State, Law, and Adivasi:Shifting Terrains of Exclusion

Abstract

This volume presents an overview of the relationship between the state, law, and Adivasis that have experienced a profound political shift due to privatization of natural resources. It discusses the role of the corporates and its impact on livelihoods of the Adivasis in India. For the Indian state, a significant challenge is to establish a new normative framework for indigenous autonomy based on the values of equality and sustainability. This calls for recognition of the right to self-determination and exercise of collective rights of the Adivasis. The chapters in this volume examine: • ‘Exclusion’ as a useful framework for analyzing the various axes of inequality that affect the Adivasi communities • How state, development, and Adivasi politics play out in entangled ways in the social, political and legal domains The interplay of and the deep tension between the promise of legal protection and the realities of inadequate implementation.

What Can We Learn about Migration and Migrants from Southern Scholars? A Brief Discussion

“…The term “refugee” erases specific local histories of India (Shamshad 2018). Similarly, Tuhiwai Smith (2012) on indigenous groups in Australia, Simpson (2016) on Nishnaabeg First Nation in Canada, Linkernbach and Verma (2022) and Kannabiran (2022) on adivasis in India, all show how the temporalities, geographies, histories, and cultural memories of dispossession are hidden and minimized through the representation in English of their displacement. Simpson (2012) for instance, points out that displacement resulting from forced migration not only affects humans, but also destroys worlds and habitats through extermination of the plant and animal nations which the people of Nishnaabeg have shared.…”