Jharkhand: Internal Colonialism by A K Roy

[Jharkhand Group]

Jharkhand: Internal Colonialism

The recent unrest in the Northeast India has again focused our attention on the problems of uneven development in the country. The issue has assumed a practical political importance, as what used to be at the periphery of the country is gradually approaching towards the centre. Violent clashes between the tribal people and the police have become a major political phenomenon in an area stretching from Gua in south Bihar to Adilabad in northwest Andhra. This vast area, called the central zone of the country, is covered with hills and jungles and inhabited by the tribals and semi-tribal downtrodden people. A big part of this area was known as Jharkhand, meaning literally ‘an area of jungle’, much before Jharkhand as a political demand for home state of hilly people had come to surface. What is more, this geographical centre also represents the industrial heart of India. All the important mines of coal, iron, aluminium, uranium, mica, quartz and all the basic industries like steel, heavy engineering, power plants, etc., lie in this area. The situation and the wealth of natural resources and industry have made Jharkhand a most sensitive area so that a small movement among these hill people or a small commotion creates panic and flutter all over the country.
Mr. N.E. Horo, president of a truncated Jharkhand Party, submitted a memorandum to Mrs. Indira Gandhi in March 1973 demanding the formation of a Jharkhand State within the Union of India. This proposed State included 16 districts, 3 from West Bengal, viz. Bankura, Midnapur and Purulia; 7 from Bihar, viz. Dhanbad, Ranchi, Singhbhum, Santhal Pargana, Hazaribagh, Palamau, and Giridih; 4 from Orissa—Sundargarh, Keonjhor, Mayurbhanj and Sambalpur; and 2 from Madhya Pradesh—Raigarh and Sarguja. These had an area of 1,87,646 sq km. and a population as per the 1971 census of 305,98,991. Before this in 1954, under the leadership of the undisputed spokesman of the tribals Mr. Jaipal Singh, a memorandum was submitted to the State Re-organisation Commission demanding a separate State of Jharkhand for the hill people of South Bihar and south-eastern India. The area of his proposed State was 63,859 sq. miles with a population as per the 1951 census of 1,63,67,175, which was bigger than West Bengal in area and greater than Orissa in population. There is a difference between the two proposed maps of the Jharkhand State. Mr. Jaipal Singh’s map left out some parts of West Bengal claimed by Mr. Horo but included a bigger part of Bihar and M.P. and the lower part of U.P. containing hills and jungles. Apart from these exercises, the hilly and jungle areas of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan also come under the contiguous belt with this Jharkhand with more or less the same problems of subjugation and oppression and so may be safely called a greater Jharkhand. Whatever may be the size and other details, the basic tenet of the Jharkhand conception is that it should be the homeland of oppressed nationalities and suppressed societies within India.

If we go back further in the past, we find the tribals demanding Jharkhand before the Simon Commission in 1928. The issue came also before the Congress party of pre-Independence days. Even in the remote history we find the mention of Jharkhand in Akbar Nama in the Moghul period, and in the literature of the Vaishnavites. The history of the tribal movement in this area is marked by heroic fights and silent sacrifices. The Kol revolt of 1832, the Santhal rebellion of 1856 and the struggle of the great Birsa Munda of Ranchi between 1890-1900 against British imperialism and the local landlords may not be highlighted by official historians to the extent they deserve but living memories still ring in the hearts of the hill and jungle areas, kept alive by songs and dances and the various tales that float over Jharkhand.
Who are the people of Jharkhand? Out of some 3 crore people, 1 crore belong to tribals, forty lakh are Harijans. The total percentage of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC & ST) constitutes about 47 percent, which is definitely much bigger than the national average of 22 percent. Amongst the tribals Santhal, Munda, Kharia, Bhumiz, Kharwar, and Mohauli, come of the Austric family while the Oraon belongs to the Dravidian family, who are said to have migrated from Maharashtra to Bihar in some remote past. Amongst the Harijans the Bowri, Mochi, Rajwar, Dhobi, Bhuiya are the main categories. In addition to these, major inhabitants of this area include Nag, Shadan, Kurmi, Cheri, Mornins (a sect of Muslims), Mandals who constitute the lower strata of the backward castes nearly placed with the Harijans. The Kurmis were with the ST till 1931 and the Mandals are still SC in the adjacent State of West Bengal. Amongst outside workers who have migrated to the area for work in the mines and industries the downtrodden people also constitute the majority. Taking all this, the people coming from oppressed sections constitute more than 75 percent of the population of Jharkhand. It is an interesting feature of Indian body politic that those who are socially exploited are economically exploited also and they live in the exploited and backward area called Jharkhand.

To understand the Jharkhand Movement properly we must understand how uneven development of the area or of the different segments of the society is creating problem of internal colonialism in the model of South Africa, where the exploiters and the exploited are not connected with any social link though staying within the same geographical area. This is a peculiar situation with no parallel anywhere with which we generally tend to compare our conditions like those in Russia, China or Vietnam and try to draw our political line of action. In India, the underdeveloped area is exploited by the developed areas as colonies, as are the underdeveloped by the developed people. Society is physically divided and the gap is increasing to the extent that many Indians are openly declared as foreigners in India. The relationship has become that of between natives and foreign rulers as in the British days. And the rulers and the ruled speak different languages, look differently, go to different schools, join different clubs. Everything is different for the poor. So they cannot be one even as a nation.

This is the real two-nation theory operating in India. The first ingredient of internal colonialism is the caste system, which despite all denials broadly determines the division of labour within the country and still definitely indicates our mental attitude to physical work. According to the report of the Anthropological Survey of India, higher caste controls agricultural production and the less privileged work as farm hands, the more menial task being relegated to those lower down the caste ladder (The Statesman editorial 18.1.76).
Now the caste system instead of withering away has been reinforced by capitalism and turned into racialism so that the upper caste policemen can do anything in a Harijan tribal village which they cannot dream of doing in an upper caste village just as an Englishman could do anything in India, a fraction of which he could not think of doing in England. What happened in Gua and Adilabad could not have happened anywhere with non-tribal agitators, however great and grave the provocation. This is social unevenness.
The second ingredient of internal colonialism is the uneven development of the different regions of the society. Political upheavals, which might lead to development, did not embrace all the areas of this vast country for a long time. In the medieval age, all the civilisations rose and fell on the banks of big rivers like the Sindhu, Ganga, Brahmaputra, Godavari, Narmada, Kaveri and there was a mad rush to capture fertile land around these big rivers. In the colonial era the political centre shifted to the shore like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. Later on shore-based colonial civilisation combined with the river-based feudal civilisation and regulated the politics of the country. The leadership of the anti-imperialistic struggle also came from this area ensuring a lead in political development. This trend is still ruling in the politics of India, whether right, left or centre. But India is not merely the bank of rivers or shore of the sea, but much bigger than that, with hills and jungles, plains and plateaus. In the past these areas cut off from the main stream of political struggle used to enjoy an undisturbed autonomy of age-old inertia. If history did not shake them, it did not exploit them either. But things underwent a qualitative change with the advent of capitalist exploitation. Today they face not only exploitation but submergence, suffocation and gradual extinction. They have now become the colonies of the people of the developed area. Their fate is like that of the original people of America now on the way out of history or those of Africa, the birthplace of homo sapiens who used to be shipped as slaves to work in the tobacco gardens and mines of white masters. India is divided into numerous internal colonies and metropolis calling for a new politics of social revolution. This is regional unevenness.The third ingredient, of course, the universal factor, is the economic unevenness which not only intensifies the extent of disparity which capitalism displays all over the world but something more than that. It is the deformed capitalism from its very birth without social revolution or industrial revolution imposed from above without any scientific education. It is the capitalism of South Africa where industry creates no society but a colony, and that too mostly alien to the society around. The rich and the poor here are not only of different classes but different races, socially cut off with a clear distinction. These privileged parasites, the socially dominating people, have not only the monopoly over the economy, but monopoly over politics as well, and are prone to look abroad irrespective of ideologies, for economic collaboration or political recognition. The productive class has been debarred from politics for thousands of years; at the most it may now pine for relief. The metropolis of the country has formed a nexus with the metropolis of the world. This is true social imperialism enslaving the Indian proletariat. These three ingredients fused together created internal colonialism and among the numerous internal colonies spread over India, Jharkhand represents the biggest and the most precious internal colony just as India used to be in the British Empire.

India is a rich country inhabited by poor people. Within India, Jharkhand is the richest area but inhabited by the poorest people. There is light everywhere. Industries and power plants are flourishing in all directions but just beyond an undelimited boundary live the people of the area in the villages where one cannot even get a lamp. Darkness in the midst of light is Jharkhand. Africans even after containing and producing 95 percent of the world’s diamonds, 33 percent of gold, 40 percent of platinum, 20 percent of copper, 30 percent of uranium, lead the most exploited and impoverished life in the world. The same is the condition of the people of Jharkhand in general and of Chotanagpur in particular, which alone contains 50 percent of India’s coal, 100 percent of India’s copper, 40 percent of bauxite. The area contains almost all the steel plants—Bokaro, Rourkela, Jamshedpur, all the power plants of the Damodar Valley project, and the Hirakund Dam of Orissa. There is no dearth of development but only at the cost of the people there. Industries displace them, dams drown them, afforestation starves them. The natives of the internal colonies are not only the victims of underdevelopment as in the north-east which led to the formations of the North-Eastern Council—of course, with no result—but of development as well in Central India, as this development does not mean the development of the people there but their displacement and replacement by the colonies of developed people, the clever people, the politically connected people coming from the developed areas.
As industrialisation of British India drained the resources of the country and even railways were installed for draining out the raw materials, so was the industrialisation of the Chotanagpur-Jharkhand area where Railways came as early as 1894 to draw out its coal and iron. The total demography of the area changed. While thousands of people are coming there, first, without getting jobs the tribal men and women sell themselves to the contractors to be exported anywhere, from Punjab to Tripura for working in brick kilns or digging earth. Even in forest development and department they have no place, no job. The colonial character of development would be evident from the following facts. Eighty percent of Bihar’s income comes from Chotanagpur but only 10 to 15 percent is spent for the people there. Not even in the proportion of the population. More than five lakh people have been displaced in the area for making dams, without rehabilitation and jobs despite assurances. Where 30 percent of the land in India, 27 percent of the land of North Bihar gets the facilities of irrigation, the percentage is only 7.2 in Chotanagpur. Today the local people, the Jharkhandis, are scared of development and are opposing the Koel Karo hydel project as that would again submerge 45,000 acres of land of 200 villages to produce 732 MW of electricity. But for whom? In the Chotanagpur area of Bihar, which is practically a focal point of the Jharkhand Movement, the per capita consumption of electricity is 204.4 KW against that of India of 96.3 KW. But this figure is misleading. It is not consumed by the people of the area but by the ruling class. The actual state of the people would be known from the figures of rural electrification. Systematic attempts are being made to destroy the culture of the Jharkhand people in general and tribal people in particular. Collective culture is being destroyed, so is the concept of community ownership. To disarm the people, the Bihar Government issued an ordinance banning the possession of bows and arrows by the tribals, which are part of their life and at the same time, lifted prohibition and started liquor shops in the tribal areas. There were clashes and resistance from the tribal people and the Government swearing in the name of Gandhiji provided armed forces to protect the wine shops. Any colony can be kept under subjugation for long only after the character of the people in the colony is spoiled. Once opium was forced on China and now wine is being pumped into Jharkhand. So, between development and non-development, the choice for the people of Jharkhand is like between the frying pan and the fire. Underdevelopment means languishing death. Development means extinction.

The capitalist economy created some mobility within the country. Mobility resulted in internal migration of the people from one area to another. The internal migration in the background of unequal development created the problem of internal colonialism and today the problem has an ugly character so that Indians have become foreigners in India as the problem is in Assam today. There is alarm and genuine concern about the fate of the basic integrity of the country. The 34 years of post-independence exercise could not decrease the gaps in development between the different areas of the country or between different social groups. Now if restrictions were imposed on the migration and professions of the developed people in the underdeveloped areas, it would amount to promulgation of an Immigration Act, much worse than what it is in operation in U.K. It would violate the Constitution of India in force. But if all restrictions in movement, settling, pursuing professions, etc., are removed considering India as one country, then underdeveloped people and their society would be completely submerged and erased out of the map due to the thrust of the people of the developed areas. No golden mean has been found and hence no solution. In the capitalist system of values, there cannot be any solutions to the question of uneven development of the oppressed nationalities. There can be no solution of internal colonialism and exploitation either. In essence, capitalism believes in free competition, in the brute concept of survival of the strongest which means the non-survival of the less strong. The capitalist solution of the underdeveloped nationalities is their extinction. That is why there is not a single multilingual, multinational State in the capitalist world barring the tiny Switzerland though there used to be many multilingual and multinational States even in the feudal time. Balkanisation is not an accidental phenomenon of history but an issue, which had started in Europe after the industrialisation, and advent of capitalism in the 19th century. Nobody would be able to check the same process operating in a much uglier way if India continues to follow the present path of capitalist development. Integration of India can only remain secure in a revolutionary change of the present system. Unless the motivation is changed, migration would only accentuate bitterness and India’s integration would remain in peril.
However there remains one silver lining. It is true that wealth and industries have further enslaved the people. Money power had added to this misery. But at the same time it has created a working class. Despite all deformation it has created a scope to project working class philosophy and the crisis has forced a bond between industrial workers even if they have come from outside and the rural poor who constitute the vast local masses popularly known as Jharkhandis. This is a phenomenon having immense possibility. The struggle of the Dalits, the people of internal colonies, the tribals and the socially downtrodden against imperialism and the ruling class can develop any time and transcend into a real national liberation movement in the country. This could not come up in the Northeast in the absence of an industrial proletariat. But now it ‘threatens’ to commence in the very heart of the country. There can be so many new States in India and many tribal States like Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal, etc. but Jharkhand was kept firmly tied with a half-dozen provinces in addition to the centre so that even if one fails the other can take charge of the chain that has kept the Prometheus bound. The existence of the working class element in the surroundings of the tribal people and dalits, i.e. the socially oppressed people, means that Jharkhand can never be separated. It can only be liberated and the gap between the liberation of Jharkhand and the liberation of the country as a whole is not beyond the February revolution and the October revolution in Czarist Russia.

Source: A. K. Roy, “Jharkhand: Internal Colonialism”, in Ram Dayal Munda and S. Bosu Mullick (eds.), Jharkhand Movement: Indigenous Peoples’ Struggle for Autonomy in India, Copenhagen/Jharkhand: IWGIA and BIRSA, 2003, pp. 79-85

 

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