[ Vizokhole Ltu ]
Culture is constantly evolving in response to political, socioeconomic, and global changes. While transformation is inevitable, it does not require abandoning cultural identity; rather, the challenge lies in preserving core values while adapting to new opportunities.
Arunachal Pradesh’ tribal communities are undergoing rapid socioeconomic changes, largely driven by development and the state’s natural resource potential. The expansion of hydropower projects, in particular, highlights the need to balance national energy goals, environmental concerns, and the rights of tribal communities affected by such interventions.
For instance, by September 2007, Arunachal had signed 39 MoUs for generating 24,471 mw of hydropower with public and private developers.Similarly, the NHPC prepared pre-feasibility reports for 25 projects with a combined capacity of 17,403 mw under the Government of India’s ‘50,000 mwhydroelectric initiatives’.
While these developments offer opportunities for economic growth and infrastructure expansion, they also raise concerns over land rights, environmental sustainability, cultural preservation, and the fair distribution of benefits. The key challenge is ensuring that development supports tribal communities without undermining their identity, rights, and interests in the name of national priorities.
A need for a constitutional protective mechanism
Arunachal is the only tribal-majority state in Northeast India without a dedicated constitutional framework providing protections comparable to other tribal states. While Nagaland and Mizoram benefit from Articles 371 A and 371 G, and several Northeastern states have Sixth Schedule protections for autonomous governance, Arunachal lacks similar constitutional safeguards for customary laws, land rights, natural resources, and traditional institutions. Although measures like the inner line permit provide some protection, they are statutory and administrative measures, rather than constitutional. This institutional gap raises concerns over the preservation of tribal identity, community land rights, and customary systems amid growing development and demographic pressures.
This concern is best understood in the context of ownership, control and management of land and natural resources. Land and natural resources are central to the social, cultural, economic, and spiritual lives of Arunachal’s tribal communities. Beyond being economic assets, they represent identity, ancestral heritage, customary institutions, and traditional knowledge. Forests, rivers, and grazing lands sustain livelihoods and cultural practices, making constitutional protection of land rights crucial. Since much of the state’s land is governed through customary community ownership rather than formal titles, concerns remain over the security of these rights amid expanding infrastructure projects, resource extraction, and external investments.
The tension between state-led land reforms and tribal customary land tenure systems is evident.
Inherently, land possession certificates (LPCs) functioned only as evidence of possession, rather than conferring legal ownership, reflecting the absence of a comprehensive statutory framework to protect tribal land rights while allowing customary practices to govern land relations. Although the Arunachal Pradesh Land Settlement and Records (Amendment) Act, 2018, sought to address this legal ambiguity by formally recognising individual ownership, it simultaneously created a fundamental contradiction. By privileging individual land titles over communal forms of ownership, the legislation departed from the customary tenure systems that have traditionally regulated land use and resource management among the state’s tribal communities. In effect, the Act imposed a statutory conception of private property that inadequately accommodated community-based customary laws, despite these systems having long provided the primary basis for governing land relations.
This legal shift weakened customary institutions and collective forms of governance, particularly among tribal communities, where the concept of individual ownership had historically been absent, and land was managed through communal norms and customary authority. The 2018 reforms therefore exemplify the broader challenge of reconciling formal legal frameworks with tribal systems of land governance, raising important questions about the compatibility of statutory property regimes with the constitutional commitment to safeguarding tribal customs and autonomy.
Similarly, the expansion of central forest regulation in Arunachal produced far-reaching consequences.
As advocate Tabup Tana Tara observed, because large portions of the state had already been recorded as ‘unclassed state forest’, they were swept into the central forest clearance regime through a bureaucratic classification, rather than any deliberate recognition of local realities. In his words, “Since so much of the state already sat recorded as unclassed state forest, all of it fell, almost by accident of paperwork, under the strict central clearance regime – regardless of who lived on it, framed it, or called it home for generations.”
This administrative extension of regulatory authority effectively subordinated customary tenure and longstanding community relationships with the land to a centralised legal framework that neither reflected nor accommodated the community’s distinctive land governance systems.
Consequently, there is a subtle yet significant divide among the different tribal communities in Arunachal. Unlike groups such as the Nagas or the Mizos, who have historically developed broader collective political identities and agendas that transcend individual tribes, the communities in Arunachal have largely remained organised along distinct ethnic and geographical lines. Political aspirations, social concerns, and community interests are often articulated within the boundaries of individual tribes,rather than through a unified regional or pan-tribal movement. Although state-level organisations such as the All-Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU) have played an important role in representing common concerns and fostering a sense of collective identity, they have not entirely bridged the historical and structural divisions that exist among the numerous tribes.
Exchanges and other participatory forums therefore play a vital role in ensuring that culture remains a living and evolving practice, rather than a static relic of the past. In this sense, cultural preservation is not merely an exercise in safeguarding heritage but an ongoing process of community participation, adaptation, and collective resilience in the face of social, economic, and political transformation.
A meaningful starting point for local communities in Arunachal lies in fostering inclusive community institutions and shared social spaces that transcend religious affiliations, ethnic boundaries, and political divisions. For instance, efforts can begin with student bodies, youth organisations, women’s groups, and tribal institutions that bring together community members, irrespective of their religious affiliation or political orientation, thereby fostering dialogue, cooperation, and a shared sense of collective responsibility. Such spaces are essential not only for promoting social cohesion but also for creating opportunities for dialogue, collective decision-making, and the negotiation of shared futures amid rapid socioeconomic change. However, the effectiveness of these institutions depends on their ability to remain genuinely inclusive and responsive to existing inequalities, rather than reproducing prevailing hierarchies of power and exclusion.
Such shared social spaces also have the potential to serve as important intermediaries in addressing social issues, such as the rise of religious polarisation in the state. While they cannot, by themselves, resolve deep-seated ideological or political differences, they can create opportunities for trust-building and collaborative action on issues of common concern. For example, the ongoing contestation between the Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society of Arunachal Pradesh (IFCSAP) and the Arunachal Christian Forum (ACF) – particularly in relation to legislative and policy debates such as the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act (APFRA) – illustrates how questions of religion, identity, and culture have increasingly become embedded within broader political narratives.
Although these debates are often framed in terms of protecting indigenous heritage or safeguarding religious freedoms, they can also acquire strong political and communal dimensions that risk intensifying identity-based mobilisation. When cultural and religious identities become central axes of political competition, public discourse may become increasingly polarised, reinforcing social divisions and eroding trust between communities.
Equally significant is the danger that prolonged political contestation over identity can overshadow other pressing developmental concerns. An excessive emphasis on polarising cultural debates may divert public attention and policy priorities away from structural issues such as unemployment, education, healthcare, infrastructure, environmental sustainability, and poverty – challenges that have a more immediate and enduring impact on the everyday lives of citizens across religious and ethnic boundaries.
A more constructive approach would therefore seek to balance the legitimate concerns surrounding cultural preservation and religious rights with an equally strong commitment to inclusive development, social justice, and democratic dialogue. (The contributor is a senior research associate at NESRC, and can be reached at Ltuvizokhole@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal.)