swidden cultivation in hill areas. There, “village heads” (nokmas) hold title to what are generally contiguous areas of land (a’king). This encompasses the land that people live on, the fields they cultivate, and jungle areas that may or may not in a subsequent year be transformed into swidden. The people who live on the land, most of whom can, in one way or another, trace kin ties to the village head, have the right to use it for hunting, and collecting fruits, wood, and bamboo. In addition, jungle can be cleared to make fields for swidden cultivation. For a couple of decades now, hill land has also been increasingly used for small orchards, as well as for the mining of coal.3 Land ownership is collective, in that the rights of the village head extend to each of his relatives in the village.4 The village head (a man) and his wife are categorized as “kin seniors” to many of the villagers, and theirs is a hereditary position that carries over from one village head to the next.5
The village head-couple are regarded as the lawful owners, in the sense that they hold legally recognized and recorded property rights. Their title also derives its legitimacy from being rooted in stories of origin. Regarding the village where I conducted most of my fieldwork, people stated that it had been founded “hundreds of years ago,” by a couple who had earlier lived in a village about four miles to the north. When the founding couple died, people said, their place was taken by their daughter and her husband, who became the subsequent village heads. This succession continued for at least “a hundred generations.”
According to the story of origin, the founding couple brought some heavy boulders from a nearby river and planted these in what would become the center of the new village. The planting of the main boulder required the sacrifice of a human to the Guira, a god and ancestor. The head of this victim (it had to be a man) had been buried under the main boulder, I was told. People said that whenever the boulders were replanted, this ritual was repeated, although nowadays the sacrifice of a dog (rather than a human) would do. Quite a few older inhabitants of the village told me that in their youth they had witnessed many of these sacrifices, but since by now the vast majority of the Garo have converted to Christianity, their performance has become very rare.
Conducting sacrifices to the boulder (or rather to Guira) was said to be entirely the responsibility of the village head, his wife’s close matrilineal relatives, and the spouses of the latter. “Anyone else would become blind or lame,” an old man told me. The position of the village head-couple, as heirs to the founders of the village, is thus legitimized by particular ritual capabilities, such as the care of the “seat” of Guira. The village head is also in charge of core elements of some of the rituals of the annual cycle (where these are still conducted). From a religious perspective, this vests the village head with major responsibilities regarding the existence of the village, and claims to the land surrounding it that its inhabitants utilize. The boulder, with its capacity to “protect” people, thus also represents part of the claim that people make to the land. Nowadays, due to the omnipresence of Christianity, few people continue to acknowledge deities like Guira. Nevertheless, throughout the Garo Hills, the boulders continue to be identified as claims to territory, which in the early twentieth century have translated into legally registered land titles.6
A Non-Benevolent Environment?
According to the Garo community religion, the environment in which people live is not necessarily benevolent. Humans and animals did not settle in an “empty” land. Rather, people came to live amidst a variety of entities, generally referred to as mitdes (deities), who are mostly of a malevolent nature. The existence of these deities precedes the creation of the world and the humans who inhabit it. The deities are believed to live on blood, or “life fluid,” which they suck from people as well as from animals and plants (such as rice). The deities are normally invisible, but people at times encounter them in their dreams. Some of the fiercest deities are located in patches of forest land that, due to the presence of these deities, are regarded as “austere land” (a’a raka) that should not be cultivated. A woman who had dreamed of these deities told me that they are “large, muscular people,” whose bodies are covered with hair from top to toe. A son of hers, who had also encountered them in his dreams, said: “They tried to tie me up, to beat me to death.” People’s identification of certain patches of jungle as “austere land” derives from experiential knowledge that has been carried over from preceding generations. But, with regards to most of the deities, they lack any such knowledge, which renders them a “presence” that is both unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Quite apart from these predatory deities, Garo people do not normally experience nature as friendly. Most notably during the wet season, every inch of greenery can harbor unpleasant surprises in the form of leeches, centipedes, poisonous spiders, and snakes. The land around houses is kept clear of any greenery, to reduce the chances of encountering these kinds of creatures. For the same reason, and especially in the rainy season, people will avoid walking through shrubs and grass. This does not mean they are afraid of the environment they live in, but a perception of nature as peaceful and harmonious, as suggested by the Garo indigenous activists’ calendar pictures, is certainly unusual to most rural Garo.
Competition, Cooperation, and Exclusion in Swidden-Making
The “organic linkage” to nature that is attributed to indigenous communities is thought to align with an egalitarian social structure (Scott 2009: 18). Throughout much of upland Asia, in which swidden cultivation was (and to a certain degree still is) the dominant mode of production, “hill polities are, almost invariably, redistributive, competitive feasting systems held together by the benefits they are able to disburse” (ibid.: 22). This implies a shared management of resources that make specific demands on the organization of social relationships, and influences the ways in which people engage with land. This also implies, at least according to the community religion of the Garo, making fields in an environment in which humans are but one of many presences.
Each year, in Garo Hills, swidden cultivators open up new fields, which they create in the jungle that covers the hills. Depending on the number of years that it has had to recuperate between cultivations, this vegetation consists either of shrubs or relatively mature trees. Following cultivation, a swidden field should ideally be left fallow for several years. The longer the jungle has had to grow back, the better the soil is able to recuperate and the larger the expected yields. Therefore, in each new year, ideally the oldest jungle should be used to make new swiddens. In preparation for swidden farming, all shrubs are cut and all but the largest trees are chopped down. For several weeks, the cut shrubs and trees are left to dry. Larger tree trunks are sold as firewood; the rest is burned so that the ashes can fertilize the soil.
In November, when the dry season is well underway, male representatives of all the families who would like to cultivate a swidden meet. This meeting, which is chaired by the village head, requires people to agree on the patch, or patches, of forest that will be cleared. As part of my ethnographic fieldwork, I attended three of these meetings, and each time it was difficult for the men to agree. Increasingly, people have started planting orchards on land that was previously used for swidden cultivation, which now renders it almost impossible to clear contiguous stretches of forest. The meetings about new fields are not only meant to decide which stretches of forest will be cleared, but more specifically which family will cultivate which field. Even when covered by trees and shrubs, people can identify the boundaries of fields that have previously been cultivated by small streams, ridges, large trees, and the remnants of paths. These boundaries are known to those who have been involved in previous cycles of cultivation. Having cultivated a field in a prior cycle of cultivation grants a family a certain precedence to claim it again, but whether or not such a right can be effectuated also depends on the
