Session 8: Adivasi Identities

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 16^th and 17^th century, gained rapid momentum in 18^th 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 20^th 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 20^th 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