The Land of the Diggers : Arshia Sattar

KORA RAJEE (English, Kurukh and with subtitles, 2005) 

Directed by Biju Toppo; Produced by Meghnath 

Kora Rajee (The Land of the Diggers) proudly proclaims that it is the first film to be made in an indigenous/tribal language in India. But it is far more than that: it is indigenous people talking about themselves and their ancestors, their migrations and exiles, their continued exploitation and marginalisation. The filmmakers, who are Jharkhandis, place themselves and their little boy in the film and there is no illusion of distance or staged delicacy. This is a hard-hitting film that tells stories of the oppression and impoverishment of a particular people over centuries.

Like the labour that was transported from India to the Caribbean to work the plantations at the height of the colonial period, so too the British moved the hardy Jharkhandis to the northeast in the 19th century to clear the forests and work the emerging tea gardens. By the 1860s, 30,000 Jharkhandis had already died due to the weather and working conditions. Assam and north Bengal today have a population of nearly 7 million Jharkhandis, a population that has remained exploited and ignored for over 150 years.

There were many reasons for the Jharkhandis to leave their native lands in search of a better life. A century of uprisings and rebellions had left them cruelly suppressed by both the British and local landowners. But the nail in the coffin was a horrendous famine in the 1890s. Labour agents bore them away a hundred years ago in much the same way as they were recruited 50 years ago -- the healthiest and fittest first, crossing states and rivers, through mountains and valleys, to a land that needed their work but never acknowledged them as part of society.. After a century of being the backbone of the tea industry, Jharkhandi labour finds itself still on the margins.