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Cohabiting a textualized world: Elbow room and Adivasi resurgence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Ruby Hembrom Open the ORCID record for Ruby Hembrom [Opens in a new window]
Ruby Hembrom*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economic and Political Science, London, United Kingdom
*
Email: R.Hembrom@lse.ac.uk
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Abstract

Stories matter—writing them down matters. For indigenous (Adivasi) peoples from oral traditions, literature has become a way to maintain culture and keep it alive. This article too is a story—an investigative one—questioning and vocalizing the challenges we encounter in trying to articulate our realities and histories in a form that is new to us, one that we've been denied as a practice and one we are not believed we are entitled to use. Mainstream cultures have side-lined, overshadowed, and subjugated our knowledge systems, placing us in structures we have to traverse, and within which we have to exist, which is possible only by internalizing and mirroring others' or mainstream ways and languages to gain legitimacy as peoples or, worse, being branded and judged by their versions of narratives of us. This article plots the course of Adivasi histories and narratives enduring, outlasting, or being demolished by dislocation and dispossession, by dominant languages and cultures, and how both writing and orality are practices of both resistance and resurgence.

Keywords

AdivasiTribalIndigenousoralitywritingpublishing
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 56 , Special Issue 5: Multiple Worlds of the Adivasi , September 2022 , pp. 1464 - 1488
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, ‘On Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept’, Cultural Studies, vol. 21, no. 2–3, 2007, pp. 240–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Fricker, Miranda, ‘Epistemic Justice as a Condition of Political Freedom?’, Synthese, vol. 190, no. 7, 2012, pp. 1317–1332CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Fricker, M., Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 While each of the terms ‘Adivasi’, ‘Tribal’, ‘Scheduled Tribe’, and ‘Indigenous’ have their own genealogies and conceptual histories, the use of Indigenous for Adivasi and tribes sits uncomfortably with many scholars, being framed within the discourse of settler colonialism, but Virginius Xaxa helps us formulate its usage, application, and ownership. According to Raile Rocky Ziipao, ‘Tribes in India face two waves of Colonialism, what [Xaxa] calls “double colonialism”—one from the British and one from the non-Tribal Indian population. Hence, the problem of trying to unravel tribal social reality from the post-colonial framework of South Asian Studies, Tribes still have yet to experience a post-colonial reality. For Tribes, post-colonial reality and framework is just an idea.’ Raile Rocky Ziipao, ‘Epistemology is the Key to Tribes’ Emancipation’, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family, South Asia Institute, Harvard University, 2018, available at https://mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu/2018/03/epistemology-is-the-key-to-tribes-emancipation/, [accessed 1 July 2022]. At the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Indigenous Populations’ annual sessions in Geneva, India's delegates (1985–1990) express solidarity and a common plight with the world's indigenous peoples, ratifying the declaration, and in the same breath alternating between the views that India has no indigenous peoples and that everyone is Indigenous, as their official stance for India's Indigenous, which has been a ploy to refuse Adivasi and Tribes the official recognition and status of being the original inhabitants. This denial is a rejection of Adivasi identity, self-determination, and agency—that's why a discomfort with Adivasis and Tribes using Indigenous is discriminatory. See Karlsson, Bengt G., ‘Anthropology and the “Indigenous Slot”. Claims to and Debates about Indigenous Peoples’ Status in India’, Critique of Anthropology, vol. 23, no. 4, 2003, pp. 403–423CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As for the history of the term ‘Adivasi’, see Virginius Xaxa, ‘Tribes as Indigenous People of India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 34, no. 51, December 1999, pp. 3589–3595: ‘The ascription of the term Adivasi as being indigenous (what the Indian Government assigns as Scheduled Tribe from the administrative perspective of lack of literacy, economic backwardness, lack of political participation and their inability to deal with the external societies) emerged more as a political self-reference than as an anthropological definition of such groups. It relates more to the common experience of subjugation faced by tribal groups from the state since colonial times. The term signifies our demand for recognition of our identity to and rights over ancestral lands, forests, customary practices and self-governance amidst the exploitative relationship by the larger dominants.’ Rycroft, Daniel J., ‘Looking Beyond the Present: The Historical Dynamics of Adivasi (Indigenous and Tribal) Assertions in India’, Journal of Adivasi and Indigenous Studies (JAIS), vol. I, no. 1, August 2014, pp. 1–17Google Scholar. Rycroft, Daniel and Dasgupta, Sangeeta, ‘Introduction’, in The Politics of Belonging in India: Becoming Adivasi, (eds) Rycroft, D. and Dasgupta, S. (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Santals form the largest homogenous indigenous (Adivasi) people of India across Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Orissa, and in smaller numbers in Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh in India. Outside of India Santals are found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. They number about seven million in India, available at http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/PCA/ST.html, [last accessed 12 August 2020].

5 Santal Parganas is one of the divisions or commissionaries of Jharkhand. Its headquarters are in Dumka. Presently, this administrative division comprises six districts: Godda, Deoghar, Dumka, Jamtara, Sahibganj, and Pakur.

6 I use ‘Diku’ to mean the non-tribal. If I were writing this article in Santali I would automatically use ‘Diku’, and thus prefer it here too. S. C. Sinha, Jyoti Sen and Sudhir Panchbai. ‘The Concept of Diku among the Tribes of Chotanagpur’, Man in India, vol. 49, no. 2, April–June, 1969, pp. 121–138.

7 Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar. Scott, J. C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

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9 First Post, ‘Literacy Rates of Scheduled Tribes Far Below National Average, Says Parliamentary Panel’, 2015, available at https://www.firstpost.com/india/literacy-rates-scheduled-tribes-far-national-average-says-parliamentary-panel-2154745.html, [accessed 1 July 2022].

10 CAD India Project, Constituent Assembly Debates. Read Search and Explore India's Constitutional Origins (Bangalore: Centre for Law and Policy Research, 2016), available at https://www.constitutionofindia.net/, [accessed 1 July 2022].

11 The Constituent Assembly Debates record Jaipal Singh Munda's usage of the term ‘Adibasi’, spelled with the letter b and not v as it has come to be used now.

12 Jaipal Singh Munda, from the Munda tribe, represented the tribals in the Constituent Assembly that drafted the Constitution, to which he was elected from Bihar in 1946. He was one of the Independent candidates to have been elected to the Constituent Assembly, available at https://www.constitutionofindia.net/constituent_assembly_members/jaipal_singh,_ [accessed 1 July 2022].

13 Lakshminarayan Sahu: ‘Perhaps this amendment, that the provisions will operate only for ten years, has been moved in view of these considerations. I think we should not bother about the period, whether it be ten years or twenty years, for the Adibasis are so backward that the period of ten years prescribed here may be safely extended to twenty years. We need not worry about this. The main thing that we should be anxious about is that we do not forcibly bring them into our fold. Some of us advocate that we should force them to come into our fold. It is very improper. It is only by a gradual process of creating closer relations that they should be absorbed amongst us.’ Lakshminarayan Sahu, Constituent Assembly of India Debates (Proceedings). Volume IX. 5th September, 1949. (Document number) 132. (Paragraph number) 171, available at https://www.constitutionofindia.net/, [accessed 1 July 2022].

14 Shibban Lal Saxena: ‘Sir, the existence of the scheduled tribes and the Scheduled areas are a stigma on our nation just as the existence of untouchability is a stigma on the Hindu religion. That these brethren of ours are still in such a sub-human state of existence is something, for which we should be ashamed. Of course, all these years this country was a slave of the British, but still we cannot be free from blame. I therefore think Sir, that these scheduled tribes and areas must as soon as possible become a thing of the past. They must come up to the level of the rest of the population and must be developed to the fullest extent. I only want that these scheduled tribes and scheduled areas should be developed so quickly that they may become indistinguishable from the rest of the Indian population and that this responsibility should be thrown on the Union Government and on the Parliament.’ Shibban Lal Saxena, Constituent Assembly of India Debates (Proceedings). Volume IX. 5th September, 1949. (Document number) 132. (Paragraph number) 131, available at https://www.constitutionofindia.net/, [accessed 1 July 2022].

15 Ibid.

16 Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant said ‘I believe that they have not received that attention and active service at our hands to which they were entitled. I think we owe them a duty and we should do all we can to raise their general level…’ Vallabhbhai J. Patel stated ‘… But I would like to make one thing clear. Is it the intention of people to defend the cause of the tribals to keep the tribes permanently in their present state? I do not think it is in their interest to do so. I think that it should be our endeavour to bring the tribal people to the level of Mr. Jaipal Singh and not keep them as tribes, so that, 10 years hence, when the Fundamental Rights are reconsidered, the word “tribes” may be removed altogether, when they would have come up to our level. It is not befitting India's civilization to provide for tribes…’ Vallabhbhai J. Patel, Constituent Assembly of India Debates (Proceedings). Volume III. 30 April, 1947. (Document number) 19, (Paragraph number) 152, available at https://www.constitutionofindia.net/, [accessed 1 July 2022].

17 Ibid.

18 Saxena, Constituent Assembly of India Debates (Proceedings). Volume IX.

19 Sahu, Constituent Assembly of India Debates (Proceedings). Volume IX.

20 Xaxa, ‘Tribes as Indigenous People of India’. Rycroft, ‘Looking Beyond the Present’. Rycroft and Dasgupta, ‘Introduction’.

21 First Post, Literacy Rates of Scheduled Tribes.

22 Darnton, Robert, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1999)Google Scholar.

23 My specific examples are drawn from the Santals, the people I come from. Though ‘They vary among themselves in respect of language and linguistic traits, ecological settings in which they live, physical features, size of the population, extent of acculturation, dominant modes of making a livelihood, level of development and social stratification’ (Virginius Xaxa et al., Report of the High Level Committee on Socio-economic, Health and Educational Status of Tribal Communities of India, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India, 2014, available at https://cjp.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2014-Xaxa-Tribal-Committee-Report.pdf, [accessed 21 July 2022]) the facts and features of discrimination, deprivation, and articulations of rights are more or less the same for Adivasi peoples.

24 Fricker, ‘Epistemic justice’; Fricker, Epistemic Injustice.

25 Herbert Hope Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal. (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1891).

26 Penny Petrone, Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990).

27 Walter. J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New York: Routledge, 1982, 2002).

28 Timotheas Hembrom, The Santal and the Biblical Creation Traditions: Anthropological and Theological Reflections (Kolkata: adivaani, 2013).

29 Ruby Hembrom, We Come from the Geese (Kolkata: adivaani, 2013). R. Hembrom, Earth Rests on a Tortoise (Kolkata: adivaani, 2013).

30 Ruby Hembrom, ‘Orality, Folklore, and Authorship—A Publishing Quandary’, International Society for Folk Narrative Research, no. 8, 2021, pp. 7–11: Special Issue: Indigeneity, Ecology and Narrative, available at http://www.isfnr.org/files/Newsletter2021.pdf, [accessed 1 July 2022].

31 Santal knowledge specialists called Karam Gurus recite the Karam Binti (roughly translates to prayer, plea, or supplication of the karam, both a plant and a term used to imply festival or ceremony). The Karam Binti is one of the most pivotal institutions of the Santals, connected with the recitation of ‘… the history of the world from the creation and through the ages’: P. O. Bodding, 1932–36. A Santal Dictionary, 5 Vols (Oslo: Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, 1935), pp. 451f. The Karam Binti is traditionally performed through various significant life events of the Santals—ritual ablution and initiation of children as ‘affiliates’ of the Santal society, at weddings, and at funerals with the Karam tree signifying regeneration and prosperity. This recitation is now reduced to a special festival, over three days, where the recital lasts all night long, an approximation of 12 or 13 hours.

32 adivaani's website: https://adivaani.org/, [accessed 1 July 2022].

33 Sanjukta Das Gupta and Rossella Ciocca, ‘Introduction’, Anglistica AION, vol. 19, no. 1, 2015, Special issue: ‘Out of Hidden India: Adivasi Histories, Stories, Visual Arts, and Performances’, doi: 10.19231/angl-aion.201511.

34 Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2014).

35 http://sahitya-akademi.gov.in/awards/yuva_samman_suchi.jsp, [accessed 1 July 2022].

36 Some of these known Indigenous authors published by mainstream publishers are Easterine Kire, A Naga Village Remembered (2003), A Terrible Matriarchy (2007), Mari (2010), Bitter Wormwood (2011), When the River Sleeps (2014), Son of the Thundercloud (2016), Don't Run, My Love (2017); Mamang Da, Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land (2003), Mountain Harvest: The Food of Arunachal (2004), The Sky Queen and Once Upon a Moontime (2003), The Legends of Pensam (2006), Stupid Cupid (2008), The Black Hill (2014), River Poems (2004), The Balm of Time (2008), Hambreelmai's Loom (2014), Midsummer Survival Lyrics (2014); Temsula Ao, Songs that Tell (1988), Songs that Try to Say (1992), Songs of Many Moods (1995), Songs from Here and There (2003), Songs From the Other Life (2007), These Hills Called Home: Stories from the War Zone (2005), Laburnum for my Head (2009), Janice Pariat, Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories (2012), Seahorse: A Novel, (2014), The Nine-Chambered Heart (2017).

37 Pierre Bourdieu, The Forms of Capital, in J. Richardson, Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 241–258.

38 Nishaant Choksi, ‘Surface Politics: Scaling Multiscriptality in an Indian Village Market’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1–24.

39 Nishaant Choksi, ‘Scripting the Border: Script Practices and Territorial Imagination among Santali Speakers in Eastern India’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, no. 227, 2014, pp. 47–63.

40 Timotheas Hembrom, The Santal and the Biblical Creation Traditions: Anthropological and Theological Reflections (Kolkata: adivaani, 2013).

41 Paul Olav Hodne, The Seed Bore Fruit: A Short History of the Santal Mission of the Northern Churches 1867–1967 (Dumka: Santal Mission of the Northern Churches, 1967).

42 Ibid.

43 Virginius Xaxa, ‘Politics of Language, Religion and Identity: Tribes in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 40, no. 13, 26 March 2005.

44 Choksi, ‘Scripting the border’.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid.

47 Hembrom, The Santal and the Biblical Creation Traditions.

48 CAD India Project, Constituent Assembly Debates.

49 K. Santosh Soren, Santalia: Catalogue of Santali Manuscripts in Oslo (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 1999).

50 Peter B. Anderson, Marine Carrin and Santosh K. Soren (eds), From Fire Rain to Rebellion: Reasserting Ethnic Identity Through Narrative (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2011).

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

53 Ruby Hembrom, ‘The Santals and the Bodding Paradox’, Norsk Tidsskrift For Misjonsvitenskap, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 51–58.

54 Jarold Ramsey, ‘Francis LaFlesche's “The Song of Flying Crow” and the Limits of Ethnography’, in American Indian Persistence and Resurgence, (ed.) Karl Kroeber (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), p. 191.

55 The Tribal Intellectual Collective India is a knowledge-producing community constituted by activists, professors, and academics from various universities in India and across the globe who are engaged in tribal and Adivasi Studies, available at http://www.ticijournals.org/, [accessed 1 July 2022].

56 Audra Simpson, ‘On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, “Voice” and Colonial Citizenship’, Junctures, no. 9, 2007, pp. 67–80.

57 Richard Kamei, ‘Uncivilising the Mind: How Anthropology Shaped the Discourse on Tribes in India’, The Caravan, vol. 13, no. 3, March 2021, pp. 84–95, available at https://caravanmagazine.in/books/anthropologists-tribes-india, [accessed 1 July 2022].

58 Simpson, ‘On Ethnographic Refusal’.

59 Hartley B. Alexander, ‘Francis LaFlesche’, American Anthropologist, NS, vol. 35, no. 2, 1933, pp. 328–331.

60 Ramsey, ‘Francis LaFlesche's “The Song of Flying Crow”’.

61 Ibid.

62 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, ‘Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg Intelligence and Rebellious Transformation’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, vol. 3, no. 3, 2014, pp. 1–25. It must be noted that Simpson is also developing an idea she borrows from Linda Tuhiwai–Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012).

63 Sangeeta Dasgupta, ‘Adivasi Studies: From a Historian's Perspective’, History Compass, vol. 16, no. 10, 2018.

64 Felix Padel and Samarendra Das, Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2010).

65 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle's Back. Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (Kolkata: adivaani, 2014).

66 Gladson Dungdung and Felix Padel, ‘Adivasis on the March—Crisis and Cultural Genocide in Tribal India’, Adivasi Hunkar, 2019, available at http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=13943, [accessed 21 July 2022].

67 In 2014, ‘Penguin Books India agreed to withdraw from sale and pulp all copies of The Hindus: An Alternative History, by the US-based academic Wendy Doniger, as part of a settlement after a group of Hindu conservative nationalists filed a case against the publisher’, available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/13/indian-conservatives-penguin-hindus-book/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/14/penguin-india-pulping-book-wendy-doniger [both accessed 1 July 2022].

68 Fricker, ‘Epistemic Justice'. Fricker, Epistemic Injustice.

69 Ibid.

70 Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle's Back.