From Peasants to Adivasis: The Making of an Indigenous Political Identity in Late Colonial Eastern India

“Peasants to Adibasis” offers a new account of the origins of Adibasi as a political category in South Asia. While it is known that the political usage of the term ‘Adibasi’ began with the 1938 founding of the Adibasi Sabha in Ranchi, how it was spread and took on specific political meanings has been little explored. This talk examines the adoption of the Adibasi identity by a mass agrarian no-rent movement in the Gangpur princely state, which bordered Ranchi, in the aftermath of a colonial massacre thus far ignored by historians. I argue the two mobilizations (Ranchi and Gangpur) transformed each other. In Gangpur, the urban Sabha was forced to engage with the concerns of agrarian and forest-dwelling Adibasis. And by taking on the Adibasi identity, the Gangpur resisters’ grievances both became more legible in a national frame and founded on a unique Adibasi relation to the land. Further, in both contexts, the concept of a common indigeneity was a way to show patterns of shared exploitation while also resisting the stigma of inherent backwardness.