Accessing Nature: Agrarian Change, Forest Laws and Their Impact on an Adivasi Economy in Colonial India

[Downloaded free from http://www.conservationandsociety.org on Thursday, August 05, 2010, IP: 71.111.187.206] Conservation and Society 7(4): 227-238, 2009 Article Accessing Nature: Agrarian Change, Forest Laws and their Impact on an Adivasi Economy in Colonial India Sanjukta Das Gupta Department of History, Calcutta University, Kolkata, India E-mail: [email protected] Abstract This article discusses how changing access to nature impacted an adivasi people, the Hos of Singhbhum. Without romanticizing the pre-British past, it may be argued that for the Hos of the time there had been dependence both on the forest and on cultivation, which had ensured them a minimum livelihood. This paper explores how their access to nature gradually diminished under colonial rule through the twin governmental policies of expansion of the agrarian frontier and restriction of the forests to the indigenous population. This led to the sedentarisation of the adivasis, further contributing towards agrarian expansion in India. However, this article argues that the extension of cultivation did not, however, benefi t the Hos. Instead, the nature of the increase in acreage in Singhbhum, led to new agricultural practices, which, together with the restrictive forest laws and lack of new irrigation facilities, led to an agrarian crisis in the region, forcing the Hos to leave their lands and seek their fortunes elsewhere. Keywords: forest, agriculture, adivasi, famine, migration DOI: 10.4103/0972-4923.65170 INTRODUCTION adivasis (Grove et al. 1998), so much so that the latter has come to be considered as the rightful subjects of environmental In recent years, the concerns of agrarian history and those history, while settled peasant tracts continue to be the domain of environmental history have tended to develop almost in of agrarian history. Recent researches have once again drawn opposition to each other (Bhattacharya 1998). Although the attention to the linkages between agrarian and forest economies implications of the agrarian landscape had been discussed (Prasad 1998). This article similarly focuses on the close ties exhaustively in the seminal work of Irfan Habib (Habib 1999), between the forest and agriculture in the adivasi economy. It agrarian history since then has largely concentrated on the attempts to relate the history of forests in Singhbhum2 with the modes and the social relations of production, often relegating agrarian history of the region under colonial rule and argues the changing rural environment to a position of secondary that the interdependence between agriculture and forest and signifi cance1. As a result, as Agarwal & Sivaramakrishnan their complementary roles in the livelihood needs of the people point out, agrarian histories of India tended to concentrate gradually became sharply demarcated during British rule. In on the ‘arable heartlands’, overlooking the mountains and this sense, the notion of British colonial rule marking a crucial forests, which, particularly since the 1980s, have come to watershed in the ecological history of India can certainly be be seen as the preserves of environmental history (Agarwal applied to Singhbhum. & Sivaramakrishnan 2001). In its early phase, Indian In their pioneering work on the environmental history of environmental history focused on the impact of colonial India, Guha and Gadgil have argued that the precolonial use natural resource management, particularly the forests, and of the forest was ‘prudent’, fi rst, because of the existence of a British rule was identifi ed as marking a watershed in the ‘cultural tradition of prudence’ at the level of the community, ecological history of India (Guha 1989). Other notable works which they termed ‘conservation from below’, and secondly, have reaffi rmed this focus on the history of the relationship because of the particular use and control of the forest between forests, the state and the forest dwellers, particularly resources at the level of the precolonial state, both of which Copyright: © Sanjukta Das Gupta 2009. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and distribution of the article, provided the original work is cited. [Downloaded free from http://www.conservationandsociety.org on Thursday, August 05, 2010, IP: 71.111.187.206] 228 / Sanjukta Das Gupta were disturbed in various ways in the colonial period (Guha explores the impact of these changes on the lives of the Hos. & Gadgil 1992). This argument has been rejected by others who assert that it would be anachronistic to attribute a sense LAND USE PATTERN IN EARLY COLONIAL of environmentalism to religious practices which effectively SINGHBHUM resulted in the preservation of forests3 (Grove 1995) and that adivasis could not be considered in any way to be the natural In the early nineteenth century, Singhbhum district was a conservators of their environment (Hardiman 1998). It has thickly forested, rugged country, protected by hill ranges and also been pointed out that the ‘cultural tradition of prudence’ watered by numerous rivers. It was fertile and productive in did not have the kind of ecological implication as had been some places and stony and barren in others. Many diverse supposed, since it actually meant exclusion of a specifi ed ethnic communities inhabited this space, the Oraon, the Munda, village space from cultivation forever, and not its prudent and the Gond, the Bhuiya, the Bhumij, the Tamaria and the Ho. regulated use (Chaudhuri 2004). An analysis of the changing The latter were the most numerous and the southwestern part nature of the use and control of the forest in precolonial and of Singhbhum district, locally known as Kolhan, was almost colonial Singhbhum corroborates some of these arguments. exclusively peopled by them. Northern Kolhan was mostly The close affi nity between humans and nature as seen among open and gently undulating, with numerous villages. The the adivasis of the region should not lead to the assumption that south also was a fl at, open country, thickly populated and well they were in any way ecologically conscious conservators of cultivated. Even in the cultivated regions forests interspersed the forest. Since adivasi societies had no recognisable means with villages. The open areas of Kolhan were scattered with of knowing if going beyond a certain limit could damage the scrub jungle, composed chiefl y of palash and asan trees. The locality’s ecosystem in the long run, we may conclude that south, where not cultivated, was covered with extensive grassy notions such as ‘conservation’ and ‘protection’ were unknown plains, while the south-west and west were mountainous and and did not infl uence their use of resources. heavily forested. On the extreme south-western corner of The article also engages in the debate concerning agrarian Singhbhum was the wildest part of the district, the Saranda development under British rule. On the basis of George hills, a mass of inaccessible rocky summits covered with Blyn’s statistics (Blyn 1966), nationalist historians for long dense jungle. Formerly under the control of indigenous ruling interpreted the impact of colonial policies on Indian agriculture dynasties, western Singhbhum was brought under the direct in terms of stagnation. It has been argued, for instance, that administration of the British in 1837 with the formation of the British revenue policies, which functioned as a ‘built-in Kolhan Government Estate. depressor’, effectively resulted in the fl ight of capital from The economy of the Hos was characterised by the the countryside and precluded any form of improvement interdependence between forest and settled cultivation. The in agricultural production (Thorner 1962). Challenging the distinction between forest and pasture was often blurred and nationalist paradigm, recent studies have assumed that the overlapping, and in many places, clearings would revert to passing of the colonial forest laws, which restricted access to forests on being abandoned. Thus, a Ho village consisted not forests, assisted in the process of agrarian expansion through only of a certain area capable of immediate cultivation, but sedentarisation of marginal groups, such as adivasis and a considerable forest area as well, over which adivasi groups nomadic pastoralists. C.A. Bayly has argued persuasively claimed their respective areas of control. When local pressures that British rule in course of the nineteenth century had in upon land became too great, several households would move fact resulted in the ‘consolidation of the Indian peasantry’ as away from the village to clear another part of the forest, in pastoralist groups and shifting cultivators were increasingly the process becoming khuntkattidars or original clearers. forced to take to settled cultivation (Bayly 1988). Yet, as Conversely, villages would revert to forest on being abandoned. this article argues, the expansion of settled cultivation did The most important role of the forests lay in providing food. not necessarily negate the pauperisation of the peasantry as Forests provided edible fruit, roots, leaves and fl owers and is evidenced by developments in west Singhbhum. Instead, game which constituted an important part of the Ho diet. the increase in acreage during the colonial period led to an Because of this dependence, tribal areas were less susceptible agrarian crisis in Singhbhum as it involved a major departure to famines and we do not get any report of any major food from the traditional land use and livelihood patterns that had shortage in Kolhan Government Estate in the fi rst half of the developed on the basis of the topography and climate of the nineteenth century, a time of recurring famines in the Chota region, forcing a large section of adivasis to leave their lands Nagpur region4. The forests also provided the grazing grounds and seek their fortunes elsewhere. for the large herds of cattle and buffaloes that the Hos owned. The article has four sections. The fi rst section traces the Thus, the forest was deeply imbricated in the material and principal features of the livelihood pattern that had developed cultural life of the region.

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