By Bhogtoram Mawroh
Recently, there was a video that went viral, at least in indigenous people’s (IPs) circles, of India’s position at the 23rd session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, where India’s representative claimed that the concept of IPs is not applicable to India. It was done by referring to the definition of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) given under ILO 169. This particular convention, known as the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention of 1989, is the major binding international convention concerning IPs and a forerunner of the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). India has not ratified the Convention. This means that India is arguing against the definition by referring to the very definition given in the Convention it doesn’t agree with, a highly paradoxical situation. This confusion is made all the more intriguing by the fact that India has ratified UNDRIP, for which ILO 169 was an important milestone. So, it would seem that India’s position that the concept of IPs does not apply to India is a little convoluted. For the UN bodies, there is no such confusion.
In the FAO-UN (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) website, on the page that gives information about India, Schedule Tribes (STs) are mentioned under IPs. The page also states that the Indian Constitution has given explicit recognition to indigenous peoples under Part X, Art. 244–244A, Article 341, and Article 342. Various national legislations, like the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, were also cited, which exist for the protection and promotion of the rights of IPs in the country. Furthermore, official institutions like the Ministry of Tribal Affair, Government of India were also highlighted. Similarly, in the IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) website, the India: Country Technical Note on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues, mentions that while the Government of India rejects equating STs with IPs, it still abides by the operational directives of bilateral and multilateral agencies with regard to IPs while operationalizing projects with their financial aid. This is reflected in IFAD’s Report to the IX Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), where it mentions grants given to projects in India, which include the ones implemented by the North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project (NERCoRMP) in areas inhabited by the Khasi, Garo, Karbi, etc. A look at the advance list of nominations to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2023-2025 for the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs Indigenous Peoples mentions Gam Shimray (a Thangkhul Naga from Manipur) from the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) as one of the two members nominated by the regional organization for the seats in Asia. Streamlet Dkhar (a Khasi from Meghalaya) from the Indigenous Women India Network (IWIN) was also among the nominees in another category which included STs from central India, like the Munda.
So, it is clear that while India’s official position that the concept of IPs does not apply in India, STs have been recognized by relevant UN bodies as IPs. Grassroots organizations in the country are also cognizant of their identity as IPs. In that context, the provisions in the Constitution and the various legislations and agencies working for the benefit of IPs suggest that the difference between the terms STs and IPs is just a matter of academic debate and has no bearing on the actual work being done on the ground. That position is not accurate. The rights given to the IPs in India are predicated on how they are defined, i.e., STs, which itself is very problematic and has long-term implications for their rights, especially their right to the territories.
Though not spelled out in the Indian Constitution, Scheduled Tribes have been identified to have the following features: (i) indications of primitive traits; (ii) distinctive culture; (iii) geographical isolation; (iv) shyness of contact with the community at large; and (v) backwardness. One can already see that there are a lot of problems with these criteria.
Do primitive traits mean a mode of economy that is not advanced, for example, hunting and gathering, while advanced groups are those that practice agriculture? Recent research has shown the Khasi and other IPs in the North East (NE) arrived in the region as farmers. In fact, they brought a lot of new crops, of which rice, in particular the Oryza sativa japonica brought by these farmers, hybridized with Oryza sativa indica, unleashing productivity gains that made the subcontinent one of the most densely populated parts of the planet. Therefore, instead of exhibiting primitive traits, groups like the Khasi actually brought valuable farming technology, which was instrumental in the rise of later Indic kingdoms that flourished in the subcontinent. Every community has its own distinctive culture, so this particular criteria is weak unless distinctive culture is equated with exoticness, which itself has very colonial overtones. As for geographical isolation and shyness of contact with the community at large, these criteria are from the point of view of the mainland, for which the NE is a frontier. In reality, the NE (including Meghalaya) wasn’t really a frontier but a vibrant and bustling zone of interaction that had global consequences. For example, all the citrus species in the world can trace their origins to Nokrek in Garo Hills, where the Indian wild orange (Citrus indica) is found, which is considered to be the progenitor of all citrus species in the world. Also, during the pre-colonial period, oranges from Khasi Hills were carried by Arab traders into Syria. From there, the Crusaders helped to propagate them throughout southern Europe. For the last criteria of backwardness, one can take recourse to the Mandal Commission methodology for identifying social and educational backwardness, which has been accepted by the highly influential Indira Sawhney and etc. v. Govt. of India judgment of 1992. That seems to be the only strong criteria that can be used for identifying STs at the moment. The question that arises is: what happens when a particular group, for example, the Khasi, improves in terms of social and educational backwardness? Does it mean that they will no longer be entitled to the benefits as given in the Constitution, like reservation and Sixth Schedule status?
Reservation of seats in Indian parliaments and state assemblies, or for jobs and education, are about representation, which, unless propelled by legislation, will be highly inadequate considering not just the social and educational backwardness of IPs but also their very low population size (less than 9% of the country’s population). In a country where the caste system has led to the hoarding of social and economic benefits for at least a couple of thousands of years, reservation is the only way minorities, indigenous and non-indigenous, can be made part of the national discourse. Protection of land rights, however, is a little different, and among other political factors, it is linked to a group being tribal. This is the reason the Ladakhis have been demanding Sixth Schedule status so that their land rights can be protected. So, while reservations may still continue, land rights are a little uncertain. This is the reason why there are ongoing attempts to divide indigenous peoples on the basis of religion so that those rights can be weakened and taken away. But does the ILO 169 and UNDRIP acknowledge the land rights of IPs, and are the IPs in the country, including the Khasi, eligible to be considered under it?
The International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 puts forward two criteria for identifying indigenous peoples: subjective and objective. The subjective criterion is self-identification at the individual level and being accepted by the community as being their member. The objective criterion is descent from populations who inhabited the country or geographical region at the time of conquest, colonization, or establishment of present state boundaries and/or retention of some social, economic, cultural, and political institutions, irrespective of their legal status. The objective criterion is the one that is most important here because it talks about long-term settlement, which can be simplified to denote the first settlers, which is actually used colloquially to refer to groups as indigenous. The reason why Native Americans are considered IPs is because, though they arrived in the Americas at around 13,000 years ago, they were the first settlers compared to the Europeans who came later. Recent research has shown that groups today identified as IPs, viz., Austroasiatic (to which Khasi belong) and Tibeto-Burman (Kok-Borok, Tani-Mishmi, Kuki-Chin-Mizo), arrived in the subcontinent before or around 2000 BCE. The Khasi appeared to have arrived a little earlier, around 3000 BCE. As far as present evidence shows, though there were some earlier hunter-gatherer populations (part of the first Out-of-Africa migrants) in the region, they no longer exist, and the Khasi and other IPs are today the oldest and earliest settlers of the NE. They were here much before the arrival of the Indo-Aryan-speaking group, which led to massive population replacement, whose evidence can still be found in the genetic makeup of the subcontinent, especially in North India. So, under the objective criterion, Khasi and other IPs do fall under the definition of indigenous based on ILO 169. Once they do, they qualify for the various commitments made under UNDRIP. One of the main concerns of UNDRIP was to address the dispossession of IPs from their lands, and many of the articles in the Declaration explicitly deal with it. Article 10 clearly states that “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories.” Furthermore, Article 26 goes into more detail about the rights of IPs to their land. So, both ILO 169 and UNDRIP are applicable to the IPs in India, which include the Khasi.
The Indian Constitution is a very progressive document, and it has many provisions for the protection and promotion of the rights of IPs, though it doesn’t accept the concept. But for the political future of the IPs, especially in terms of land rights, the concept of tribe does not provide a guarantee. It is only the concept of IPs, internationally accepted and recognized, that can give that assurance. So while the Government of India does not accept the concept, following the subjective criteria, groups can use self-identification to identify themselves as IPs. A beginning can be made by IPs by substituting the word Indigenous Peoples for tribals while referring to themselves in formal and informal settings and build partnerships with other IPs in India and elsewhere. For that, we need to accept a more inclusive politics, and the biggest roadblock to it, apart from the official narrative for Meghalaya, is the Jaidbynriew politics, which is exclusionary and antagonistic. It is only then we can be truly safe.
(The views expressed in the article are those of the author and do not reflect in any way his affiliation to any organisation or institution)