Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Drawing on a political ethnography of a Dalit agrarian resistance movement in western India, this paper argues that non-state actors, such as grassroots movements of marginalized communities, reshape state-society relations from below, challenging extant Western theoretical conceptualizations.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how Dalit agrarian resistance in western India reshapes state–society relations through what I call the art of engaging with the state. Drawing on a political ethnography of Maanavi Haqqa Abhiyaan (Campaign for Human Rights), an anti-caste land-rights movement, particularly of occupying grazing land in the Marathwada region of western India, I show how landless Dalits neither passively accept the failed implementation of land reform nor seek “reactive statelessness” (Scott, 2009). Instead, they tactically negotiate with the State. First, they make the injustice of landlessness “legible” to the state by artfully deploying legal provisions under the Prevention of Atrocities Act. Second, they foreground the non-material meanings of land – dignity and self-respect – rendering land rights an ideational as much as an economic claim. Third, they claim de facto rights to government land by asserting vernacular semiotics of land occupation over land encroachment. Together, these strategies illuminate how marginalized communities see and reshape the state from below, enabling more inclusive policies.