Adivasi Consciousness and the Path of Development
The
consciousness of community, in the history of Indian life, is perhaps one of
the most astonishing gifts that the British bestowed — albeit unintentionally —
through their imperial intrusion. Empire thrives by enthroning one language,
one culture, as supreme; all other tongues, all other classes, are reduced to
servitude beneath the weight of that imposed order. Conversely, this process
estranges the common man from his own native speech, his ancestral memory,
until he becomes a stranger within his own soil. These thoughts kept recurring
as I sat for two consecutive days in the auditorium of the Bangla Academy,
attending a seminar organized by the Khatra Adivasi Unnayan O Kalyan Samajsebi
Sangha.
In that gathering, I observed three distinct yet converging streams of Adivasi awareness — young men and women from Adivasi communities who had found their way into education; activists and social workers engaged in Adivasi regions; and, lastly, urban scholars who studied the Adivasi condition from afar. As an attentive listener in the audience, I could discern the alignments and contradictions between these three groups, like three rivers meeting yet colliding at the confluence.
In contemporary India, power — so the participants claimed — lies firmly in the hands of an entrenched Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya elite. The language and culture of the majority is being imposed relentlessly upon the minority cultures of the Adivasis. One could almost say, with bitter irony, that the role once played by the English has now been assumed by our own rulers. The colonial method of cultural erasure has merely changed masters. Students and youth of the Adivasi communities spoke in searing tones, lashing out not only against the urban middle-class historians, social theorists, intellectuals, and state functionaries who patronize them, but also against the very machinery of governance itself. Of course, in West Bengal, “the state” means the Central Government — for none dare to criticize the failures of the State Government in such forums. Yet, even in their restraint, I sensed a simmering anger beneath their words. What surprised me most was that these young Adivasi intellectuals did not spare even their own privileged brethren — those who had abandoned their ancestral villages to live in cities, casting away their native tongue and culture, donning instead the borrowed mask of the ruler’s idiom. Against them too, sharp criticism rang out.
They also turned their arrows upon those who sit comfortably in cities, delivering lofty lectures on “Adivasi welfare” while siphoning off government grants meant for Adivasi uplift. From my own experience, I can attest: many so-called upper-caste scholars, with no organic link to Adivasi life, have claimed fellowships and grants from state and central institutions in the name of “research.” But of what use has this expenditure been to the Adivasis themselves? How can outsiders, with no lived experience of their pain, presume to write the destiny of Adivasi people? This fundamental contradiction was laid bare in the seminar. And whenever any speaker ventured into obfuscation or condescension, the young men and women in the audience rose in protest. Thus, the seminar, despite its flaws in speaker selection, became a genuine forum of dialogue. Yet some speakers, in the old habit inherited from the Leftist cultural era, digressed entirely from Adivasi questions. What was new, however, was that this time the large Adivasi presence in the hall rejected such diversions fiercely and vocally.
One profound realization struck me — and it is for this reason I sit to write these lines: in the words of the Adivasi speakers, it was not hunger or poverty that received the loudest emphasis, but the right to safeguard their own language and culture. What we would call a social identity crisis — it is this crisis that has wounded them most deeply, and it is against this erasure of identity that they roared in unison.
For indeed, hunger is not greater than human dignity. Existence is inseparable from identity, and this is the profoundest vulnerability of their condition. Consider this: even today in India there exist over 4.1 million manual scavenger latrines, where members of certain Adivasi sub-castes are condemned to carry human waste upon their heads. For them, the state provides no serious infrastructure of education or healthcare. Why? Because the state has branded them into a single occupation — as scavengers, as corpse-bearers. Why must the children of such communities not dream of being doctors or engineers? Why should their birth dictate their lifelong labor? Such merciless questions resounded in that seminar, overturning the comfort of middle-class narratives.
Our mainstream narrative equates “uplift” with doles, subsidies, reservations. But the Adivasis demand something far greater: not pity, not welfare, but the restoration of their cultural dignity — equal place at the table of the nation. They do not ask for perpetual “reserved” jobs; they ask for the chance to compete, to study medicine, to build bridges, to write literature in their own tongue. The colonial lens, inherited from the British, has made us view them only through sympathy, charity, and quotas. But they want equality, not patronage.
Recognition of Adivasi society, language, and culture — this is the axis on which their development rests. They have their own scripts, their own cosmologies, their own pedagogies. Yet the state, in West Bengal, forces Santals to adopt Bengali; in Bihar, Bhojpuri is imposed. Santali script is denied legitimacy, and they are told to write in Bengali letters. This is nothing but cultural annihilation disguised as “assimilation.” The state reserves jobs for them, yet forces them to take examinations in alien tongues. How is this not contradiction?
Culture, in our times, is controlled by television and newspapers — and these in turn are governed by globalization. Thus the middle-class culture, itself a borrowed fragment from the colonial past, is projected as the only culture. The Adivasi traditions are dismissed as “backward.” Do we ever see Santal festivals in our television serials? No. What we see is the middle-class culture — itself a hybrid creation of the British-era babu and his mimicry.
The British left us English, and with it, the burden of alien education. Unlike China, Spain, or Japan, we never prioritized our mother tongues in higher education. Even in the 21st century, every medical and engineering text in India is in English. If this is so, can one seriously imagine that Santali will receive its rightful recognition?
Take the case of handicrafts. We treat “tribal art” as synonymous with handicraft — never mechanized industry. After the European Industrial Revolution, machine-made goods became the mainstream, and handicraft was relegated as “marginal.” Santali art has thus never been accorded dignity. Instead, it is copied by urban traders, sold cheap in markets, while the original artisans languish in poverty. Thus, the commercialization of tribal art enriched the mainstream, leaving its true creators in deprivation.
Let us speak of politics and history. The uprisings of the Kols, Santals, and Hos are no less significant than the Non-Cooperation Movement or the Chittagong Uprising. Yet where are they in our history books? Thousands of pages on the freedom struggle, and they receive barely a page. Fifty-four years after independence, there was still no postage stamp for Birsa Munda, no statue in major cities — while Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi filled every square. Even foreign icons — Marx, Lenin — had statues erected across India, but not our own tribal heroes. Only now, under the compulsions of vote-bank politics, have token gestures been made. Yet it is far too little. The neglect is nothing less than stepmotherly.
The reason is plain: our nationalist historiography was written by Nehruvian loyalists, schooled in Britain, blind to any story outside the Gandhi-Nehru pantheon. This colonialism of history persists. The “great” leaders are those who studied in Britain: Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Savarkar, even Subhas Bose. But what of those who never left India, who resisted in forests and villages? Their stories are erased. Recognition still requires validation from abroad — a colonial disease of the mind.
And yet, we urban dwellers never tire of shedding crocodile tears for the marginalized. Seven percent of India’s population are Adivasis; nearly half of India consists of marginalized communities of some kind. Yet our intellectuals treat them with indifference, even disdain. Consider S.C. Dube, the eminent sociologist, who in his Indian Society dismissed the totemic traditions of Adivasis as “fabrications.” He called their ancestral epics “imaginary.” But are not the lives of Rama, Jesus, or Muhammad equally shrouded in myth and legend? Why do our scholars never question these? Because they belong to the “central” faiths, not the margins. Thus, the bowman in our epics, the tribal hero in our folklore, is denied historical legitimacy. This, in truth, reveals the disgraceful conspiracy of Indian historiography.
What, then, is most urgent? Beyond subsidies, beyond anti-poverty schemes, the foremost demand of the Adivasis is an end to this historical neglect, and the recognition of their human worth. Their hunger for education, their restless desire to speak in their own voice, is the seed of their emancipation. The true economic progress of the Adivasis lies not in quotas, but in education — for only education can arm them with the tools of resistance.
Let them speak for themselves. Let them have their own newspapers in their own tongues. Let them narrate their history of deprivation in their own words, and assert their rightful claim upon society. They will build their own future — all they require is the light of education and awareness, which it is the sacred duty of the state to provide.
In that gathering, I observed three distinct yet converging streams of Adivasi awareness — young men and women from Adivasi communities who had found their way into education; activists and social workers engaged in Adivasi regions; and, lastly, urban scholars who studied the Adivasi condition from afar. As an attentive listener in the audience, I could discern the alignments and contradictions between these three groups, like three rivers meeting yet colliding at the confluence.
In contemporary India, power — so the participants claimed — lies firmly in the hands of an entrenched Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya elite. The language and culture of the majority is being imposed relentlessly upon the minority cultures of the Adivasis. One could almost say, with bitter irony, that the role once played by the English has now been assumed by our own rulers. The colonial method of cultural erasure has merely changed masters. Students and youth of the Adivasi communities spoke in searing tones, lashing out not only against the urban middle-class historians, social theorists, intellectuals, and state functionaries who patronize them, but also against the very machinery of governance itself. Of course, in West Bengal, “the state” means the Central Government — for none dare to criticize the failures of the State Government in such forums. Yet, even in their restraint, I sensed a simmering anger beneath their words. What surprised me most was that these young Adivasi intellectuals did not spare even their own privileged brethren — those who had abandoned their ancestral villages to live in cities, casting away their native tongue and culture, donning instead the borrowed mask of the ruler’s idiom. Against them too, sharp criticism rang out.
They also turned their arrows upon those who sit comfortably in cities, delivering lofty lectures on “Adivasi welfare” while siphoning off government grants meant for Adivasi uplift. From my own experience, I can attest: many so-called upper-caste scholars, with no organic link to Adivasi life, have claimed fellowships and grants from state and central institutions in the name of “research.” But of what use has this expenditure been to the Adivasis themselves? How can outsiders, with no lived experience of their pain, presume to write the destiny of Adivasi people? This fundamental contradiction was laid bare in the seminar. And whenever any speaker ventured into obfuscation or condescension, the young men and women in the audience rose in protest. Thus, the seminar, despite its flaws in speaker selection, became a genuine forum of dialogue. Yet some speakers, in the old habit inherited from the Leftist cultural era, digressed entirely from Adivasi questions. What was new, however, was that this time the large Adivasi presence in the hall rejected such diversions fiercely and vocally.
One profound realization struck me — and it is for this reason I sit to write these lines: in the words of the Adivasi speakers, it was not hunger or poverty that received the loudest emphasis, but the right to safeguard their own language and culture. What we would call a social identity crisis — it is this crisis that has wounded them most deeply, and it is against this erasure of identity that they roared in unison.
For indeed, hunger is not greater than human dignity. Existence is inseparable from identity, and this is the profoundest vulnerability of their condition. Consider this: even today in India there exist over 4.1 million manual scavenger latrines, where members of certain Adivasi sub-castes are condemned to carry human waste upon their heads. For them, the state provides no serious infrastructure of education or healthcare. Why? Because the state has branded them into a single occupation — as scavengers, as corpse-bearers. Why must the children of such communities not dream of being doctors or engineers? Why should their birth dictate their lifelong labor? Such merciless questions resounded in that seminar, overturning the comfort of middle-class narratives.
Our mainstream narrative equates “uplift” with doles, subsidies, reservations. But the Adivasis demand something far greater: not pity, not welfare, but the restoration of their cultural dignity — equal place at the table of the nation. They do not ask for perpetual “reserved” jobs; they ask for the chance to compete, to study medicine, to build bridges, to write literature in their own tongue. The colonial lens, inherited from the British, has made us view them only through sympathy, charity, and quotas. But they want equality, not patronage.
Recognition of Adivasi society, language, and culture — this is the axis on which their development rests. They have their own scripts, their own cosmologies, their own pedagogies. Yet the state, in West Bengal, forces Santals to adopt Bengali; in Bihar, Bhojpuri is imposed. Santali script is denied legitimacy, and they are told to write in Bengali letters. This is nothing but cultural annihilation disguised as “assimilation.” The state reserves jobs for them, yet forces them to take examinations in alien tongues. How is this not contradiction?
Culture, in our times, is controlled by television and newspapers — and these in turn are governed by globalization. Thus the middle-class culture, itself a borrowed fragment from the colonial past, is projected as the only culture. The Adivasi traditions are dismissed as “backward.” Do we ever see Santal festivals in our television serials? No. What we see is the middle-class culture — itself a hybrid creation of the British-era babu and his mimicry.
The British left us English, and with it, the burden of alien education. Unlike China, Spain, or Japan, we never prioritized our mother tongues in higher education. Even in the 21st century, every medical and engineering text in India is in English. If this is so, can one seriously imagine that Santali will receive its rightful recognition?
Take the case of handicrafts. We treat “tribal art” as synonymous with handicraft — never mechanized industry. After the European Industrial Revolution, machine-made goods became the mainstream, and handicraft was relegated as “marginal.” Santali art has thus never been accorded dignity. Instead, it is copied by urban traders, sold cheap in markets, while the original artisans languish in poverty. Thus, the commercialization of tribal art enriched the mainstream, leaving its true creators in deprivation.
Let us speak of politics and history. The uprisings of the Kols, Santals, and Hos are no less significant than the Non-Cooperation Movement or the Chittagong Uprising. Yet where are they in our history books? Thousands of pages on the freedom struggle, and they receive barely a page. Fifty-four years after independence, there was still no postage stamp for Birsa Munda, no statue in major cities — while Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi filled every square. Even foreign icons — Marx, Lenin — had statues erected across India, but not our own tribal heroes. Only now, under the compulsions of vote-bank politics, have token gestures been made. Yet it is far too little. The neglect is nothing less than stepmotherly.
The reason is plain: our nationalist historiography was written by Nehruvian loyalists, schooled in Britain, blind to any story outside the Gandhi-Nehru pantheon. This colonialism of history persists. The “great” leaders are those who studied in Britain: Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Savarkar, even Subhas Bose. But what of those who never left India, who resisted in forests and villages? Their stories are erased. Recognition still requires validation from abroad — a colonial disease of the mind.
And yet, we urban dwellers never tire of shedding crocodile tears for the marginalized. Seven percent of India’s population are Adivasis; nearly half of India consists of marginalized communities of some kind. Yet our intellectuals treat them with indifference, even disdain. Consider S.C. Dube, the eminent sociologist, who in his Indian Society dismissed the totemic traditions of Adivasis as “fabrications.” He called their ancestral epics “imaginary.” But are not the lives of Rama, Jesus, or Muhammad equally shrouded in myth and legend? Why do our scholars never question these? Because they belong to the “central” faiths, not the margins. Thus, the bowman in our epics, the tribal hero in our folklore, is denied historical legitimacy. This, in truth, reveals the disgraceful conspiracy of Indian historiography.
What, then, is most urgent? Beyond subsidies, beyond anti-poverty schemes, the foremost demand of the Adivasis is an end to this historical neglect, and the recognition of their human worth. Their hunger for education, their restless desire to speak in their own voice, is the seed of their emancipation. The true economic progress of the Adivasis lies not in quotas, but in education — for only education can arm them with the tools of resistance.
Let them speak for themselves. Let them have their own newspapers in their own tongues. Let them narrate their history of deprivation in their own words, and assert their rightful claim upon society. They will build their own future — all they require is the light of education and awareness, which it is the sacred duty of the state to provide.
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