Country: Bihar, India
Group: Ho
Date: October 31st, 2023
Team: Teagen Allen (lead), Jhanz Marco Garcia, Rebekah Dilks
Content Warnings: forced displacement, discrimination
Approximate Time Period: 1860-Present
The Ho are the fourth largest scheduled tribe in India They identify themselves as Ho, Hodoko, and Horo meaning “human” in their native language (Odisha State Tribal Museum, n.d.).
Starting in the colonial period in India, the British and Indian governments enacted a series of laws that forced the Adivasi, India’s indigenous people, to vacate their ancestral lands. The 1864 Forest Act allowed the British Government to claim eminent domain over any land covered by trees, brush wood, or jungle (Minority Rights, 1996). This Act categorized anyone residing on such land as illegal occupants, granting the government the authority to expel the Adivasi, including the Ho, from their land. The British accomplished this by utilizing a legal system that the Ho had no means of navigating (Kannabiran in 2016).
In 1957, the Indian Government passed the Coal Bearing Area Act, which allowed public and private entities to acquire land rich in coal and other minerals (Minority Rights, 1996). In 1972, the Wildlife Protection Act removed the rights of the Adivasi from their land and claimed it for National Parks and Wildlife Preserves (Minority Rights, 1996). Since the passing of the 1957 act, and subsequent 1972 various private and governmental projects such as the building of hydroelectric dams have forced nearly 20 million tribal persons off their land (Areeparampil, 1996). These projects have displaced an average of 9% of all currently living tribal persons at least once in their lives (Minority Rights, 1996).
Data quality was rated a 3/3 for this case due to significant coverage in scholarly articles and books from unbiased international sources.
Sources
- Areeparampil, Mathew. (1996). Displacement Due to Mining in Jharkhand. Economic and Political Weekly, 31(24), 1524–1528. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4404276
- Kannabiran, K. (2016). Constitutional geographies and cartographies – JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44166673
- Minority Rights, BHENGRA, R., BIJOY, C. R., & LUITHUI, S. (1999). The Adivasis of India. Minority Rights Group. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=267cc89872155cd22310a7658a14fddc07ef002d
- Odisha State Tribal Museum (n.d.). Munda. Retrieved October 30, 2023, from https://www.ostm.in/tribes_of_odisha/munda/