A Longue Duree Approach To People’s Politics

Bhangya Bhukya’s The Roots of the Periphery: A History of the Gonds of Deccan India is a comprehensive history of the Gonds of Deccan India, an adivasi community. The research is based upon a wide range of sources ranging from the manuscripts, census, gazetteers, published government reports, journals and newspapers, unpublished documents, interviews and secondary sources.

The author begins with three questions that he attempts to answer. First, why do certain social groups continue to lead a rugged and wild life? Second, why did civilization not reach the hills and forests? And third, why did the Adivasis evade the state and choose to live in the peripheries of empire, which are now referred to as Scheduled Areas? In an attempt to answer the questions the author takes a longue duree approach. He traces the making of the periphery in India from the advent of the Aryans through the Sultanate and the Mughal period to that of the British period, with the focus of this book being the latter.

The author argues that the adivasis were mostly self-governing communities and this was their major difference with the caste-Hindu society. The former were driven to the non-state spaces in the process of state making in India, beyond the colonial divide. Bhukya’s objective in this book is to study the effects of this process of state making, especially the colonial period, while constructing the Gond’s social history.