The Chengara struggle refers to an ongoing controversy about land near the Chengara village in the Pathanamthitta district in Kerala, India.
Background
Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. is an agricultural business corporation with a history that goes back over 150 years. According to its own slogan, it is "India's most diversified agri-business". It is the largest producer of pineapples in India, the largest producer of tea in South India, and the largest employer in the region. It employs around 13,000 people in rural Kerala, and more than 100,000 people are, according to the companies own information, dependent on the company for their livelihood.
Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. started its rubber production in the early 1900s. Today, it is spread over 10 estates in Kerala. One of these 10 is the Kumbazha estate, situated in Chengara near Konni in Kerala's Pathanamthitta district, which has been occupied by the Dalits and Adivasis.
Until 1984, the company was wholly foreign-owned by Harrisons & Crosfield (named Elementis plc. after 1998), the UK's largest specialty chemicals business. Since 1984, Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. is part of the RPG Enterprises,RPG Group#Harrisons Malayalam one of India's largest business groups. In popular perception, Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. still remains a 'foreign' company.
Adivasis and Dalits in Kerala The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are official designations given to various groups of historically disadvantaged people. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes comprise about 16.6% and 8.6%, respectively, of India's population (according to the 2011 census). The Schedules Castes are known as Dalits (the lowest group in the caste hierarchy; "untouchables") and Scheduled Tribes are known as Adivasi ("original inhabitants", the indigenous communities). Dalits and Adivasis represent 10% and 1.1% of Kerala's population respectively.
Land Reforms Act
Janmi-Kudiyan System Through a longer stretch of history, the Dalits have been the backbone of Kerala's wetland rice cultivation. Initially, they were slaves, but after the year 1850, they became attached laborers (following the ban on slave traffic). Finally, in the 1940s, they became "free" laborers (following the advance of caste-based social movements and communist trade union organization). Although they were integral to agrarian production, they were prevented from owning land in Kerala's traditional caste society.
Until the late 1950s, the centuries-old Janmi-Kudiyan (landlord-tenant) landholding system, based on the caste system, prevailed in Kerala. In this system, the landlords were Namboothiris (called Brahmins in the rest of India) - the highest in the caste hierarchy. The land was often leased to the Dalits – the lowest caste - for cultivation, with a simple taxation system. For a long time, it resembled European feudalism, save the differences introduced by the caste system. This means that the ownership of land was concentrated in the hands of a few individual landlords.
Innumerable malpractices like untouchability, inapproachability, and unseeability, were widely practiced by the Namboothiris. Many of these practices were based on the idea of purity, which gave rise to the widespread practice of theendal (pollution). These practices pushed the Adivasis and the Dalits into servitude, slavery, dispossession, and displacement, which then compelled them to pawn their dignity and their human rights at the feet of a caste-based society. By the early 20th century, due to the impact of several social reformations, Kerala managed to officially get rid of untouchability and other malpractices which alienated the Dalits and Adivasis. However, prejudices against them continue, especially in rural areas.
Land Reforms – theory In 1957, elections for the new Kerala Legislative Assembly were held, and a reformist, communist-led government came into power. It was the first time a communist government (Communist Party of India- CPI) was democratically elected to power anywhere in the world. It initiated pioneering land reforms. One of the key legislations the state had undertaken to ensure land for the landless was "The Kerala Land Reforms Act, 1963". By this act, the centuries-old Janmi-Kudiyan system was brought to an end.Aneesh K.A., Homelessness at Home: Call for a Second Land Reform in Kerela, IJDTSA Vol.2, Issue 2, No.4 pp.47 to 59, December, 2014, 1.
The major objective of the land reform has been the re-ordering of agrarian relations in order to achieve an egalitarian social structure ("Land to the Tiller"). With a view to achieve this objective, the Kerala Land Reform Act, 1963, imposes certain restrictions on ownership and possession of landed properties in the state. This is commonly known as "ceiling". Ceiling means that there is a total extent of land that a "person" can own. Land over the ceiling limit is deemed surplus land. If the individual owns more land than the ceiling limit, the surplus land should be taken away by the government (with or without paying compensation to original owner) and be distributed (as one example) among small farmers, tenants, or landless laborers.
The ceiling in Kerala varies with the size of the household and does not exceed 25 standard acres (10 ha), the maximum that the largest family could own. In the case of a company, the limit is 10 standard acres, subject to a maximum of 15 acres. However, the Kerala Land Reforms Act, 1963, exempted certain kinds of land from the ceiling limit, including plantations and private forests (sec. 81).
Land Reforms – implementation According to the Kerala Land Reforms Act, 1963, the government was to distribute surplus and revenue forest land to Kerala's landless poor. Though the land ceiling laws were expected to create large extents of surplus land, most landlords circumvented the legal requirement through bogus transfers, gift deeds, and other methods. Until today, the act has not been fully implemented, resulting in a huge number of landless people in the state.
The government of Kerala claims that there is no surplus land left to distribute. Generally, there is considerable confusion in Kerala as to who possesses what land. It is not unusual for the forest and revenue departments to claim a particular piece of land as theirs. However, only an inquiry and survey into land property in Kerala would reveal the actual situation and probable violations of the Land Ceiling Law. Therefore, in 2008/2009, the Kerala government initiated a project called "Bhoomi keralam" (in Malayalam, "Kerala Earth") to implement a resurvey of Kerala lands (originally started in 1966). A specially created body, the Kerala Land Information Mission, was entrusted with measuring the land and identifying 27,000 ha to be distributed to Dalits and Adivasis. However, the project got stuck and only a few surveys have been initiated.
Implications for Dalits and Adivasis The historic Kerala Land Reforms Act, 1963, with its "land to the tiller" policy, turned out negative for the Dalits and Adivasis. By the new law, the tenants of the land (settled farmers, mostly upper and middle-caste citizens) became the owners and the laborers, while the Dalits and Adivasis were left mostly landless. As of September 2010, only 2% of Dalits and 2.21% of Adivasis were provided a very limited livelihood.As of September 2010, Aneesh, 2. In Kerala, 56% of 6.5 million Adivasis and Dalits still have no land. The rest, who are regarded as landowners, might possess as little as 1/100 of an acre, while some of the local corporate houses have access to thousands of acres on lease.N. Padmanabhan, Contemporary Kerala, 2011, 105 – 106.
Some Dalits and Adivasis were given ownership of plots of land under their huts. However, these plots were so small that they now form over 16,500 ghetto-like quarters housing several generations (one-lakh colonies). This resulted in the total derailment of their life. This legal denial of ownership and access to land meant that they would never evolve as land-owners, despite their continued role in agrarian society.
The Chengara Struggle
Beginning In 2001, the Adivasis in Kerala had led a month-and-a-half-long struggle under the banner of the Adivasi Gotra Mahasabha, led by tribeswoman C.K. Janu, and had attracted global attention. The demand was that 45,000 landless Adivasi families be provided five acres each of cultivable land. The government of Kerala then said that land would be identified and a recommendation would be made to the Union government that Adivasi lands be included in the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, so that the land could be alienated at a later date. This promise of land assignment has been met partially.
On 27 September 2006, the Chief Minister of Kerala, V.S. Achuthanandan, gave a written assurance that the government would allot land to a sizeable number of landless families by 31 December 2006. This promise was not met.
In January 2007, as reaction to the broken promise, the United Struggle Front of the poor for Liberation (Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi, SJVSV) started the first attempt to reclaim land. They chose an estate of Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. The struggle was led by the Dalit activist Laha Gopalan, a former government employee and a self-proclaimed Communist Party of India worker. This struggle was called off due to assurance by the Kerala Government that it would look into their demands.
Months passed, but there was no sign of any positive move from the state government. Therefore, on 4 August 2007, the SJVSV led 300 landless families to another estate of Harrisons Malayalam Ltd, the Chengara estate, to claim and occupy land. This was the start of what is now known as the Chengara Struggle.Aneesh, 3 The struggle does not take place in the village Chengara, but in Harrisons Malayalam's Kumbazha estate, more than three km away. This estate is popularly known as Chengara estate, so the struggle was named "Chengara Struggle" or "Chengara Samaram" in the local language Malayalam.
In the initial phase, the Dalits and Adivasis occupied about 125 acres of land. After the Onam festival in Kerala, they spread to a larger area, covering four hills - each family occupying one acre of land. Afterwards, they reclaimed the whole estate (about 6,000 acres), which is spread out over 7 hills. Their numbers swelled by the day and at one time, there were as many as 7,500 families, involving 29,000 people from different parts of Kerala.
The protestors pitched tents on the occupied land and started tapping the rubber trees in the estate, eking out a living in due course. They demanded land and labor to live.Manosmita et al., 31 These were the people left out of the once-launched land reforms of Kerala. Unlike struggles opposing forced displacement, the Chengara struggle is a direct claim on land by the landless.M S Sreerekha, Illegal Land, Illegal People, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol - XLVII No. 30, 28 July 2012, 21 – 22, http://www.epw.in/commentary/illegal-land-illegal-people.html One woman stated that "I spent my whole life on four cents (approx. 1/25 of an acre) of land. Even when I die, my family has to bury me on that piece of land. That's why we struggle for Chengara. It's struggle for life!"
The Dalits and Adivasis were demanding that the Kerala government distribute the land among them, which had been part of a long-standing promise by the Kerala government.Prakesh Louis, LAND STRUGGLES OF DALITS IN KERALA, Integral Liberation Vol. 12, No. 4, December 2008, 255 They initially demanded permanent ownership of five acres of land for farming and INR 50,000 in cash towards initial farming expenses to each landless family. The demand was later reduced to one acre of land.
Arguments of the Dalits and Adivasis