Customs, rights and identity. Adivasi women in Eastern India

This article traces the trajectory of the changing lives of adivasi women of eastern and central India, i.e., the erstwhile Chotanagpur Division and the Santal Parganas of the Bengal Presidency under colonial times, and which is today incorporated largely within the state of Jharkhand. In India today, adivasi women figure among some of the most deprived of people living in the margins, much of their vulnerability arising from unequal access to resources, particularly their right to inherit paternal property, and rooted in their socio-economic norms. Colonial rule, on the one hand, witnessed the increasing marginalisation of tribal women with the weakening of the communal indigenous organisations which left them exposed to exploitation of the market forces. On the other hand, it also enabled the empowerment of a section of adivasi women who asserted their right to inherit ancestral property. In contrast, the politics of indigeneity in contemporary India have imposed restrictions on adivasi women’s bid to claim land rights

Introduction. Out of Hidden India: Adivasi Histories, Stories, Visual Arts and Performances

This issue of Anglistica AION is dedicated to indigenous India and to some of its forms of emerging subjectivity. After having been studied by ethnoanthropologists as cultural exceptions or worse after having embodied the stereotype of the ‘born offender’ in colonial legislation, Indian tribals are claiming a new articulated visibility and an amplified political resonance. As Rashmi Varma remarks, in post-independence India, tribals are emerging as political protagonists in their own right asking, and in part obtaining, attention and recognition. Unfortunately even in the postcolonial state tribals continue to suffer from an easy mis-representation of their role and status, figuring very often as dangerous insurgents who threaten national security or as backward minorities whose survival hinders development

From ‘Folk’ to Digital: Transformation of Bengal Paṭacitra Art in the Times of Coronavirus

This article looks at the fortunes of traditional craftsmen, the scroll painters – citrakars or paṭuỵās – of Bengal during the novel coronavirus pandemic. It first examines how ideas regarding coronavirus were propagated and represented through paṭacitra folk art. Secondly, through an analysis of the paṭacitras of Medinipur and Kālighāt, it seeks to trace the ways paṭacitra art has been adapted and reinvented in the digital space, arguing that the pandemic is a milestone in the long history of the transformation of Bengal paṭacitras. Since the last decade of the 20th century, the market for paṭacitras has become increasingly urban and even global, and partly dependent on governmental and NGO support, art fairs and cultural centres. The pandemic opened up paṭuỵā art to cyberspace: direct contact was established between the village-based scroll painter and a worldwide virtual audience. NGOs with dedicated Facebook pages on popular art and the possibility of live performances effectively transformed a ‘rurban’ cultural practice into a ‘glocal’ phenomenon. Finally, the article explores whether this new performance-cum-marketing space will lead to any change in the income-earning capacity of traditional artists

From ‘Folk’ to Digital

This article looks at the fortunes of traditional craftsmen, the scroll painters – citrakars or paṭuỵās – of Bengal during the novel coronavirus pandemic. It first examines how ideas regarding coronavirus were propagated and represented through paṭacitra folk art. Secondly, through an analysis of the paṭacitras of Medinipur and Kālighāt, it seeks to trace the ways paṭacitra art has been adapted and reinvented in the digital space, arguing that the pandemic is a milestone in the long history of the transformation of Bengal paṭacitras. Since the last decade of the 20th century, the market for paṭacitras has become increasingly urban and even global, and partly dependent on governmental and NGO support, art fairs and cultural centres. The pandemic opened up paṭuỵā art to cyberspace: direct contact was established between the village-based scroll painter and a worldwide virtual audience. NGOs with dedicated Facebook pages on popular art and the possibility of live performances effectively transformed a ‘rurban’ cultural practice into a ‘glocal’ phenomenon. Finally, the article explores whether this new performance-cum-marketing space will lead to any change in the income-earning capacity of traditional artists

Marriage and migration: The private and the public in Hariprabha Takeda’s accounts of Japan

Through an analysis of travel accounts and memoirs of Hariprabha Takeda, this article studies the experiences of a Bengali traveller / migrant to Japan in the first half of the 20th century. It argues that the notion of a pan-Asian identity based on a shared cultural heritage, which was being debated and popularized in early 20th century India, partly shaped her understanding of the society and culture of her new habitation. Focusing on the issues of integration, identity and rootedness, the article emphasizes her experiences as a middle-class migrant and argues that the anti-colonial ideology of the early 20th century and the political turmoil of the wartime years enabled her to build up a sense of belonging with the mainstream community

Claiming rights, negotiating relationships. Changes in Ho society Under colonial rule

In this essay I analyse the transitions experienced by the Hos of Kolhan (in Singhbhum district of Chotanagpur) under colonial rule. Despite similarities, Ho village organization was distinct in many ways from that of the other adivasi groups, including the Mundas whom they resembled most closely. Under colonial rule these specificities, particularly those related to tenancy status of the Hos, tended to become more distinct, leading to shifts and repositionings within the internal community organization on the one hand, together with the reassessment of the Ho community’s relationship with ‘alien’ outsiders on the other. Such changes, moreover, occurred in a context when new British legislations attempted simultaneously to weave together the contradictory principles of exceptionalism and homogenization. This essay seeks to investigate into the Ho social organization and trace the changes that it experienced under colonial rule. It focuses on three specific aspects of this transition, namely the co-opting of thevillage leadership, the mankis and the mundas within the new governance and its impact on the village society, the negotiations of the Hos with the new tenancy legislations, and the redefinition of their relationships with various non-tribal ‘outsider’ groups

Indigeneity and violence: the Adivasi experience in eastern India

This paper aims to unravel the changing forms of violence encountered by the ‘tribal’ or Adivasi communities of eastern India from the nineteenth century till the present times. The very identification of particular communities as ‘tribes’ and the imposition of attributes of tribalism, such as primitivity, and childlike innocence, by British colonial writers constituted an epistemic violence, the psychological impact of which persists to this day. The resultant infantilizing of Adivasis divested them of their own agency and effectively transformed their representation from perpetrators to victims of violence, oppression and displacement. After Independence, this notion of victimhood was appropriated both by the post-colonial state which reserved for itself the role of the redeemer/ provider, as well as by Adivasi communities who thus sought to reshape their community identity in their fight for indigenous rights. However, Adivasis continue to suffer from an easy misrepresentation of their role and status, figuring very often as dangerous insurgents who threaten national security or as backward minorities whose survival hinders development. This paper demonstrates the increasing exposure of Adivasi communities to ‘slow violence’ and to ‘everyday forms of violence’ whereby they are progressively dispossessed of their livelihood and cultural heritage

Introduction

This Introduction discusses the major historiography on tribal history of India from colonial times to interpretations by Subaltern scholars and environmental historians

Other Landscapes: Colonialism and the Predicament of Authority in Nineteenth-Century South India

An Assessment of Deborah Sutton's book in the context of enviroment and colonial studies

Rethinking Adivasi Identity: The Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act (1908) and its Aftermath Among the Hos of Singhbhum

The paper examines the ways in which the colonial state and its tribal subjects attempted to reshape tradition and social practices and to redefine community identity in the late 19th and early 20th century with reference to adivasi movements in the context of the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908. It argues that resistance could be understood in terms of compromise and negotiation rather than only as open rebellion