The Scheduled Tribes and Their India

The Scheduled Tribes and Their India
Author: Nandini Sundar
Publisher: Oxford in India Readings in So
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780199459711

A people in need of quick modernization and mainstreaming, or a powerful defense against the advancing march of capitalist growth---these are the two most prominent and stereotypical images of Adivasis in contemporary India, and both do grave injustice to the ground realities. The category Scheduled Tribes, which is purely an administrative category, and does not reflect the immense diversity among the 500 different communities of tribals in India, comprising 8.6 per cent of Indias population, has acquired over a period of time, a distinct political and discursive salience. This collection of essays, divided in three parts, brings together a range of predominantly sociological and anthropological but broadly social science writing that reflects on and illuminates the jungle of dilemmas and conflicts that the scheduled tribes face as they navigate their way through everyday life. It highlights the enormity of social, cultural, linguistic, and politico-economic diversity among the so-called Scheduled Tribes in India, and aims to provide an intellectual platform for an engagement between the scheduled tribes and their India, as also to map the state of current sociological/anthropological writing and debate on the scheduled tribes.

We Were Adivasis

We Were Adivasis
Author: Megan Moodie
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2015-08-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022625318X

In We Were Adivasis, anthropologist Megan Moodie examines the Indian state’s relationship to “Scheduled Tribes,” or adivasis—historically oppressed groups that are now entitled to affirmative action quotas in educational and political institutions. Through a deep ethnography of the Dhanka in Jaipur, Moodie brings readers inside the creative imaginative work of these long-marginalized tribal communities. She shows how they must simultaneously affirm and refute their tribal status on a range of levels, from domestic interactions to historical representation, by relegating their status to the past: we were adivasis. Moodie takes readers to a diversity of settings, including households, tribal council meetings, and wedding festivals, to reveal the aspirations that are expressed in each. Crucially, she demonstrates how such aspiration and identity-building are strongly gendered, requiring different dispositions required of men and women in the pursuit of collective social uplift. The Dhanka strategy for occupying the role of adivasi in urban India comes at a cost: young women must relinquish dreams of education and employment in favor of community-sanctioned marriage and domestic life. Ultimately, We Were Adivasis explores how such groups negotiate their pasts to articulate different visions of a yet uncertain future in the increasingly liberalized world.

Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes in Indian Politics

Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes in Indian Politics
Author: Annapurna Sanyal
Publisher:
Total Pages: 128
Release: 1991
Genre: Caste
ISBN:

This Book Studies The Behaviour Pattern Of The Scheduled Caste And Scheduled Tribe Mlas In The Legislative Assembly Of West Bengal. The Purpose Of The Study Is To Investigate How Far They Reveal An Interest In, And Take An Initiative In The Matters Relating Directly To The Schedules Castes And Scheduled Tribes.

Democratic Dynasties

Democratic Dynasties
Author: Kanchan Chandra
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2016-04-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131659212X

Dynastic politics, usually presumed to be the antithesis of democracy, is a routine aspect of politics in many modern democracies. This book introduces a new theoretical perspective on dynasticism in democracies, using original data on twenty-first-century Indian parliaments. It argues that the roots of dynastic politics lie at least in part in modern democratic institutions - states and parties - which give political families a leg-up in the electoral process. It also proposes a rethinking of the view that dynastic politics is a violation of democracy, showing that it can also reinforce some aspects of democracy while violating others. Finally, this book suggests that both reinforcement and violation are the products, not of some property intrinsic to political dynasties, but of the institutional environment from which those dynasties emerge.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture
Author: Vasudha Dalmia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2012-04-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521516250

A wide-ranging and truly interdisciplinary guide to understanding the relationship between India's colonial past and globalized present.

Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age

Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age
Author: Susan Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2001-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521798426

The phenomenon of caste has probably aroused more controversy than any other aspect of Indian life and thought. Susan Bayly's cogent and sophisticated analysis explores the emergence of the ideas, experiences and practices which gave rise to the so-called 'caste society' from the pre-colonial period to the end of the twentieth century. Using an historical and anthropological approach, she frames her analysis within the context of India's dynamic economic and social order, interpreting caste not as an essence of Indian culture and civilization, but rather as a contingent and variable response to the changes that occurred in the subcontinent's political landscape through the colonial conquest. The idea of caste in relation to Western and Indian 'orientalist' thought is also explored.

Land Alienation and Politics of Tribal Exploitation in India

Land Alienation and Politics of Tribal Exploitation in India
Author: Suratha Kumar Malik
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2020-06-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9811553823

This book explores tribal land alienation problems in India and tribal agitation against land encroachment and alienation. It discusses India’s tribal land problem and explains how despite legislation to protect tribal lands, the problem has not been resolved since neither the letter nor the spirit of the law has been implemented. Due to continuous land encroachment and alienation by outsiders, the negligence of the revenue administration and the apathy of the central and state government, the situation concerning tribal land in the country have became precarious. In this context, the book highlights the process of land estrangement among the tribes and the related movements, focusing on the Narayanpatna land movement in the Koraput district of Odisha. It argues that land remains a central issue that is extremely important for tribes as it directly affects their life, livelihood, freedom and development, and that the cultural attachment of tribes and their views regarding the idea of ‘place’ (land) furnishes crucial perspectives in understanding the politics of collective resistance. It also discusses the politicization of group identity and material interest against the outside authority as the basis of the unrest among the tribes, and when the grudges of the people are hardened due to insensitivity and tyranny, the extent of tribal resistance escalates, leading to conflict between the state and its own people. Given its scope, this book is a valuable resource for students and research scholars, as well as for policymakers and anyone interested in Indian democracy and development in general, and tribal problems, issues and politics in particular.

Why Ethnic Parties Succeed

Why Ethnic Parties Succeed
Author: Kanchan Chandra
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2007-02-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521891417

Why do some ethnic parties succeed in attracting the support of their target ethnic group while others fail? In a world in which ethnic parties flourish in both established and emerging democracies alike, understanding the conditions under which such parties rise and fall is of critical importance to both political scientists and policy makers. Drawing on a study of variation in the performance of ethnic parties in India, this book builds a theory of ethnic party performance in 'patronage democracies'. Chandra shows why individual voters and political entrepreneurs in such democracies condition their strategies not on party ideologies or policy platforms, but on a headcount of co-ethnics and others across party personnel and among the electorate.

Annihilation of Caste

Annihilation of Caste
Author: B.R. Ambedkar
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 178168832X

“What the Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world, Annihilation of Caste is to India.” —Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste The classic work of Indian Dalit politics, reframed with an extensive introduction by Arundathi Roy B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar – a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois – offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to the provocation. The hatchet was never buried. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste in “The Doctor and the Saint,” examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy takes us to the beginning of Gandhi’s political career in South Africa, where his views on race, caste and imperialism were shaped. She tracks Ambedkar’s emergence as a major political figure in the national movement, and shows how his scholarship and intelligence illuminated a political struggle beset by sectarianism and obscurantism. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar’s anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality.