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 relations with the other families 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”