[Assam] st status

[ranenkumar goswami]

ST status and aspects of tribalism
— Utpal Bordoloi
During Mir Jumla’s invasion of Assam (1661), Aje and
Gilje, princesses of the Gabil Mahari (sub-clan) of
the Sangma clan, exercised the prerogative of Garo
ladies to pick their own mates and married captured
soldiers of the Muslim army. These unfortunate
captives had the surname ‘Momin’ which, in Arabic
means ‘believer’. They were adopted by their wives’
people, and that is how Momin became a Garo clan.

This story, which today’s Garo Momins say is
apocryphal, disinformation spread by their rival Marak
and Sangma clans, is retold by Dr Milton Sangma,
historian and retired Pro Vice Chancellor of North
Eastern Hill University in his book History and
Culture of the Garos; and by Dewan Sing Rongmutu in
Folk Tales of the Garos. 

The Garos are the earliest of the human groups that
migrated into North East India from the Tibetan
plateau during the pre-historic period; the evidence
of this being the Garo villages found across the
Brahmaputra Valley, including many in and around
Guwahati metropolitan area. For millennia, Kamakhya
was a Garo shrine (is worship of the sacred feminine a
natural feature of social systems whose organising
principle is matriliny?) before it was stolen by the
patriarchal Aryans during the Koch kingdom. But when
the Constitution of India was drafted, the Garos and
Karbis were denied Scheduled Tribe status in the
plains districts of the Brahmaputra Valley. These
tribes were recognised by the Constitution only in the
hill districts named after them in erstwhile British
Assam, as in the case of Khasis and Jaintias, Lushais
(Mizos) and Nagas. Conversely, so-called ‘plains
tribes’ like Bodos were denied constitutional
recognition in the hills districts. It is nice to
imagine an ‘Aryan conspiracy’ behind these anomalies.
But most likely it was only ignorance. 

The dilemma of the Garos, Karbis and other autochthons
of Assam has a personal resonance for the writer of
this article. According to Garo customary law, this
writer should be a Momin, since his mother (Dr Renu
Prova Momin-Bordoloi, retired head of the Botany
department, Cotton College ; also, incidentally, the
first tribal lady of North East India to earn B Sc, M
Sc and Ph D degrees) belongs to a branch of the Garo
tribe that lived in a village located on the site of
what is now Dimapur airport in Nagaland (Dimapur was
part of Sivasagar district in British Assam) though
his father, late Dr Upendra Nath Bordoloi of Gauhati
University belonged to the Sonari (goldsmith) caste of
Bordolois of Tarajan Sonari gaon, Jorhat. 

The problem lies in this : this writer was born in,
and is, a permanent resident of Guwahati. But the
Deputy Commissioner of Kamrup, a plains district, has
no legal authority to issue him a ST certificate to
which he is entitled under Garo customary law, even if
he uses the maternal title Momin, as Garo is a hill
tribe as defined by the Indian Constitution. On the
other hand, because this writer is a permanent
resident of Kamrup district, no other district
authority – say of Karbi Anglong which has substantial
Garo population – can issue him a ST certificate
either. The East, West and South Garo Hills districts
went out of Assam in 1972, so that option is ruled out
too. There are hundreds of thousands of people in a
similar situation across Assam, including Bodos
domiciled in Karbi Anglong. What redress for them? 

The issue of scheduling new tribes, which gained fresh
prominence after the November 24 incident at Beltola,
has brought such constitutional anomalies to the fore.
The so-called Adivasis or ‘tea tribes’, the
Koch-Rajbongshi, Tai-Ahom, Motok, Moran and Chutia all
want to be recognised as STs (as do the Gujjars of
Rajasthan). But the question arises, who is a tribal ?

According to Dr Sanjib Barua of the Centre for Policy
Research, New Delhi and IIT, Guwahati, “
 the demand
of the tea workers’ descendants for ST status, and the
framework within which the debate is being conducted,
draw attention to our continued reliance on a highly
questionable stock of colonial knowledge about Indian
society and culture (emphasis mine).” Colonial
ethnography, Dr Barua wrote recently, ““relied on
racist notions of tribes having fixed habitats and
ethnic traits that are almost biological and even
inheritable. In North East India, the so-called hill
tribes were thus all fixed to their supposed natural
habitats.”

“Colonial knowledge continues to shape categories of
Indian census,” says Dr Barua. ‘Since the census
counts tribes only in their supposed natural habitats,
it produces the absurdity of the number of people
classified as plains tribals being zero in the hills,
and those classified as hill tribals being zero in the
plains”. Garo villages like Ading gre or Adinggiri
(near Kamakhya), Borbaka and Sorubaka (North Guwahati)
and Pilangkata (Basistha), to name only a few in
Kamrup district, highlight the absurdity pointed out
by Dr Barua. “ 
 if one goes by the Indian census, the
number of hill tribals living even in metropolitan
Guwahati is zero.” But the whole metropolitan area was
once tribal territory : according to the Amri (plains)
Karbi, Nehru park was once the cemetery of Karbi
Rajas. Philologists note that the Assamese word Guwa
(Tamool ; Sanskrit Tamboola ) comes from the Garo root
Guwe (Karbi Kowe ; Khasi Kwai). The name Guwahati
indicates a (tribal) market, a haat, where areca,
beetle nut, was traded. 

The Registrar General of India and the Union Ministry
of Tribal Affairs headed by Paty Ripple Kyndiah, a
Khasi, have rejected the demands for inclusion in the
ST list, saying that the Adivasis et al do not meet
the criteria of “tribal characteristics, including a
primitive background and distinctive cultures and
traditions.” These authorities appear to be suffering
from intellectual and bureaucratic inertia : what,
exactly, are “tribal characteristics”? Modern
ethnologists (e.g. : Desmond Morris: Tribes) would
classify even followers of English football and rugby
clubs (or cricket teams ; the ‘Barmy Army’) as tribes
because of their “tribal characteristics.” (notice, on
television, football and cricket fans painted with
their club or national colours, like primitive
warriors in war paint ; notice their aggression ;
notice, in the case of English football fans, their
drunkenness). Do modern Khasis like Union Minister
Kyndiah still qualify as STs under the test of
primitiveness ? Also, does not every society in the
world have its own “distinctive culture and
traditions” ? The Registrar General of India and Union
Ministry of Tribal Affairs need to redefine their
terms.

The story of the Garo Momins is relevant today because
it is being re-enacted in Nagaland, where the marriage
of immigrant Muslims, or Miyas, with women of the Sumi
(Sema) tribe is producing a nascent tribe called, not
jokingly, Sumiya, an acronym of Sumi and Miya. From
this it would appear as if the formation of new tribes
and clans is a continuing process : they will have to
be recognised at some point in time – if the Indian
polity continues to operate on the concept of ‘vote
banks.’ Some communities living in the North East,
like the Tamang, Limbu, Sherpa and Lepcha, are
recognised as tribes elsewhere; should they be
included in the Sixth Schedule too? These are only
some of the issues which would have to be addressed
when the Pandora’s box of recognising new Scheduled
Tribes is opened.
 -----The Assam Tribune, December 19, 2007
  
 


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