The Jharkhand Movement: Indigenous Peoples' Struggle for Autonomy in India

Jharkhand, the land of forest, named by the people of the neighboring plains, had been a safe haven of the indigenous peoples until the sixteenth century when the process of central state formation began to grow out of the nontribal matrix in the region. The states that emerged then fell under the direct influence and control of the great empires of successive periods that encroached upon the resources and lives of the indigenous peoples. They disrupted their egalitarian social system and their culture based upon a symbiotic relationship with their environment, forcing the indigenous people to retreat to even more inhospitable regions to rebuild their social structure. However, they were never able to fully escape the ever-increasing boundaries of the state, which eventually stripped the Jharkhand of its resources and left its people peasants. The modern Jharkhand movement, a continuation of the peoples' resistance to the encroaching state, has been widely covered in the media and academic circles. Various analytical reports, academic interpretations and political explanations, often holding contradictory views, have been published over a period exceeding the last five decades. The production of such a huge corpus of literature shows the strength of the movement, and the immense significance of the issues. Containing contributions by leading social scientists and activists, this volume furthers the discourse on the relationship between mainstream nationalism and the indigenous identity often termed ethnicity, as it relates to the nation state. In doing so, it helps civil society understand the relevance of autonomy and identity of the indigenous peoples of the country as a whole. Thebasic line of inquiry concerns the issues (dispossession from life supporting resources of land, forest, water and identity), the main cause (internal colonialism) and the remedy (provision of autonomy).