Muthanga: A Spark of Hope

Abstract

On 19 February 2003, the armed police of the currently rightwing government of the Indian state of Kerala descended on over one thousand adivasi1 families men, women and children—who had peacefully settled on the fringes of the Muthanga range of the Wayanad Wild Life Sanctuary, driving them out in a most brutal fashion and even killing one of those women who resisted. The state had failed to give any prior warning of the police action, nor was any attempt made toward a mediated negotiation. The police unleashed a reign of terror in the region; physical molestation of women was also reported, the latter having been substantiated by the National Women's Commission. Those who fell into the hands of the police were brutally manhandled en route to the police station; in a bizarre innovation, the activists were forced to beat one another. The movement had been launched by the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha—the Grand Assembly of Indigenous People—led by a tribal woman, C. K. Janu. The demands of the Adi vasi Gothra Maha Sabha for land, food, shelter, the enforcement of constitutional provisions, reparation for losses incurred by the intervention of foreign compa nies in their environment, etc., are paralleled in indigenous movements else where, e.g., the Zapatistas in Mexico (see Collier 1994; Gledhill 1997; Hellman 2000; Weinberg 2000; Womack 1999). However, unlike other indigenous move ments, the situation in Kerala has received little world attention. Adivasis are the only ethnic minority in the state of Kerala, constituting 1.14 percent of its 31.8 million population. These indigenous people, belonging to dif ferent clans but of a common social origin, are spread over an adivasi belt that straddles the highlands of Wayanad, Palakkad, and Idukki districts. To under stand the trajectories of the adivasis in Kerala2—largely their social exclusion and resistance—one has to briefly look into the genesis of their misfortunes. They were largely displaced from their traditional habitat. This displacement began from the early nineteenth century with the razing of forests of Malabar and Tra vancore for the British navy and, by the 1850s, for the colonial railways. The process of dispossession gained momentum from the second half of the century