Savage Attack: Tribal Insurgency in India

Edited by Crispin Bates and Alpa Shah

ISBN 978-81-87358-69-5

Hardback 306pp

Pub date: March 2014

Pub Price: Rs 725

"This important book explores the ways that Indian adivasis or ‘tribal’ people have been understood over the past two centuries. There are a series of thoughtful and challenging chapters that examine the way in which these definitions have to be situated within a changing politics of, on the one hand, state control, and on the other, an internal politics of rebellion as against integration. The supposed homogeneity of adivasi communities is scrutinized and questioned, leading into discussions of the internal politics of these groups. In all, an excellent collection that challenges many firmly-held notions about Indian adivasis."

David Hardiman, Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick, Uk    

Savage Attack: Tribal Insurgency in India, edited by Crispin Bates and Alpa Shah

In Savage Attack: Tribal Insurgency in India the authors ask whether there is anything particularly adivasi about the forms of resistance that have been labelled as adivasi movements. What does it mean to speak about adivasi as opposed to peasant resistance? Can one differentiate adivasi resistance from that of other lower castes such as the dalits? In this volume the authors move beyond stereotypes of tribal rebellion to argue that it is important to explore how and why particular forms of resistance are depicted as adivasi issues at particular points in time. Interpretations that have depicted adivasis as a united and highly politicised group of people have romanticised and demonized tribal society and history, thus denying the individuals and communities involved any real agency. Both the interpretations of the state and of left-wing supporters of tribal insurgencies have continued to ignore the complex realities of tribal life and the variety in the expressions of political activism that have resulted across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent.

Contents:

Preface

List of Contributors

Introduction

Savage Attack: Adivasis and Insurgency in India. Crispin Bates and Alpa Shah

1. We Shall Fight Them on the Beach: Counterinsurgency, Colonisation and the Andaman Islanders, 1771–1863

Satadru Sen

2. ‘Natural Boundaries’: Negotiating Land Rights and  Establishing Rule on the East India Company’s North-Eastern Frontier 1790s–1820s . Gunnel Cederlöf

3. From ‘Natural Philosophy’ to ‘Political Ritual’: An Ethno-Historical Reading of the Colonial Sources on the Konds’ Religion (Orissa) .Raphaël Rousseleau

4. Locating Adivasi Identity in Colonial India: The Oraons and the Tana Bhagats in Chhotanagpur, 1914–1919

Sangeeta Dasgupta

5. Tribal Armed Rebellion of 1922–1924 in the Madras Presidency: a Study of Causation as Colonial Legitimation

Atlury Murali

6. Events, Incidents and Accidents: Re-Thinking Indigenous Resistance in the Andaman Islands. Vishvajit Pandya

7. The Making and Unmaking of an Adivasi Working Class in Western Orissa. Christian Strümpell

8. Adivasis and Communists in Post-Reform Kerala:  Neoliberalism, Political Disillusionment, and the Indigenist Challenge .Luisa Steur

9. Thoughts on Religious Experience and ‘Politics’ in Adivasi India: an Anthropologist Attempts a Rereading of History . Amit Desai

10. Alcoholics Anonymous: The Maoist Movement in  Jharkhand, India .Alpa Shah

About the Authors:

Crispin Bates is Professor of Modern and South Asian History in the

School of History, Classics and Archaeology and Director of the

Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His

research interests focus on labour migration and peasant and tribal

history in central India, on which he has published numerous articles.

His publications include Subalterns and Raj: South Asia since 1600

(London: Routledge, 2007); Beyond Representation: constructions of

identity in colonial and postcolonial India (Oxford, New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2005), and (with Subho Basu) Rethinking Indian

Political Institutions (London: Anthem Press, 2005). Between 2006-

2008 he was Principal Investigator in an AHRC-funded research

project concerning the Great Indian Uprising and is the editor

and key contributor to Mutiny at the Margins (New Delhi: Sage,

2013-2014), a seven volume series exploring new perspectives

on the 1857 rebellion

Alpa Shah is Reader in the Department of Anthropology at the

London School of Economics and Political Science. This book

was prepared while she was Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at

Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of In the

Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and

Insurgency in Jharkhand, India (Duke University Press and Oxford

University Press, India: 2010). She has co-edited several volumes including

(with Judith Pettigrew) Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies

of Maoism in India and Nepal (Social Science Press, Delhi: 2012),

(with Sara Schneiderman)  An Anthropology of Affirmative Action

:The Practices, Politics and Policies of Transforming Inequality

in South Asia (Focaal, 2013), and  (with Tobias Kelly)

A Double Edged Sword: Protection and State

Violence (Critique of Anthropology, 2013).