The BJP hopes to recover its morale in the forthcoming assembly elections. Assam, where it emerged as the largest party in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the 2015 local body elections, is its best bet.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already visited four districts of Assam this year. The BJP has declared its chief ministerial candidate and entered into alliances with the Asom Gana Parishad and the Bodoland Peoples Front. However, the Union government’s decision to set up a committee to grant tribal status to six Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities – Ahoms, Koch-Rajbonshi, Moran, Matak, Chutiya, and Tea Tribes – days before the announcement of elections is perhaps the most significant development. The case of the Tea Tribes is straightforward. Their ancestors were forcibly relocated by the British from the tribal belt of eastern India to work in Assam’s tea gardens. Unfortunately, after independence, they were denied tribal status. The case of the other five communities that include erstwhile ruling groups – Ahoms and Koch (Rajbonshi) is complex. Their demand for tribal status can be read in a number of ways.
The immediate context suggests that the BJP is trying to attract numerically and historically important communities to challenge the three-term Congress government. However, changing the status of even one community will disturb the overall political-economic equilibrium. For instance, the Bodo tribe of plain districts is opposed to the inclusion of Koch-Rajbonshis in the ST category.
The government has, therefore, shown willingness to grant tribal status to Bodos living in hill districts and to hill tribes based in plain districts. This will correct longstanding anomalies apart from managing the opposition to the addition of new communities to the ST category.
Yet if correction of anomalies is a motive then Barmans, who are recognised as ST in Cachar and not in Karimganj and Hailakandi districts carved out of Cachar, too deserve attention. There is another way of looking at the demand for tribal status. The post-colonial state launched special welfare schemes for tribes and gave substantial autonomy to hill districts/ states. The demonstration effect of the double benefit accruing to the hill tribes pushed the plain tribes to demand autonomous councils while the communities designated as castes demanded tribal status saying they had been misclassified as castes.
The hill tribes are now demanding greater autonomy. Political parties have cynically exploited such demands. In the run-up to the 2011 elections, the Congress-run state government created development councils for about 18 communities and also promised tribal status to six of them. However, after it came to power, it did not provide sufficient funds for the councils. Ahead of the 2016 election, the chief minister again announced development councils for other communities. Yet another dimension of the demand relates to migration. Indigenous communities feel threatened by the influx of outsiders and believe that recognition as tribes will help protect their identity, landholdings, and political representation. Since the BJP wants to grant citiz-enship to the persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries, it has to support the demands of indigenous communities to balance diverse interests.
The issue, however, needs to be seen through the long course of history. Assam’s fertile valleys have for centuries attracted tribes from the adjoining hills and further beyond in South East Asia. The new comers were Assamised, that is, linguistically and culturally assimilated into the plains society. Even those who remained in the hills had to visit the markets in the plains and learn a little bit of Assamese. The British introduced rigid exclusionary boundaries that restricted political, economic, and cultural intercourse between the hills/tribes and plains. Moreover, anthropologist-cum-administrators froze the identities of the administratively segregated communities. Both the usefulness of the divide-and-rule policy and the need to keep economically unviable hill and tribal areas outside direct British rule informed this colonial approach.
Economic support
In the post-colonial period, other developments deeply affected the relationship between hills/ tribes and plains/ castes. Hills and tribes received special constitutional treatment and preferential federal economic support and they were also able to directly access federal and metropolitan educational and employment opportunities. Moreover, the hills and the tribes could access a variety of cultures and languages, which were not subordinate to the mainstream Assamese society, and develop an alternate culture. So, the plains have lost both their economic and cultural attractions. The hill and tribal people no longer need to adopt the culture of the plains for economic reasons. Bureaucratic highhandedness, police brutality and caste consciousness of the mainstream Assamese society have also contributed to the alienation of the hills and the tribes.
To conclude, the demand for tribal status is not driven merely by inter-community competition over political power and development funds. The historical process of Assamisation seems to have halted and communities that until a few decades ago appeared to be securely detribalised seem to be returning to their tribal roots.
Assam, which is one of the states of the North East where tribes do not constitute a majority, might soon become a tribal majority state. Neighbouring Manipur is also witnessing retribalisation with the OBC Meiteis, the erstwhile ruling community, demanding tribal status (These developments remind us of Jats, who once sought recognition as an upper caste and are now clamouring for OBC status).
It remains to be seen if retribalisation stops with the acquisition of ST certificates or leads to a genuine recovery of tribal customs and egalitarian modes of social organisation. In any case, after securing tribal status the communities are likely to demand autonomous councils, a privilege enjoyed by only a few tribes, on account of dismal performance of development councils. Moreover, once new communities are added to the ST category, other communities will demand tribal status because the state’s community-specific developmental interventions are viewed in zero-sum terms.
(The writer teaches at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru)