Everyday, as he returned to his hut from the fields, Jagtu Gond would pause for a few moments, his gaunt brown body glistening in the evening light, his eyes fierce and intense. Gazing at the stretch of lush green, thirty acres of some of the richest and most fertile land in the area, he would repeat passionately to himself—this is my land, and I will get it back at all costs.

The patwari records, however, did not bear out Jagtu’s claim. The land stood in the name of Babulal Joshi, one of the most powerful politicians of the district. Babulal Joshi was a man of many facets—landlord, moneylender, forest contractor, PWD contractor, trader and politician. Every petty government functionary paid him obeisance. And, although he was himself never elected to the state legislative assembly or parliament because the seats were reserved for tribals, it was always his men who were put up and elected. They always acted on his bidding.

It was his land, Jagtu said. But the whole village believed that the only land Jagtu owned was one-quarter of an acre on which his mother, Suklia’s hut stood, and where his animals were tied. The land had been in the name of Babulal Joshi for so long that people had forgotten that it had belonged to anyone else. But Jagtu could never forget. The land had belonged to his father, Kondoo. And now, by all rights, it was his.

Kondoo Gond, his father. He could scarcely remember him, he had died when he was only a child. Jagtu’s only memories of him were with a bottle of home-brewed liquor, sprawled out for days in a drunken stupor, and the bouts of madness in his last days.

But it was not always like this. In the long evenings, as they sat outside their hut and watched the setting sun, Jagtu’s mother would tell him of how it had once been.

Jagtu’s father, and his father before him, for as far back as they could remember, had owned the land which was now held by Babulal Joshi. At that time, the land did not have a tube well or tractor. The grain they sowed was coarse, and the techniques of cultivation were primitive. Even so, they grew enough to fill their stomachs, except in the lean summer months when their grain stores were exhausted. But even then they did not starve because of the forests. As long as they were there, no tribal needed to worry.

The first roads were built when she was a child, his mother recalled. They brought nothing but misery. With them came the patwari, the forest guards, the police constable, the excise inspector, and then the politician in khadi. With the roads came the outsider.

Before her own eyes she saw her whole world transformed. The outsider came to stay; he felled their forests and took away their women. He brought with him his trade. In the village markets, goods appeared which they had never dreamed existed. In exchange for salt, a basic necessity, and for cheap and garish trinkets, cosmetics and synthetic cloth that were so alluringly displayed in the village markets, the tribals would barter away all their produce. A kilogram of chirongi nuts or cashew nuts or tamarind would purchased be from the tribals in exchange for a kilogram of salt; this would then be sold for ten to fifteen times the price in the markets of Raipur and Bilaspur. Impoverished and dispossessed, the relentless lean months of the summer would stretch long as the tribals began to learn the agony of starvation. And the forests were no longer there to support them, as they had for generations past.

However, the trader would never let them starve. He was always there in their hour of need. But at a brutal price. He would lend them the money they needed to tide over their months of need, but at crippling rates of interest. The defenceless tribal found himself increasingly caught in the vice of indebtedness, from which he could not free himself. And before long, he would lose his jewellery, his livestock and finally his land to the moneylender. And so the outsider who came empty- handed to their villages, in time came to own most of the land and property in the region, and the tribal, once self-sufficient and proud, became landless, deprived and powerless.

So it was with Kondoo Gond. Suklia recalled that when she married Kondoo, Babulal already was the most powerful man in the region. Tribals from tens of miles all around trudged to his threshold in their season of want. He owned a jeep, at that time the ultimate symbol of wealth and power. The jeep had its other uses as well; she had seen the occasional tribal who failed to pay his dues dragged by the jeep in full view of the village. There was never any doubt about who was in command.

But it was rare to have to resort to such a naked display of power. With the tribal, and his unshakable moral code, such terror tactics were mostly unnecessary. Suklia recalled how frequently Kondoo would, like so many others, borrow against his entire next crop. After that it was not necessary for the moneylender, Babulal or his henchmen to visit the village, his fields or his home even once. Kondoo would toil in his fields even harder than he had ever done when the grain was for his own kitchen. The crop was harvested, threshed, packed in gunnysacks. Kondoo would then spend the bus fare to Babulal’s village to deliver the grain at his doorstep, keeping nothing behind in his own house. After that, of course, he would starve again, and before long he would be at Babulal’s door for another loan.

The day had to come, as it had for so many others before him, when Babulal would send for Kondoo. Babulal said that Kondoo’s loan had mounted so high that he would have to transfer his land to him. But there was one hurdle; a law had been passed that land could not be transferred from a tribal to a non-tribal without the permission of the collector. Babulal assured Kondoo this was a mere formality. He would simply have to stand before the collector and testify that he had received in cash the full value of his land.

Kondoo had always looked on Babulal with an amalgam of fear and awe. He would never have dreamed of speaking out against the Seth. But his land, his beloved land. How could he lose it? He begged and pleaded for time, another chance. He recklessly pledged all his other belongings, his labour and that of his whole family, his life itself. Babulal’s voice acquired a new edge of steel. We’ll go to Jagdalpur, to the collector’s court the day after the next village haat-bazaar, he said coldly, make sure you are here.

Contd...

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