Dalits and Adivasis, left out of the

first phase of land reforms, are
agitating for land redistribution.
Kerala is widely acclaimed for its
achievements in social
development as it boasts a near
total literacy, comparatively higher
life expectancy and land reforms.
Even though its per capita income
has remained low, this
phenomenon has famously become
known as the “Kerala Model of
Development.” However, the
exclusion of Dalits, who constitute
9.8 per cent of the State's total
population; Adivasis, who
constitute 1.14 per cent; and fisher
people, from the success story of
Kerala's development, has gone
relatively unacknowledged. More
recently, scholars have drawn
attention to the landlessness of
Dalits and Adivasis that has
rendered large segments of these
social groups incapable of
participating in the developmental
process, and to the land struggles
that have ensued as a result over
the past decade.
In 1975, a law passed by
Parliament made it mandatory for
the Government of Kerala to
restore alienated lands to Adivasis
who had lost out due to the in-
migration of peasant communities
from other parts of Kerala, who
had access to better agricultural
technologies, capital and
organisational skills. These new
settlers had a different notion of
land that was directly related to
property and ownership, a concept
that Adivasis had not yet acquired.
In 1988, Nalla Thampi, a social
activist, filed a formal petition in
the High Court of Kerala
demanding that the State
government implement the long
overdue rule passed by Parliament.
The court directed the Government
to restore to the Adivasis the lands
that were alienated from them. Due
to the political clout of the land's
occupants, however, as well as a
series of litigations, the restoration
of land to the Adivasis never
materialised.
Denial of ownership
In the case of Kerala's Dalits,
although they were integral to
agrarian production, they were
prevented from owning land in the
traditional caste society. This
situation did not change in any
substantial manner with the
introduction of land reforms in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. These
reforms made former tenants —
mostly upper and middle-caste
citizens — land owners, as they
could prove their status as tenants
by presenting rent receipts.
Dalits, as labourers, could not stake
such claims on land. As a result,
Dalits were given ownership of tiny
plots of land that housed their huts.
The total area of land that they
could own under the rules of land
reforms varied from 0.04 hectares
in villages to 0.02 hectares in
urban areas. This legal denial of
ownership and access to land
meant that Dalits would never
evolve as land-owning peasants
despite their continued role in
agrarian society.
Since 1980, intergenerational
fragmentation of Dalits' tiny plots
of land gave way to autonomous
movements demanding cultivable
lands to landless Dalits, thereby
causing confrontation with
established political parties. In
particular, Communist parties that
were behind the historic
programme of land reforms felt
threatened by the gradual
development of these autonomous
movements that demanded the
reopening of the “settled problem”
of land reforms in Kerala.
Although certain leaders of the
Communist Party of India (Marxist)
even openly expressed their
interest in a second land reform
that would benefit Dalits and other
marginalised social groups, they
had to recant due to opposition
from the party.
Fearing the erosion of their support
bases, no political party was willing
to do anything that would
destabilise the status quo in land
ownership. Except for a few
dissenters on both the Left and the
Right, it seems to have been in all
parties' interests to view the land
question in Kerala as solved once
and for all.
Formation of movements
Under such circumstances, Dalit
and Adivasi activists from various
parts of Kerala such as M.
Geethanandan from Kannur, C. K.
Janu from Wayanad, Sunny M.
Kapikkad, and M. D. Thomas from
Kottayam led the movement in
2000 in claiming land for the
landless Adivasis. With the
formation of the Adivasi Gotra
Maha Sabha (the Grand Council of
Adivasis), movements developed to
occupy excess lands held by the
Department of Forests and big
plantations as well as lands under
government control which were
meant to be redistributed among
landless people.
These mobilisations, which began
in the late 1990s, were new to
Kerala's polity as they were
organised by Dalit and Adivasi
activists and not controlled by
political parties. This is a major
difference from other regions of
India, such as Jharkhand and
Chhattisgarh, where Maoists had
armed Adivasis in their struggles
against exploitation and
oppression. The mobilisations in
Kerala, however, were aimed at
securing the rights of Adivasis to
claim their alienated lands as well
as enabling Dalits to acquire lands.
In 2002, the political agitation
received tremendous civil society
support and the Government was
forced to recognise the oppressive
situation under which Adivasis
have been living in Kerala. In 2003,
under the leadership of Adivasi
Gotra Maha Sabha, the people laid
siege to the wild life sanctuary at
Muthanga in Wayanad District and
police firing on February 19, 2003
led to the death of an Adivasi
activist and a policeman.
In the aftermath of the event, the
police hunted down Janu and
Geethanandan, the leaders of the
movement. Following this
mobilisation, the Adivasi Gotra
Maha Sabha held other
confrontations in the village of
Aralam (the neighbouring district
of Kannur) that had a large
population of the Adivasi
community of Paniyar.
Illegal occupation
In 2007, another Dalit activist,
Laha Gopalan, launched another
land struggle at Chengara (the
Pathanamthitta district of Kerala)
that occupied a rubber plantation
leased by Harrison-Malayalam
Plantations from the former native
ruler of the princely state of
Travancore.
The leadership of the movement
had brought in landless people,
mostly from Dalit communities
from various parts of the State, to
occupy the plantation and start
living there.
This led to confrontations with the
State government, political parties,
and trade unions. The Government
thought of it as illegal occupation
while the trade unions felt that the
occupiers were denying the
legitimate rights of the workers of
the plantations.
This occupation led to a series of
confrontations that eventually
made the issue of landlessness a
highly political one. What makes
this politicisation distinctive
moreover, is that the Adivasi and
Dalit struggles for land in Kerala
has been mobilised outside and
against major political parties in
the State, while raising ethical
questions of long-denied equality
and redistributive justice.
(The author is an Associate
Professor in the School of Social
Sciences of Mahatma Gandhi
University, Kottayam, India. He
was a CASI Fall 2011 Visiting
Scholar.)
This article is by special
arrangement with the Centre for
the Advanced Study of India,
University of Pennsylvania
(This article was published on
December 19, 2011)
Keywords: Dalits and Adivasis, first
phase of land reforms , land
redistribution, India In Transition