Adivasis Forest Areas and Revolution for Council for Social Development

8/12/2019 Adivasis Forest Areas and Revolution for Council for Social Development

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The Fire in India's Forests: Forests, Adivasis and Revolutionaries

In the recent debates about the intensifying civil war between the Indian state and the Maoistmovement, a great deal of discussion has taken place - both in the mainstream media and in other

circles - about the nature, implications and likely outcome of this war. Much of this discussion has been

based on certain assumptions. These assumptions can be summarised as an equation: most Maoists areadivasis most adivasis movements are in forest areas and therefore, in short, !forest areas " adivasi

movements " Maoists.! #ome add a fourth part to the equation !"revolutionaries.!

#ome - particularly those close to the state machinery - take this equation as practically a$iomatic %they

may not share the positive implications of the notion of !revolutionaries!, but they do constantly harpon how the Maoists aim to overthrow the Indian state&. 'ut many others, including leftists and

progressives, also tend to largely adopt this approach. They nuance it, in particular, by pointing out that

there is no equivalence between adivasi movements and Maoists but otherwise, these categories are

assumed to be overlapping. Those more sympathetic to the Maoist movement tend to assume moreequivalence than others.

'ut there is nothing particularly obvious or natural about this equation. (or instance, the Maoistmovement, while widespread and large, is not and never was a !tribal movement!, either in mass terms

or in political character and the idea of the forest areas as the heart of revolution in India was certainlynot widely held twenty or thirty years ago.

)et, on the other hand, this is not an artificial construct either. There is no doubt that there is, indeed,

substantial overlap between these categories today. *ow did this situation come to pass+ $amining

this question both can help to analyse the situation in forest areas and also reveal more about the Indian political conuncture today, and the possibilities for revolutionary action in such a conuncture.

Forest Areas

The first term in the equation - Indias forest areas - have a very specific history and political economy,

which is often lost sight of in current debates. The present author has discussed this political economy

in more detail in an earlier article %/opalakrishnan 0121&. There are some elements of this situation that

are of political importance for understanding the political conuncture in forest areas today.

Indias forest management system is rooted in the forest laws, and in particular in the series of (orest

3cts passed by the 'ritish between 2456 and 2708. 9umerous historians and scholars have documented

the origins of Indias forest management policies. Their roots lie in the imperial need for cheap timber,

driving the 'ritish to e$propriate indigenous management systems and replace them with e$tractive,centralised control regimes built around scientific forestry;. <ritical to these regimes was the notion of

a bounded space = a territory = that is then reduced to state property, whose value; is inde$ed by one

or the other feature %timber, originally, or keystone species; in the case of tiger reserves today&. arliersystems - a variety of forms of village management, religious customs, community management, etc. -

were concerned with regulation of use and %at most& e$traction of revenue. Their purpose did not

revolve around the e$traction of a single commodity this was an innovation of the 'ritish.

In the process of declaring these closed areas of state property, the 'ritish attempted to force thee$isting management systems and production systems into a narrow frame of documentary private

property !rights!, to be recognised through a process of !settlement! %which was introduced into the

later (orest 3cts and remains in the currently operational Indian (orest 3ct&. In the colonial view thisshould have been sufficient to address the needs of the subect population.



'ut in practice both the 'ritish and the postcolonial Indian state have met with fierce resistance in their

e$propriation drive in forest areas. The result was that the process of !settlement! of rights was never

completed in most forest areas, and even where it was completed, multiple uses and vestigial collective

management systems remained in operation. The result has been that one reality e$ists in the world oflaw, where forests are uninhabited wilderness, and another e$ists in reality, where millions use and

depend on them for survival. More important than the fact that these uses are illegal is that they are not

recorded, and as such outside the knowledge of the state system.The result of this is that there is no security of private property, in the ideal capitalist sense, in forestareas. >ather, what e$ists is a legal twilight ?one, a contested situation with competing claims, de facto

management systems that clash with de ure ones and state policies that are based on a combination of

fantasy at the time of policymaking and brutality in implementation.

In turn, this means that the operations of the state in forest areas acquires certain very specificcharacteristics. The use of force becomes e$tremely common. @n the one hand, the normal constraints

of bourgeois law do not e$ist. @n the other, the lack of secure property relations means that

accumulation in these areas is simultaneously constrained and driven by the direct e$ercise of stateforce. <lose relations with the formal state machinery are a precondition for acccumulation in forest

areas, whether one is a tendu leaf contractor, a landlord, a tea estate, a forest guard or Aedanta.

#uch a situation proves to be a useful !compromise! for the ruling classes in a conte$t where state force

alone simply cannot e$terminate or remove the entire forest dwelling population. @n the one hand, thecontinuous subsidy to capital that is created by the provision of free or cheap minerals, water, timber

and land from forest areas has contributed a untold and inestimable amount to Indias capitalist

development. In the recent neoliberal era, in particular, global dynamics have made resource captureand e$propriation a key part of the dynamic of capital accumulation. The result has been a rapid

acceleration of the use of the forest laws for e$propriation of resources.

@n the other, this situation has produced a partially proletarianised population of crores of people =

mostly, but not only, adivasis = whose traditional productive resources %particularly forest produce&have been e$propriated, and who are now vulnerable to super-e$ploitation as migrant workers. 9or are

the consequences limited to present day forest dwellers the resulting desperate reserve army ofworkers has had a historical and geographical ripple effect, diminishing the strength of the workingclass as a whole %most visible in the heavy and increasing use of adivasi migrant labour across Indias

developed; capitalist belts&.

3s a result, the link between capital, the state and the use of force is blatantly obvious in forest areas in

a manner that it is not elsewhere. This has direct implications for peoples resistance, revolutionary politics and resistance movements. The remainder of this paper will seek to e$plore these implications.

Adivasis and Adivasi Areas

3s said above, not all forest areas are adivasi or tribal homelands - the forests of Bttarakhand,

*imachal, Cashmir and 9orth 'engal come to mind, among others. #imilarly, not all adivasis are forestdwellers. 'ut it is certainly true that there is an overall linkage between adivasi communities and forest

areas that has been e$plored at length elsewhere.

This link, in turn, has involved adivasis in a particular relationship with the Indian state that needs to beconsidered in depth. Though there has been a tendency to equate all distinct features of adivasi society

with the identity of adivasis - to attribute, in a sense, a kind of ethnic e$ceptionalism to these societies -

the historical development of these communities since the mid nineteenth century has also been shaped

by the dynamics of capitalism in India, and in particular by its dynamics in forest areas. This is not to



say that adivasis do not have a strikingly distinct cultural and social identity, but to point out that this

identity has had a dialectical relationship with capitalism in these areas. To enter into a full discussion

of this process would be out of the scope of this paper, but we can sketch two particular features of

adivasi society that are noteworthy in this conte$t.

The first is the oft-noted persistence of community activity and collective production among adivasis,

and the lower - relatively speaking - level of internal class differentiation. In forest areas, the dynamic

of the forest laws - and in particular the almost complete lack of secure property rights - has clearlycontributed to this reality in two ways. (irst, class differentiation, as occurs in general among the peasantry, has been inhibited. Dhere internal differentiation has occurred, as it has in all communities,

such differentiation has also been distorted. It has produced small elites, generally among those close

to the state machinery %including beneficiaries of reservations, panchayat leaders, E(M <ommitteemembers, etc.&, who are polarised against large masses of people on the brink of destitution. This is

also true among non-adivasi forest dwelling communities, most of whom were already integrated into a

greater degree of private property relations prior to the declaration of state forests, but among whomsimilar processes have operated in forest areas. The lack of differentiation makes collective production

still a possibility.

Two other dynamics push this possibility towards an actuality. <ollective production remains a key

source of livelihood for most such communities. (urther, it becomes a key form of resistance as it facescontinuous repression. 3s a result, such forms of production get reproduced, and the accompanying

cultural and social forms become a locus of identity and resistance. This is most visible in the

9ortheast, where tribal communities have literally been at war against e$propriation attemptscontinuously since the colonial period. In central India, where such struggles have been less successful,

the state suppression of community management systems has progressed much further = but they

remain alive in such phenomena as community forest management %practiced by thousands of villages

in @rissa and Eharkhand&, collective gathering and management of minor forest produce, collectivegra?ing systems, etc.

The second noteworthy feature is the nature of popular struggle in adivasi areas. (rom the period of

'ritish rule onwards, adivasis have waged a militant struggle against oppression. The dynamics notedabove have shaped these struggles in a direction where they tend to raise more fundamental questions,and generate more political demands, than thos in other areas. In particular, the heavy use of state force

in forest areas, and the close link between state power and accumulation, means the state both is and is

seen to be the direct agent of oppression. Thus, resistance in adivasi areas confronts the state moredirectly than in other areas, opening an opportunity for radical politics. It is no accident therefore that

many forms of radical struggle, whether the undivided <FI, the !peoples movements! wave of the

2741s, and the Maoists today, have developed mass bases in adivasi areas.

Resistance and Popular Movements in Forest Areas

Indeed, these historical dynamics have shaped most forms of left and progressive political activity in

forest areas. In evaluating this impact, one also needs to take note of the changes that have taken placein the countrys forest administration since the passage of the (orest %<onservation& 3ct in 2741. This

law effectively took control over forest land away from #tate governments and increased the

centralisation of the already dictatorial forest law regime. The same tendency was repeated, andaccelerated, by the #upreme <ourts intervention in forest policy from 2775 onwards through the T.N.Godavarman case. Guring this period, up to appro$imately 0116, the countrys forest policy was driven

by discussinos among a small group of involved parties - none representing forest dwellres - in the

proceedings of this case.



Dhile there is a great diversity of current forms of resistance in forest areas, we can sketch the current

situation by e$amining each of the following %among !left! forces&: parliamentary parties, non-

parliamentary !peoples movements! and, finally, the armed organisations.

Parliamentary parties in forest areas: The main parliamentary Heft parties of India havehistorically had a significant presence in forest and tribal areas, including in Maharashtra,

Eharkhand, <hhattisgarh, 3ndhra Fradesh, Tripura, Dest 'engal, etc. In ideological terms, while

at times recognising the specificity of adivasi issues and struggles, the general ideologicaltendency has been to view the adivasi question from the prism of the struggle of the peasantry.

<entral to the struggles led by Heft parties in these areas has hence been the struggle against

landlords and for land rights. *owever, this has declined in recent decades, which we canconecture is due to the general shift of the Heft parties towards economism and parliamentarism

in recent decades, their work in forest areas has also suffered. In addition to the general decline

of these parties, one can note that there is a specific problem in forest areas which would

contribute to such difficulties. #ince parliamentarism bereft of struggle brings with it the need toengage in patron client politics, delivering !results! to ones supporters by accessing state

power, it requires a form of institutional fle$ibility which is simply absent in forest areas. (or

instance, even obtaining such a basic document as a ration card is often impossible for those

who live entirely on forest land, and obtaining title to ones lands under cultivation is alsorendered very difficult by the (orest %<onservation& 3ct and the orders of the #upreme <ourt.

The result is that, in the absence of a wider agenda for transformation of social power, bothstruggle and maintaining electoral support becomes more difficult and party cadres tend to

become entrenched in local power structures.

Non-parliamentary democratic organisations: (rom the late 2781s onwards there has also been

a rapid growth of what are variously described as !peoples movements!, movement

organisation, mass organisations, etc., in forest areas. These should not be confused with funded 9/@s engaging in welfare activities, but rather belong to the category of what are often called

!new social movements! in international discussions. These organisations encompass a large

diversity of si?es %ranging from #tate-wide mass movements to small groups with a presence ina few villages&, organisational forms and strategic orientations. 9evertheless there are also

certain features that characterise most, though of course not all, of these organisations. These

features include internal structures that are less formal than a party %often centred around anindividual or small group&, a mode of organising centred around grassroots mass work, and an

ideological orientation that most often blends agrarian populism with more orthodo$ forms of

leftism. This ideological orientation has found a particular match in the reality of forest areas,where the direct confrontation with the state encourages and provides space for political

discourses and ideologies that, implicitly or e$plicitly, insist on a transformation of state

structures. 3nti-displacement struggles, which mirror the situation in forest areas in many

respects, offer similarly fertile ground for raising these issues. In this sense these groups differfrom all streams of the Indian <ommunist movement, which have largely maintained orthodo$

understandings focused on !capture! of state power. 3s a result, the demands of these

organisations have at times had an impact on political discourse that is considerably out of proportion to their si?e or political weight, such as in their mobilisation for local government

and direct democracy as well as their focus on issues like environmental protection,

displacement and rehabilitation, community resource control, etc. )et, at the same time, if theerror of the left parties has been to assume that the situation in the rest of the country can simply

be e$tended to forest areas, the error many of these organisations make is the opposite: to

assume that the peculiar configuration of forest areas %or anti displacement struggles& can

simply be e$tended to areas with a more !normal! capitalist configuration. De need not go into



the details of the resulting difficulties here, but one clear impact of this approach has been to

inhibit the growth of these organisations and their platforms outside of these areas. The loose

organisational structure, individualised leadership and tendency to privilege purely political

demands over class demands %a kind of mirror image of the Heft parties economism& all emergefrom the conte$t of a particualr configuration of state power, and all hinder the e$pansion of

these groups to other conte$ts.

Armed organisations: (inally, the <FI%Maoist& and other armed organisations have also foundtheir strongest base today in the forest belt of <hhattisgarh, Eharkhand, western @rissa, eastern

Maharashtra and parts of Dest 'engal. Indeed, outside of their old strongholds in 3ndhra

Fradesh and 'ihar, the main e$pansion of these organisations in the past two decades has beenin the forest areas of these #tates. This, once again, is not surprising, for the direct confrontation

with the state, the glaring inustice of the legal situation, and the brutally repressive character of

state force in these areas makes armed struggle both more possible and more attractive. )et the

rapid e$pansion of armed struggle in these areas faces much the same obstacle that thedemocratic !movement! organisations face - this kind of pra$is is premised on a configuration

of state power which is not replicated in other areas. Dhile, at the ideological level, the armed

organisations tend to see these areas as the most backward of the !semi-feudal semi-colonial

spectrum!, the operation of peoples war in these conte$ts presumably has been particularlysuitable as a result of the dynamics of forests in particular. Dhether this limitation is amenable

to being overcome by the armed organisations remains to be seen, but for the moment this doesnot seem to be the case. Indeed, if we recognise that the Indian states counter-insurgency

doctrine has always been premised on containment of armed organisations and not on their

defeat, in some senses the <FI%Maoist& today is e$actly where the state would like it to be: predominantly contained to a particular social group, in one geographical region, isolated from

public opinion and treated by even its sympathisers as a !tribal! movement. This is the sinister

side of the states constant equation of forest areas, tribals and the Maoists, for it may sound the

death knell of what claims to be a revolutionary movement.

Conclusion

This brings us to the final question: for those who believe in radical social transformation, what lessons

can be learned from this situation+ The question of !revolutionary! forces in India today requires us todistinguish between forces with a subectively revolutionary consciousness and those playing an

obectively revolutionary role. In terms of the former, there is no doubt that the armed organisations

have the largest mass base that is dedicated to a concept of revolution %notwithstanding the differencesone may have with the particular notion of revolution that they advance&. )et, in terms of the obective

situation, all forces for social change in these areas - in the left sense of social change - are at risk of

encirclement and stagnation. In this sense, in the current scenario, none of them appears to beobjectively in a position to advance revolutionary processes.

If the argument made here is correct, the root of this problem lies in the inability of those of us in theseforces - both at the level of pra$is and at the level of theory - to correctly assess the role of forest areas

in Indian capitalism. (orest areas are seen as merely the most backward of the peasant belts by themainstream left in the country. (or the non-party democratic organisations, their distinctiveness is

recognised, but then proected as a kind of social model for the rest of society, leading to the

assumption that the particular demands and pra$is of work in these areas can e$tend to all. 'oth do not place forest areas within the conte$t of the development, e$pansion and current structure of Indian

capitalism. There is therefore no coherent effort to understand how these struggles fit into the larger

developments and restructuring of Indian capitalism. (or instance, the use of law and the forest model



in other areas how systems of collective resource control can be productively e$tended to, for instance,

urban or semi-rural environments, without assuming the e$istence of a !community! how a class

alliance can be developed between these struggles and those for, for instance, greater control over

production in factory environments. These are among the questions that forces for social change needto consider. In the absence of this, these forces udgments of the balance of forces and corresponding

political strategies are premised on an essentially ahistorical understanding of forest regions.

This is a microcosm of the problem faced by the Indian left from its inception: the difficulty ofconceptualising a socioeconomic formation that is as diverse, comple$ and multifaceted as the one thatfaces us in India. 'ut in the current conte$t of forest areas its consequences may be particularly

disturbing. 3t a time when left forces are either stalemated or in retreat among almost all other sectors

of Indian society, forests and forest dwellers are perhaps the one social group among whom left forcesremain both vibrant and growing. It would be a tragedy if our organisations failed to use this

opportunity because of an incorrect conception of Indian capitalism, and as a result allowed the heroic

struggles of forest dwellers to become one more episode in the string of defeats that has characterisedso many of the struggles of the Indian working class.

REFERENCES

/opalakrishnan, #hankar %0121&. !(orest 3reas, Folitical conomy and the !Heft-Frogressive Hine! on@peration /reen *unt!, adical Notes, May 1. 3vailable at:

http:JJradicalnotes.comJcontentJviewJ28J7J, last accessed on #eptember 0, 0122.

http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/137/39/



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Adivasis Forest Areas and Revolution for Council for Social Development