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The abandoning of swidden cultivation, combined with the conversion to Christianity, also changes the ways in which people interact with the environment. Since Christianization in a way “numbs” the entities who, according to the community religion, are present in the land, it changes the way in which people perceive the nature amidst which they live. This gradually creates room for a less complicated exploitation of the land, as well as for more objectified notions of nature as “beautiful” and “sound” in its own right. With the predatory entities being granted less of a presence, people are free to use, exploit, and control their environment, without facing the threat of (supernatural) retaliation. Likewise, that same nature can serve as décor for the aspirations of ethno-nationalist groups, who consider themselves the ultimate owners of nature vis-à-vis non-Garo outsiders, against whom they agitate.
Conclusion: Ownership, Access, and Belonging
In this chapter, I have explored Garo perceptions of land and nature, and how these are changing over time. I have shown how these perceptions are inspired by religious ideas, and rooted in agricultural practices. I started out by showing that the “sacrality” of land for indigenous people provides a powerful argument against its alienation by capitalist forces. In the struggle for land fought by the Dongria Khond, it seems likely that this argument proved convincing, and helped them to win the case against the Vedanta mining company. Ethnic activists who campaign for the creation of a Garo homeland, such as the Garo student unions, appeal to a similar sentiment when they call for the defense of Garo soil against outsiders. However, referring to this special relationship in the Garo case seems to neglect the fact that, at least traditionally, Garo did not primarily consider nature as beneficial. According to Garo practitioners of the community religion, the land in which they live is inhabited by primordial entities with whom they need to negotiate its occupation. This negotiation, which involves acknowledgment of the deities as well as extensive sacrifices, creates a privileged relationship, which in turn produces the exclusion of outsiders.
The conversion of many Garo to Christianity has implied gaining control of, if not the numbing of, the deities of the community religion by Christian divinity. People therefore no longer need to justify and negotiate their usage of the land with its primordial owners. Even in the cases where people have not converted to Christianity, and continue to practice the community religion, the growing Christian presence has resulted in a gradual decline of their fear of the primordial entities. Consequently, these conversions have facilitated more “possessive” and permanent forms of cultivation, for example the creation of orchards. Religious conversions have also weakened the position of the village head, since it has taken away some of the responsibilities of his office. Instead, the authority of the village head has come to depend largely on legal entities created by the Indian state. This shift in terms of legality has contributed significantly to the emergence of conditions that have rendered privatization viable over collective ownership.
In the Garo Hills, indigenous claims tend to be formulated by urban Christian activists, who themselves have little or no involvement with agriculture, or rural life for that matter. Privatized agriculture does not fit with their projections of Garo indigeneity. Rather, they consistently link the latter to swidden cultivation. As I have shown, this emphasis fits in with national expectations of “tribe” and global ideas about indigenous people, but does not necessarily do justice to Garo villagers’ much more complex and engaged understandings of the environment in which they live.
Erik de Maaker (PhD, Leiden) is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University in the Netherlands. He studied anthropology in Amsterdam and Leiden and wrote a PhD dissertation that takes mortuary rituals as a starting point for an analysis of social and economic transformation in upland Northeast India. His current research focuses on the redefinition of land as a resource, as well as its changing importance in processes of “place” making in the extended eastern Himalayas. Erik has published several articles in academic journals and edited volumes, and is preparing a monograph on economic and religious transformations of society in upland Northeast India. For more details regarding his research and publications, see https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/ErikdeMaaker.
Notes
1. The film was produced by Survival International, and can be viewed on their website at http://www.survivalinternational.org/films/mine (accessed 11 December 2014).
2. In January 2014, Garo Hills had approximately sixteen militant groups. Although no one could give exact numbers, the general impression was that some of these were very small, almost non-existent. Others supposedly counted several dozen, if not several hundred, men and women. Some of the better-known “underground” groups are the Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA), the A’chik National Liberation Army (ANLA), the Garo Liberation Tigers (GLT), and the A’chik (Garo) Tiger Force (ATF). In 2004 the A’chik National Volunteers Council (ANVC) signed a ceasefire agreement, and is transforming itself into a regular political group. Sections of it have contested local elections as the ANVC-D (Democratic).
3. Coal mining was an important economic activity until early 2014, when the National Green Tribunal (a national Indian Legislative Council) imposed a ban on small-scale unlicensed mining. The ban has been largely successful, and coal mining in the state has mostly come to a halt.
4. Garo social models emphasize kin ties, but it is important to note that kinship is always defined in a broad sense, and thus not limited to relationships defined by “blood.” Rather, kinship provides an encompassing social “grid” that allows people to frame all the relationships that they trace among each other. For instance, Garo traditionally value cross-cousin marriages. Given that kinship is classificatory, who exactly qualifies as cross-cousins is open to interpretation.
5. Garo trace matrilineal descent, and village headmanship is carried over from mother to daughter. The headman title thus rests with the husbands of these successive women. This male entitlement through marriage explains why marriage alliances, that are carried over from various generations, tend to be a central cultural concern (de Maaker 2012).
6. This explains why the boulder principle has also been appropriated to substantiate ethno-nationalist claims. In 1997 in Tura, the largest town of the Garo Hills, a kusi-boulder was erected by its “citizens” (according to the plaquette placed on it). Its planting, in the central area of Ringre, emphasizes that Tura is above all a “Garo” town. Yet historically, Tura has had a largely non-Garo population, created as it was by the former colonial administration, who brought in a lot of Bengali and Assamese, and lately their numbers have been on the rise. As a reaction to this, it seems, Garo indigenous activists want to claim the city as exclusively Garo.
Bibliography
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