Tribal Culture and the Roots of Militancy

By Felix Padel November 2010

How could peace return to the tribal areas? Senior representatives of Government have said “through
development” – but what kind of development? Mainstream models of development received from the
West have been totally top-down, and materialist. If a real dialogue, on equal terms, can be instituted
widely, to correct imbalances of power, and if the rule of law can be assured in such a way that adivasis
and dalits can become confident of getting justice in the courts, even when they have met abuse from
security forces, then perhaps the dire situation can be turned around, and India can show the way in de-
escalation of conflict.

Parallels with the wider “War on Terror” are instructive. It is clear to most observers that the American-
led attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, far from reducing terrorism, have exponentially increased the
number of potential terrorists, simply through “collateral damage”: the number of civilians in those
countries humiliated, harmed or killed by invading forces has instigated a massive backlash. Similarly
with the Maoist insurgency – attempts to subdue it by force echo the colonial model of suppressing
insurgency, with immense “collateral damage” upon civilians – ultimately, the approach of Brigadier-
General Dyer in 1919 Punjab, or the wholesale slaughter used to end the Tamil tiger insurgency in Sri
Lanka.

Just as allopathic medicine tends to treat symptoms rather than causes of disease, through radical
surgery or drugs that kill large numbers of (mostly healthy) bacteria, while homoeopathic and ayurvedic
medicine treat ailments holistically, without intrinsic violence, treating like with like in tiny doses, or
drawing on the healing properties in every plant; so violent suppression instigates violent reaction, while
dialogue and rule of law offer infinite possibilities for peace. Dialogue means all sides speaking their
criticisms and admitting their mistakes, and a retreat from the atmosphere of terror and repression.
India has “shown the way” to the rest of the world in many periods – could it show another way out of
this situation of descent into civil war?

In a way, modern society thrives on conflict and competition, and war carries a certain attraction, which
works through the process of escalating polarization – right-left, win-lose, right-wrong. Sociologists and
anthropologists have much to offer in conceptualizing the problems that plague society and offering
solutions. Using a minimum of jargon, with a holistic attention to social structure, what insights can
social scientists give for improving the dire circumstances in tribal areas?

Analaysing tribal culture

The stereotype of anthropologists wanting tribals to stay static like in a museum has valid roots, from
Dalton’s “ethnographic zoo” of 1860s/70s – perpetuated in Bhubaneswar’s annual “tribal village” where
adivasis are treated like a human zoo.
Wherever there has been mass displacement a tribal museum’s been set up – e.g. two in Bhubaneswar,
one in Koraput – based on items bought by anthropologists. Adivasis going around these museums
experience a sense of soul-death of their culture, & feel belittled, not empowered.

The very act of studying tribal culture is often dehumanizing and objectifying, based on a pseudo-
objectivity. A balance of objective-subjective is required. Without a finely tuned subjectivity of self-
knowledge that admits one’s own relationship with the subject of study and bias, real objectivity is
impossible. To place oneself above or apart from people studied, or use dehumanizing jargon, gets in
the way of clear thinking and asserts a false claim to status. The colonial model of “knowledge for
control”.

Anthropology in the colonial period was mostly practiced by a small number of administrators &
missionaries who at least took an interest in people’s culture. The trouble was, they were limited by the
social evolutionism which almost everyone believed in in the 19 th- early 20th century. Social evolutionism
is the theory that all societies develop through set stages. Developed by Comte & Herbert Spencer, as
well as Marx and Engels, the theory still forms the mainstream paradigm that views tribal culture in
terms of being “primitive” or “backward”.

In a way, social evolutionism is a misapplication of Darwin’s theory of evolution of species – thousands

interacting, each developing on a unique path – to society. Each theorist imposed the idea of a single set
of stages, which is not borne out by nature or evidence. E.g. when British came to India in the 1600s-
1700s, they may have been more highly developed in military technology & some aspects of law and
economics, but in other ways India was more highly developed, in culture, hygene, many manufacturing
skills, and also in aspects of law. When the British imposed a Permanent Settlement and other laws, they
imposed a process of degeneration at the same time as development.

The division of countries into “developed” and “developing” is a colonial construct, and the phrase
introduced by Truman when he became President in 1949 defined the mould of American imperialism:
“underdevelopment” – a word that immediately defined half the world as less developed than America.
Modern society, if one looks at family life or especially sense of community, has actually degenerated.

So what do we mean by development? The World Bank, IMF and other institutions run from Washington
and other capitals, define all their interactions with poorer countries in terms of “development”. In
precisely the same way, the Indian Government defines most of its relationship with tribal people in
terms of “development” on the [remise that they are “underdeveloped”. Yet it is increasingly evident
that a lot of what we have called development is actually destruction. Adivasis are certainly vocal in
saying that displacement for them is not development. Even roads, if they serve to bring timber mafia
and other exploiters to an area, can easily turn out to be the opposite of real development.

Quoting Bhagaban Majhi, a leader of the Kashipur movement in Odisha, “I asked the SP, Agya, what do
you mean by development? Is it development to destroy millions of years old mountains for the sake of
profit for a few officials? Look at the people already displaced! You havn’t properly resetlled them at all
– they havn’t received the jobs & houses you promised them. How can you think of displacing more
people till you’ve properly resettled those already displaced? We are tribal farmers, earthworms – if we
lose our land we die.”

There’s a huge problem of language at the heart of development. “Develop” is an intransitive verb,
referring to an organic process. Administrative discourse often uses it as a transitive verb (“develop
them!”, “they must be developed”). Development is not something that can be imposed. Yet imposing a
single paradigm of development throughout the world is precisely what the World Bank and similar
institutions have been doing.

This is as much a problem of the Left as the Right. Communist countries imposed uniform models of
“development” as ruthlessly as any, and there is a tendency from the both sides to depict any positive
view of tribal society as “primitive romanticism”, with minimal quoting the views of tribal people at all.
Too often, their voices are absent from studies of their own development or displacement

Adivasi society places high value on sharing and equality, looking on waste and discrimination as
uncivilized. Modern anthropology has progressed by critiquing top-down colonial models, bringing a
reverse perspective. Too often, anthropologists are a lonely witness to highly civilized cultures facing an
onslaught from outside forces – an onslaught that always starts by defining tribal culture as backward &
uncivilized!

In terms of equality, sharing, knowledge of nature, plants, water, and the principle of long-term
sustainability, tribal cultures are a lot more highly developed and civilized than mainstream society.
Women have a higher status in many ways, more in control of the economics of their own labour.
Children are treated with a lot more respect and allowed to learn at their own pace, from the adults
they are drawn to learn from. As for the problem of power and law – it’s true, there have been tribal
kingdoms, and since British times there’s been a tendency to elevate “headmen” above the rest, and use
a tribal elite as instrument of control, but this goes against the strong sense of equality in tribal culture.
Consider the custom for resolving legal disputes, reported from numerous adivasi societies: the focus is
reconciliation. Both parties end up being fined, even if one more than the other, and the fine has to pay
for a feast of reconciliation. What can be more civilized than this?

Tribal insurgency and the system of endemic exploitation

From the Paharia in what is now Jharkhand in the 1780s, Bhils from the 1820s, Munda, Ho and Konds
from the 1830s, to the Santal Hul in 1856, Birsa Munda in the 1890s, the Bastar rebellion of 1910, and
the Quit India movement in Koraput in 1942-3, when Lakhman Naik was jailed and hanged for a crime
he didn’t commit, the feudal relationship of exploitation and dispossession accentuated during British
rule by draconian demands for revenue was at the heart of the grievances causing militancy. Then, as
now, it was attempts to make land more “profitable” that caused trouble.

This is why B.D.Sharma, as Commissioner for SCs & STs characterized a state of war being waged by the
state against tribal people………………
Starvation deaths and farmers’ suicides are the fruit of a system of endemic exploitation. Arundhati
Roy’s “Walking with comrades” shows why so many adivasi women and men youth join the Maoists. A
main motivating factor – as senior government officials often admit - is simply the number of atrocities
committed by security forces, with impunity. Where’s the hope for justice?

An interview with senior police officer E.N.Rammohan, who investigated the recent ambush of 76
jawans in Dantewara, in Tehelka (12.6.2010) – “Bringing in the army against the naxals will be a
disaster” – spells this out. Many units of the security forces are out of control. Often terrified
themselves, and taught that all adivasis are Maoists, and that Maoists are terrorists, they often commit
atrocities beyond imagining when entering tribal villages. The image of several girls, their corpses
carried on poles and labeled without evidence as Moists, encapsulated “Operation Green Hunt” in…….

Another root is displacement. Of an estimated 60 million village people displaced since Independence,
approximately half are adivasis, and a quarter dalits. Less than 5% have been properly resettled or
improved their standard of living. Between Resettlement & Rehabilitation as it is supposed to happen,
and the reality on the ground, there is a Reality Gap (Padel & Das 2011).

But how far does Maoist insurgency emerge out of rebellions against colonial rule, and how far is it an
alien import? Bastar had strong movements against steel plants long before salwa judum started in
2005. From the killing Saraswati in Kandhamal in August 2008, to public support for the People’s
Committee Against Police Atrocities in West Midnapore in November, and for the Chasi Mulya Adivasi
Sangho in Narayanpatna (South Odisha) in 2009, Maoist support has often a kiss of death to genuine
movements against exploitation, used to justify draconian repression and mass arrests.

Analysing the roots of militancy

As the Maoists say, the civil war escalating in India’s tribal areas is essentially a class war – just like the
“war on terror” against militant Islam in some of the world’s most impoverished countries.

But (in both cases) the two sides mirror each other’s violence. Both believe in violence. Both believe that
sacrificing lives is often necessary, and openly speak of their own jawans as martyrs. Both sides are also
materialist in outlook. We won’t get a critique of the mining industry from the Maoists.

Mao’s violence in Tibet, in the Cultural Revolution, and especially in the “Great Leap Forward” – based
on insane increases in quotas of steel production, was frequently anti-peasant, often killing his own
ardent comrades/supporters when they tried to tell him the truth (e.g. about the fake steel quotas and
mass starvation). Mao was great at his own PR, which is why such different views of him co-exist. In this,
he resembles mining companies, whose PR image differs radically from their reality.

Maoist attacks on mines & factories show they are more interested in getting guns and explosives than
stopping operations. Though they ask for cancelling MoUs, there’s a lot of evidence that big companies
pay them protection money, and that they get funds from China (as with Nepali Maoists). China
exemplifies a creep from communism to an extreme form of capitalism. Perhaps there is no
contradiction any more. Marx made the best critique of capitalism, but did in choosing dialectical
materialism as his philosophical base, did he lay grounds for this transition back to capitalism?
Adivasis face a situation of genocide. The invaders are a multitude of corporations, with dispossession by
mining companies at the forefront of a land takeover that replicates the genocide of native Americans,
the Highland Clearances in Scotland. What is sobering to remember about General Dyer in 1919 Punjab
is how most Britons supported him afterwards, from a belief in use of force. One of Gandhi’s greatest
actions was the report he wrote, showing how widespread humiliations, beatings & violence by the
security forces had a causative effect inflaming Punjab.

What’s taking place is a resource war. The violence descending on India’s resource-rich tribal heartland
is a classic manifestation of the resource curse. Neoliberal economics reinforces the belief – just as in
the Highland Clearances – that adivasis’ way of life is “uneconomic”.

Possibilities for peace - a sociological perspective

Recognising the process of escalating polarization is the starting point. Mainstream and Maoist is one
level. At anoth level, Jairam Ramesh spelt out a split between “two cultures” (EPW….): one that believes
in economics, the other in the environment. In many ways, adivasi society is (or was) based on an
ecological awareness.

Compared to “terrorists”, such as Islamic extremists or Tamil Tigers, Maoists are remarkably restrained,
in as far as suicide bombings are not a tactic to date, and atrocities against civilians are generally
apologized for (e.g. the blowing up of an ambulance in Kandhamal), even after their leader Azad was
apparently murdered in a false encounter while negotiating for peace (1 st July……?). Yet when they
target police, they escalate the violence, and instigate a backlash. The violence falls in villages –
sacrificed by both sides.

In many ways, for corporations & those who believe that the state should act as their facilitator, Maoists
are an easier enemy to deal with than adivasis protesting they won’t give up their land. For instance, in
Kalinganagar the Bisthapit Birodhi Jan Manch is not Maoist, but when steel companies are allowed to
pay for police stations (as happened in December 2009), and on their behalf preside over mass violence
against communities, there is a grave danger of driving people committed to non-violence into Maoist
arms.

In implementing the Rule of Law, Jairam Ramesh’s Environment Ministry has made a start. Mining
companies have often been among the main violators of the law), especially of the Environment
Protection Act 1986, which in effect has been one of the main laws protecting adivasi rights. EIAs
became mandatory in 1994, but have often been a sham as has been shown. Public Hearings are
mandatory since 1997, have been an even more outrageous scam, as has not been so clearly shown.

But what about atrocities by security forces? Can there be peace without Justice? Could there be a
Peace & Reconciliation process? Transitional Justice?

Real Development could be effected simply by assuring Rule of Law. If adivasis can go to a police station
and register an FIR against police who have abused them - if they can go to the courts and expect justice
- this would put an end to exploitation & dispossession: the main causes of impoverishment. Tribal areas
can then truly develop, according to a process in their own hands, with government servants
implementing the rule of law will be serving the people as they are meant to.

The trouble is, the agenda has being set from outside the country. World Bank loans paying for mining
infrastructure demand huge sums in annual repayment. These come with “conditionalities” aimed at
opening up tribal areas to penetration by MNCs, who take main profits outside the country. Even
ensuring 26% profits for local development (as in new draft of MMDR act) is meaningless: a. because
mining & metal has never been profitable – profit comes at a later stage when the metal is traded; b.
because this money is never democratically controlled, so top-down approach & corruption through
contractors is guaranteed.

Tribal people see the process of takeover & invasion in terms of being “flooded out with money”. In
their culture, money was never an important value, compared to relationships with people with nature.
How can democratic tribal institutions be brought to bear in the decision-making process?
transparently! Not behind closed doors! Is it still possible to achieve the Panchayat Raj, implementing
the PESA Act of 1996?

There is a growing sense that the World Bank/IMF has imposed social & environmental catastrophe in
many parts of the world, and that the loans they gave should not be paid back, and certainly should not
be used to dictate financial policies from aborad! If the Rule of Law is to be implemented, what about
bringing those responsible for dams & deforestation to justice too, and cancelling the debts?

Till that happens – and the discourse has hardly started yet - how to initiate a return to peace? In many
ways the polarizations occurring throughout the world – first the cold war, capitalism versus
communism, now capitalism versus militant Islam, with wars against Maoists in remote areas – are a
displacement. The third world war started during the cold war, and it is essentially a war over resources:
above all over land, but also water, minerals, forests, and mountains.

War has an attraction built on filmy excitement, and the capitalist emphasis on competition. How to
write and speak and start to think in a way to promote peace?