Adivasis, Integration and the State in India: Experiences of Incompatibilities

Abstract

Anthropologists, administrators and policy makers debated the adivasis question in the post-independent India from the perspectives of isolation, assimilation and integration. Amidst discourses, integration approach was followed to address the adivasi issues in the post-colonial period. Following the integration approach, the Indian state made series of promises to the adivasis in terms of granting equal citizenship rights in social, economic, political and cultural spheres; providing equal opportunities and committed to preserve and protect adivasi culture and identity. Despite such promises, adivasis continue to live at the margin of the post-colonial state, and thereby experiencing different forms of marginalization, dispossession and deprivation. They have developed cynicism towards the integration policy and experiencing declining sense of involvement in the (mainstream) society. The integration approach of the Indian state has become a means of exclusion for the adivasis in India. Within this backdrop, the paper critically examines the contemporary dynamics of integration of adivasis in the Indian state.