, 219n52, 283 Bloody Friday 56–57 Bodo 48, 49, 59, 160 borders 17, 22n14, 27, 34, 35, 54, 120

Burling, Robbins 12, 70n2, 132, 143–146, 168n46, 242, 264n72 cancer 177, 190–193 capitalism 7–8, 10, 15–16, 30–34, 65–67, 104, 163, 284 carbon trading 41, 72 Castree, Noel 272–273, 280, 288n6 Cederlöf, Gunnel ix, 10, 17, 276 Chakrabarty, Dipesh x, 8, 219n49 Chakraborty, Sanat K. ix, 92, 98, 122n43, 289n12 charcoal 12, 87, 101–103, 115, 123n66, 125n86, 133, 281 Chatterjee, Partha 69–70 Chatterjee, Piya 33, 70n11 Cherrapunjee (Sohra) 14, 102–103, 114–119, 125n89, 156, 180, 207, 249, 277, 280, 287 Chhakchhuak, Linda ix, 122n40, 170n65, 223n109, 265n78, 265n81 Christianity 6, 29, 32, 48, 72, 109 citizenship 68–70, 250 Clifford, James 256, 265n83 coal, see mining coal war 180, 200, 218n25, 272 coffee 90, 146, 278, 288n11 colonialism 7–8, 17, 31–33, 83, 122, 131–141, 280, 287n1 commodification 15–16, 22n12, 30, 33, 119, 127, 159, 259, 272–279 Community Forestry International 11, 22n9, 105–106, 110–113, 129n73, 286

312   Index community management 9, 41, 86, 96, 287 contact zone 17 cotton 133, 140 custodianship 150–156, 165, 260, 274 customary law 6, 68, 128, 149–150, 156–158, 180–181, 196, 216, 230–231, 246–255, 260, 261n15, 264n64, 264n71, 265n88, 274–276, 279, 284 dams, see hydropower democracy 61, 63, 73n45, 96, 227–228, 231, 233, 240, 269, 285 development 6, 13, 19, 33, 36–47, 96, 105–106, 110, 113, 146, 153, 156, 174–175, 179–185, 189–190, 199–200, 228, 240–244, 255, 269, 272, 286 DONER 22n11, 37–47, 70n.1, 71n17, 71n20, 71nn27–31, 72n38, 105, 263n45–46, 272, 287n2 East India Company 36, 131, 166n6, 269 ecological nationalism xi, 10 ecology 29, 83, 117, 121n21, 125n87 ecosystem 84, 116–117, 121n21, 125n87, 256, 258, 282 ecotourism 41–42, 183, 272 elephants 11, 82, 131, 133, 135, 171n82, 212, 240 environment, definition 11 environmental destruction 11, 116, 125n83, 273 environmental history 6, 18, 29, 32, 83–84, 95 Escobar, Arturo 16, 22n12, 45, 256 ethnic groups 26–29, 65, 254, 267, 284 ethnicity 29, 58–60, 70, 255, 269 Ferguson, James 35–36, 45 fieldwork 6, 10, 19–21, 143, 168n48, 168n52, 208, 272 Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO 85–86, 99, 121n26, 266–267 forced labor, begar 126, 129, 134, 136–137, 166n1, 166n4

forest cover 15–16, 84–93, 111, 115–117, 122n38–39, 282 department 6,14–15, 77, 79, 82, 86–88, 92–103, 112, 122n23, 122n45, 132–138, 151, 153, 166n15, 170n68, 205, 279, 288n10 destruction 12, 95 illegal logging 4–6, 44, 77–80, 100–103, 155, 171n82 protection 98–100 sacred 9, 11, 12, 106–111, 113, 116–117, 124, 284, 286 timber ban 12–15, 86–99, 121n30, 171n.86, 182, 216, 223n116, 269, 272, 276, 280 frontiers 7, 10, 17, 22n13–14, 32, 43, 46, 71n19, 128, 132, 215, 237, 266–272, 280, 287n1, 288n4 Gadgil, Madhav 32, 83, 86, 108 Gait, Edward Sir 16 Garo custom 149–150, 248, 264n64 headman, nokma 79, 80, 82, 97, 120n9, 127, 129, 134–150, 166n7, 168n51, 169n55, 169n60, 170n64, 210, 231, 241, 242–244, 263n47, 277–279 kinship 28, 135 142–144, 149–150, 168n46, 170n64, 275 territory, Garoland 27, 53, 58, 73n35, 129, 166n5 Garo Hills, map 25 Garo Students’ Union 56–58, 100 gender 6, 121n30, 146–147, 162, 172n105, 249–254, 264n72 Goldman, Michael 37–38 Grassroots democracy movement, also TI movement 227–228, 240, 284–287 Grassroots Options ix, 87, 110, 121n28–29, 124n81, 170n65, 205, 217n15, 222n94, 222n98, 222n100, 229, 265n78, 265n81 Guha, Amalendu 31, 115 Guha, Ramachandra 32, 83, 108

Index   313  Guha, Ranajit 128, 137 Guha, Sumit 256–257 Gurdon, P.R.T. 106–107, 115, 166n4, 247, 253

Doloi, chief 238, 249, 263n50 kingdom 27, 263n50 rebellion 128 Jaintia Hills, map 25

Hajong 28, 160 Hansen, Thomas Blom 18, 50, 254n60 Harvey, David 9, 30–31, 192, 287 High Court, Gauhati 80, 82, 89, 136, 149, 152, 170n71, 171n83, 204–205, 218n34, 230–231, 240, 248, 250–251 Hooker, Joseph Dalton 115 human rights 51–52, 55, 64, 73n47, 153, 175–176, 189, 193, 201–203, 222n96 hydropower, dams 36–38, 42–44, 47, 77n22. 77n32, 94, 194, 272, 278 Hynniewtrep 28, 53, 64, 74n71, 175, 200, 222n8, 251–252, 259 Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council, HNLC 53–54, 64, 73n53, 73n55, 74n71, 200, 220n57, 222n91, 236

Kalam, A.P.J. Abdul 19, 23n18, 173, 174, 177, 193, 216n1, 221n82 Karbi 28, 59–60, 160–161, 213 Khasi custom 3, 6, 21, 68, 109, 149, 158, 166n6, 178–181, 196, 202, 228, 230–233, 247–254, 261n17, 264, 265n75, 265n78 kinship 28, 161, 250–254 language 249–251 myths 4–6 Khasi Hills, map 25 Khasi Students Union, KSU 14, 62–64, 67, 70, 80n72, 94, 130n64, 205–206, 217, 241n92, 273 Kipling, Rudyard 131 Koch 28, 160, 161 Kyoto protocol 41, 123n45, 273

identity 6, 21n5, 48, 52–53, 58, 61–62, 69, 244–250, 255, 257, 259, 268, 275, 285 Independence, of India 25, 27, 34, 48, 54, 148, 149, 207, 216n1, 232–236, 269 indigenous peoples 18, 61–65, 68, 74n70–71, 128, 136, 154, 192, 195, 229, 231–233, 245, 255–258, 261n24, 267 Inner Line Regulation 32, 270–271 insurgency 5, 22n14, 45, 47–57, 65, 72n41, 73n50, 195, 211, 228, 235, 241, 242, 245, 267–269, 284 International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD x, 13, 22n10, 105, 168n52, 169n55 International Working Group of Indigenous Affairs, IWGIA xi, 255 iron smelting 115, 117, 125n84

Lafarge 35–36, 164, 172n101, 183–184, 201–207, 222n94, 269, 280–282, 287, 289n14 Land Acquisition Act 41, 151–153, 156, 170n72, 170n75 Land mapping 112–113, 158 Land Reforms Commission 74, 157– 159, 171n88 Land Transfer Act 35, 66–67, 159– 164,172n93, 172n96, 203, 205, 275 language 20, 28–29, 64, 70n2, 72n40, 140, 238, 249, 251, 260n11 Lapang D. D. 67, 69, 163, 164, 172n93, 172n99, 175, 216, 221n83, 224n129 Liberation of Achik Elite Force, LAEF 54, 74n58, 100 limestone, see mining logging, see forest look east Policy 34, 201, 281, 287 Lyngdoh, Paul 63, 121n34, 173, 178

Jadugoda 173–178, 189, 190, 194, 196, 217n.16, 221n.86 Jaintia

Maaker, Erik de x, 144–145, 168n46, 168n52, 211–212

314   Index Mackenzie, Alexander 17, 128, 133, 269–271 Manipur 26, 28, 46, 49, 51, 70n8, 71n32, 72n41, 236–237 Marak, Julius L. R. 141, 154, 264n64, 288n7 Marx, Karl 16, 24, 30–31, 256, 272–273 matrilineal kinship 28, 127, 135, 146–147, 156, 161, 168n46, 172n105, 242–243, 249–254, 264n72 Mawphlang 11, 14, 106–114, 118, 124n73, 228, 230, 233, 259, 260n4, 285, 287 Meghalaya Adventurer Association, MAA 182–183, 216 Meghalaya, location and basic facts 25–29 Meghalaya People’s Human Rights Council, MPHRC 175, 178, 189, 202–203, 221n83 Mills, A.J.M. 115 mining coal 9, 12, 16, 145, 180, 190, 208–214 limestone 10, 15, 35–36, 116, 118, 164, 172n102, 173, 179, 182–184, 201–207, 219n41, 223n107, 280–282 uranium 14, 16, 164, 174–179, 184–201, 215–216, 269, 279–285 Ministry of Environment and Forests, MOEF 87, 94, 201, 205–206, 223n106 Mizoram 26–29, 46, 70n8, 84, 91, 122n39–40, 263n39 modernity 8, 16 Momin, Thokje Gabil 132, 134–136, 139, 168n37 Mughal Empire 16, 261n25 Mukhim, Patricia 73n57, 74n75, 160, 172, 182, 244, 255, 259, 261n20 Naga struggle 29, 46, 48–49, 54, 70n10, 73n54, 210, 262n37, 267 Nagaland 26, 28, 29, 36, 46, 51–52, 70n8, 76, 84 Nakane, Chie 141–144, 168n46–48, 242

national parks 11, 68, 96, 151–155, 170n66, 170n68, 182, 212, 223n118 Nature commodification of 15, 259, 266, 272–273, 279 conservation 14, 38, 106 definition 10–11, 21n7, 22n.12, 121n21 sacred 3–6, 108, 113 society interface 6, 9, 10, 17, 70 Nehru, Jawaharlal 46, 237, 239, 262n35 neoliberalism 38, 66, 162 Nokrek National Park 21n8, 68, 212, 223n118 Nongbri, Tiplut x, 74, 75, 87–88, 97, 99, 121n30, 157–159, 162, 243–244, 251, 253, 255, 262n33, 266n81 Nongkynrih, A.K. ix, 67, 157, 159, 171n86, 243, 263n51 North Eastern Council 37, 46, 249 North-Eastern Hill University, NEHU ix, xi, 23n18, 107–108, 186 nuclear 18–19, 23n17, 174–177, 191–195, 200, 217n6–7, 220 oak trees 3, 107 Ostrom, Elinor 40 pine trees 100, 107 Playfair, A. 141, 166n6, 168n43, 247, 253 Pnar, see Jaintia Polanyi, Karl 7, 127, 275, 286n8 political ecology 15–19, 22n15–16, 125n87, 283 Pratt, Mary Louise 17 property 6, 42, 66, 135, 136, 141, 144–148, 162, 181, 246–247, 277 ancestral 150, 162, 172n.105, 213, 274 private 103–104, 127, 145, 165, 213, 274, 276, 278 regimes 6, 97, 128, 165 rights 30, 114, 127–128 Public Interest Litigation, PIL 89, 121n34, 166n6, 182–183, 212, 217n14, 219n39

Index   315  Rabha 28, 86, 160, 161, 208 radiation 174, 177–178, 190–195, 215, 217n14, 220n71, 221n78, 281 Ramakrishnan, P.S. x, 91–92, 116, 121n25 rebels, see insurgency refugees 59–60, 228 resource curse 37, 40–44, 72n35, 184 resource frontier 17, 266, 271–272 rice 22n10, 140, 143–147, 152, 168n49, 169n59, 192, 278, 288n5 rubber 78, 80, 146, 278, 288n11 Sachs, Jeffrey D. 42, 71n15, 72n35 sacred groves 9, 11, 12, 106–111, 113, 116–117, 124, 284, 286 Sahlins, Marshall 8 Sakia, Arupjyoti 32, 71n13, 167n31 Sakia, Yasmin 33, 48 sal tree 78–79, 133, 279 Sangma Captain W.A. 151, 153 Sangma, Milton S. ix, 72n40, 170n64, 248 Sangma, Purno. A. 74n60, 231–232, 239, 261n21 Sangma, Sonaram R. 126–130, 132–139, 165n9, 166n9, 277 satellite imagery 15, 85, 86, 89, 90, 121n24 sawmills 178–79, 92, 99–104, 123n63 scheduled tribes (STs) 28, 62, 65, 66, 68–69, 161 Schendel, Willem van xi, 34, 215 Scott, David 131–132 Scott, James C. 21n3, 32, 127 Seng Khasi 248, 252 shifting cultivation (jhum) 12–13, 15–16, 22n10–11, 41–42, 80–81, 87, 90–92, 96–97, 103, 116–117, 126–127, 133–136, 138–150, 154, 157, 212, 272, 277–278, 284 Shillong, history 27–28 Shillong Peak 3–6, 11, 12, 16, 109, 259, 279, 287 Shylla, H.S. 173–177, 188, 196, 200, 252 Sinha, A.C. ix, 95–96, 104, 114, 167n22 Sivaramakrishna, K. xi, 10, 17, 123n48

Sixth Schedule 33, 63, 68, 87–88, 99, 123n47, 156, 181, 214, 233–235, 237–238, 240, 246, 251 Sohra, see Cherrapunjee state, anthropology of 18, 50, 254n60 Stepputat, Finn18, 50, 254n60 Subba, T.B. ix, 62, 70n9, 74n70 Sundar, Nandini xi, 22n14, 86, 121n23, 123n48 Supreme Court 12, 14–15, 77, 82, 87–96, 115–116, 177, 181–183, 201, 205–207, 212, 215–216, 230, 252, 259, 269, 272, 280–282 syiem, see Khasi Syiem, Francis 4–5, 279 Syiem, Laborious Manik S. 231–233, 240, 262n27, 262n30, 263n52, 287 Syiem, Wickliffe 236, 262n33 Syiemlieh, David R. ix, 33, 36, 243 tea plantations 7, 31–33, 36, 39, 70n11, 71n12, 71n13 timber ban, see forest traditional institutions 241–246, 254, 260n5, 286 Tripura 28, 46, 65–66, 70n8, 235 Tsing, Anna 10, 17, 127, 148 United Liberation Front of Asom, ULFA 58, 73n49, 214–215, 224n125 United Nations, UN 61–64, 74n70, 195, 201, 203, 232, 236, 262n33 Uranium Corporation of India, UCIL 173, 175–179, 185–200, 269, 280–282, 285 Verghese, B. G. 72n39, 271, 287n2 violence 49–61, 201, 266–268 Vision 2020 22n11, 24, 44, 70n1, 71n17, 72n39, 263n46, 286n2 wildlife 11, 13, 16, 151, 212, 259, 275 World Bank 37–47, 49, 71n21, 105, 272, 287n2 zamindar 128, 131–135, 167n30