H N Muanlal, JNU
The land that we called home is a place of many historical events. We cannot deny the fact that many migrations, battles or wars had taken place in these hills. Our forefathers have struggle, fought for their lives to defend what we now called Our Land. They fought among themselves and with others for supremacy. It was a place of heroisms and betrayals. Many bloods had been shed.
We cannot ignore these bygone eras merely because it has no written records. Some may even regard that it is of no importance now as the situation has changed and is different; different in our daily lives, occupations, ways of living, etc. Nevertheless if we look closer, everything revolves around the land. It is because of this that most of the inter village wars were fought. Does anyone believe that our forefathers fought with the Meitei just because they are Meitei? Or the rival villages just for a prize called Laltang? Or the British who are more advance in warfare and manpower just for the sake of forced labour?
Culture is dynamic. It keeps on evolving according to changing time and space. Some sociologist and political philosophers tried to study culture as autonomous, independent from other variables. They try to separate the study of culture from that of the changing socio-political realities. Although we do not deny them completely, in a place like ours we cannot depart from it. The situations that we are in, our ways of thinking in every sphere of our lives are undeniably a reflection of our socio-economic and political reality of the times. The tradition of Pu Zu Kholh, marriage system, festivals and ceremonies, and most importantly the idea of leadership i.e. preference of elected social or political leadership to a hereditary chieftainship may be some (I say some, not all) of the basic examples. It is this changing leadership interface with the ownership of land in the context of ethnic identity assertions that we want to focus on. Look at our dances, our folklores and songs, and for instance the festival of Kut, one will notice that it all reflect the people and its relationship with the land. Thus, to study our society, our culture and our relationship to one another which is ever changing, we cannot depart away from the issues of land ownership and its dynamism.
Generally speaking, our society has communitarian values and aspects. By communitarians, we mean “social order in which individuals are bound together by common values that foster close communal bonds” (Oxford). It signifies a group of people who are socially related by virtue of identity with a particular location. As we all know the system of chieftainship was powerful in our society. He is the owner of the land. But what is important to note here is that the very basis of land and its relationship with the common people is of common ownership. We are not saying that private ownership does not exist. It does. A family cultivates a particular area of the village land and they owned the produced. The land that they cultivated does not however belong to an individual family. It belongs to the community, the village. The house a family built is theirs, not the land they built on. The land is under the supervision of the chief. Thus, the chief plays an important role in the society. He needs to regulate every year the jhum circle. Although it still exists in our villages, the role they play is now reduced to a mere titular.
With the rise of western institutions like education, services and the religious concept, no doubt, significant changes can be seen in our society. The urbanization further transforms our social relations to a great extent. It is not our interest here to discuss the process of how urbanization comes about but how it transform or plays a major factor in the changing scenario of our land ownership system. Urbanization changes the concept of traditional land ownership. People began to own a plot or plots of land under their names. It loosens the community links it once had in a village. We are not saying that urbanization abruptly alters the social relations we once had but slowly and it is dynamic. It is unfortunately noticeable even now in our existing villages to a certain extent. In contrast to the traditional based land ownership that we have discussed earlier, private ownership of land comes into play. Not only people began to own land for constructing their houses, the better-off began to possess lands for one or more reasons. Basically, it is mainly for cultivations of different cash crops, though with some exceptions. It is also with the idea that it will generate some jobs/works for our own people.
With India’s independence and the reorganization of the states, the mainland India is divided on the basis of language. The North Eastern region however was an exception. With its diversity, it is almost impossible to separate on linguistic basis. We, a section of the Zo community and our land, became a part of the Manipur state. We, the people who once consider ourselves a free nation are now reduced to a minority. We are now at the mercy of those who holds the state. Obviously it is not us who have a say in the state government but the very people whom we fiercely guarded against. Our land which we once cherish so much becomes a playground of the people whom our forefathers had fought against. It is thus natural that we began to develop this strong sense of identity based on us and them. This strong sense of community link, based on identity developed, I suppose, on the very basis of our consciousness that culminates out of the notions that we, once a proud people, are marginalized. The majority people, whom we are living with in this so called Manipur state, will never understand. They never will. Instead, they are desperately trying to “meitei-nised” the whole state. See how they plan to manipulate the names (and some they already did) of our hill range, rivers etc. I don’t blame them. Just imagine yourself getting something which does not belong to you. The first thing you might want to do is to change the name or make a mark so that others might believe that you owned it. What you don’t know is that it must have been someone else’s property before it falls on your hand. You won’t even care if it is legitimate or accidental. That’s because it is in your hand now. It is all that matters now. You want to think that it originally is yours. No one owns prior to you. That exactly is the consciousness of the them in Manipur. They have a history of written records. It is they who had established connections with the colonial ruler. It is obvious that there are possibilities of constructing and manipulating history against the reality of our past. I am also convinced that even though the British, who started conducting surveys and datas about us independently, would somehow falls into their traps.
Keeping aside other factors, our main focus is to discuss the present development within our society. Though marginalized, our town Lamka fair relatively well as compared to other districts in the state in most fields. In terms of education, sports etc., we do contribute quite a number of individuals to the state as well as at the national level notwithstanding our small population and limited infrastructures. In terms of business too, there are fairly quite a number of people whom we could, as a community, be proud of. Our community is such that we tend to take pride in other people’s success, especially if it is from our own community. There is nothing wrong in that. And mind you, that is how people judge us too, especially in north east. It looks obscure but people seem to weigh you from the community you belong. The good thing about our society is that we still have that strong sense of community service; Tawmngaihna would be an appropriate word. Fortunately, it transcends all sections of our society; rich or poor, employed or unemployed, male or female etc. Some may argue that Tawmngaihna is the thing of the past or maybe it has been reduced to some sections of the society, I don’t disagree with them. No doubt. Times are changing. And it is fast. We cannot deny the fact that our work culture is also changing. People do not have as much leisure time as they used to have before. We are not saying that we perform community services only during our leisure time. But things have changed. With the rising unemployment, people migrating from villages to town areas in search of better life, insecurity began to blanket the place where we live. Without a warning, people are in the street looking for work just to earn bread for a day. Take a look around. You don’t even have to try to see it. It’s everywhere. The question here is how can you expect people to do community services and then go hungry for the rest of the day? Going back to the point, our society as we know reflect our individuality. I don’t know how many of us would agree to this but it seems that it is our individuality that appropriates society and not the other way round. And that is a part of our culture. If someone is successful, we expect good things from them. We suppose that it is their duty to serve the people beyond his/her family. Even those individuals who are successful or powerful enough have that sense of obligation to serve the community.
Now in the scenario where we are under the threat of being dominated by the majority who consider themselves superior, what would be our response as individuals or as a community? Generally, the first thing our response has been asserting our rights and identity as a tribal. This is what we are in fact adhering to. Since the Constitution of India provides us with a provision to safeguard our lands and culture, I suppose, it is indeed a safest bid. After all, it is the only way we could defend ourselves from them in this sorry state. But is it working? My colleague once ask me why the people in the hill areas of Manipur are deeply against the idea of plain people (read talpakte) settling in the hills when everyone else could settle in the plain area? A good query indeed. I would have asked the same question if I were him. It was a reasonable question from the eye of a third party. But the situation is far more elusive. To explain, though not ignoring the importance of Tribal Rights, Constitutional provisions, Regulations or Acts, etc., we need to go beyond these “institutional provisions”. It is necessary to objectify our subjective conditions if we need to be more convincing. For this, we need to be more aware of the development within and outside our existence to explain this subtle issue. To this, I would like to quote my friend stating, “Why are the Indians asking the British to quit India when they themselves considered staying in England as a privilege?”. The difference here from our situation is that we do not, however, considered ourselves privilege settling in the plains.
As we know, the present situation where the plain people began to force their way in the hill areas can be seen no other than in Lamka town and its surrounding areas. They had established themselves as a strong economic force not to mention the role they began to play both in the social and political field. For instance, during the last election campaign, they began to participate openly. Their population has grown to such an extent that it will be sheer stupidity to ignore them in the town area. Thus, they become a factor. The incursion into our tribal lands is not the question of good or bad, it is real. And they are here to stay. The question we again have to ask ourselves is should we be afraid? My personal answer would be yes. It is not because they are larger in terms of population, nor in terms of resources nor in terms of the hegemony they hold when it comes to power distribution in the state. The reason why I am intimidated is because of our unsettled land holding system. As we have discuss earlier, the role of the village chief in this era of identity politics become less relevant. It is in a state of flux. It was this institution (chieftaincy) that holds us together in the past as a cultural and social unit. It is also this very institution that convinced the colonial ruler that our land should be protected under it. Those laws and regulations which were passed by the colonial ruler meant to protect our land and culture are incorporated even in post colonial period. This is how we differentiate ourselves from the plain people.
Now we have contemporary institutions and organizations which play a vital role in our society. Not only in town areas, we all have an established social and political institutions in every village. My main concern is, although we have made an immense progress in terms of establishing a contemporary social and political institution which substantiate our village chief, we haven’t addressed seriously, as an individual and as a society, on how our land should be protected or what kind of alternative land holding system should be regulate in our classless society. My argument is if most of the role of the chief has been replaced by the contemporary institutions and organizations, why haven’t we also take into account or address the kind of system of land holding under the new institutions which was the main functions under the old one? Of course, the institution of chieftainship and his power over land is still intact. What we wanted to state here is that, as discussed earlier ours is a society with communitarian values. The chief system directly or indirectly upholds these values because he holds authority over both the people and the land. By ensuring control over the two, the institution of the chief makes both the land and the people inseparable. That is the very basis of our culture. And our culture itself will be fragmented if there is a sudden shift in its relation to each other (Land and the people). The whole paradigm of our culture and its continuity dwell within the process of the relationship between the land and its people. The separation of one with the other signifies the discontinuity of the dynamism of culture. Now, as we all know, the authority over the social relations lies with the new players but not the land. In contrast, the chief still holds the authority over the land but his power over the people is diminishing. (Of course, we do not deny the fact that the distinction of authority over land and the people is more complicated than it looks. However, we need to distinguish it generally so as to make the picture clear). This led to the process of deterioration of our traditions and customs. It entails a fragmentation of our society, our development as a community is at stake and leaves serious questions about our survival as an ethnic group. So, don’t we think it is a high time that we give a serious thoughts about our priority as an individual, as a society and also most importantly as a player in these contemporary institutions.
If we see the development now, a few wealthy sections of our society began to procure lands from the towns and villages. The areas around our major villages which are connected by vehicle roads are mostly the targets. The lands procured are used for plantations of mostly cash crops. Few individuals, mostly villagers from nearby areas are hired to look after the plantations. In one way it generates employments for few individuals. They also utilize our land resources to generate profits. That is a good thing in itself. And most importantly, it gives a security to us because the land belongs to individuals from our own society. Imagine if our villages land falls in the hands of individuals belonging to them. The consequences would be far more serious indeed. However, it will be a half baked truth if we ignore the development within our society itself. As concerned individuals in our society, it is important for each one of us to anticipate beyond our present day situations and ascertain the possibilities in the future.
The queries we need to place ourselves are what if the situations change with the changing times? What if we don’t need to bother about our marginalized/minority status in the future, the very basis on which we strongly assert our group identity? Will the next and the generations that follow, who had purchased the land, have the same commitment and responsibility towards their people like their predecessors?
Personally, I disagree with people who think that our present situations will drag on forever. That fateful day may come when we get our dignity, our freedom back to live our life peacefully. The day may come when you need not bother about people other than your own. Imagine yourself witnessing that fateful day. Now you want to go back to the times, as an individual in a village or society, where you are free to roam these hills which we called our home. It was the place where our forefathers roam freely in the jungles for hunting, cutting of trees, cultivating crops and collecting fruits etc. We are not saying here that we may again go back to our forefathers’ professions and ways of livings. Quite contrary to our thinking, seeing the present development, we may not be as free as our predecessors used to be. Especially the people living in the villages will be severely affected. The land which once was owned by the village/community will by then be owned by individuals. The chief who once regulate the jhum circle will no more have the authority over what he had already sold. The free assess of land in which the village life solely depends will no longer exist. Because the land itself by then be owned by the wealthy people. If we all accept this situation as an inevitable process of human society, it ends here. The process of transformation in our society has began.
Concluding without a conclusion
I used to ponder upon this question: Can we really exist as a distinct cultural group without some kind of village system of land holdings? Here, we are more concentrating on our village lands and not in the town areas because it is in these villages of ours that we can still find the continuity of our cultural cosmos. Although changes are inevitable, much of our social fabrics are still intact. As we have discussed earlier, we as a tribal cannot be separated from the land. Most importantly here it signifies a direct relationship of the land with the community and not as individuals. And that is the very basis of our culture. If the village lands in due course of time become an individual property, where do we locate our culture? For better or worst the dynamism of private land ownership, as we all know, has already taken roots in our village lands. With this development, one should acknowledge the possibilities in our society the rising tides of class divisions. Is this inevitable or can there be an alternative ways of living in this world of individualism? Is there a possibility under our new social players (contemporary social or political institutions) where we can regulate our land holding system? The dice is yours.
www.zogam.com
The land that we called home is a place of many historical events. We cannot deny the fact that many migrations, battles or wars had taken place in these hills. Our forefathers have struggle, fought for their lives to defend what we now called Our Land. They fought among themselves and with others for supremacy. It was a place of heroisms and betrayals. Many bloods had been shed.
We cannot ignore these bygone eras merely because it has no written records. Some may even regard that it is of no importance now as the situation has changed and is different; different in our daily lives, occupations, ways of living, etc. Nevertheless if we look closer, everything revolves around the land. It is because of this that most of the inter village wars were fought. Does anyone believe that our forefathers fought with the Meitei just because they are Meitei? Or the rival villages just for a prize called Laltang? Or the British who are more advance in warfare and manpower just for the sake of forced labour?
Culture is dynamic. It keeps on evolving according to changing time and space. Some sociologist and political philosophers tried to study culture as autonomous, independent from other variables. They try to separate the study of culture from that of the changing socio-political realities. Although we do not deny them completely, in a place like ours we cannot depart from it. The situations that we are in, our ways of thinking in every sphere of our lives are undeniably a reflection of our socio-economic and political reality of the times. The tradition of Pu Zu Kholh, marriage system, festivals and ceremonies, and most importantly the idea of leadership i.e. preference of elected social or political leadership to a hereditary chieftainship may be some (I say some, not all) of the basic examples. It is this changing leadership interface with the ownership of land in the context of ethnic identity assertions that we want to focus on. Look at our dances, our folklores and songs, and for instance the festival of Kut, one will notice that it all reflect the people and its relationship with the land. Thus, to study our society, our culture and our relationship to one another which is ever changing, we cannot depart away from the issues of land ownership and its dynamism.
Generally speaking, our society has communitarian values and aspects. By communitarians, we mean “social order in which individuals are bound together by common values that foster close communal bonds” (Oxford). It signifies a group of people who are socially related by virtue of identity with a particular location. As we all know the system of chieftainship was powerful in our society. He is the owner of the land. But what is important to note here is that the very basis of land and its relationship with the common people is of common ownership. We are not saying that private ownership does not exist. It does. A family cultivates a particular area of the village land and they owned the produced. The land that they cultivated does not however belong to an individual family. It belongs to the community, the village. The house a family built is theirs, not the land they built on. The land is under the supervision of the chief. Thus, the chief plays an important role in the society. He needs to regulate every year the jhum circle. Although it still exists in our villages, the role they play is now reduced to a mere titular.
With the rise of western institutions like education, services and the religious concept, no doubt, significant changes can be seen in our society. The urbanization further transforms our social relations to a great extent. It is not our interest here to discuss the process of how urbanization comes about but how it transform or plays a major factor in the changing scenario of our land ownership system. Urbanization changes the concept of traditional land ownership. People began to own a plot or plots of land under their names. It loosens the community links it once had in a village. We are not saying that urbanization abruptly alters the social relations we once had but slowly and it is dynamic. It is unfortunately noticeable even now in our existing villages to a certain extent. In contrast to the traditional based land ownership that we have discussed earlier, private ownership of land comes into play. Not only people began to own land for constructing their houses, the better-off began to possess lands for one or more reasons. Basically, it is mainly for cultivations of different cash crops, though with some exceptions. It is also with the idea that it will generate some jobs/works for our own people.
With India’s independence and the reorganization of the states, the mainland India is divided on the basis of language. The North Eastern region however was an exception. With its diversity, it is almost impossible to separate on linguistic basis. We, a section of the Zo community and our land, became a part of the Manipur state. We, the people who once consider ourselves a free nation are now reduced to a minority. We are now at the mercy of those who holds the state. Obviously it is not us who have a say in the state government but the very people whom we fiercely guarded against. Our land which we once cherish so much becomes a playground of the people whom our forefathers had fought against. It is thus natural that we began to develop this strong sense of identity based on us and them. This strong sense of community link, based on identity developed, I suppose, on the very basis of our consciousness that culminates out of the notions that we, once a proud people, are marginalized. The majority people, whom we are living with in this so called Manipur state, will never understand. They never will. Instead, they are desperately trying to “meitei-nised” the whole state. See how they plan to manipulate the names (and some they already did) of our hill range, rivers etc. I don’t blame them. Just imagine yourself getting something which does not belong to you. The first thing you might want to do is to change the name or make a mark so that others might believe that you owned it. What you don’t know is that it must have been someone else’s property before it falls on your hand. You won’t even care if it is legitimate or accidental. That’s because it is in your hand now. It is all that matters now. You want to think that it originally is yours. No one owns prior to you. That exactly is the consciousness of the them in Manipur. They have a history of written records. It is they who had established connections with the colonial ruler. It is obvious that there are possibilities of constructing and manipulating history against the reality of our past. I am also convinced that even though the British, who started conducting surveys and datas about us independently, would somehow falls into their traps.
Keeping aside other factors, our main focus is to discuss the present development within our society. Though marginalized, our town Lamka fair relatively well as compared to other districts in the state in most fields. In terms of education, sports etc., we do contribute quite a number of individuals to the state as well as at the national level notwithstanding our small population and limited infrastructures. In terms of business too, there are fairly quite a number of people whom we could, as a community, be proud of. Our community is such that we tend to take pride in other people’s success, especially if it is from our own community. There is nothing wrong in that. And mind you, that is how people judge us too, especially in north east. It looks obscure but people seem to weigh you from the community you belong. The good thing about our society is that we still have that strong sense of community service; Tawmngaihna would be an appropriate word. Fortunately, it transcends all sections of our society; rich or poor, employed or unemployed, male or female etc. Some may argue that Tawmngaihna is the thing of the past or maybe it has been reduced to some sections of the society, I don’t disagree with them. No doubt. Times are changing. And it is fast. We cannot deny the fact that our work culture is also changing. People do not have as much leisure time as they used to have before. We are not saying that we perform community services only during our leisure time. But things have changed. With the rising unemployment, people migrating from villages to town areas in search of better life, insecurity began to blanket the place where we live. Without a warning, people are in the street looking for work just to earn bread for a day. Take a look around. You don’t even have to try to see it. It’s everywhere. The question here is how can you expect people to do community services and then go hungry for the rest of the day? Going back to the point, our society as we know reflect our individuality. I don’t know how many of us would agree to this but it seems that it is our individuality that appropriates society and not the other way round. And that is a part of our culture. If someone is successful, we expect good things from them. We suppose that it is their duty to serve the people beyond his/her family. Even those individuals who are successful or powerful enough have that sense of obligation to serve the community.
Now in the scenario where we are under the threat of being dominated by the majority who consider themselves superior, what would be our response as individuals or as a community? Generally, the first thing our response has been asserting our rights and identity as a tribal. This is what we are in fact adhering to. Since the Constitution of India provides us with a provision to safeguard our lands and culture, I suppose, it is indeed a safest bid. After all, it is the only way we could defend ourselves from them in this sorry state. But is it working? My colleague once ask me why the people in the hill areas of Manipur are deeply against the idea of plain people (read talpakte) settling in the hills when everyone else could settle in the plain area? A good query indeed. I would have asked the same question if I were him. It was a reasonable question from the eye of a third party. But the situation is far more elusive. To explain, though not ignoring the importance of Tribal Rights, Constitutional provisions, Regulations or Acts, etc., we need to go beyond these “institutional provisions”. It is necessary to objectify our subjective conditions if we need to be more convincing. For this, we need to be more aware of the development within and outside our existence to explain this subtle issue. To this, I would like to quote my friend stating, “Why are the Indians asking the British to quit India when they themselves considered staying in England as a privilege?”. The difference here from our situation is that we do not, however, considered ourselves privilege settling in the plains.
As we know, the present situation where the plain people began to force their way in the hill areas can be seen no other than in Lamka town and its surrounding areas. They had established themselves as a strong economic force not to mention the role they began to play both in the social and political field. For instance, during the last election campaign, they began to participate openly. Their population has grown to such an extent that it will be sheer stupidity to ignore them in the town area. Thus, they become a factor. The incursion into our tribal lands is not the question of good or bad, it is real. And they are here to stay. The question we again have to ask ourselves is should we be afraid? My personal answer would be yes. It is not because they are larger in terms of population, nor in terms of resources nor in terms of the hegemony they hold when it comes to power distribution in the state. The reason why I am intimidated is because of our unsettled land holding system. As we have discuss earlier, the role of the village chief in this era of identity politics become less relevant. It is in a state of flux. It was this institution (chieftaincy) that holds us together in the past as a cultural and social unit. It is also this very institution that convinced the colonial ruler that our land should be protected under it. Those laws and regulations which were passed by the colonial ruler meant to protect our land and culture are incorporated even in post colonial period. This is how we differentiate ourselves from the plain people.
Now we have contemporary institutions and organizations which play a vital role in our society. Not only in town areas, we all have an established social and political institutions in every village. My main concern is, although we have made an immense progress in terms of establishing a contemporary social and political institution which substantiate our village chief, we haven’t addressed seriously, as an individual and as a society, on how our land should be protected or what kind of alternative land holding system should be regulate in our classless society. My argument is if most of the role of the chief has been replaced by the contemporary institutions and organizations, why haven’t we also take into account or address the kind of system of land holding under the new institutions which was the main functions under the old one? Of course, the institution of chieftainship and his power over land is still intact. What we wanted to state here is that, as discussed earlier ours is a society with communitarian values. The chief system directly or indirectly upholds these values because he holds authority over both the people and the land. By ensuring control over the two, the institution of the chief makes both the land and the people inseparable. That is the very basis of our culture. And our culture itself will be fragmented if there is a sudden shift in its relation to each other (Land and the people). The whole paradigm of our culture and its continuity dwell within the process of the relationship between the land and its people. The separation of one with the other signifies the discontinuity of the dynamism of culture. Now, as we all know, the authority over the social relations lies with the new players but not the land. In contrast, the chief still holds the authority over the land but his power over the people is diminishing. (Of course, we do not deny the fact that the distinction of authority over land and the people is more complicated than it looks. However, we need to distinguish it generally so as to make the picture clear). This led to the process of deterioration of our traditions and customs. It entails a fragmentation of our society, our development as a community is at stake and leaves serious questions about our survival as an ethnic group. So, don’t we think it is a high time that we give a serious thoughts about our priority as an individual, as a society and also most importantly as a player in these contemporary institutions.
If we see the development now, a few wealthy sections of our society began to procure lands from the towns and villages. The areas around our major villages which are connected by vehicle roads are mostly the targets. The lands procured are used for plantations of mostly cash crops. Few individuals, mostly villagers from nearby areas are hired to look after the plantations. In one way it generates employments for few individuals. They also utilize our land resources to generate profits. That is a good thing in itself. And most importantly, it gives a security to us because the land belongs to individuals from our own society. Imagine if our villages land falls in the hands of individuals belonging to them. The consequences would be far more serious indeed. However, it will be a half baked truth if we ignore the development within our society itself. As concerned individuals in our society, it is important for each one of us to anticipate beyond our present day situations and ascertain the possibilities in the future.
The queries we need to place ourselves are what if the situations change with the changing times? What if we don’t need to bother about our marginalized/minority status in the future, the very basis on which we strongly assert our group identity? Will the next and the generations that follow, who had purchased the land, have the same commitment and responsibility towards their people like their predecessors?
Personally, I disagree with people who think that our present situations will drag on forever. That fateful day may come when we get our dignity, our freedom back to live our life peacefully. The day may come when you need not bother about people other than your own. Imagine yourself witnessing that fateful day. Now you want to go back to the times, as an individual in a village or society, where you are free to roam these hills which we called our home. It was the place where our forefathers roam freely in the jungles for hunting, cutting of trees, cultivating crops and collecting fruits etc. We are not saying here that we may again go back to our forefathers’ professions and ways of livings. Quite contrary to our thinking, seeing the present development, we may not be as free as our predecessors used to be. Especially the people living in the villages will be severely affected. The land which once was owned by the village/community will by then be owned by individuals. The chief who once regulate the jhum circle will no more have the authority over what he had already sold. The free assess of land in which the village life solely depends will no longer exist. Because the land itself by then be owned by the wealthy people. If we all accept this situation as an inevitable process of human society, it ends here. The process of transformation in our society has began.
Concluding without a conclusion
I used to ponder upon this question: Can we really exist as a distinct cultural group without some kind of village system of land holdings? Here, we are more concentrating on our village lands and not in the town areas because it is in these villages of ours that we can still find the continuity of our cultural cosmos. Although changes are inevitable, much of our social fabrics are still intact. As we have discussed earlier, we as a tribal cannot be separated from the land. Most importantly here it signifies a direct relationship of the land with the community and not as individuals. And that is the very basis of our culture. If the village lands in due course of time become an individual property, where do we locate our culture? For better or worst the dynamism of private land ownership, as we all know, has already taken roots in our village lands. With this development, one should acknowledge the possibilities in our society the rising tides of class divisions. Is this inevitable or can there be an alternative ways of living in this world of individualism? Is there a possibility under our new social players (contemporary social or political institutions) where we can regulate our land holding system? The dice is yours.
www.zogam.com
