that are involved in the claiming of land. In these land “claims,” the most important factor is no doubt the hierarchical order in which families choose the fields they desire to work. The family of the title holder to a patch of land and his closest relatives have the right to choose first. Men representing other families who are more distantly related to the title holder can then opt for a field after the others have chosen. Families who are not close kin of the village head but are still residents of the village also have a right to claim a swidden and cultivate it. This pattern of claims is comparable to that of swidden cultivators in neighboring hill areas, and it is also found in other areas of Southeast Asia (Murray Li 2010).
It is advantageous to be able to choose a field first, since field characteristics differ depending on the composition of the soil and its placement on a hilltop, a slope, or in a valley. Swidden cultivation is entirely rain-dependent, and in the Garo Hills, a couple of weeks into the growth season, the rains stop. This leaves fields that are located at the top of a hill relatively dry, which is good for the cultivation of cotton, but less favorable when it comes to vegetables or rice. At the foot of a hill the soil retains moisture, which is more suitable for the latter crops.
Even though families have some sort of rights to earlier worked fields and are aware of its boundaries, the occupation of new swidden is unlikely to be the same as that of a previous cycle of cultivation. Families may want a field that is larger, or smaller, than the one they cultivated previously. From one cycle of cultivation to another, some families may have lost members, or families may even have ceased to exist, while other families have newly come into being. Moreover, over the last century the rural population of the Garo Hills has multiplied at least four-, if not six-fold, and the demand for land has gradually increased. It could also be that people may simply want to work a different field from the one they worked before, to see if it results in better yields. Or they may want to work roughly the same field as before but change its boundaries, making it either bigger or smaller to suit their needs.
Ideally, no family should claim more land than it can work. People speak with disdain of such families, whose fields end up being overgrown with weeds. All this means that negotiations about who will work which field are complicated, demanding, and prone to create conflicts. Conflicting interests are ideally negotiated through long discussions mediated by the most senior men. It is the responsibility of the village head to guarantee that all resident families get access to land, but he can only accomplish this with the support of his wife’s close relatives and their in-laws. The collective usage rights of swiddens are thus realized with the consent of the most important families, who in turn support the village head.
Once a meeting in which the men decide about the new fields has ended (and they have in principle reached an agreement), they go to the forest to physically “claim” (kanga) their new swidden. This involves a quick survey of the forest, followed by a short ritual that serves to demand an omen from the deities. The man who imposes the claim makes a small clearing, in which he plants a stick that is split at the top. In the split, some folded leaves are placed. The omen is said to come to the one who requested it, in a dream, during the following night. The dream informs the person who claimed the land of its future yield, and thus also, more implicitly, of the judgment of the deities about its cultivation. Although the “claiming” ritual is primarily justified in religious terms, it is of great social significance as well, since it visually displays the entitlement of a certain man to a specific field-to-be vis-à-vis the other men of his village. In this sense, it underscores that the fields that people claim belong to their family only. The claim translates into what is perhaps best termed a private usage right. All the labor required is provided by the family who makes the claim, and the eventual harvest will be its exclusive property.
The Garo community religion, while now seriously marginalized due to the growing number of people who are converting to Christianity, continues to be closely tied to swidden cultivation. It encompasses a variety of mediatory rituals, aimed at negotiating the cultivation of swidden with the omnipresent deities. As significantly, these practices result in the expression of social relationships among villagers that warrant, balance, and “normalize” the use of swidden among the people who, in belonging to a particular village, share its ownership (de Maaker 2013b). Ritual practices that are attributed great significance tend to be primarily the responsibility of the village head, and their conduct emphasizes the importance of the village head-couple for the entire village. At the same time, the village head depends on the support of families that consider themselves closely related to him for the conduct of these rituals. They extend support in terms of supplying cooked rice and meat, as well as by participating in the celebrations. In this sense, the position of the village head depends on the families who “produce” him as a central religious figure. Land distribution practices thus prioritize access to swidden for families who are close to the village head. Moreover, it restricts access to only the inhabitants of the village (but this includes non-Garo who have married into Garo families). This link of rights to occupation and village residence works towards the exclusion of people who do not belong to a given village. Among Garo, the management of land used for swidden cultivation thus foregrounds ties traced among matrilineal kin. Such ties primarily involve Garo, and unless a marital relationship is traced exclude people of different communities.
Inclusion of the Garo Hills into State and Market Structures
The “community way of living,” as mentioned in the Indian Draft National Tribal Policy, which is projected onto communities such as the Garo, suggests that people are only partially integrated in the overarching structures of market and state. For the Garo, this may have been true in precolonial times, but currently, they are gradually becoming more and more encapsulated by market and state. In precolonial times, the Garo Hills seem to have consisted of semi-autonomous villages. Landlords based in the plains and foothills levied tribute at weekly or monthly markets (hats), but this did not imply territorial-political or administrative control (Misra 2011). When the colonial state expanded from Bengal to Assam in the early nineteenth century, the Garo Hills were initially omitted, since the area had few resources that were of importance to the colonial economy, and deadly strains of malaria discouraged early colonial administrators and clergymen and -women. When the region was eventually colonized, it became a “lightly” administered district, which allowed for a certain degree of exclusion from colonial control. This state of exclusion was instituted after independence under the sixth schedule of the Indian constitution.
Garo upland farmers have a long history of producing for markets. Over time, the importance of these markets for the sale of their produce, and the acquisition of other goods, has increased. This has led to a change in agricultural practices. Experimentation with the cultivation of permanent crops on the hill slopes has a long history, extending to the early days of colonial expansion in the region. In the village where I did most of my research, older people remembered that when they were young, none of the hill slopes had been permanently cultivated. But over the last two to three decades, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of hill land that is used for orchards. The most popular orchard crops are areca and cashew. Most significantly, villagers themselves have been searching for alternatives to make the cultivation of their fields more profitable. This has been especially notable since the 1980s, when due to reduced rainfall, and the subsequent shortening of the crop cycle, swidden yields began to drop.
The occupational pattern of the swiddens is facilitating a changeover to the cultivation of permanent crops. Rather than abandoning a swidden after two years of cultivation, which was the standard practice until a couple of decades ago, people simply continue to occupy it. Soon after they sow their first swidden crops, those who intend to keep their swidden as an orchard will plant saplings on it. After one or two years, when the field is no longer used as a swidden, they continue to care for the saplings so that these can grow into trees that bear fruit. Even in those locations where land is abundant, this gradual increase of permanent cultivation eventually creates shortages of land that is available for swidden cultivation.
This permanent occupation of land does not translate into
