Includes References and Index.

Jharkhand (‘the land of forests’)—the only self-defined Indigenous state in India—was created in 2000 after a lengthy regional campaign known as the Jharkhand Movement. Over the 20 years since then, the state has been a volatile political environment in which competing political groups from the radical left (known as Maoists) and the Hindu right, as well as regional parties, have mobilized Indigenous subaltern communities for different ends. The book contributes to scholarship on critical social justice and indigeneity by highlighting ‘relations of justification’ as a central feature of group-based claims-making for social groups who identity with indigeneity in different ways. In an ethnic political environment like Jharkhand, whether or not social groups are recognized as ‘agents of justice’ rather than simply as ‘subjects’ to be allocated goods to ‘correct their backwardness’ depends on their relations with other communities, with political groups, and with different scales of governance. Today, because Adivasi identity in Jharkhand is perceived to provide political and social capital, we find more evidence of social groups from Indigenous backgrounds—as well as of those officially designated as ‘scheduled castes’ and ‘other backward classes’ under the Constitution of India—trying to build bridges with indigeneity while simultaneously critiquing the internal hierarchies and contestations within it. With insights drawn from ethnographic and archival research, this book explains that when ‘relations’—that is, how marginalized groups are treated by others—are at the epicentre of claims-making, expressive attachments determine political activism rather than the instrumental choices that groups are forced to make in contexts characterized by wide power differentials.

https://academic.oup.com/book/55711