Jharkhand looks headed for fierce acrimony between tribals and non-tribals over proposed amendments to a hundred-year-old law that restricts sale and purchase of tribal land in order to protect the primitive communities. Political parties are bitterly divided even as protests are spreading across the state.

Simmering discontent and a growing series of demonstrations and processions by both supporters and opponents of the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, for a fortnight has created what political observers describe as a “civil-war situation” in Jharkhand.