Paper short abstract:

An analysis of the landscape and geography of violence associated with adivasis in the Red Corridor. An attempt to connect historic millenarian responses to the arrival of the East India Company in the Chotanagpur Plateau with adivasi responses to mining companies and Maoist movement in Jharkhand.

Paper long abstract:

The paper seeks to explore the landscape of the Red Corridor through connecting adivasi-led millenarian movements that responded to 'the coming' of the East India Company in the Chotanagpur Plateau with the current phase of the Maoist movement and its response to the advance of mining companies in Jharkhand. To connect the two, the paper uses Hobswam's(1959) observation that millenarian movements turn into or are absorbed by modern revolutionary movements, abandoning their chiliastic ideology for a more secular, modern theory for revolution.

With the coming of the millennium, globalisation is again experienced by adivasis through the interests of 'The Company', its agents and facilitators, including a new state. Through documenting responses from mining districts in Jharkhand with a millenarian history, the paper aims to answer the following- has there been a transformation in adivasi perceptions of the company? do adivasis recall their millenarian past to make sense of their present, particularly adivasis affected by mining? is the Maoist movement seen as a likely or successful medium to articulate existing adivasi views of company and State? how do adivasis perceive their futures in the wake of expanding mining interests, State responses to the movement and the demands of Maoists? And lastly, is Hobswam's observation applicable in the case of the Maoist movement in Jharkhand, has it absorbed the Chotanagpur Plateau's millenarian movements and strengthened amongst adivasis because of their encounter with globalisation? An analysis of emerging views may connect the colonial and post-colonial worlds of adivasis in Jharkhand.