Amid the rhetoric of land jihad, concerns over land rights persist in Jharkhand
A day before the second phase of polling in Jharkhand, an election video went viral on social media. The video, posted by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s official Twitter account, shows a large horde of Muslims, which included several children, moving into a middle-class house. At the entrance of the house is a flag of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. The video portrays the horde as uncouth, running amok in the house—much to the horror of the family living there. At the end of the video, two men tell the owner of the house that “these people” had been brought in by his party. “Why should just our homes be ruined?” they ask. The video ends with a slogan asking people to vote for the BJP.
The video encapsulates and crystallises the BJP’s shrill poll pitch in Jharkhand, where polling concluded this Wednesday. After receiving complaints, the Election Commission of India ordered the BJP to take down the video, but it has been shared widely on social media.
Land has been an emotive issue in the state, with concerns pertaining to land acquisition or the dilution of laws relating to land ownership finding resonance in past elections. Over the course of its election campaign, the BJP has made the selling of Adivasi land by “middlemen” one of its main poll planks. Crucially, it has claimed that Bangladeshi infiltrators were the beneficiaries of land sales and called the process an instance of “land jihad.”
The BJP has pushed this rhetoric despite there being no evidence to suggest that the alleged land transfers, have been to Muslims hailing from Bangladesh. The narrative seems to have stemmed from a dispute between an Adivasi and a Muslim family in Pakur district, both of whom have had land records dating back to 1932. This dispute has been referenced by BJP leaders during the campaigning: while kicking off BJP’s poll campaign at Jharkhand on 20 September from Sahibganj, Amit Shah, the home minister, said, “In Pakur district, slogans are being raised asking Hindus and Adivasis to leave Jharkhand. Tell me, does this land belong to Adivasis or to Rohingya and Bangladeshi infiltrators?” Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs lodged a formal protest with India’s Deputy High Commissioner in Dhaka thereafter, expressing “serious reservations, deep hurt, and extreme displeasure.”
At the heart of BJP’s campaign is Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s chief minister, tasked with managing handling the election campaign along with Shivraj Singh Chouhan, a former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Sarma, who has been credited with BJP’s return to power in Chhattisgarh in 2023, has been using the Bangladeshi infiltrator narrative in his home state for several years.
The BJP has often used anti-Muslim rhetoric to consolidate the Hindu vote in regions that do not have an Adivasi-majority, such as north Chotanagpur. In Adivasi dominant areas, the party has departed from its traditional approach of pitting Hindu Adivasis against Christian Adivasis. This time around they have sought to paint Muslims as the diku—an outsider perceived as exploiting Jharkhand’s resources and people. This term has been used to refer to moneylenders, traders and administrators from Bihar or West Bengal as well as other dominant-caste groups from outside the state. The BJP has traditionally drawn support from many of these segments. It has also focussed on Christian missionaries, accusing them of engaging in forced and fraudulent conversions among Adivasis. By raising the bogey of infiltration, the BJP hopes to gain the Christian vote as well as prevent an Adivasi and Muslim consolidation, which hurt them in 2019.
Even as the fear mongering around land jihad was taking place in the state, the issues surrounding ownership and rights over land continued to persist in the state. In Khunti, which went to polls on 13 November and whose current MLA is from the BJP, I spoke to several Adivasi residents who were worried about the ghuspaitiye—infiltrator. “Bangladeshis are not ghuspaitiye. The real ghuspaitiye are Adivasis like us, who have become dalals,” Narayan Pahan, a local BJP member and a farmer told me. He explained that dalals—middlemen—were those who bought land from Adivasis and sold it to non-Adivasis at higher prices.
The Chhota Nagpur Tenancy Act of 1908, enacted after several uprisings in the region, provided not only for the creation and maintenance of land records but also created a special tenure category that ensured that land transfers did not take place to non-Adivasis. Over time, some amendments to the act made this possible, with requisite permissions.
In 2016, the BJP government, led by Raghubar Das, had introduced amendments in the state assembly to the CNT and another crucial land act in the state, the Santhal Paragana Tenancy Act. There were widespread protests against this move, which led to the incarceration of several protestors. The governor eventually declined to give her assent to the amendment bills. In October 2016, Abraham Munda, an Adivasi protestor, was killed in police firing in Khunti district. Hemant Soren and the JMM won the 2019 election on the promise of ensuring forest rights to Adivasis and withdrawing all cases registered during the protests.
Ranchi Sudhir Pal, an activist working on land issues, said that the emergence of middlemen was bound to happen with the dilution of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act of 2013—LARR Act—brought in by the BJP government, led by Raghubar Das at the time, in Jharkhand. In 2016, he said, the Das government brought in several projects and a policy to create a land bank was made. “They are bypassing the CNT Act through this policy, which has removed the provision of consent of people affected by its implementation.” Jharkhand’s land bank holds 2.1 million acres of land and ever since its creation.
Vinod Singh, an MLA with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, said he had also urged Hemant Soren to repeal the land bank policy and amendments that Das had brought in. The amendments to the LARR Act had exempted restrictions of social-impact assessment for land acquisition. This also included scheduled areas under the fifth schedule of the Constitution, which provides safeguards to the cultural and economic interests of Scheduled Tribes. Over a dozen districts in Jharkhand fall under these areas. “The bill, now awaiting the Governor’s and the President’s consents, thus cuts deeply into the safeguards regarding land rights so far available under the CNT and SPT Acts. It brazenly overlooks the core concerns of the LARR Act, such as the provision of comprehensive and appropriate rehabilitation of all stakeholders in the land that is to be acquired and maintenance of the ecological balance,” a statement from CPI (ML)L said in 2017.
Dayamani Barla, founder of the Adivasi-Moolvasi Astitva Raksha Manch, a people’s movement that unites thousands of Adivasis, Dalits and farmers across Jharkhand, told me that in order to understand the issue one needs to understand the ownership patterns and structure of Adivasi land, which can be broadly divided into private land—called Khatiyani, where every family has records and rights over it—and land within the limits of the village, such as the river and the grazing ground, which are collectively owned by the village.
She said that Raghubar Das introduced a policy, without making any amendments, which effectively allowed collective land to be opened up for public use. “He got the plots identified and created land banks. This is in violation of the laws. Land is being acquired without any permission from gram sabha and affected people. The role of the village is being diminished. There were laws made to make tribal lands safe and with this policy they are giving lands to non-tribals. They are the ones who are bringing non-tribals here and changing the demography. So what of ghuspaitiye are they talking about?”
Renu Tikri, a member of the BJP in Ranchi, said that while her party was committed to upgrading the status of Adivasis, she had certain specific demands. “There were Khatiyan surveys in 1932 and in 1976. In both instances, some wrong names made it to the list. A similar thing happened in the1984 survey. These need to be corrected,” she said. In Jharkhand, two documents are central to the question of land rights for Adivasis. Khatiyan is a record of existing rights of the occupiers of the land, and contains details about the land’s boundaries. Raiyati status, which is subcategorised variously under the CNTA and the SPTA, denotes a person’s rights of ownership and possession over the land. Pahan and Tikri said that the BJP should strengthen the CNT Act and ensure that Adivasi land is sold only to Adivasis.
The JMM government, which won on the back of the widespread agitation against the proposed amendments, was expected to roll back the amendments but has failed to do so. “They had five years to do it,” Pal said.
When I asked Supriyo Bhattacharya, spokesperson for the JMM, why the land bank and acquisition policy of the former government had not been repealed, he told me it was due to “technical reasons”. “Repealing a law requires amendments and formalities. When we form government we will initiate that process,” he said.
Many Adivasis in Khunti are not able to work on their land due to a lack of clarity over boundaries and ownership. “I don’t know how much land we have today. My husband and I work as daily wage workers as we are not able to use our land, despite owning it,” Sweta Munda, a labourer from Khunti, told me.
Kali Charan Munda of the Congress won Khunti Lok Sabha seat this year with a thumping margin of nearly one and half lakh votes. The Congress was in alliance with the JMM during the parliamentary election. The alliance led in all the assembly segments of the seat, which had been won by the BJP since 2009.
Pal said that the rhetoric of land jihad was based on conjecture and is not backed by data. “The government has itself said in its affidavit to the high court and the Parliament that they have no documentation of ghuspaitiye. They are raising the issue in the Santhal region to weaken the JMM’s hold.” He added that the JMM enjoyed the support of miya and majhi—Muslims and Adivasis, which would be difficult to break, but that the rhetoric may find resonance with OBCs and other dominant castes in the regions. “There are cordial relations between Adivasis and Muslims,” Pal said. Adivasis comprise 26 percent and Muslims comprise 14.3 percent of the population of Jharkhand, according to the 2011 census. The vote from the sadans—non-Adivasi people, largely comprising OBCs—is expected to be a crucial factor in determining the outcome of the election, on 23 November.
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