Displaced by settlers

Tribal communities in Kerala's Attappady block are being alienated from their land despite laws in place to protect their rights 

- JEFF JOSEPH

LOCATED AT the foothills of the Nilgiris in Kerala, Attappady block is known for its agricultural productivity and tribal communities. Data with the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP), shows that the block is home to 33,000 or 6 per cent of the state's tribal population. It is also the only block in Kerala where tribal communities have historically owned land. However, they are now increasingly being labelled as "encroachers" on their land. Many of them are in fact embroiled in legal disputes with non-tribal settlers, primarily from other parts of Kerala and adjoining Tamil Nadu, who claim to have proof of sale deals for the land even though Kerala’s laws prohibit such deals.

One such case is of Nanjiyamma, who earned recognition in July 2022 after winning a National award for her song in the film Ayyappanum Koshiyum. At a time when her family should have been celebrating her win, they were locked in a fight over land rights. Two weeks prior, Palakkad Additional Judicial Magistrate had permitted a petrol pump to be set up on 0.2 hectares (ha) that is part of the land historically owned by Nanjiyamma’s family and under ownership dispute for decades. 

In 1962, Nanjiyamma’s father-in-law Nagan leased out 0.5 ha of his total 1.9 ha land to a settler farmer from Tamil Nadu, Mariboyan. That year the government declared Attappady a tribal-dominated block, and in 1975, passed the Kerala Scheduled Tribes (Restriction on Transfer of Lands and Restoration of Alienated Lands) Act, which prohibited sale of tribal land to non-tribals. By then, Mariboyan had allegedly prepared a fake sale deal for the land, leased out to him by Nagan. In 1986, after the rules were framed under the 1975 Act, Nagan tried to get the claims of Mariboyan nullified.