Babu Farari

Abstract

This article, drawing on research carried out in the village of Jamgod (India, Madhya Pradesh), present the story of Babu Farari, an outlaw living and operating in this area in the 50s. First met during fieldwork as a legend about a local social bandit, the figure of Babu grew to acquire a deeper, three-dimensional complexity. His story has been reconstructed here from fragments of ethnography, interviews and conversations, and from information contained in the fieldnotes of Mayer, an anthropologist who did research in the same village when Babu Farari was active. This polyvocal narrative shows a “legend in the making” and provides insight into the way in which stories are embedded within wider social and political frameworks and how local history acquires meaning only in relation to contemporary social and political events. Indeed, details in the various narratives about Babu Farari’s life give rise to features of present-day local moral economies and folk ethics about State, power and the Self.