Politicising Development: Re‐imagining Land Rights and Identities in Highland Kerala, India

Abstract

This article discusses the initial articulation and the later re‐articulation of adivasi identities in their struggles for re‐claiming land rights. Adivasis – meaning original inhabitants – are the indigenous communities that have been living in the forested highlands of Kerala since time immemorial. Colonial anthropologists and administrators chose to describe these communities as tribes in the process of ‘othering’ them, and the post‐colonial state created a ‘scheduled tribe’ slot to include them in the constitution for affirmative action purpose. Their collective subjectivity as indigenous peoples is, however, articulated in terms of adivasi. Their identity as adivasi, and hence their attachment to place, has been projected in their struggles for reclaiming rights in land and forests. The adivasis are a highly heterogeneous group with differential relation to land and forests. The law passed by the government of Kerala to restitute the land claims of adivasis treated the indigenous peoples as a monolith, which had grave consequences for the land claims of the majority of the adivasi population. The subsequent struggles were marked by a re‐articulation of the sub‐identities, that is, specific identities of each adivasi group linked to specific historicities connecting them to particular places within the landscape. Using Stuart Hall’s conception of identity as an articulated positioning, the article attempts to analyse the dynamic articulation of indigenous people’s identities in the process of their protracted struggle for land. The article raises the imperative for a new class politics sensitive to difference and place which is vital for the sustained liberation struggles of subjugated and exploited social groups such as the adivasis. The challenge for Kerala’s left movement is to articulate such a class politics.