The Problematics of Tribal Integration: Voices from India’s Alternative Centers

322 Pages·2019·2.9 MB·English

by  bodhi s.r and bipin jojo (editors)

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The Problematics of
Tribal Integration
Voices from India’s Alternative Centers
Edited by
bodhi s.r and bipin jojo
Published by
The Shared Mirror Publishing House
The Shared Mirror Publishing House shall endeavour to promote Dalit Bahujan literature and
writers. It takes inspiration from the publishing efforts of anti-caste visionaries like Phule,
IyotheeThass, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Periyar and others.
It aims to further the anti-caste discourse, following the course set by Round Table India, the Dalit
Bahujan information portal, through publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction. It is driven by a
sincere desire to radically expand the horizons of Indian writing in English and other languages by
providing a platform to a wide range of marginalized voices across the sub-continent.
For more: www.thesharedmirror.org
ebook edition 2019: ISBN 978-81-929930-3-4
Published in India by The Shared Mirror Publishing House, Hyderabad
Copyright © 2019, The Shared Mirror Publishing House and Tribal Intellectual Collective India (of
the collection).
Copyright © of each work belongs to the respective author.
Cover Design: Vishal P. Sarpe

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Acknowledgement
Our gratitude is as great as our debt to The Shared Mirror Publishing House for supporting the
endeavor of the Tribal Intellectual Collective in deepening theory and intellectualism among
indigenous tribal communities in India. For this we will always remain grateful to Kuffir and Anu
Ramdas for sharing this critical reflexive mirroring space with us. The amount of work that both have
invested in the book is tremendous. We also thank Nidhin Donald and Sundeep Pattem for their
valuable feedback on the manuscript. We remain ever grateful to all of them.
The papers included in this volume are articles sourced from the Tribal Intellectual Collective India
(TICI). They have been presented, discussed and debated within the TICI’s regional and national
assembliesand also published in the journalsof the Tribal Intellectual Collective India. We wish to
record our appreciation to the Tribal Intellectual Collective India for permitting the consolidation,
refinement, upgradation and publication of the articles under specific themes and assigning us the
responsibility to engage with this particular volume.
For the first chapter 'Tribes and Indian National Identity: Location of Exclusion and Marginality' by
Virginius Xaxa, we thank the Editor of the Brown Journal of World Affairs for permitting us to
republish the same. It was first published in the Fall/Winter 2016, Volume XXIII, Issue I of the said
Journal. Professor Virginius Xaxa is the National Convener of the Tribal Intellectual Collective India
and we are indebted to his guidance and leadership for the Tribal community's struggle to turn itself
into a knowledge producing community.
We thank all members of the Tribal Intellectual Collective India for participating actively in the
knowledge enterprise to keep our community narratives alive and to produce a knowledge that heals
not only us but the world at large. We live in a world that in its search for a particular-universal, has
lost its way. We hope to be able to show that there are other ways of seeing and living as diverse
collectives in this world, ways that are fundamentally grounded in perspectives that see the world as
context-pluriversal (rather than particular-universal) and guided by principles of living that are
fundamentally rooted in diversity and dialogue.

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Table of Contents
Foreword ................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 3
~bodhi s.r and bipin jojo
Problematizing the Discourse and Context ............................................. 40
Tribes and Indian National Identity: Location of Exclusion and Marginality ............ 41
~ Virginius Xaxa
Integration: A Historical Conspectus from a tribal/Adivasi Perspective ................... 56
~ bodhi s.r & raile r. ziipao
The Frame of Reference .............................................................................. 102
On the Politico-Historical Location of Scheduled Tribes in the Indian Constitution:
Reflections on Critical Intersections...................................................................... 103
~ Monica Sakhrani
Unmasking Marxist and Nationalist Constructions of Adivasi Uprising: An Exercise in
Historical Reassembling ....................................................................................... 113
~Bhangya Bhukya
The Polemics of Integration and State Making Processes ...................................... 126
~Rimi Tadu
Discourse on Adivasi Development: Nehru and Elwin’s Perspectives .................... 141
~Venkatesh Vaditya
Concrete Conditions and Dynamics ........................................................ 156
Sacred Groves: A Cultural Symbol of Tribal Political Self-Assertion ...................... 157
~J.J. Roy Burman
Conservation Refugees: A Methodology of Tribal Marginalization ......................... 168
~Shyamal Bikash Chakma
Interrogating the Concept of Collective Bargaining in Rongmei Tribe ................... 183
~Richard Kamei
Tribes, Governance and Political Institutions in North East India ......................... 193
~Joseph Riamei

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Revisiting the Sixth Schedule and the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council ... 202
~Kerlihok L. Buam
Rabha Ethnic Politics and Role of the State: A Critical Appraisal ........................... 217
~Jagmohan Boro
Unravelling a Historical Contradiction: Problematizing Non-tribal Migration in
Meghalaya ............................................................................................................ 224
~ Batskhem Myrboh
Colonial Construction of ‘Agency’ in Andhra: Towards Understanding Tribal
Resistance ............................................................................................................ 238
~Vulli Dhanaraju
Movements and Organizations among Adivasis in Maharashtra: Politics and Process
............................................................................................................................ 258
~Pandurang Bhoye
Adivasi Rights and International Investments: Implications of Mining in Fifth
Scheduled Areas ................................................................................................... 272
~Abhay Xaxa
Attempts to Amend the CNT and SPT Act in Jharkhand: Are We Witnessing the Rise
of Settler Colonial Politics? ................................................................................... 287
~Niraj Lakra
tribal/Adivasi Dialogues ............................................................................. 299
Speech by Spokesperson of the Federation of Khasi States ................................... 300
~ John F. Kharshiing
A Dialogue with Saneka Munda of the Khutkati Rights Struggle ............................ 306
~bipin jojo and Nicholas Barla
Authors ............................................................................................................... 314

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Foreword
Among the authors who have contributed to this knowledge project, some of whom I know
personally, I observe a shared perspective and a distinct theoretical proposition that runs across their
arguments, that of a need to shift the debate about tribes/Adivasis as ‘objects of theory’ to ‘subjects
with epistemology’. In many ways this is a paradigm shift because earlier studies, the ‘pre-Xaxa’ tribal
studies as my colleagues bodhi s.r and bipin jojo posits, have rarely noticed or realized the same. This
fundamental shift has produced a space for the emergence, at least theoretically, of the recognition
that there exist an embedded tribes/Adivasi episteme. Such arguments I believe will reframe and alter
the very idea of knowledge in tribal/Adivasi studies. Why so? Because it reclaims tribal/Adivasi
people’s perspective and pro-actively asserts epistemological existence as organic foundations of all
that tribal/Adivasi studies concerns itself with; notions such as ecology, nature, body, identity, culture,
polity and life.
In my point-of-view, this phase in the history of tribal/Adivasi studies is critical,where there is an
assertion ofcommunity epistemology as fundamental to the said domain of study, achieving in the
process the defamiliarization and deconstruction of the role of the colonial epistemology in framing,
invisibilizing and silencing tribes/Adivasis. Further, it warms my heart to note that this
demonumentalizing project that bodhi s.r and bipin jojo has undertaken is taking place across
tribal/Adivasi communities rather than within a few communities out of the 450 tribal groups. There
is, as I observe, a community led initiative to methodologically grapple with these concrete theoretical
conditions as an intellectual collective and not as a specific community.
The recent formation of the Tribal Intellectual Collective India (TICI), as bodhi s.r informs me, holds
some promise for an interesting phase of methodological muddying, theoretical mudslinging and
probably a rise of new organic knowledge; more real, more genuine, more insightful in tribal/Adivasi
studies. The Tribal Intellectual Collective being at the forefront of this knowledge project, are
constituted by knowledge producers from within the tribal/Adivasi communities from across the
country. Even though these collective efforts of intellectualization are in its initial phases, they are, in
many ways, clearing the path for the rise of a new generation of tribal/Adivasi intellectuals and thought
leaders with a pan Indian perspective and a much deeper and wider theoretical scope.
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The book – ‘The Problematics of Tribal Integration: Voices from India’s Alternative Centers’ is an
effort towards augmenting this knowledge project. Edited by bodhi s.r, the National Co-convener
(Academics) and bipin Jojo, the National Co-convener (Organization) of the TICI, the ideas expressed
in the book are new, the thoughts refreshing, the position critical, the source organic, and the insights
– simple but deep. It is rare that in such few pages are contained theoretical frames and arguments
that provide such in-depth academic insights into the tribal/Adivasi as well as the Indian/Global
reality. After reading the book, one is left wanting for more, while instantly being politically satisfied
with the fact that someone from the tribal/Adivasi community has stood up to state the truth of the
tribal/Adivasi historical condition at this moment in time.
The theoretical contributions that the book makes are plenty, but few key ideas worth mentioning are
'problematization of epistemology' and the debates concerning thereof, the ‘Pre and Post Xaxa
theoretical framework’, the brilliant exposition on ‘axiologicide’, the ‘adaptation-negotiation-freedom’
spectrum, and the multiple and diverse contexts that each of the authors bring to light concerning
tribal/Adivasi history, social condition, political position, legal status, etc, spanning across the length
and breadth of India.
The introduction is a must read; it touches some fundamental issues and leave one conceptually and
theoretically refreshed and clear. Each of the following chapters is empirically rich and provides the
reader insights into the historical complexity and socio-political intricacies that defines the
tribal/Adivasi conditions and epistemologies. But as the arguments by the authors suggest and so will
I; that when you complete reading the book and leave with some lingering thoughts about the
tribes/Adivasis in India, do note that it is NOT the oft-repeated framework of ‘Assimilation,
Integration and Isolation’ that will help you get superior theoretical insights of the tribal condition in
India, but the tribal/Adivasi peoples' organic framework drawn from a ‘perspective from within’ of
‘Adaptation-Negotiation-Freedom’ that is more sociologically real, methodologically grounded and
politically refined.
Shaileshkumar Darokar
TISS Mumbai

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Introduction
~bodhi s.r and bipin jojo

When we as peoples from epistemological communities that are historically and structurally perceived
and confined to the category ‘tribe’ by hegemonic forces, reflect on social theories, or even on
possibilities of formulating a point-of-view about tribal/Adivasi realities, we have often been faulted
and even ridiculed for supposedly bringing more ‘stories’ and ‘emotions’ rather than ‘facts’ and ‘logic’
in theoretical engagement. Across the academic spectrum, this is often cited as the reason for tribes’
inability to secure any theoretical advancement of their epistemological cause. This book series,
initiated by the Tribal Intellectual Collective India in collaboration with The Shared Mirror, is a
theoretical attempt to problematize this narrative and to provide an intellectual response to such deep-
rooted paternalistic conceptions prevailing across varied discursive traditions. We believe it is
imperative for us at this juncture in history to raise this debate about epistemology to a valid place of
moral and historical discourse, not only for reasons that are political but for the theoretical and
methodological usefulness that such academic engagements could yield.
This volume, while not exhaustive, engages with a particularly long-standing debate in ‘tribal’ studies
– the notion and process of ‘Tribal Integration’ into the Indian state. It is part of our efforts to carve
out a specific domain in tribal studies that we call integration studies. The nineteen chapters that
constitute this edited volume are a culmination of the points-of-view of peoples who have attempted
to see and think differently about the problematics of integration, tribes and the Indian state. Each of
the authors has tried to historicise and unravel the realities and experiences of tribal/Adivasi
communities. While some have examined State structure and State responses, others have interrogated
prevailing/dominant theoretical debates, organic struggles and resistance movements, plus a myriad
other issue surrounding the problematics of ‘Integration’.
In this introduction, we touch upon some of the current theoretical arguments on the subject of
‘Integration’. We also revisit significant historical events, draw upon relevant contemporary concrete
conditions and engage with a subject we consider fundamental to the realities of tribes in India today;
the question of knowledge and epistemology. The problematization of the latter is imperative in the
light of the fact that, knowledge production and knowledges in India have played a critical role in
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insidiously defining, labelling and producing social realities that has churned out unequal and extremely
dehumanizing socio-structural landscapes. We also touch upon the status of Tribal Studies in India
today, followed by analysis and thereafter locating each of the nineteen chapters in context, and finally
conclude with some basic but critical theoretical propositions.
Reflections on Epistemology
Although subsumed in a complex ontological embodiment of the subject/object of our own (Khasi
and Munda) realities, we have attempted to reconcile our academic and personal selves with the
methodological processual discrepancies that many tribes/Adivasis in academia are sometimes
confronted with. This pertains to the dominant notions of ‘objectivity’ and ‘universality’. The former
being a premise to claim neutrality and impartiality in knowledge production, and the latter a premise
to assert the applicability of a knowledge beyond time and space. These are often argued by west
European theorists as fundamental imperatives of any research endeavour. Over the years, as we
have meditated deeply on these methodological claims, we have come to realize the problematics of
objectivity and universalization, and the subtle reproduction of colonialism through these ‘given’
premises, where a knowledge producer holds a somewhat dogmatic yet naive belief and acceptance
of the ‘value’ and ‘efficacy’ of knowledge produced from such frameworks. Such epistemological
premises and methodological strategies we now reject; not merely for being premises and elements
of colonial reproduction but much more for their inability to capture and provide deeper insights
into diverse realities outside the normative west European gaze of the world.
Further, whenever we have tried to understand our reality based on ‘colonial’ writings, we have found
that we cannot experience our own organic historical narratives. The frames of reference in which
we try to comprehend history on the one hand and our day-to-day lived reality on the other, is full
of socio-political discrepancies. We are aware that history cannot be written in the same way as it is
experienced, but even then, ‘colonial’ writings when relied upon too heavily are problematic, as the
production of knowledge operates from anepistemological location that construct and classify rather
than unravel and explain.
This pursuit of knowledge did however, demand from us to state forthwith, both our ontological
assumptions about the demarcated context of theoretical engagement and our epistemological
assumptions of how to gain knowledge about the context. After considerable rumination over the
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