By Barnes L Mawrie
Long ago Chief Seattle had rightly remarked, “We only borrow our land from our children”. These words are pregnant with meanings. They express the age-old sentiments of the tribal people who always look at land as a community entity which should never end up as private property. Land for the tribals have a lot of significance: It is a mother because it shelters them and provides them with every means of nourishment. Land is life because a person lives in it, breathes its air and is finally laid to rest in it. Thus land marks the beginning and end of a person’s life. For the tribal people land is sacred as it is considered God’s gift to them. In fact, from times immemorial it is believed that different plots of land were allotted by God to different tribes/clans. God himself led the different tribal groups into their present habitats and so the land which they occupy now is a sacred inheritance. For this reason, tribal people consider land a common property, given to a clan or a tribe. The concept of “private land” is alien to them. In short, every member of the tribe/clan has equal right to land.
Among some tribes today, there is still the traditional practice of having a community land. If it is of the village then every member of the village would have a right to it and if it is of a clan then every clan member has a right to it. Thus every person or family has a right to occupy a plot within the community land in order to build his/her house and to cultivate for self sustenance. Unfortunately, the British colonists came and ruined this traditional system by introducing the concept and practice of “private land”. The tribal people in the past never had land documents (patta) or land registrations. Thus land that has ceased to be used by a family for a period of time would go back to the community. It was the British who introduced such a selfish system thereby corrupting the tribal mind and the indigenous wisdom.
Today we are witnessing an aberration of this new law where we see some individuals possessing vast tracks of land as their private property. Persons who have money go into a spree of land acquisition and their thirst for more seems insatiable. In recent years we have seen rich coal mine owners aggrandizing themselves with land acquisitions. Even our government has fallen into this bad practice. God alone knows, why do they need to acquire thousands of acres in view of the so called “New Shillong” or may be they have a hidden agenda. Unfortunately, the Church itself is to be blamed for acquiring more land than what it needs. The negative repercussions of this are already seen today. The percentage of landless tribals in our region is growing year by year. Even in rural areas where we are inclined to think that land belongs to the villagers, the truth is that much of land here is owned by a few crore-pattis in the cities. We speak of feudal system in other parts of India, yet feudalism is fast becoming a reality even among our tribal people. Hundreds of poor tribal families work as tenants in plots of land situated in their very own village. It is here that the tribal society needs to pause and think. Should we become victims of foreign mentality, foreign laws and practices when we see them as enslaving our own people? Or should we not go back to our age-old wisdom and practice?
The solution is not simple as the problem itself is very complex. There is need for enactment of laws by the government with regard to land ownership system. According to me, we need urgently a “Land ceiling law” to put a halt to the greed of rich landlords/Church and government. Land ceiling system which is being practiced in other parts of India should also be enforced among the tribals in North-east India. No tribal person, however rich he/she may be, should be allowed to own land more than what he/she needs. However, as experience has shown some cunning individuals have circumvented the law by registering different plots in the names of their children and grand children etc. So the ceiling law must be applied to family as a unit and not to individuals. So a family should own only a certain amount of land and not beyond that, depending on the size of the family itself. The excess land should by all means be returned to the community (village or clan). The ceiling law must as well be applied to government departments and to the Church.
Perhaps a time has come when our tribal society has need of such a law to ensure its own survival and integrity. If such laws are not enacted on a priority basis, we run the risk of impoverishing our own people and putting them at the mercy of the rich landlords. If as they say “history repeats itself” then I will not be surprised if one day the landless poor will cause another uprising reminiscent of the French Revolution. Let us not forget that tribal land management system where land is administered by the community, is by far the best because it ensures a healthy and sustainable economy and promotes a sense of solidarity. Private ownership of land on the other hand has been responsible for the uncontrolled destruction of the environment as witnessed in Jaintia Hills and other places. Let us hope that someday some wise tribal statesmen will arise to set right the mayhem that we have created for ourselves.