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By Arshia Sattar In this film from Jharkhand, India, indigenous people talk about themselves and their ancestors, their migrations and exiles, their continued exploitation and marginalisation
(English, Kurukh and with subtitles, 2005)
Directed by Biju Toppo
Produced by Meghnath
Kora Rajee (The Land of the Diggers) proudly proclaims that it is the first film to be made in an indigenous/tribal language in India. But it is far more than that: it is indigenous people talking about themselves and their ancestors, their migrations and exiles, their continued exploitation and marginalisation. The filmmakers, who are Jharkhandis, place themselves and their little boy in the film and there is no illusion of distance or staged delicacy. This is a hard-hitting film that tells stories of the oppression and impoverishment of a particular people over centuries. The film is complex and touches upon many issues, ranging from labour migrations in the 19th century to displacement and globalisation in the 21st century. It is a deeply moving film, carried to its conclusion by folksongs that sing first of hope and then increasingly, of sadness and loss. The loss is many-fold: loss of lands, cultures, jobs, access to food and medicines and finally, to that ultimate loss when one is no longer visible. Like the labour that was transported from India to the Caribbean to work the plantations at the height of the colonial period, so too the British moved the hardy Jharkhandis to the northeast in the 19th century to clear the forests and work the emerging tea gardens. By the 1860s, 30,000 Jharkhandis had already died due to the weather and working conditions. Assam and north Bengal today have a population of nearly 7 million Jharkhandis, a population that has remained exploited and ignored for over 150 years. There were many reasons for the Jharkhandis to leave their native lands in search of a better life. A century of uprisings and rebellions had left them cruelly suppressed by both the British and local landowners. But the nail in the coffin was a horrendous famine in the 1890s. Labour agents bore them away a hundred years ago in much the same way as they were recruited 50 years ago -- the healthiest and fittest first, crossing states and rivers, through mountains and valleys, to a land that needed their work but never acknowledged them as part of society. After a century of being the backbone of the tea industry, Jharkhandi labour finds itself still on the margins. They do not hold white-collar positions in an industry that claims to be in crisis. Indian teas do not dominate world markets they way they used to, and the movement of global capital across nations and industries has ensured that small, local tea estates can no longer sustain themselves and the hundreds of labour families that depend on them for survival. The last six years have seen lockouts and seasonal employment. Food and water are scarce on the estates, and tea-processing units are guarded by men who, also, have not been paid in months. Diseases caused by malnutrition and starvation cannot be treated because there are no medicines and local health facilities are closing down. Where, then, can these victims of globalisation and decades of marginalisation go? They cannot return to the impoverished lands they left behind. Generation after generation, they have made their homes and created communities of displacement in the land where they work -- there are occasional visits back to ancestral villages and distant relatives, but there is no prospect of permanent return or resettlement. Education for the young was never taken seriously, because the only future lay in working the tea gardens. As the price of tea fluctuates with the rise and fall of other commodity markets in a globalised economy, even traditional avenues of employment (however dismal) are breaking down. Local MLAs are unconcerned, and, despite their numbers, the Jharkhandis are not listed in Assam and Bengal as a scheduled tribe, leaving them well outside the pitiful benefits afforded to indigenous peoples in other states. Issues of forced migration and migrant labour as a post-colonial phenomenon are starting to become visible in certain sectors (see My Migrant Soul ), but we need to re-visit older sites and instances of displacement because of poverty and forced transportation. Kora Rajee reminds us that even as the new economies have created new imbalances, they have also severely aggravated old ones. For more information, contact: AKHRA,
Shastri Nagar, KankeRoad,
Ranchi, Jharkhand 834 008
Phone: 91 651 223 1693/0325
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InfoChange News & Features, August 2005
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