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Adivasi Raj in Southern Rajasthan

SRILATA SWAMINADHAN

As the Indian nation prepares to celebrate its fiftieth year of Independence, the tribals of Southern Rajasthan are beginning to rise, awaken and shake off fifty years of further enslavement and begin their struggle for genuine emancipation and freedom by demanding autonomy under the provisions of the 6th Schedule of the Constitution of India.

The southern districts of Udaipur, Banswara, Dungarpur, Chittorgarh, Rajsamand and Sirohi have a tribal population which is over 70% of the total population. This area which is rich in forests, forest wealth, mines, minerals and stone quarries, fertile lands and rivers, with a high average rainfall which sets it apart from the rest of arid Rajasthan, used to be one of the most lush and wealthy areas of Rajasthan. Fifty years of ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’ have left it naked and deforested, covered with the open sores of indiscriminate mining. All its forest and mineral wealth have been drained to enrich the non-tribal populations. The tribals, through a process of ‘internal colonisation’, have been marginalised over the years and have yet to understand how centrally-made rules, regulations and laws in faraway Delhi and Jaipur have deprived them of all their natural resources and wealth.

The adivasis have always been proud and independent and not even the British imperialists could subjugate them or make them answerable to their laws and, hence, the British ended up by labelling them a lawless and criminal tribe. But in the past fifty years they have been robbed not only of their forests, lands and all forms of common wealth but even of their culture, language and history in a manner that even the British imperialists were unable to do.

Today, the adivasis are in danger of losing their very identity and heritage.

Background of Left Struggle
Our work in southern Rajasthan began over twenty-eight years ago when a handful of communist revolutionaries, inspired by the Naxalbari uprising, determined to organise the backward and highly exploited tribals of this area and awaken in them the fire to free themselves from the bondage of economic, political and social tyranny. They worked mainly in Dungarpur district and the Kherwara part of Udaipur district where they launched a struggle against the rapacious hold of moneylenders who had control over adivasi lands through highly usurious mortgages. The harvest on such land was cut by the tribals but went straight to the moneylenders. Needless to say the nexus between the police, administration and exploiting classes made the suppression of the tribals complete. In such a situation, the call for cutting and keeping the harvest found an echo in the hearts of the tribals. A movement was launched against moneylenders and for reclaiming of lands and harvests that were in the hands of moneylenders. However, this struggle was brutally suppressed and many comrades went to jail. Tribal leaders like Coms. Kalu, Hoorma, Sangram, Khema and Hirala, who had fought with great heroism and self-sacrifice to free their societies, were treated as common criminals and were incarcerated in jail for 8-9 years. Com. Mahendra Chaudhary, present Party Secretary in Rajasthan, was one of the leaders of this movement and was also arrested, tortured and put in jail in 1972.

With the collapse of the Naxalbari movement all over India, the struggle in this area also suffered a severe setback. With the arrest of its main leaders and as others were forced to leave the area and go underground, the tribals faced intense repression and the movement died out.

It was with great difficulty that a new beginning was attempted in the late ’70s when Com. Mahendra Chaudhary once more began working among the tribal kisans of southern Rajasthan. The work had to be tackled in an indirect way as the leaders and the party were underground. The Rajasthan Kisan Sangathan (RKS) was finally launched in 1980 and has been working in the four districts of Southern Rajasthan. The communists in this area were members of the UCCRI-ML of Com. Nagi Reddy which later merged in 1985 with six other M-L organisations to form the Communist Organisation of India, Marxist-Leninist (COI-ML), under the leadership of Com. Kanu Sanyal.

Throughout the seventies and eighties the work was hampered by various forms of left adventurism and a wrong approach to open and a secretive and defensive method of functioning that did not lead to the growth of the party. However, through the RKS, tribal peasants was effectively organised and many struggles were launched on their economic and social demands. But without a solid political agenda these demands could not be properly build upon and hence the movement could not be correctly evolved or sustained. The work, therefore, ended up being merely fighting for a series of issues while the lack of a correct political line was more and more felt.

In 1991 when there was a split in the top leadership of the COI(ML), the Rajasthan wing refused to join with either faction and denounced the split as a betrayal of the workers and peasants. Two years later we hoped that our stint in the political wilderness was ended with the Rajasthan comrade formally joining the Indian People’s Front (IPF) but this only led to greater confusion and demoralisation when the IPF was dissolved in 1994!

Through all these years of political turmoil and confusion the ranks of revolutionaries in Rajasthan got thinner and thinner as more and more comrades dropped out opting from more secure lives. Communist was a dirty word in this state, there was very little industry and hardly any working class and even the mainline communist parties like CPI and CPI(M) have found it difficult merely surviving. Feudalism, its culture and values are still so deeply entrenched that even bourgeois democratic values have made little or no impact on the people.

It was under these daunting conditions, objectively and subjectively, and on the brink of extinction that we took the decision to join the CPI(ML) Liberation in the winter of 1994 and formally formed the Rajasthan unit in January 1995. Since then, the onerous tasks of dealing with disorientation and demoralisation in the scattered and depleted ranks, building up an open party with its tiered organisation, trying to instill the principles of party functioning, discipline and Marxist-Leninist ideology along with running active mass organisations has been our concern. Many of our comrades were not happy with the decision to openly form a Marxist-Leninist party as they felt that conditions in Rajasthan were not ready for such a radical step and that we should carry on working indirectly through our mass organisations. But inspite of initial hesitations, reservations and opposition, the past two years have shown that our decision to join the CPI(ML) and openly engage in party formation, was the correct one.

“Adivasi Raj”
Inspired by the role our party has played in struggles for genuine self-determination of adivasi nationalities in Karbi Anglong, North Cachar and Jharkhand, the CPI(ML) in Rajasthan decided in its State Committee meeting held in Jaipur on 26th January ’97 to start the process of adivasi autonomy in the southern tribal districts of Rajasthan. Actually the question of tribals had been taken up twice earlier. The first time when the IPF-Rajasthan decided to participate in the elections to the state assembly at the end of 1993 and passed a resolution in its state committee that the main plank of our election campaign in southern Rajasthan would be adivasi autonomy. The second time was during the Fourth State Conference of RKS in February 1996. But in both these cases we were unable to form a clear cut policy or take any concrete steps and so the demand remained on paper.

However, the time appeared ripe with the increasing discontentment of tribals on all levels and in every sphere of life with their own marginalisation. Along with this is the general disenchantment with the ruling parties and their empty promises. The party also needed a correct political slogan on which to focus its activities. The call for adivasi autonomy or for adivasi raj in southern Rajasthan is the right answer.

It is four months now since we have actively tried to put into motion our struggle for autonomy and the results are positive as it has definitely ended the stagnation in the movement and given new life, impetus and meaning to our work. We now have a central, political point on which to focus all our activities — both short-term and long-term.

In April 1997 the first meeting of the Southern Rajasthan Area Committee (SRAC) was held and it was decided to hold a Conference of all the Party members in the area to formally work out the tactics and strategy of adivasi raj. This Conference was held in Dungarpur on 11-12 May 1997 in which there was an overwhelming response from all the members in favour of the decision and the committee members with Com. Ram Prasad Dindor (a leading tribal activist) as the Secretary of the Southern Rajasthan Area Committee was confirmed.

The conference passed six important resolutions:
1. To demand tribal autonomy by the provisions given in the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution in the tribal districts of southern Rajasthan.
2. That on the golden anniversary of India’s freedom, official recognition and importance is given to those folk heroes who fought for tribals such as Govind Guru, Kali Bai, Nanbhai Khant, Punja Bhil, Vijaysingh Pathik and Motilal Tejawat and that public buildings, parks, streets, schools, colleges and hospitals should be named after these leaders who fought against the local feudal rulers and British imperialism and sacrificed their lives for the cause of tribal freedom.
3. That the problem of massive unemployment of adivasi youth be tackled by ensuring a separate reservation for tribals of Southern Rajasthan so that it is not the economically and socially more privileged ‘Meenas’ of north and east Rajasthan who benefit at the expense of the Meenas in the southern area.
4. That the Government of Rajasthan utilise 60% of the royalties earned from forests, forests produce, mines, minerals etc. from this area only for the tribals living in this area.
5. That the government puts an immediate stop to the eviction of tribals from this area in order to set up game sanctuaries, dams, national parks, reserve forests, industrial estates etc.
6. That the government publish a white paper on all government and non-government funds spent on tribal and non-tribal development in this area in the past fifty years which include all bank loans, RCI, RIICO and funds spent by NGOs.

The conference also worked out a broad programme of struggle for the rest of the year. From now till August the main task before us was to propagate the idea of autonomy throughout the adivasi area and to attract as wide a section of the community into participating for autonomy. On 14th August the apna raj sammelan will be held in Udaipur city when the struggle for autonomy will be officially launched. We hope to invite leaders from Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Gorkhaland, Karbi Anglong and North Cachar movements to address the Conference so that we can learn from their struggles, experiences, aspirations, successes and failures.

As soon as the kharif crop is harvested, two big marches will start, one beginning in Puja Bhil’s birthplace, Paanarva (Udaipur District) and the other from Baarapal, the place where the brave tribal woman, Kali Bai, was killed and martyred by the soldiers of the feudal rulers of Dungarpur. Both these marches will go from village to village throughout the whole area and after two months they will converge at Maangarh on 15 December. Maangarh is the place where Govind Guru and thousands of tribal followers faced the combined feudal and British armies and fought a heroic battle in which thousands of tribals were slaughtered and yet this incident is not mentioned in any history of India’s freedom struggles. A deliberate oversight which still angers the tribals and is one more proof of the way they, their history and culture have been marginalised by the present rulers of India. If the government does not accede to the demand for autonomy then from 26 January 1998 an economic blockade of all produce from this area will begin. Since these decisions were taken we have begun the offensive by active propaganda, public meetings, distribution leaflets, holding press conferences, submitting a memorandum to the Governor and to the Chief Minister and going from village to village to explain our demands to the tribals. A monthly, party news-sheet is being brought out by the SRAC every month since April called Haaka which means clarion call in the local adivasi dialect. It is brought out in simple language and gives an update of the activities plus glimpses into the history of adivasi struggles.

The task before us cannot be underestimated and we are having to prepare for a long and protracted struggle. One of the first problems that we have to tackle is to unite all the tribals in this area in the struggle and give them a common identity which, at the moment, they do not have. The tribals in the area, although they all come from the same ethnic stock, call themselves by a number of different names — Bhil, Meena, Bhil-Meena — or only by their clan or sub-caste names and these are numerous. To add to the general confusion, the BJP-RSS-VHP have systematically tried to have the word ‘adivasi’ deleted and replaced by the word ‘vanvasi’. The reason for this is not difficult to understand as the former means the “original inhabitant” and therefore, gives automatic right to the tribals over this area as all other people, races and groups could only have come after them. Naturally, this is not a right that the upper-caste dominated BJP is going to concede!

Both parliamentary and legislative assembly seats from this area are reserved, predominantly, for tribals. But all this has meant is that tribal leaders have been co-opted into the main political parties where they have had to follow a political line which is not in the interests of their people. The tribal people are beginning to awaken to the fact that their leaders have sold out for mere personal gain while the tribal MLAs and MPs are increasingly frustrated by the marginal roles they play in their party’s politics. This frustration is being voiced by BJP and Congress tribal leaders who realise that the demand for autonomy, that has been raised by our Party, cannot be contradicted with any credibility.

Protests against autonomy have already come from a section of the press which represents the BJP and are openly calling our struggle an act of terrorism. So far, the poor tribal kisans are in favour of the movement for apna raj and so are a large section of middle-class tribals who are unemployed or in petty government posts. There is a section of tribal leaders who are exploiting their own people and who fear that their nefarious activities might have to come to a halt. They want autonomy but not under the leadership of the CPI(ML) as they know that our Party will oppose all corruption and exploitation of the people. However, all are united in acknowledging that the progress and development of this area and its people can only be ensured by self-rule.

Home > Liberation Main Page > Index August 1997 > ARTICLE