The violence that rocked Orissa’s Kandhmal district recently would not have assumed such monstrous proportions had the state government acted with foresight taking steps to bridge the widening gulf between tribals and non-tribals of the area who have been at loggerheads for quite sometime.

In fact, the animus between the tribals and the non-tribals is a phenomenon not limited to Kandhmal but also visible in the adjoining districts like Rayagada, Malkangiri, Nowrangpur and Koraput where the alienation of tribal land has acquired scandalous dimensions. While the issue has become highly politicised, the government so far has done little to remedy the situation.

The officialdom, too, now admits that the violence that began on December 24 would not have spread like wildfire had the Kui Samanvaya Samiti of Kandhmal, a powerful body of local Kui speaking tribals, not issued a three-day bandh call on December 25 protesting a bid by the Kui-speaking non-tribals, specially harijans, to claim scheduled tribe status and its attendant benefits. The ire of the Samiti was particularly directed against steel and mines minister, Padmnabh Behera, a harijan, who was later forced to resign.

Highly placed sources in Kandhmal said that the tribals and the non-tribals in Kandhmal have been at war over the issue of land for the last several decades. The animosity is particularly strong between the tribals and harijans, the latter not only constituting a large chunk of the district’s population but also being relatively affluent. The district had witnessed one of the worst riots involving the two groups in the early 1990s when Janata Dal government led by late Biju Patnaik, father of the present chief minister, was in power.

The harijans, locally known as Panas, are quite well off and are alleged to have bought a lot of land from the tribals through persuasion and other means, which has led to the further impoverishment of the community. Tribal land in the district has also been bought in bulk by several other non-tribals including business at cheap rates. The gradual alienation of tribal land has left the vast majority of tribals in the district either landless or with little land at their disposal that farming has turned into an unremunerative proposition for them. Most of them depend exclusively on the forest produce for survival but the government has placed restrictions even there.

Staying in close proximity with each other, the rivalry between the harijans and the tribals has grown in almost the same proportion as the affluence of the harijans who have become the owners of the land in sharp contrast to the landless tribals. “Despite being aware of the simmering tension, the government never sought to address the issue. It is only now after the riots that an attempt is being made,” says a local resident, Shiba Tripathy, referring to the appointment of eight new revenue officials in Kandhmal district to resolve the issue of land conflict.

Significantly enough, the Kandhmal Kui Samanvaya Samiti, which targeted steel and mines minister Padmnabh Behera specifically because it sees him as the biggest leader of local Harijans, has made it absolutely clear that its concerns have little to do with either the RSS or the Vishva Hindu Parishad which have been in focus in the wake of the riots. In other words the Samiti, in sharp contrast to issues like religious conversions being raised by the Hindutva outfits, remains concerned only about the welfare of tribals which can be ensured by stopping the alienation of tribal land and the alleged bid by the Harijans to usurp the benefits due to the tribals. While the government, so far, has fulfilled two major demands of the tribals by sacking Behera and announcing that non-tribals will not be given ST status under any circumstances, it is yet to sort out the land issue which is likely to rouse sentiments again not only in Kandhmal but also in the adjoining districts.

The land issue remains in equally sharp focus in districts like Rayagada, Koraput, Malkangiri and Nowrangpur, all tribal dominated districts. While in Rayagada, radical Left outfit, CPI (M-L) is leading a movement for the return of the land taken away from the local tribals either by force or by fraudulent means, in Malkangiri and Nowrangpur the embers of the violent conflict over land between tribals and non-tribals are still smouldering.

The tribals in Malkangiri are also angry because the government has allegedly been taking sides with the non-tribal Bengali settlers who are reported to have bought their land in bulk by allegedly bribing the local revenue officials. The same is the situation in Nowrangpur which is also part of the undivided Koraput where the sale of tribal land to the non-tribals is banned under the law as the entire belt happens to be a scheduled area.

Trouble broke out in Malkangiri a few years ago when accusing the Bengali settlers of fraud the tribals demanded their land back. The refusal of the settlers to return the land led to clashes but the government sided with the settlers allegedly under the pressure of the then minister, Arabinda Dhali. In the neighbouring Nowrangpur, the situation took a violent turn when following clashes between tribals and non-tribals over the land issue, the police opened fire on the mob of tribals at Raighar killing three of them.

The state government later set up a committee to study cases of fraudulent transfer of tribal land to non-tribals, but the committee failed to make much progress under obvious political pressure. The Kandhmal violence having set the alarm bells ringing again, the government is expected to make amends for its past mistakes and settle the issue of land once and for all.




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