Going Primitive: The Ethics of Indigenous Rights Activism in Contemporary Jharkhand

Abstract

How and why did a labor union organizer from Goa, a former Naxalite student cadre from West Bengal and a Jesuit priest from Tamil Nadu end up as spokespersons for adivasi rights in contemporary Jharkhand? What caused their discourse to shift from tribal/adivasi to indigeneity? Might indigeneity be an ideology for them? To answer these questions, this paper analyzes the oral histories of three leading indigenous rights activists in Jharkhand. In these self-narratives, I focus on how these middle-class activists have crafted their political ethics with reference to ‘indigenous peoples’ in India and beyond. I argue that ‘indigeneity’ functions in Jharkhandi activist discourses as a marker of a distinctive post-materialist turn in bourgeois politics. The defense of the indigenous speaks to deep-seated existential crises for these activists, who seek to transcend the modern domains of state and capital and to locate an authentic space of critique in imagined adivasi collectivities.