Reclaiming Indigeneity and Democracy in India's Jharkhand

Basu, I. 2024. Reclaiming Indigeneity and Democracy in India's Jharkhand. Oxford Oxford University Press.

TitleReclaiming Indigeneity and Democracy in India's Jharkhand
AuthorsBasu, I.
Abstract

‘Jharkhand’ - the land of forests, is the only self-defined indigenous state in India, which was created in 2000 after a long-standing regional movement known as the Jharkhand Movement. Over 20 years, the state has gone through a volatile political environment, as competing political groups from the radical left known as Maoists, to Hindu right and regional parties mobilised indigenous subaltern communities for different ends.
The book contributes to scholarship on critical social justice and indigeneity, by highlighting ‘relations of justification’ as a central feature of group-based claims-making for social groups who identify with indigeneity in different ways. In an ethnic political environment like Jharkhand, ‘relations’ that determine whether or not social groups are recognised as ‘agents of justice’ rather than simply as ‘subjects’ to be allocated goods to correct their backwardness depends on- relations with other communities; with political groups; and with different scales of governance. Today, as adivasi identity in Jharkhand is perceived to provide political and social capital, we find more evidence of social groups from indigenous backgrounds as well as from long term-inhabitants from schedule castes and other backward classes, trying to build bridges with indigeneity while simultaneously critiquing the internal hierarchies and contestations within it. Through insights from ethnographic and archival research, the book explains that when ‘relations’ in terms of how marginalised groups are treated by others are at the epicentre of claims-making, expressive attachments determine political activism over the instrumental choices that groups are forced to make in contexts of huge power differentials.

KeywordsCritical Social Justice
Indigenous
Subaltern
Recognition Politics
Expressive Partisanship
Instrumental Partisanship
Democracy
Year2024
PublisherOxford University Press
Publication dates
Published26 Nov 2023
Place of publicationOxford
ISBN9780198884675
9780191993695
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198884675.001.0001
Web address (URL)https://academic.oup.com/book/55711

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