Locating tribal identity and cultural existence in the light of industrialization in post-colonial India’s Jharkhand

Abstract

The tribal communities in India have developed their identity in close proximity to the natural resources around which they had developed their cultural traditions, economy, social control mechanisms, religious myths and techniques of production. They have developed a symbiotic relation with their local environment. For them land was not merely a source of livelihood rather a representation of their cultural identity and existence.

In the name of development, tribal communities in post-colonial India have been alienated not only from the development processes, but even from their own dwellings. As mainstream development processes tended to create social spaces of inequality, tribal communities face marginalisation virtually in every sphere of social life. More than half of them are malnourished, two thirds continue to be illiterate and live below the poverty line. With the introduction of globalisation more land is being acquired to encourage investment by the Indian and foreign private sector in the tribal region of Middle India. Due to this marginalization their long-standing social position, which is ‘self-representation’ has become question mark. The loss of land has brought a question on their indigenous identity.With the above back ground taking some secondary cases and also from personal experiences the present paper has tried to explore the impact of industrialization on tribal identity and cultural existence in India with reference to Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. As capitalist penetration deepened in natural resource rich areas of South Bihar, the voice for separate state came in demand to address the colonialism and local peoples’ autonomy. Since the late 1980s, Jharkhandi movement was increasingly coming into focus that demands swaraj for the local people. As a fact, local people especially adivasis, who are located in worlds that were transformed by modernity and colonialism and now by the Indian state, coping with the everyday is often a challenge. At times, they are vulnerable subjects of 'progress' and development whilst at other times they are able to exercise agency and negotiate the structures of dominance. This study reveals how bifurcation of Jharkhand from Bihar and Chhattisgarh from Madhya pradesh also failed to deliver its promises. Some of the questions that would be raised are as follows: How does resource rent state (Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh) as an actor bring about cultural transformations in Adivasi worlds? How the local adivasi positioned them within the paradigm of state development that facilitates capitalist project? Paper also deconstruct and de-codify the meaning of development when the cries of development echo all around in the forms of displacement, ethno genocide and dispossession in resource rich region of the India.