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- Convenors:
-
Christian Strümpell
(Humboldt University Berlin)
Uwe Skoda (Aarhus University)
- Chair:
-
Biswamoy Pati
(NEHRU MEMORIAL MUSEUM & LIBRARY)
- Discussant:
-
Georg Pfeffer
(Freie Universität Berlin)
- Location:
- C406
- Start time:
- 25 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Our panel seeks to enquire into the relationship between the tribes living in India's mineral rich hill regions and the state and we invite speakers to investigate these issues with reference to recent original ethnographic and/or historical research.
Long Abstract:
The mineral-rich hills of Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh have been described as the regions where India's economic liberalisation has revealed its most brutal face, where private corporations in conjunction with the state ruthlessly destroy ecological habitat and drive the largely tribal people inhabiting the hills forcefully off their land. These processes reveal once more the problematic relationship between the (postcolonial) state and the tribes. Our panel seeks enquire into how this relationship is produced, consented to and contested by various actors and groups and we invite speakers to investigate these issues with reference to recent original ethnographic and/or historical research.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to trace the changing nature of the relationship between the state and the people with reference to the Mundas and the Hos of Chotonagpur in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Paper long abstract:
The world of the adivasis today vis-à-vis the Indian nation state is marked by a set of contradictions, with adivasis making brief appearances in the mainstream at particular moments of crisis, and always, as the subject of received wisdom concerning development, education and in some cases, of leadership as well. The roots of this alienation of the adivasis from the state could be traced to colonial rule. This paper seeks to trace the changing nature of the relationship between the state and the people with reference to the Mundas and the Hos of Chotonagpur in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The two-way process of integration at a political and cultural plane under the indigenous rulers, the Nagbanshis of Chotanagpur and the Simha dynasty of Singhbhum, came to be replaced by a policy of paternalism and protectionism, a policy that was retained to a large extent by the post-colonial state.
Paper short abstract:
The paper looks at the evolving princely state bureaucracy in the former kingdom of Bonai (Orissa) and at the repercussions on the Adivasi population in early 20th century – a troubled relationship centred around land and its settlements, police powers and a monopoly of force and forest rights.
Paper long abstract:
Relying on archival sources as well as interviews and operating on the interface between anthropology and history the paper looks firstly at the evolving princely state bureaucracy in the former kingdom of Bonai (Orissa). Secondly, the repercussions on the Adivasi population in early 20th century are discussed -a troubled relationship centred around land and its settlements, police powers and a monopoly of force and forest rights. Taking into account the role of the Adivasi "aristocracy" - Gond and Bhuiyan chiefs styled as zamindar in the process - the paper proposes a nuanced view on Adivasi-State relationship and argues for a long-duree perspective on the tribe-(transforming) state-nexus.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore firstly Sanskrit literary descriptions of the relations between ‘forest’ tribal chiefs and ‘Hindu’ kings, and then some past and present ‘tribal’ (Poraja and Kond) representations of the political power and mythical model in Southern Odhisa.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I aim to explore firstly Sanskrit literary (epic) descriptions of the relations between 'forest' chiefs and Hindu kings. Starting from the colonial sources, reporting the dominant origin legends of tribes in Southern Odhisa (former Jeypore-Nandapur kingdom), I will trace their Sanskrit literary roots. I will then compare such myths with some tribal versions (mostly Joria Poraja and Kond) of the origins of the political power and of the ideal cosmic order, particularly regarding the former king and its mythical model.
Beyond the mythical or religious aspect, I will analyse the enduring political messages within those various discourses.
I will also show the parallel, but also the discrepancy, between both perspectives. I will then deal with the continuity, both with the present representations of the tribes among the urban Odhiya population as well as the perception of the State organisations by the tribal peoples themselves. Taking as an example the Dongria and Desiya Konds facing the imposed industrial projects, I will finally examine some of their discourses both about the State and about their sovereign god Niyamraja.
Paper short abstract:
The paper attempts to understand the predicament of adivasis in Eastern India in the context of globalisation. They currently find themselves confronting the world's most powerful multi-national mining companies in nexus with global corporate interests that are initiating massive landscape changes.
Paper long abstract:
The rapid development of economic globalisation since about 1980 has made dramatic environmental and social impacts in the Indian sub continent. These impacts can only be understood in terms of a historical perspective that includes the colonial and even eralier periods. I focus on the impact of globalisation in Orissa and Jharkhand, especially on the living environments of adivasi (indigenous/aboriginal or tribal) people specifically in terms of effects on the dynamic relationship between culture, landscape and religion. Since the 1990s the Indian Klondyke minerals rush is globally unparalleled. Currently local communities and human rights campaigners find themselves pitted against companies which because of the strategic importance of aluminium are integral to the needs of the global military industrial complex. There is a widespread ongoing corporate enclosure movement in Eastern India concerned with establishing property rights in resources. The key question to ask is why and how do state and civil society institutions allow such neo-liberal enclosures to proceed despite strong opposition from local communities as evidenced from the Kalignagar massacre in Orissa 2006. The paper attempts to answer these questions through a grounded engagement with actual places, peoples and ideoologies and uses the ideological frameworks of environmental history and political ecology to understand the impact and response to long term and widespread landuse changes in Eastern India in the context of globalisation.
Paper short abstract:
Indigenous knowledge as a resource to promote an alternative citizenship Marine Carrin I will further explore how indigenous knowledge has become a tool of resistance, which articulates the defence of indigenous laws, considered as paradigms of self-governance, linking it with environmental issues .
Paper long abstract:
Indigenous knowledge as a resource to promote an alternative citizenship
Marine Carrin
From an historical point of view Jharkhand has benefited from legal exceptions shaped around tenure laws (Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908 and Santal Parganas Tenancy Act, 1908, which aimed at protecting Adivasi lands from alienation). These laws have contributed to create the political space of Jharkhand where Adivasi populations have been emotionally invested in questions of identity, but other factors related to the exploitation of natural resources (forests, mines, water) have brought dispossession, exploitation and contradictions. I propose to explore how Adivasi stage their assertions of identity around the question of access to material resources, and to show how these resources are manipulated as arguments to create a kind of jurisprudence able to target the opaque bureaucracy and the intricate strategies of the different mafias which operate at different levels of clandestine production. As an example, I shall show how Santal men villages try to find new niches of production and how Santal women succeed in selling forest produces at the tribal markets. This kind of success promotes the idea of indigeneity, which is also expressed through religious movements, art and literature, which are rooted in Chotanagpur landscape. We will further explore how indigenous knowledge has become a tool of resistance, which articulates the defence of indigenous laws, considered as paradigms of self-governance, linking it with environmental issues as promoted by international agencies.
Paper short abstract:
The paper aims to present an example of successful eco-resistance against bauxite mining and industrialisation fought in the mid 80ies by Adivasi Paiko, Binjal and Soara communities in the Bora Sambar region of Western Orissa up today.
Paper long abstract:
The Gandhamardan Surekhya Andulan - the Gandha Mardhan Protection Movement (Gandha=medicine; mardhan= mountains) of western Orissa shows how a landscape and the protection of its environment have become an expression of local resistance and of regional identity. The struggle for conservation of the forest and the mountains represents a cultural symbol of local resistance against ecological and cultural destruction through ruthless industrialisation. Today the successful Gandha Mardhan Movement means not only the conservation of the forest but also agency and survival of the indigenous population of the region. The saved landscape mirrors the local struggle for eco-justice and cultural identity fought by local communities in western Orissa.
Paper short abstract:
Based on long-term ethnographic field work around one of the region's oldest industries, the Rourkela Steel Plant, this paper seeks to explore the tribal perspective on industrial modernity in Orissa, on the diku state establishing it and on the brutal destruction and dispossession it unleashes.
Paper long abstract:
Since a century mining and metal industries exploit the rich coal and mineral reserves of northern and western Orissa. Anthropological-cum-activist accounts of the great transformation that is thus violently enforced upon local tribal societies usually stop with their displacement. Studies of tribal workers on factory shop floors and tribal life in the resettlement and labour colonies that have come up around them barely exist. Based on long-term ethnographic field work around one of the region's oldest industries, the Rourkela Steel Plant, this paper seeks to explore the tribal perspective on industrial modernity in Orissa, on the diku state establishing it and on the jungli, brutal destruction and dispossession it unleashes. The paper aims to investigate how the tribal reasoning on these processes differs from or conflates with other local and/ or academic accounts.