Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses life histories and reminiscences of Santal adivasis which provide an alternate view of adivasi history, and traces how such understandings influenced subsequent interpretations of adivasi pasts.

Paper long abstract:

Situated between objective truth and personal narrative, memoirs and life-stories are a window to the lived experiences of the past and provide an understanding of the mental, emotional and cultural backgrounds and the social attitudes of both individuals and of the community or the wider society to which they belong. Marginalised subaltern groups of the colonial era, and particularly adivasi communities, have long remained absent in this kind of historical genre as they seem to have left behind few written records about themselves. Their idea of history has for long remained absent in the making of 'mainstream' history. A new assessment of how individual adivasis expressed their idea of the past, of the present and of their own identity will necessarily take into account the 'forgotten' texts which some of them did leave behind. This paper is an early attempt to throw light on the reminiscences of Chotrae Desmanjhi, a Christian Santal and an eye-witness of the rebellion of 1855. His memoirs provide, among other things, an alternate reading of the hul, its failure, and an account of the Santal migration to Assam. This may be considered as a different type of historical narrative, one that help us understand the author's fractured identity and sense of non-belonging brought about through displacement and the loss of homeland. The paper also analyses how such an alternate account influenced subsequent adivasi interpretations of their histories.