Why do humans feel deeply attached to their land?

Human relationship with soil is complex. We like to possess land, some place to call our own. We identify ourselves not only with the land we own but also with the surrounding culture. In this, we are no different from other animals. Most animals (especially the male of the species) go to elaborate lengths, including risking their lives, to mark out territory and control it.

At one level, soil is a provider of food, support and a place of rest. On another, it is a possession like no other. Over millennia, humans have valued possession of land way beyond other things. Great wars have been fought over small pieces of land. Gold, precious stones, wealth have all have been used simply as an expression of superiority, but land is a precious possession. The only exception is the migrating human population that values livestock rather than land.

Land is something that has defined people. Soil is a living tribute to, and a memoir of the dead as no other. Graves have been made to honour the men past and ancient tombs of the great continue to be worshipped millennia after their death. Even in the burial, some take great care to keep the body isolated from the dirt of the soil while others ensure that the mortal remains become a part of the soil as quickly as possible.

People identify more easily with soil than human constructs like religion or ideology. A square metre of land has more symbolic value for humans. We identify with our place of birth and our roots far more closely than the material objects we grew up with. Even in cosmopolitan cities, it is not unusual for people to identify themselves with their ‘native land’. They may have migrated out of compulsions, but their identity is still associated with their ancestral land. Tagore’s Kabuliwala would readily testify to this. We tend to discard and ignore our early earthly possessions, but no one can help but be saddened when leaving that patch of land behind as they move on in life. 

But, vast expanses of land have always scared and fascinated humans. They have always tried to limit their vision of land. The immediate response of humans (and even other animals) on coming to a piece of land, is to define it with limits or boundaries so that its possession remains comprehendible. Each animal has a sense of ‘defendable size of territory’ and will only claim that much for the fear of being overstretched. No house, village, town, city or civilisation has declared infinite land for itself. Vast and devastating wars have occurred between human (and animal) tribes, but in the end, it is all to extend the limits of ownership. When an occasional Alexander or Hitler has demanded an open-ended access to the vast expanse of land, they have only failed in a spectacular manner. It is probably related to human limitations of visualisation and the ability to retain the map of an area. At times, geography has helped define limits through its changing features, but even when nature has been even, people have still divided land into smaller measures. 

Even within this self-limited desire of ownership, there is probably no square kilometre of land on earth for which human blood has not been shed by another human being. There is no patch of land that was considered too inhospitable to fight for. People have fought over the same spot of land when, a few of hundred metres away, there could be nearly as good a piece of land. This is true of parking places in cities to large households in ancient times, not to mention places of worship. We associate properties to land (such as its ‘holiness’) that we associate to few other objects. The sense and desire to possess a particular patch of land for minor or even imaginary gains, such as presence of gods, can lead people to conflicts and wars whose absurdity is self-evident to all except those involved in the fight. Religious places are the most fought over, typically by people who hardly live by the dictates of the religion. This obsession with land would be funny if it was not so deadly. As Sahir Ludhianvi complains in the movie Taj Mahal “khudaebartarterijami par jamikikhatir ye jungkyunhai” (Oh lord, in this land of yours, why do people fight for land?).

With a circular Earth, there are no real boundaries within human comprehension, except those defined by the seas. But even within these bounds, we create smaller bounds – only nations like to have expanding boundaries as far as possible. This is a new addition to human instincts and arises more from the desire to exploit resources. Land affects our psyche so much that people born in places where land stretches in all directions have a different attitude than people born on islands and that in turn is different from people who live at the edge of the sea, even if land stretches in one direction and is limited on the other. People who live close to the sea and its vast expanse have a different perspective on life compared to those born in little enclaves built between forbidding mountains. Their music reveals this more than any other expression.

But at the individual level, our residences are typically no more than a hundred or so square metres. Even in the most palatial of houses, the human self-limiting nature is easy to see – we divide these large houses into rooms where adjacent rooms can well have the same function, but are still divided – except of course in public houses where strangers and friends interact. When we go to a hotel we need rooms that are, at best, shared with our loved ones. Large rooms full of strangers make us uncomfortable, especially during one’s private moments. 

Any garden or a public square of any value must have an area of several hundred square metres for us to feel comfortable in. We are in fact quite happy to share a reasonable garden, public square or even a large hall with strangers as long as there is a mutual acceptance of non-interference (and probably indifference) amongst the sharing parties. Even the most sacred of public places, namely religious places, are no more than a few hundred square metres and will seat no more than a few hundred people. The only exception are sports stadia, but then these spaces are not about ownership – they are about observing a turf war in the central few square metres!

To a farmer, land is an integral part of his or her life. That ‘do bigha zamin’ is the centre of his or her universe. He will plough it with great effort and will remain focused around it all the time. He will try and improve the soil, nourish and water it with care and concern. To a farmer, land is not livelihood. It is life. Even if he is disposed of the crops he has grown, he will not move away from the land and migrate to a safer place. But when the land betrays him, his universe collapses. Land may regenerate next year, but in its immediate loss, the sense of grief for the farmer is so much that he (or she) will lose patience to hold on a little longer. Suicide along with the death of his land seems to be the only option for him. But governments are not sensitive. To them land is a commodity sometimes valued for as little as a few tens of rupees worth of compensation. Governments are not sensitive to the bond that exists between a man and his piece of land. 

At the other end are city dwellers who are barely in touch with those who live within their periphery and there is no cultural trait of a building. Flats are isolated pieces of land that don’t even touch the ground. Yet, local neighbourhood groups and clubs that try to keep the local environment stable as per the consensual choice, are very common. It is rare to come across a collection of residences, in a building or in a cluster of bungalows where such groups do not exist. And within this group, very often the only common quality is the ownership of a proximate piece of land. Such groups are also self-limiting in size, rarely going beyond a few hundred metres from their centre of activity.

This then is the boundary for human connectivity to land. And yet, humans have not taken good care of it. We have always been willing to be vulgar on somebody else’s land, hopelessly assuming that it has no connection to our own land. Denudations through tree cutting, over exploitation of farming land, artificial landfills, extraction of minerals, surface pollution through industrialisation, spraying of harsh chemicals and worst of all, concretisation of large landmasses have played a havoc on the land we claim to worship. Truly, humans desire only small patches of land and are reckless with larger pieces of land. They desire a lot but also leave a lot to be desired.