Indigeneity In India

First published in 2006. Who and what are the 'indigenous people'? The question has become highly contentious in India today, where eighty million peoples belonging to the state category of 'scheduled tribes' are attempting to gain international recognition as indigenous people as a part of struggle for recognition and rights in land and resources. This volume interrogates the politics surrounding the category of peoples in India known as 'tribals' or 'adivasis' and more recently 'indigenous peoples'.

This book engages with notions of self and landscape as manifest in water, forest and land via historical and current perspectives in the context of indigenous communities in India. It also brings processes of identity formation among tribes in Africa and Latin America into relief. Using interconnected historical moments and representations of being, becoming and belonging, it situates the content and complexities of Adivasi self-fashioning in contemporary times, and discusses constructions of selfhood, diaspora, homeland, environment and ecology, political structures, state, marginality, development, alienation and rights. Drawing on a range of historical sources – from recorded oral traditions and village histories to contemporary Adivasi self-narratives – the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, sociology and social anthropology, tribal and indigenous studies and politics.

In the Global South, indigenous people have been continuously subjected to top-down, and often violent, processes of post-colonial state and nation building. This book examines the development dilemmas of the indigenous people (adivasis) of the Indian state of Kerala. It explores the different facets of change in their lives and livelihoods in the context of modernisation under different political regimes. As part of the Indian Union, Kerala followed a development approach in tune with the Government of India with regard to indigenous communities. However, within the framework of India’s quasi-federal polity, the state of Kerala has been tracing a development path of its own, which has come to be known as the ‘Kerala model of development’. Adopting a historical political economic approach, the book locates the adivasi communities in the larger contextual shifts from late colonialism through the post-independence years, and critically analyses the Kerala model of development with particular reference to the adivasis’ changing political status and rights to land. It pays special attention to policy dynamics in the neoliberal phase, and the actual practices of decentralisation as a way of including the socially excluded and marginalised. Offering a theoretical elaboration of the interaction between class and indigeneity based on intensive fieldwork in Kerala, the book addresses adivasi development in relation to the general development experience of Kerala, and goes on to relate this particular study to the global context of indigenous people’s struggles. It will be of interest to those working in the fields of South Asian Development, Political Economy and South Asian Politics.

As calls for reparations to indigenous peoples grow on every continent, issues around resource extraction and dispossession raise complex legal questions. What do these disputes mean to those affected? How do the narratives of indigenous people, legal professionals, and the media intersect? In this richly layered and nuanced account, Pooja Parmar focuses on indigeneity in the widely publicized controversy over a Coca-Cola bottling facility in Kerala, India. Juxtaposing popular, legal, and Adivasi narratives, Parmar examines how meanings are gained and lost through translation of complex claims into the languages of social movements and formal legal systems. Included are perspectives of the diverse range of actors involved, based on interviews with members of Adivasi communities, social activists, bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers, and judges. Presented in clear, accessible prose, Parmar's account of translation enriches debates in the fields of legal pluralism, indigeneity, and development.

Whatever be the definition of 'indigenous' vis-a-vis 'indigeneity', and however concensual it might be, both these terms have been inferred, applied and questioned in multifarious ways. The concept indigeneity in Asia has transformed considerably, over a period of time. With the rise in the indigeneity movement and large-scale migration, citizenship within national borders is challenged, and the borders in question are also contested. This book chronicles the discernible strains on the questions of indegeneity, citizenship, identity, and border making in the Northeast India. The issues pertaining to indigeneity, citizenship, and state, are also a reminder of the residues of colonial doings that have had a colossal impact till this day. Through empirical evidence backed by theoretical underpinnings, each essay in the book demonstrates the diversity of approaches that can be used to interrogate the debate on indegeneity, citizenship, the state, and opens the conversation on Northeast India. This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

“Indigeneity” has become a prominent yet contested concept in national and international politics, as well as within the social sciences. This edited volume draws from authors representing different disciplines and perspectives, exploring the dependence of indigeneity on varying sociopolitical contexts, actors, and discourses with the ultimate goal of investigating the concept’s scientific and political potential.

Who is an Indian? This is possibly the oldest question facing Indigenous peoples across the Americas, and one with significant implications for decisions relating to resource distribution, conflicts over who gets to live where and for how long, and clashing principles of governance and law. For centuries, the dominant views on this issue have been strongly shaped by ideas of both race and place. But just as important, who is permitted to ask, and answer this question? This collection examines the changing roles of race and place in the politics of defining Indigenous identities in the Americas. Drawing on case studies of Indigenous communities across North America, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, it is a rare volume to compare Indigenous experience throughout the western hemisphere. The contributors question the vocabulary, legal mechanisms, and applications of science in constructing the identities of Indigenous populations, and consider ideas of nation, land, and tradition in moving indigeneity beyond race.

Since the 1990s, the Indigenous movement worldwide has become increasingly relevant to research in India, re-shaping the terms of engagement with Adivasi (Indigenous/tribal) peoples and their pasts. This book responds to the growing need for an inter-disciplinary re-assessment of Tribal studies in postcolonial India and defines a new agenda for Adivasi studies. It considers the existing conceptual and historical parameters of Tribal studies, as a means of addressing new approaches to histories of de-colonization and patterns of identity-formation that have become visible since national independence. Contributors address a number of important concerns, including the meaning of Indigenous studies in the context of globalised academic and political imaginaries, and the possibilities and pitfalls of constructions of indigeneity as both a foundational and a relational concept. A series of short editorial essays provide theoretical clarity to issues of representation, resistance, agency, recognition and marginality. The book is an essential read for students and scholars of Indian Sociology, Anthropology, History, Cultural Studies and Indigenous studies.