Adivasi children and the making of indigeneity in Jharkhand

Abstract

Marginalized in Indian society, tribal children and youth in Jharkhand reformulate various forms of local knowledge, which they diffuse from one network to another through the activities of peers and youth volunteers. The corpus of knowledge has changed through schooling, colonialism, post-colonialism and tribal assertion, and youth have found new niches to express their agency as a group. Another recent influence on indigenous knowledge is the religious movement of Sarna Dhorom, the ‘return to the sacred grove’, promoted by various gurus since the 1960s, linked to the promotion of an indigenous script and a new form of literacy. Drawing on observation, as well as interviews with children in class, I argue that they are able to sustain their own symbolic autonomy, while participating in cultural reproduction. Children find out very early that experiences in the classroom belong to a realm of action they relate to textbooks and to the state, as opposed to village knowledge, which they perceive as the knowledge of the ancestors. Comparing the situation of children and youth in two rural villages – one remote, the other closer to an urban centre – the article shows that those who live in a remote area want to develop local projects in solidarity with adults, while those who study closer to an urban centre develop new aspirations of taking part in a globalized world.