Bhangya Bhukya: The mapping of adivasi
social: Colonial anthropology and the adivasis
Bhukya,
in his paper, highlights the critical importance that British gave to enumeration
and mapping of their colonies where huge resources were used to create detailed
knowledge about the colonies. This process, which started with European’s
travellers account in 16th and 17th century, gained rapid
momentum in 18th century. This knowledge was used to create the
domination and hegemony over the colonies.
While
representing the adivasis, Bhukya credits the scholars such as Hardiman,
Skariya, and Bates in showing how adivasis were placed in the wider system of
colonial knowledge. He also argues that the post-colonial scholarship on
adivasis did not displace the derogatory categories for adivasis created in the
colonial period. Bhukya, while examining the colonial anthropology, delineates
it into four categories: official anthropology, missionary anthropology,
romantic anthropology, and Hindu nationalist anthropology from the early 20th
century, where each category had its own ideas and agendas for producing and
reproducing adivasi society.
These
categories resulted in creating racial categories where adivasis were pushed at
the bottom of the ladder and some were even branded as habitual criminals based
on the anthropometric surveys. Many such surveys undertaken during colonial
period attempted to put the adivasis under fold of the Hindu religion where
their own customs were explained through Hindu mythology.
One of
the most extensive documentation about the people of India was carried out by
Thurston and Rangachary, an anatomist and a botanist, in the early 20th
century where they published seven volumes on the castes and tribes of South India.
This documentation firstly essentialised the communities into separate
categories, it also used similar names for communities who appeared to be
anthropomorphically and occupationally similar, thus creating a new form of
understanding. Bhukya also shows that such
biased understanding of the adivasis of India made the colonial missionaries
take charge of their upliftment and their conversion.
Bhukya
also interestingly notes that colonial administrators also celebrated the
tribal masculinity, especially in western India, as also their egalitarian
values. However, he later argues that, this was done to bring them closer to
the settled agriculture areas to have more control over them as well as keep
them out of the revenue rich forest areas. Bhukya also criticised Ghruye and MN
Srinivas for their seemingly biased opinions towards Hindus. Where the former considered
all born on the Indian soil to be Hindu and adivasis to be ‘backward Hindus’,
the latter introduced the term ‘sanskratisation’ to emphasise on the higher
position of the Hindus and the supposed emulation of the Hindu practices by the
lower caste and tribal groups to seek higher position in society. Bhukya argues
that such prominence given to Hindu religion takes away the presence of
pre-existing social systems and coexistence of mixed cultures.
Sumit Guha: States, Tribes, Castes: A
historical Re-exploration in comparative perspective
The
paper contests the term ‘tribe’ used in Indian sociology and suggests new term,
hoping to replace the colonial constructions of ‘tribe’ (borrowed from Latin
via English) and ‘caste’ (borrowed from Portugese) which it argues was
inadequate and didn’t fit into the ‘observed characteristics of the peoples
labelled as such in other parts of the world. It suggests the term ‘khum’,
which the writer argues, existed earlier and was more appropriate in describing
the intended people.
All over
the world, the author argues citing examples from different parts of the world
the word ‘tribe’ was generally referred to groups and organisations possessing
latent military power and who often resisted and successfully drove away the
marching armies of the ‘civilised’ state.
The idea
of ‘tribe’ he argues, was constructed in opposition to the idea of ‘caste’. He
contests the popular understanding of the tribe as often was constructed on the
basis of their so called ‘primitive’ agriculturalist practices (like swidden or
slash and burn), which often was termed as pre-state mode of production and
those who practiced were also attributed inferior intellectual range. On the
other hand, according to this theory, mode of production based on superior
technology (plough agriculture) gave rise to the ‘Caste’. The writer argues that we need to abandon the
ideas of ‘linear’ social development and the ideas that the tribe was a
peaceful and primitive organisation. He notes that throughout history, new
tribes had repeatedly emerged and sometimes founded news states and sometimes
destroyed them. Tribes, he argues, transformed to dominant castes (e.g.
Rajputs) and monarchies have all ‘coexisted through the south and West Asia’.
Luisa Steur: Adivasis,
communists and the rise of indigenism in Kerala
Luisa
attributes the rise of indigenism in two broad factors: 1. Global structural
changes that took place since the 1973 and pronounced more in the context of
India in the post 1990s. The rise of neo-liberalism intensified the struggle of
the Adivasis over land and resources as state made efforts to provide land to
the mining companies and for other projects. The wave of neo-liberalism reached
the shore of Kerala post 1990s and the government made structural changes. 2.
However, the alienation of the Adivasis/tribals from the communist party was
more complex as the left failed to address and articulate the problems faced by
the Adivasis and the Dalits. The author argues that the rise of indigenism is
not only the articulation of Adivasis and their issues but also a solidarity
movement of the Adivasis and the Dalits. Both have been neglected in the
communist party. The party emphasised more on the class unity and not identity
and in the process neglected the question of caste oppression. The landless
Adivasis and Dalits didn’t benefit from the land distribution by the communist
state as the tenant farmers did. She argues that many of the leaders and
participants in the recent movement for articulating indigenism were earlier
with the communist party. The party and the Adivasi-Dalits drifted apart on
their interpretation of history. Besides, the initiatives taken by the
communist state for the Adivasis in the state’s cooperative system crumbled due
to global competition and the communist failed to address it adequately.
The new
indigenous movement anchors itself in their own historical background while
responding to the neo-liberal market situation. However, though identity based,
the indigenous politics has an undertone of class which is closer to the
ideology of the communists
Luisa Steur: Adivasi mobilisation:
‘Identity’ versus ‘Class’ after the Kerala model of Development?
This
paper reflects on the politics and social mobilisation of the Adivasis in the
aftermath of the starvation deaths in the Adivasi inhabited areas of Kerala in
2001. The new Adivasi movement she argues, challenged the ‘Kerala model of
development’ hitherto hailed as a successful alternative model for human
development and redistributive system. The new movement projected, as many
argued that Adivasis became a victim of Kerala model of development. She warns
that this was a narrow understanding of the Kerala model of development and it
was more complex than just brushing it aside as a failure of the model and also
it poses the danger of ignoring the limitations of the neo-liberal competitive
market and the role of the state. This narrow understanding might, she argues,
limit the ‘emancipation of the subaltern groups’ and prevents them from using
their historical political experience to dynamise the present political course’
ignoring the class aspect.
She
argues that the new movement based on identity has the potential and danger of
putting upper class or upper caste values at the core of the movement’s
mission. The ‘Adivasis’ is not a homogenous identity and there’s politics of
power and appropriation within the Adivasi groups in favour of more powerful
Adivasi groups which is often based class. She draws parallel to the communist
movement and contends that, though the communist movements started as a class
struggle, over a period of time the elites entered into the party and
marginalised the subaltern and eventually the disillusioned Adivasis left the
communist party looking for alternatives. The similar threat is posed to the
present movement based on identity. Thus, the promise of the Adivasi identity
politics need to actively fight with the appropriation, as the Adivasi workers
did with the communist development discourse. She further contends that the
Adivasi groups need to contest the construction of the ‘Adivasis’ in popular
imagination as groups wanting to live a simple life and having no desire to
have material possession. This romantic
notion about the Adivasi identity is a threat to the assertion of the subaltern
identity of the Adivasis.
Kaushik Ghosh, Between global flows and local
dams: Indigenousness, locality and the transitional sphere in Jharkhand India
In this
paper, Ghosh provides a critique of the transnational indigenous movements and
discourses and argues that local contestations of adivasis against the
development model of the nation-state are sometimes diluted in this translations
sphere. The article attempts to provide the local context to the adivasi
contestations and struggles which do not conform to the transnational
indigenous imaginations of a homogenous population with common historical
narratives of dispossession.
He
argues that in the case of adivasis, the approaches adopted by the colonial and
post-colonial state can be divided into two types- incorporative governmentality
and exclusive governmentality. Incorporative governmentality implies the addressing
ethnicity through inclusion and exclusive governmentality provides separate
protection to the adivasis and an autonomy for self-governance. These arguments
are articulated through the narrative of the adivasis struggle against the Koel-Karo
hydroelectric project.
The
article also critiques the middle class adivasis who benefitted from the
incorporative governmentality and became the leaders in the movement to form a Jharkhand
state. However, they latched on to the transnational discourses indigenous
people which ?? and over the course of time, lost to the dominant Hindu
political party, which eventually came to form the first government of the
Jharkhand state.
Ghosh
argues that this transnational sphere, especially with regards to India, uphold
the colonial imagination of Aryan-aboriginal conflict where the original
settlers of India, namely the tribal communities, were exploited by the Hindu
Aryan invaders. It ignores the other historical processes that have created the
discrimination, most of which arose in the colonial shelter to the Hindu money
lenders and land lords who exploited the tribals. While critiquing the middle
class adivasi leaders, Ghosh points to the contradiction that these leaders are
unable to see when they praise the colonial period and appeal to the
international capitalist institutions such as World Bank and United Nations.
While attempting to fit into this transnational world, these leaders seem to
have forgotten the brunt of capitalism that many adivasis communities in India
have borne with the immense pressure for resource extraction from the homelands
of the adivasi communities. These leaders are essentially deterritorialised and
do not seem to be answerable to any of their local sites.
Ghosh,
by illustrating the case of solidarity between Mundas and Rautias, also
highlights the distinction between the transnational discourses on
indigenousness and the local expression and reading of adivasiness. Rautias (small
and marginal landlords during colonial period) are seen as the adivasis by
Mundas since after losing their lands due to post-independence land reform
policies, they now toil equally as hard as Mundas in producing their lives with
their hands.
Ghosh although
calls for the localised understand of the history of the sites to understand
the contemporary adivasi struggles, for Koel-Karo movement in this paper, he
has not delved deeper into the history of the adivasi struggle and have mostly
limited his arguments to describing the contemporary positioning of the
different actors.
Subroto and Priya
