Reclaiming Indigeneity and Democracy in India's Jharkhand : WestminsterResearch

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Title	Reclaiming Indigeneity and Democracy in India's Jharkhand
Authors	Basu, 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.
Keywords	Critical Social Justice
	Indigenous
	Subaltern
	Recognition Politics
	Expressive Partisanship
	Instrumental Partisanship
	Democracy
Year	2024
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Published	26 Nov 2023
Place of publication	Oxford
ISBN	9780198884675
	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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Reclaiming Indigeneity and Democracy in India's Jharkhand

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