Understanding adivasiness as caste expression and land rights claim in central-eastern India
Patrik Oskarsson et all
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences,
The adivasi population represents a special case in India’s new land wars. Strong
individual and community rights to agricultural and forest lands, while existent, have been enacted based on notions of adivasi identities as primeval, without linking these to
economic and political influence. This article interrogates the adivasi land question seen
through a caste lens. It does so via case studies in two states to understand the ways in
which adivasi identity is mobilised for its instrumental value and used to demand land
rights. In Andhra Pradesh, the Supreme Court’s Samatha Judgement has prevented
virtually all private mining activities. In Jharkhand, however, a similar Act is seen to be
trumped by the national Coal Bearing Areas Act, as well as by former and current land
acquisition acts that allow industrial land claims to take precedence over identity-based
ones. Available evidence indicates the challenges involved in bringing support for land
rights that are premised on the supposedly unchanging identity of adivasis when these
go against dominant interests. This circumstance serves to highlight how equable the
plight of adivasis is in some regards to that of caste groups, despite their usually distinct
treatment in scholarly analyses.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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