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Bodhi S.R & Kanchan T Ekka
JTICI Vol.1,Issue 2,No.1 pp.1 to 24, December 2013

Of Savagery Disruption, Historical Injustice and Political Distortion: Reflections on Chottanagpur, Adivasi, State and Empowerment

Published On: Friday, September 15, 2017

 

Abstract

Rarely have the indigenous and tribal peoples encountered a crisis as insurmountable as the one they face currently. On one hand, there are social forces of assimilation, mainstreaming or co-option, such as westernisation, hinduisation and peasantisation, operating on them at a rapid and humongous scale never witnessed before. On the other hand, there is the massive deployment of state forces to facilitate the tribe’s ‘willing acceptance’ of the indomitable ‘nation state’, premised within a vaguely conceptualized frame of integration. This at times, coupled with a subterranean neo liberal agenda, compels them to operate within the ‘Nation State’s’ bounded, ‘autonomous’ and rigid political boundary. Squeezed between these layered resolute forces, closing in and suffocating them from all ends, the original inhabitants of Chotanagpur; the Adivasis, mostly comprising of Santal, Ho, Kharia, Munda and Oraon, residing in the five states of Chottanagpur, have responded differently to each of these forces, operating singly and in combination. While some of their responses have been within the realm of the socio-religious and socio-cultural, some have been within the socio-political and politico-economic domains. Central in the formulations and articulations of these organic adivasi resistances, is the overt, yet subtle, pulsating endogenous need to differentiate themselves from the ‘other’ and to protect and preserve their historical geopolitical and social spaces in the arena of territory, culture and politics. This article is a product of few years but insidious critical reflections on key structural issues pertaining to state, government and governance in Chottanagpur. It engages historically with State-Adivasi relationship and problematises the same viz. operationalization and implication of various state approaches to Adivasi empowerment in Chottanagpur.

(This paper was a Public Lecture delivered on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, 2013 in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)

Full Paper Available with the Managing Editor

 

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