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an intrinsic relatedness to land, which they locate almost exclusively within the cultural sphere of the rural “traditional” Garo, located in a “rural” environment. Rather than unquestioningly accepting that the Garo, as a “tribal” community, have an “organic linkage” to nature and land, in this chapter I explore Garo villagers’ perspectives on their environment. The Garo Hills have been subject to major transformations in terms of the utilization of land as a resource. I argue that these contribute to increasingly objectified and utilitarian perspectives on land.
Statements through Calendar Art
Garo urban, indigenous activists refer in their publicity materials to a traditional Garo culture that is inevitably rural. This is evident, for instance, in the calendars that are distributed by local student associations. The calendars are sold in support of these organizations to private persons and shop owners. They are written in the Garo language, and are primarily of relevance to readers (and speakers) of Garo. A calendar distributed by the A’chik [Garo] Youth and Cultural Organisation (AYCO) for the year 2006 emphasized the closeness to nature of the Garo people in its imagery. The top half of the calendar had pictures of Garo Wangala dancing, which is regarded as emblematic of the Garo community (de Maaker 2013a). The lower half was dedicated to shifting cultivation, or swiddening. Swidden cultivation is generally considered the cornerstone of the “traditional” Garo lifestyle, since it is seen as a technology that has been sustained over centuries, and distinguishes the hill-farming Garo from the communities of the plains.
The AYCO calendar had several smaller picture-inserts, one of which shows a group of Garo youths posing as “real tribesmen” in a swidden. Going by the caption of this inserted picture, the men are positioned in the field to guard it against other people, “enemies,” who pose a threat to the control of “Garo soil.” The men are dressed in loincloths, which used to be the dress of Garo villagers but is rarely seen nowadays. The youths also wear turbans on top of their long, uncut hair. The headgear, and the uncut hair, are markers of the Garo community religion, although in reality, men belonging to that religion (Songsareks) never untie their hair in public. Moreover, Songsareks tie their turbans tight, and not loose, as is shown in the picture. It is highly unlikely that the Garo youth shown in the calendar are Songsareks, since without exception all urban Garo are Christians. To anonymize their scarcely clothed bodies, and perhaps to reduce the shame Christians are likely to experience due to being pictured in loincloths, the pictured youths have their backs turned to the camera.
Swidden cultivation continues to be important in the Garo Hills, though it is practiced much less now than it was a couple of decades ago. However, swidden cultivation is primarily, if not only, practiced by villagers. Urban youth do not engage in it. They not only consider it tedious to do such work, but also render it a primitive and ineffective agricultural technique, even though it is “truly” Garo. Then, significantly, the bodies of the men shown in the calendar insert mentioned above are relaxed, even though they are keeping guard, suggesting that they are in an environment that is benevolent, a view in line with the globally increasingly dominant “urban” perspective on nature as beautiful, benevolent, and essentially bereft of danger (Ingold 2011). In this chapter, I attempt to explore the Garo relationship to land and nature. The chapter is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork that I have conducted in the Garo Hills region over the last fifteen years, starting with an intensive two-year fieldwork period, during which I researched changing religious practices in the context of my PhD.
Founding Myths and the Inheritance of Collective Claims
In the following sections I will discuss how Garo villagers perceive and use land, and the swidden cultivation that is traditionally practiced on it. Garo only practice swidden cultivation in hill areas. There, “village heads” (nokmas) hold title to what are generally contiguous areas of land (a’king). This encompasses the land that people live on, the fields they cultivate, and jungle areas that may or may not in a subsequent year be transformed into swidden. The people who live on the land, most of whom can, in one way or another, trace kin ties to the village head, have the right to use it for hunting, and collecting fruits, wood, and bamboo. In addition, jungle can be cleared to make fields for swidden cultivation. For a couple of decades now, hill land has also been increasingly used for small orchards, as well as for the mining of coal.3 Land ownership is collective, in that the rights of the village head extend to each of his relatives in the village.4 The village head (a man) and his wife are categorized as “kin seniors” to many of the villagers, and theirs is a hereditary position that carries over from one village head to the next.5
The village head-couple are regarded as the lawful owners, in the sense that they hold legally recognized and recorded property rights. Their title also derives its legitimacy from being rooted in stories of origin. Regarding the village where I conducted most of my fieldwork, people stated that it had been founded “hundreds of years ago,” by a couple who had earlier lived in a village about four miles to the north. When the founding couple died, people said, their place was taken by their daughter and her husband, who became the subsequent village heads. This succession continued for at least “a hundred generations.”
According to the story of origin, the founding couple brought some heavy boulders from a nearby river and planted these in what would become the center of the new village. The planting of the main boulder required the sacrifice of a human to the Guira, a god and ancestor. The head of this victim (it had to be a man) had been buried under the main boulder, I was told. People said that whenever the boulders were replanted, this ritual was repeated, although nowadays the sacrifice of a dog (rather than a human) would do. Quite a few older inhabitants of the village told me that in their youth they had witnessed many of these sacrifices, but since by now the vast majority of the Garo have converted to Christianity, their performance has become very rare.
Conducting sacrifices to the boulder (or rather to Guira) was said to be entirely the responsibility of the village head, his wife’s close matrilineal relatives, and the spouses of the latter. “Anyone else would become blind or lame,” an old man told me. The position of the village head-couple, as heirs to the founders of the village, is thus legitimized by particular ritual capabilities, such as the care of the “seat” of Guira. The village head is also in charge of core elements of some of the rituals of the annual cycle (where these are still conducted). From a religious perspective, this vests the village head with major responsibilities regarding the existence of the village, and claims to the land surrounding it that its inhabitants utilize. The boulder, with its capacity to “protect” people, thus also represents part of the claim that people make to the land. Nowadays, due to the omnipresence of Christianity, few people continue to acknowledge deities like Guira. Nevertheless, throughout the Garo Hills, the boulders continue to be identified as claims to territory, which in the early twentieth century have translated into legally registered land titles.6
A Non-Benevolent Environment?
According to the Garo community religion, the environment in which people live is not necessarily benevolent. Humans and animals did not settle in an “empty” land. Rather, people came to live amidst a variety of entities, generally referred to as mitdes (deities), who are mostly of a malevolent nature. The existence of these deities precedes the creation of the world and the humans who inhabit it. The deities are believed to live on blood, or “life fluid,” which they suck from people as well as from animals and plants (such as rice). The deities are normally invisible, but people at times encounter them in their dreams. Some of the fiercest deities are located in patches of forest land that, due to the presence of these deities, are regarded as “austere land” (a’a raka) that should not be cultivated. A woman who had dreamed of these deities told me that they are “large, muscular people,” whose bodies are covered with hair from top to toe. A son of hers, who