Kaanu

Title

Special issue: Multiple worlds of the Adivasi. An introduction

Creator

Damodaran, Vinita

Dasgupta, Sangeeta

Date

2022

Subject

Adivasi studies

indigeneity

decolonialisation

identity

literature

agency

resistance

state

land rights

forest rights

Identifier

doi:10.1017/s0026749x22000361

issn:0026-749X

Source

Original source

Is Part Of

Modern Asian Studies

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Abstract

On 6 December 1959, the image of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurating the Damodar Valley Corporation dam project in Bihar with a 15-year-old Adivasi girl called Budhini Manjhiyan was flashed across the national newspapers. This was an iconic moment in the national debate around development and change which was to dominate modern India on whether lands, predominately rural and tribal, were to be flooded to benefit the nation. Years later, in 2016, when the newspapers caught up with Budhini, she had returned to Jharkhand and was struggling to make ends meet for herself and her children. Her story resonates with the ways in which, in recent times, Adivasis are becoming increasingly visible as subjects in debates around indigeneity, identity, conversion, development, and climate change. The post-colonial Indian state and its allies, with a developmentalist agenda uppermost in their minds, have made loss of land, displacement, migration, and forced resettlement a part of Adivasi experiences. Forces of globalization, often in tandem with the policies of the Indian state, are engulfing marginal spaces. The increasingly powerful majoritarian narrative of the state subsumes alternate voices with easy nonchalance. The foregrounding of planetary narratives on the fate of humanity in the era of the Anthropocene erases the importance of particular locales and specific communities that could offer an alternative to declensionist narratives. But amid this marginalization, there also lies a story of the assertion of Adivasi agency. Voices of Adivasis—although multiple and fractured—can be heard as they assert their identity, express their politics, and creatively negotiate with the state and its institutions. Scattered across India in geographically differentiated terrains, pursuing different occupations, and speaking different languages, the experiences of Adivasis are varied, as they inhabit many worlds. Their stories point to the multiplicity of cultures and myriad ways of thinking that must be accommodated within the ambit of the nation, and yet offer the possibilities of different ways of living and being on this earth.

Bibliographic Citation

Damodaran, Vinita; Dasgupta, Sangeeta. (2022). 'Special issue: Multiple worlds of the Adivasi. An introduction'. Modern Asian Studies, 56(5), pp. 1353-1374.

Extent

Vol. 56, Issue 5, pp. 1353-1374

Has Format

Download PDF

Type

journal-article

Kaanu ID

kb000078