Indigeneity, Landscape and History

Adivasi Self-fashioning in India

Asoka Kumar Sen

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780367277796
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351611862
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

This book engages with notions of self and landscape as manifest in water, forest and land via historical and current perspectives in the context of indigenous communities in India. It also brings processes of identity formation among tribes in Africa and Latin America into relief. Using interconnected historical moments and representations of being, becoming and belonging, it situates the content and complexities of Adivasi self-fashioning in contemporary times, and discusses constructions of selfhood, diaspora, homeland, environment and ecology, political structures, state, marginality, development, alienation and rights.

Drawing on a range of historical sources – from recorded oral traditions and village histories to contemporary Adivasi self-narratives – the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, sociology and social anthropology, tribal and indigenous studies and politics.

Part I
Other representation

1
Sanskritic and colonial representations of tribe

This chapter unfolds and critically examines the context and content of how others, that is, dominant Sanskritic and colonial elements, represented the tribal communities. It may broadly be summed up as ‘tribalism/tribalist’ after Van Schendel, which falls in line with the more generic notion of ‘Orientalism’ (1992: 103). What is common about both is the ethnocentric way the dominant groups like the Sanskritic-colonial elements and western/European communities looked at servile communities. Guided by a hegemonising mindset, this resulted in the epistemic diminution and misrepresentation of the tribals in the former, and non-western/European peoples in the latter. Cederlof adds, ‘The problem of the silenced, indigenous voices is not merely an issue of Europe vs. (in this case) India. People in forest and hill tracts faced the same lack of representation with regard to any state that claimed lordship over the territory in which they lived’ (2013: 382).

We notice certain continuity in representation in early colonial ethnography in India due to the impact of Sanskritic/Brahmanical tradition. But subsequently, western ethnological studies, particularly the racial theory of classification of cultures and peoples (Stocking 1991; Bayly 1997; Bates 1995b), had begun to impact colonial scholars. The idea of race was based on (a) linguistic and ethnological divisions of mankind; and (b) where communities were categorised into superior and inferior groups on the basis of their physical and moral traits. This section will address the above ideas under two parts of unequal length – the Sanskritic followed by colonial representation.

The Sanskritic representation

The term Sanskritic representation stands for the depiction of the tribe in the Sanskrit texts. This embodies the views not only of their authors, but also of those who were votaries of the ideology. Often identified as Brahmanic, this propagated a high culture value represented by higher castes. Though Brahmins were the maker and carrier of these values, these seeped into the lower caste groups who later played a key role in transmitting and popularising these ideas. At this level, this assumed a broader nomenclature of Hindu. Significantly, colonial ethnographer/administrators preferred to club Brahmin and Hindu together rather than making a rigid distinction between the two. This section explores the broader Hindu vision of the tribe, the context, mode and motives of representation; and how this portrayal survived to finally shape the tribalist ideology.

With regard to the context of this representation, we learn that the ethnic communities (the Kolarian groups) were in control over large tracts of middle India (Grierson 1967: 35). The Aryans invaded this politico-cultural space and started their military and cultural expansion. But, they posed that they were out to spread the light of civilisation among a savage and sanguinary people. They, therefore, reiterated corporal and cerebral inferiority of the conquered. We should not take this representation as fully neutral. Since a considerable part of this representation was appropriated from the reading of these Sanskrit texts by western scholars, the textualisation often displayed their ethnocentric mindset. Trautmann remarked:

What I want to show is that the Vedic evidence that has been brought forward has been subjected to a consistent over reading in favor of a racializing interpretation, and that the image of the ‘dark-skinned savage’ is only imposed on the Vedic evidence with a considerable amount of text-torturing, both ‘substantive’ and ‘adjectival’ in character.

(1997: 208)

In Sanskrit texts, tribal communities in India were variously designated as das (slave), dasyu (robbers), rakshasa, asura, danava, savara and pulinda (demon) (Roy 1970: 14–18, 20–38). They were not only identified as ethnologically different, but also culturally inferior and low people. Distinction of physical feature was one measure. The Aryans were superior due to their fair complexion and sharpness of features (Trautmann 1997: 162). On the contrary, the tribals were considered inferior by the Rig Veda because of their black skin (twacham Krishnam), fierce eyes (ghora chakshas), deformed nose (visipra) or noseless (anasa) (Roy 1970: 14–18, 20–38). The other measure was cultural. Considering their own tongue as more refined, the aboriginal speech was termed mridhravach (imperfect); their culinary habit was unclean because they were kolabidhvasin or pig eaters; and they were a fallen people as they did not perform ‘sacred rites’ of the Aryans. In addition, they were characterised as a savage and oppressive group of people. To quote the Ramayana: ‘Men-devouring Rakshas of various shapes, and wild beasts, (or serpents) which feed on blood, dwell in this vast forest. They harass the devotees who reside in the settlements and slay them in the forest.’ Further, these ‘shapeless and ill-looking monsters’, ‘anarya wretches’, ‘uttering frightful sounds’ were castigated as a ‘treacherous race’ (ibid.: 17, 38–9).

However, Sanskrit texts make both tacit and candid admission of the nativity of the ‘black aborigines’ and their politico-cultural advance. The Taittiriya Upanishad affirmed that the country was first occupied by the asuras. Kulindas, who were identified as the Kolarian aborigines by the Aryans, held sway over the hilly region between the river Beas in Punjab and river Tons (Tamasa) in Oudh. Similarly, the Rig Veda wrote about the supremacy of the Savaras over large tracts of northern India (ibid.: 14, 24–7). These texts also admitted that the pastoralist aboriginal communities had developed their state system of urban ‘commonwealth’; the Dasa chief headed a city or group of cities; the Dasyu chief named Sambara was the lord of 100 cities. These settlements were protected by large forts and castles. They used stone and flint weapons during warfare and stone implements for domestic use (ibid.: 23, 26–8). With this polity, they were able to amass wealth to the envy of their Aryan adversary. These facts testify that the Aryans implicitly considered the non-Aryan groups superior to the Aryans in the scale of civilisation. The Rig Veda averred that when the ‘poor’ Aryan ‘has not even ordinary water to wash himself in, the wives of the enemy in the insolent pride of their wealth bathe in milk’. Similarly, their patriarchal social order sustained by individual marriage was deemed as a sign of superiority (ibid.: 29).

The Sanskrit texts narrate the story of confrontation and conflict between the non-Aryans and Aryans. We learn of initial Aryan reverses as also the final defeat, displacement and migration of the aboriginal peoples. The Markandeya Purana depicts the defeat of the Aryan King Suratha at the hands of an ‘unclean’ tribe; the Mahabharata narrates the asura conquest over Aryan gods; the Mahabharata and the Puranas mention about the suffering of Indra, the chief of gods, at the hands of asura chief Bali (ibid.: 17–18). The Rig Veda Samhita mentions about numerous conflicts between the Aryans and the aborigines, ending in the gradual expansion of the Aryans from the Indus Valley to the Gangetic Plains and beyond, and consequent recession of the aboriginal communities to the hill and forested regions in northern and eastern India (ibid.: 13; Chapter II).

However, militarism was not the only course resorted to by the Aryans. They also conducted the absorption of the enemy in their fold, famously characterised as ‘Hindu mode of absorption’ by later scholars. Initially, it was done through marriage. The Manu Samhita describes that all castes and the tribes originated out of the crosses between the original four castes. About the biological linkage, the Vishnu Purana mentions that the asuras were ‘the first born of Brahman, from whose thigh they sprang’. But greater emphasis was on the systematic relegation of these people. The reasons given were that the aboriginals did not observe the ‘sacred rites’ (ibid.: 14–15) and that they had no respect for the Brahmins (‘seeing no Brahmanas’). As a result, they were cast out from the fold and relegated to the rank of Sudra. And so it was with the Kols and Bhils: the story goes that they were born out of Raja Bena’s left hand, but he was cursed as he was not courteous to the sages (ibid.: 16). Though S.C. Roy dismissed these legends as ‘fanciful theories and legendary inventions’ (ibid.), one may discern, in the different versions of aboriginal origin, the Aryan ploy to absorb the conquered within the conqueror’s fold – a reverse version of the Adivasi origin myth.

It is significant that the Sanskritic representation of the ethnic groups considerably impacted colonial ethnographers. Justice Campbell, a strong exponent of knowledge making through observation and the agency of officers, collated information from the Puranas where the aborigines were designated as ‘vile monsters’, ‘allied to monkeys’, ‘as black as crows’, of flattened features and of dwarfish stature’ (1866: 23). Similarly, Dalton relied on the works of orientalist researchers to find out about the epithets of abuse such as ‘worshippers of mad gods’, ‘haters of Brahmins’, ‘ferocious lookers’, ‘inhuman’, ‘flesh-eaters’, ‘devourers of life’, ‘possessed of magical powers’, ‘changing their shapes at will’ (1866: 158). Hunter, too, was initiated to the Vedic literature as an important source of information through the writings of orientalist scholars like Colebrooke and Dr Muir (1975: 90–129). He, therefore, borrowed the Sanskritic representation of the aboriginals as ‘enemy’, ‘evil spirit’, ‘lower animal’ and ‘the slave of the nobler race’ (ibid.: 124–5).

Colonial scholars underlined the hegemonising strategy adopted by the Hindus. Characterising this as ‘peaceful colonization by the brahmins’, Max Müller observed that in south india they ‘followed the wiser policy of adopting the language of the aboriginal people, and of conveying through its medium their knowledge and instruction to the minds of uncivilized tribes’ (Trautman 1997: 176). But Dalton remarked that tribals had generally emulated a non-tribal way of life, which split them into aborigines and Hinduised aborigines (1973: 3). This idea was extended further by Risley, who affirmed ‘the gradual Brahmanising of the aboriginal’, while the latter underlined that the growing Hindu influence might jeopardise tribal identity itself (1998: III). These sources impacted the colonial representation of the Indian ethnic communities up to a certain time. But later, other sources came to shape colonial minds. Therefore, it becomes pertinent to apprehend the context and content of the colonial conceptualisation of tribe.

Colonial representation as tribe/aborigine ¹

This has surfaced as a widely debatable issue ever since Edward Said’s famous conceptualisation of Orient occupied the academic centre stage (1985: 5, 8).² Questions were raised whether this was really ethnocentric and imaginative. While scholars broadly agree on the ethnocentric aspect of knowledge making, like ‘orientalism’, ‘tribalism’ was not ideologically a uniform discourse (Bayly 1997: 167). Similarly, scholars are not in agreement about its imaginary character. Damodaran, for instance, argues that the notion of tribe in India emerged out of specific historical situations and was not the product simply of colonial imaginings (2006b: 44–75). It is, therefore, imperative to understand the methodology of colonial knowledge making. Hence, this section will seek to examine the function of such sources as observation and direct field experience of the administrators and ethnographers, official network as well as the role of native sources in crystallising the knowledge bank. But the crucial point for this study should be to grapple with the actual share of the Adivasi informant. This becomes necessary in view of the observation about the gradual displacement of the ‘native informant’ in the making of colonial discourse (Dasgupta 2007a). This will usher us first into the ideological complexities in operation to be followed by how and by whom colonial discourse was produced.

Ideology and appropriation of colonial knowledge

Colonial knowledge was the product of two distinct yet complementary processes – exploration of the self by the western scholars and seeking ‘moral justification’ for the imperialistic agenda of the west. Europe’s progress through renaissance, religious reformation and scientific and technological revolutions prompted scholars to argue that western society was modern and civilised as against medieval and backward non-western societies (Bates 1995b: 220). This prompted them to invent ‘an ideal-typical model of traditional society’ so that it could be ‘increasingly tied to the dynamics of imperial governance’ (Mantena 2010: 56–7). While non-western peoples were generally considered inferior, they could discover the dichotomies between ‘barbarian’ Chinese and Indian and ‘savage’ and ‘primitive’ Africans and Melanesians (Adas 1989: 194–5). Their primary concern was to understand why western societies had progressed more than their non-western counterparts. Anthropologists, historians and philosophers as also evange-lists, free traders, colonial administrator-ethnographers focussed on the communities, variously termed as aborigine, tribe and autochthon, to explore why they occupied the lowest position. Western scientists, medical practitioners, anthropologists and linguists worked in tandem to formulate and systematise essentials of primitivism and tribalism to map the anthropomorphic progress from primitivism to western modernity. In a sense, they wanted ‘to comprehend non-European social formations in relation to the prehistory (and future) of European man and society… to chart the unique trajectory of Western modernity’ that would foster ‘a fundamental rethinking of the idea of the primitive’ (Mantena 2010: 57). Accordingly, the primitive or tribe in India was characterised as blood-centric descent groups, savage, sensuous, body-centric, irrational, presentist, stateless and historyless (Kuper 1988: 4–34; Sivaramakrishnan 1996: 243–82; Skaria 1997: 726–45; Guha 2002; Banerjee 2006: 2–25). They reasoned that these attributes rendered them non-contemporary, rather anachronistic or the ‘other’, (Skaria 1999: Chapter I) of the modern society.

The intellectuals believed that practical ‘physiological, moral and intellectual’ evidences justified ‘evolutionary racial hierarchies’ (Bayly 1997: 165–87). They, therefore, classified people into superior/inferior, civilised/savage and dominant/subservient races. This project gained momentum since the British census operations and the Ethnographic Conference of 1885 in Lahore. In collaboration with the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the Bengal and Supreme governments directed ‘all local authorities to furnish complete and accurate lists of various races found within their respective jurisdictions’ (Dalton 1973: i). Though the avowed objective was to be ‘of some service to students of comparative ethnology in Europe’, it was actually to appropriate knowledge for the sake of ‘good administration’ and solving ‘possible social problems’ (Risley 1998: iv). We can draw a parallel from the African history: ‘To rule Africa, colonial officials needed knowledge about African languages, cultures, and laws, which in many regions began to be compiled with the assistance of local intermediaries within a few years of occupation’ (Parker and Rathbone 2007: 107).

There was yet another aspect – administrator-ethnographers in India became conscious of the weakness in the policy of ‘homogenization’.³ The census of 1891 revealed ‘how rapidly the old aboriginal faiths are being effaced’ (Risley 1998: iii). But the idea of conservation of the aboriginals was not fully altruistic. It worked under the overriding imperialist compulsion of stalling the growth of Indian nationalism (Cohn 1997: ix, Chapter ii) by highlighting racial, caste, religious and linguistic differences among Indians. We can draw support from Hunter, who asserted: ‘We are too accustomed to speak of India as a single country and of its inhabitants as a single nation; but the truth is, that as regards its ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I Other representation
• PART II Self-representation
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index