Enclosing Land,Enclosing Adivasi s: Colonial Agriculture and Adivasi s in Central India,1853–1948 *

Abstract

British colonial rule in India sought to bring the relatively autonomous forest and hill people under its governance through various policies. Land revenue policies combined with modern agricultural technology played a crucial role in expanding colonial state-making in forest and hill areas. This policy lured many land-hungry peasants from plains to migrate into these areas and bring vast areas of uncultivable land into cultivation. This process evicted adivasis (aboriginals) and reduced them to landless agricultural labourers. Others tried to retain their independence by migrating into the remaining forest tracts, which the British and princely rulers now classed as reserved for the sole use of the state. They were banned from utilising reserved forests in the old ways. Although the intention was to make the adivasis into productive subjects of a modern state, the reality was that they ended up as marginalised and excluded from this process. The colonial project of enclosing land thus enclosed the adivasis and stigmatised them as primitive or isolated communities. The isolation of the adivasis was a result of their marginalisation under the colonial rule. In this way, a boundary was created between the plains and hill regions of India, with different standards applying in each.