Indigenous Experience Today

Type Conference Paper - Indigenous Experience Today
Title Indigenous Experience Today
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2007
URL http://www.cc.utexas.edu/law/centers/humanrights/events/adjudicating/papers/BaviskarIndianIndigeneit​ies.doc
Abstract
In the late 1990s, sections among Bhilala adivasis, members of a “Scheduled Tribe” in western India, joined the battle for Hindu supremacy, attacking Christian adivasis and, later, Muslims. At issue was indigeneity, the politics of place and belonging in the Indian nation. How did the globally circulating discourses of indigeneity that helped empower adivasis in their fight against dam-induced displacement, come to be superseded? Instead of signifying a subaltern experience of adivasi dispossession and resistance, how are discourses of indigeneity deployed to support the claims of the politically dominant Hindu Right, disenfranchizing religious minorities and legitimizing a politics of hate? How do Bhilala adivasis participate in this transformation in the valences of indigeneity? In this paper, I trace adivasi mobilization across three sites: rights to place and natural resources, religious reform, and electoral representation, to examine how discourses of indigeneity are differently constructed and contested across the terrain of class, caste and citizenship. I argue that there are significant continuities in the articulation of adivasi cultural rights with respect to land and Hindu supremacy. These shared premises alert us to the need to rethink notions of justice in the context of indigeneity.

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