Blurring belongings: navigating Indian and Adivasi identities in an area of protracted violence in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper is based on empirical research on the discursive production and marginalisation of Adivasi identities in an area of protracted violence and civil unrest in India. We examine the historical naming of the Adivasis in national and local discourses and the ways it is circumscribed contemporarily by the regulative Indian state and its efforts to document all citizens. We highlight systematic exclusions related to the location, livelihood and cultural practices of the Adivasi Gond community and the associated difficulties this presents for them to identify and be identified with the dominant symbols of ‘Indianness’. We then attend to the framing of the civil unrest in India, as one between the state and Maoists, with the Adivasis as ‘victims’ of Maoist violence. We highlight the implications of such a polarised construction of conflict for the Gond community and for the navigation of their multiple belongings locally. We argue that in categorising the Maoists as anti-India/national and thereby deploying more force, surveillance and strong coercive language, the state is normalising violence and actually fighting the community it is purportedly trying to save and protect. We shift away from the macro accounts of conflict, which situate the Adivasis in deficit, by addressing the particularities of contemporary local social relations and the complexities this presents for the everyday lives of the Gond Adivasis. We illustrate how the discourse of polarised conflict does not respond to the Adivasi position and the daily struggles of the Gond community for the assertion of their Indian identities.