The Making of a Village

The Dynamics of Adivasi Rural Life in India

Asoka Kumar Sen

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367775636
• eBook ISBN: 9781000094060
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Making of a Village examines the social and cultural life of indigenous peoples in India. It unfolds intimate aspects of Adivasi history such as the birth of a village, its demographic formation, forging of social relations, in- and out-migration, and the dialectics of the village as a socio-physical space during precolonial and colonial periods.

Drawing on oral, archival and empirical data from eastern India, it highlights the interconnected themes of inflection of identity; the change of the Adivasis from historic agents to colonial subjects and their arcadia to a servile landscape; and the indigenous notion of state. It also initiates a dialogue between the past and present to bring into sharp relief ideas of village community, indigeneity, migration, governance, colonialism, agency, subjecthood, rural change, environment and ecology.

Redefining the study of rural sociology in South Asia, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, politics, development studies, sociology, social and cultural anthropology, Adivasi and indigenous studies, and South Asian studies.

1 Introduction

Village studies: an overview

Tracing the historical journey of a village from inception to maturity is at once fascinating and epistemically rewarding. Experiences of this journey can be better appreciated in the light of the homologies and differences between historical and other genres of writings, broadly characterised as village studies. For the sake of convenience, this is elaborated in this chapter under three categories: writings by colonial ethnographers-administrators, the sociological and anthropological writings produced immediately after Indian independence and later, and finally, the village-centric ethnographic works by a wide spectrum of scholars.

Village studies in India were initiated and made a major advance during the colonial period, pioneered by the likes of Henry Maine (1876), B.H. Baden-Powell (1972) and W.W. Hunter (1975).¹ The studies by colonial administrator-ethnographers did not have their own autonomy, as they were written as an appendage to the main task of preparing land revenue and Census reports. Despite this, they provided rich basic data on village life that underlined the salience of the village as an area of study. But these studies generally suffered from critical gaps in knowledge. First, intimate details about village life were missing. Second, this created the slanted notion of Indian villages as archaic, economically self-reliant, politico-administratively autonomous, unchanging ‘little republics’ (ibid.),² characterised by a homogenous village community and village unity (Breman 1997: 15–16; Gupta 2005: 752). Third, the lack of development of rural India, an unfortunate legacy of colonial rule, remained generally out of focus in colonial ethnographies. Post-colonial village studies largely attempted to broaden our understanding of village life in general and made the prevailing aspirations and tribulations of rural life more legible.

I will first deal with the quest of village India by the sociologists and anthropologists, which began during the 1950s and continued until recent times. Prominent among this work are the studies by Marriott (1955), Srinivas (1955, 1975), Majumdar (1955), Dube (1959, 1963), Bailey (1960), Cohn (1990), Breman, Kloos and Saith (1997), Madan (2010), Shah (2002), Gupta (2005), Singh (2009), Shah (2010), Mines and Yazgi (2011) and Hebbar (2011). One group of the empiricists relied on participant-observation methodology which provided them with an intimate, ‘field’ view (Srinivas 1975: 1387) of contemporary village life that was missing from colonial ethnography (Baden-Powell 1972: 34). Digressing from the dominant empirical and presentist trend, some scholars attempted a longue durée approach through a study of historical accounts such as Ain-i-Akbari, colonial village and settlement records, village handbooks, and memories of village elders to set their works within a larger temporal scale (Marriott 1955: 24; Srinivas 1955: 20–1, 44; Dube 1959: 15; Cohn 1990: 343–421; Madan 2010: 5; Shah 2002).

The early writings were obviously undertaken as part of India’s quest for a ‘new self-identity of a nation state’. As such, appraisal of village life served as a ‘“natural” entry point to the understanding of the traditional Indian society’ (Jodhka 2000: 1). This was attempted by exploring extensive contemporary knowledge of village life (Dube 1959: 13; Srinivas 1955: 3; Marriott 1955: VII, XV). But scholars were involved in a debate over methodology. Some of them deliberated over whether a single village could serve as ‘typical or representative of rural India as a whole’ (Dube 1959: 6; see also Marriott 1955: 171; Srinivas 1955: 2). This raised a microcosm/macrocosm or universal/parochial debate in academic circles, originating from the question of whether an Indian village is ‘a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm of Indian civilisation’ (Dumont and Pocock 1957: 25). However, scholars sought to resolve the conflict either by emphasising ‘regional or all-India uniformities’ that made villages ‘part of a wider social system and organized political society’ (Dube 1959: 5; see also Srinivas 1955: 2)³ or clustering together different single empirical studies to offer a holistic view of Indian villages, as was the case in the edited volumes of Srinivas and Marriott.

The other method involved conducting a provincial or regional study on such issues as land control and social structure, as was done in the old Banaras province. Proponents of this approach believed that this would provide ‘the holistic study of the little community with the totality of Indian civilization of which it forms a part’ (Breman 1997: 46). The majority of these works concentrated on caste⁴ as the substantive agent of Indian country life (Inden 1990: 156–8). This indirectly reinforced the notion of caste/village correspondence (Dumont and Pocock 1957: 29), or rather the basic Hindu-centrism of village India. Some of the edited volumes however chose to engage either with mixed-caste ‘tribe’ villages or purely ‘tribal’ villages.⁵ Yet purely tribe-centric studies were also conducted, such as the study by Bailey (1960) on political activity and political change in nine Adivasi hamlets in the Baderi village of highland Orissa; the study by Shah (2010) on indigenous politics, environmentalism and insurgency in the context of a village in the Bero region of Jharkhand; and Hebbar’s enquiry into ‘the contemporariness of tribal life and struggle over issues of ecology, culture, politics and science’ in the context of the Ho tribe of West Singhbhum in Jharkhand (2011: 1–8). These investigations laid bare the binaries of mainstream caste-centric and the sub-stream Adivasi-centric rural India.

While the above attempt to decolonise village episteme formed one aspect of scholarly intervention, the other major aspect involved critically comprehending the colonial legacy of non-development, exploitation and material marginalisation. This knowledge was essential for facilitating the journey of the newly created nation state towards development and progress and offsetting the unwelcome legacy of colonialism. As a sequel, forming an understanding of the problem of stagnation of the agrarian sector and the emergence of new aspirations among the peasantry of Third World countries came into focus (Jodhka 2000: 2). In this vein, post-independence works on Indian villages concentrated on development and change in rural life (Madan 2010: 2; Jodhka, 2000: 2; see also Dube 1959: Chapter I; Breman 1997: 13).

One redeeming feature of post-colonial ethnography was the focus on Adivasi villages in India. This welcome global spurt among political scientists, historians, sociologists and anthropologists fostered diachronic and synchronic understanding of rural life. Within the binaries of mainstream/sub-stream, colonisation/decolonisation and dominant/margin, scholars problematised such issues as identity, governmentality, Adivasi contestation against land alienation and displacement in villages, and denial of rights. Undeniably, academic sensitivity is the by-product of an aspirational and articulate Adivasi world. I will elaborate below on the broad ideological and epistemic content of these village studies, followed by my critique of a slanted and narrow academic vision of Adivasi rural life.

The dominant theme of ethnographic studies has been the notion of identity of the communities variously named as tribe, aboriginal, Adivasi and Scheduled tribe in India. Initially, there was a nomenclatural contest between the terms tribe and Adivasi. But scholars gradually rationalised the use of Adivasi as a representational category, although dissent against this term continued.⁶ The other controversy surfaced in the 1990s with the declaration of the UN Charter on human rights. Activists and intellectuals debated whether it would be more appropriate to substitute the term Adivasi with indigene/indigenous to assimilate them into a global indigenous movement. Arjun Appadorai argued that the use of indigene would liberate the community from the constrictions of the nation state. But against this, Kaushik Ghosh preferred the use of Adivasi, underlining the ‘national’ contexts of ‘indigenousness’ (2006: 501).

Scholars also debated the precise parameters of identity. While some scholars hinted at fuzziness, by underlining the contested and ubiquitous nature of the concept of indigenous identity (Uddin, Gerharz, and Chakkarath: 2017: 1–25), others underlined territory, or rather the culturalisation of landscape (Ricca 2018: 2; Sen 2018: 52) and ‘popular self-government’ (Sundar 2009: 191; Carrin 2013: 114; Kumar 2017: 96; Sen 2020: 27–45), as the basis of identity.

While concentrating on ideology and function, the study of governmentality put the focus on the failure of colonial and post-colonial states to humanely address the Adivasis. Academics and activists arrived at the conclusion that village-centric Adivasi communities have in the process been reduced to a marginalised and vulnerable category.⁷ They inhabited ‘an area of unfathomable poverty and underdevelopment’ (Singh 2015: 1) and suffered ‘everyday tyranny of the state’ (Bhukya 2010: xii; see also Ghosh 2006: 504; Nilsen 2018; Sen 2018: 50–1). This contributed to the recent focus on the cause, nature and manifestations of Adivasi marginalisation and backwardness (Bates 1995; Bhukya 2010; Nilsen 2018).

Finally, historical and ethnographic studies created an overarching narrative of Adivasi contestation against the wrong perpetrated by colonial and post-colonial states. The major change that occurred was a movement away from producing a narrative of militancy (Guha 1983; Singh 1966) to a post-colonial focus on peaceful and legal modes of protest against the pervasive lacunae in post-independence development policy. Popular themes were land alienation and displacement due to industrialisation and urbanisation (Bates 1995: 15–16; Areeparampil 1996: 1524–5; Stuligross 2008: 87), construction of large dams and denial of traditional forest rights causing pervasive Adivasi assertion of a customary right over jal-jungle-jameen (water, forest, land) (Areeparampil 1992: 143–86; Linkenbach 2005: 152–3; Vasan 2005: 4447–50; Ghosh 2006: 501–34; Aufschnaiter 2008; Sundar 2008: 7–8; Baviskar 2009: 160–222; Kennedy and King 2009; 1–61; Chandra 2013: 53–5; Guzy 2014: 149–59; Padel 2014: 74–7; Pattnaik 2014: 114; Krishnan and Naga 2017: 1–17; Ricca 2018: 2–25; Sen 2018: 187–203; Prabhat Khabar, 24 January, 2020; Singh, Unpublished). At the same time, scholars suggested ways the wrong could be mitigated. This included ‘reinvigorating’ customs and traditional institutions (Kumar 2017: 95–116); intensifying citizenship struggle (Sundar 2011: 419–32; Carrin 2013: 106–20; Nilsen 2016: 31–45) and strengthening the global movement for human rights (Bowen 2000: 12; Karlsson 2003: 403–16). Studies also unravelled the Adivasi perception of the way in which they should redeem the wrong (Singh 2019: 28–33; Singh, unpublished).

We cannot obfuscate the reality of historic and contemporary Adivasi subalternity and marginalisation, and also their articulation. Yet, we should not take a blinkered attitude to the slanted and narrow canvas of the above accounts, as these in a way ‘deny the ethnic groups an autonomous ontological status’ by invariably constructing ‘their otherness from the mainstream social groups’ (Sen 2018: 6). This representation has virtually set up a ‘politics of representation’ across the world (Cooper 1994: 1526). How this was enacted is relevant to this context.

First, the dichotomy was underlined between pre-state Adivasi groups and mainstream peoples belonging to a state system, followed by a focus on state laws, institutions and mechanism of governance (colonial and post-colonial) and Adivasi adjustment or maladjustment with an exogenous order. This created the other binary between the national mainstream and Adivasis. This invariably produced a critical discourse on such issues as subjecthood, denial of legal and human rights and the status of the ethnic groups as real or putative citizens referred to above. Shifting the trajectory from colonial or nation state to international arena became the third form of dichotomy. Here the focus is on whether their context should be post-national or global; whether they should be enfranchised by international law; whether their struggles should be interpreted through extraneous theories (Ghosh 2006: 501; Aufschnaiter 2008: 23–46; Kennedy and King 2009: 1); and whether the indigenous local practice should be studied in terms of its ‘entanglement’ with global and national issues (Schulte-Droesch 2014: 155–80).

One may accuse me of trivialising the issue if I rigidly stick to a narrow and localised context. I am aware that this wider understanding has made our engagement with Adivasi rural life more intense, critical and cohesive. I am also aware that Adivasi rural life took a major and convulsive turn after the advent of British rule. But I cannot ignore some serious issues that this misplaced focus creates. First, it abjectly erases the Adivasis’ creative pre-colonial past (Sen 2008: 88), resulting in ‘cultural ossification of indigeneity itself’ (Ricca 2018: 5–6). Second, it lends weight to the misconception that the Adivasis had been a pre-historic group of people and that colonial rule inaugurated their move into a historical phase (Sen 2008: 88; Ricca 2018: 2–5). Last, indigenous discourse is reduced into a narrow politico-military-administrative account, dominated by the themes of denial, disaffection and turmoil. Consequently, we lose sight of their pre-colonial legacies and peacetime past, when as historic agents they internalised critical historical influences to found and reinvent their self and existence. This narrow perspective fails to underline Adivasiness or ‘indigeneity’ as a robust ‘ubiquitous expression of the “cultural nature” of human beings, and their creative tendency to “produce culture”’ (Ricca 2018: 2).

Fortunately, against this linear grain, a section of ethnography extrudes an antithetical, inclusive and inward-looking vision of Adivasi rusticity. This narrates the organisation and flow of the daily life in Adivasi villages which Paul Thompson underlined (1978) and a recent study prepared the rough blueprint (Sen 2011: 44–5). Fortunately, some studies have initiated the process of reassembling Adivasi village life by pursuing diverse themes. The ‘counter-cultural narratives’ of the idea of state and culture in upland north-east India is one such approach (Guite 2018). Another is the study of the popular religion of the Sahariyas, a primitive tribal group of south-eastern Rajasthan, unfolding an evocative and alternate narrative of ‘life that pulsates and vibrates below the apparent carapace of backwardness and deprivation’ (Singh 2015: 1) and the very process of change through selective acculturation and syncretism (Schulte-Droesch 2014: 155–80; Carrin 2017: 1–3). Furthermore, this approach has proliferated into studies on the search for and consolidation of linguistic identity of the Santals (Choksi 2017: 1–24) and the Oraons (Singh 2017: 54–62; Singh 2018: 37–50); inspired philosophical enquiries focusing on the distinctive Adivasi worldview and religious identity (Munda and Manki 2009; P. Sen 2003a, 2003b, 2006: 310–20; 2007: 48–59) and has explored the ‘precision and craftsmanship in domestic architecture and mural art’ through a study of architecture of Santal dwellings (Bharat, 2019; see 3–4). Yet others have added a new dimension to indigenous identity discourse by concentrating on Adivasi appropriation and reinvention of their cultural forms and colonial-day heroes (Rycroft 2014: 51–71; Nath and Kumari 2019: 1–25).

While working closely with the above enumeration of Indian rural life, The Making of a Village: The Dynamics of Adivasi Rural Life in India seeks in many different ways to chart a new course. First, unlike the above dominant caste and cursorily tribe-centric approach of the sociological-anthropological village studies, Adivasi rural life, drawn in the context of the Ho (the reason for this choice is elaborated on below), forms the focal theme of the present work. This replicates the methodology of understanding a single ethnic community, which is the approach adopted by Bailey, Shah and Hebbar. But there is one major difference. Keeping the focus on the Ho, the other strategy has been to incorporate information about other different Adivasi groups in Jharkhand and India as well as beyond to produce a holistic view of the Adivasi/indigenous rural way of life. This turns this study into a much broader narrative than the above single-demographic rural accounts.

Second, the digression from empirical wor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Maps
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Telling the story: text and beyond text
• 3. The birth of a village
• 4. Weaving the demographic pattern
• 5. The story of in- and out-migration
• 6. Governance of a village
• 7. The changing rural landscape
• 8. Concluding remarks
• Bibliography
• Index