Dialectics Of Power And Resistance
Kamal Nayan Choubey
ADIVASIs AND THE STATE: SUBALTERNITY AND CITIZENSHIP IN INDIA’S BHIL HEARTLAND by Alf Gunvald Nilsen Cambridge University Press, 2018, 328 pp., $105.00
August 2019, volume 43, No 8

In the post-liberalization era the tribal communities are facing two contradictory situations. On the one hand, neo-liberalization has enhanced the processes of dispossession and marginalization and on the other hand, tribal organizations have compelled the Indian state in recent years to introduce various national laws like the FRA and MNREGA, which give tribal and other marginalized communities ownership and livelihood rights. Indeed, Indian tribal communities have been facing an immense crisis due to pressures from different quarters on their natural habitat and livelihood resources. This crisis has not only emerged due to the ‘development’ agenda of the Indian state, but has its roots in the monopolistic nature of the representative organ of the Indian state i.e., the Forest Department (FD) in forest areas, which in most of the areas undermined the proper implementation of the FRA. The book under review examines the changing contours of tribal struggle in western India and in this context it presents a critical and extensive study of the Bhil community and its complex relationship with ‘local state’ (i.e., FD and other state institutions).

This is a book about the subaltern politics in India—and especially about mobilization for their democratic claims to state. The book critically evaluates the context  which led to the emergence of political mobilization in tribal areas of western India. It probes the nature of their demands, their engagement with the state, its representatives and its institutions and the changes that occurred due to their collective action. This book is primarily centered on the political activities and challenges of the two grassroots organizations i.e., the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangathan (KMCS) and the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan (AMS). Methodologically, the author has primarily used the oral narratives of the several (more than 60) activists of both these organizations and other Bhil tribals. Through these narratives the author has tried to bring together the experiences of the local communities with the ‘local state’ in their daily life and the working of democracy and state power at the grassroots level.

The author evaluates the theoretical construction of ‘civil society’ and ‘political society’ presented by Partha Chatterjee. He, however, underlines that it seems that Chatterjee has not been able to capture the status of political consciousness and mobilization of tribal communities, because for him they are not either able to use constitutional provisions or political mobilization to demand certain basic rights for the state. On the basis of his study the author has shown that in recent decades the tribal organizations and activists have developed an understanding of legal provisions and they are using this knowledge to assert their rights through laws like PESA, FRA and MNREGA. He shows that unlike Chatterjee’s conception of subaltern politics of contemporary India, the KMCS and AMS are using legal norms and they are working as the common organizations of both middle class activists and tribal youths.

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