Confused and Contradictory Worlds

At a time when adivasis are both central to the national political discourse on conversion, migration, the environ-ment, and insurgency, and yet strangely silenced, Alpa Shah’s straight up ethnography of a Munda village in Jharkhand is very welcome. It grounds her critical discussion of these larger issues in much needed empirical detail. But if Alpa’s adivasis live in the shadow of the state, Alpa writes in the shadow of unnamed activists, and both are much the worse for their shadow boxing. Writing about the life worlds of adivasis and rural elites in Ranchi district of Jharkhand, the book aims to provide an alternative to the received wisdom in many cases. For instance, as against activists who claim that traditional institutions of governance are secular alternatives to the state run panchayat system, Alpa Shah argues that what is important to the Mundas about this traditional system is its sacral rather than its secular character.

As for the exploitative state, she shows how this is a bogey fetishized by rural elites who have an interest in becoming mediators between the poor and the state. As against the activist idea of adivasis in harmony with nature, she argues that adivasis have an interest in cutting down forests to keep rampaging elephants away and it is the rural elite who want to promote afforestation. As against the depiction of migration as a blight on rural lives, she emphasizes the freedom and romance associated with it; and as against the notion of Maoists as representatives of the very poorest, she shows their connections with the rural elite. The book is often interesting and insightful, but occasionally falter on counts of theoretical and empirical coherence.