Adivasis and the State

Adivasis and the State presents a major study of how subalternity is both constituted
and contested through state–society relations in the Bhil heartland of western India.
Deciphering the complex transformations wrought by colonial and postcolonial state
formation, the book develops a fine-grained analysis of the historical processes that
ultimately resulted in the subordination of Bhil Adivasi communities to an everyday
tyranny of predatory and coercive interactions with the local state.
Adivasi engagements with postcolonial democracy are analysed through an in-depth
ethnography of how local sangathans in rural districts of western Madhya Pradesh
have organised and mobilised to democratise local state–society relations. Focusing
on citizenship as a pivot of struggle, this book interrogates the oppositional local
rationalities that make collective action possible and the ways in which rights-based
claims and demands from below transform the meanings of governmental categories,
legal frameworks, and universalising vocabularies of democracy.
The book also reveals how dominant groups mobilise coercion through both the
state and civil society in order to halt the political advances of subaltern Adivasis. At the
core of the book lies a concern with understanding the dialectics of power and resistance
that give form and direction to the political economy of democracy and development
in contemporary India. Towards this end, Adivasis and the State contributes a sustained
and nuanced Gramscian analysis of hegemony in order to interrogate the possibilities
and limits of subaltern political engagement with state structures.
Alf Gunvald Nilsen teaches in the Department of Global Development and Planning
at the University of Agder, Norway. He has authored Dispossession and Resistance in
India: The River and the Rage (2010) and co-authored (with Laurence Cox) We Make
Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism
(2014). He has also co-edited New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and
Resistance in Contemporary India (2015) and Social Movements and the State in India:
Deepening Democracy? (2016).
South Asia in the Social Sciences
South Asia has become a laboratory for devising new institutions and practices of
modern social life. Forms of capitalist enterprise, providing welfare and social services,
the public role of religion, the management of ethnic conflict, popular culture and
mass democracy in the countries of the region have shown a marked divergence from
known patterns in other parts of the world. South Asia is now being studied for its
relevance to the general theoretical understanding of modernity itself.
South Asia in the Social Sciences will feature books that offer innovative research on
contemporary South Asia. It will focus on the place of the region in the various global
disciplines of the social sciences and highlight research that uses unconventional
sources of information and novel research methods. While recognising that most
current research is focused on the larger countries, the series will attempt to showcase
research on the smaller countries of the region.
General Editor
Partha Chatterjee
Columbia University
Editorial Board
Pranab Bardhan
University of California at Berkeley
Stuart Corbridge
Durham University
Satish Deshpande
University of Delhi
Christophe Jaffrelot
Centre d’etudes et de recherches internationales, Paris
Nivedita Menon
Jawaharlal Nehru University

Other books in the series:

Government as Practice: Democratic Left in a Transforming India
Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya
Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India
Anuj Bhuwania
Development after Statism: Industrial Firms and the Political Economy of South Asia
Adnan Naseemullah
Politics of the Poor: Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India
Indrajit Roy
South Asian Governmentalities: Michel Foucault and the Question of Postcolonial Orderings
Stephen Legg and Deana Heath (eds.)
Nationalism Development and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka
Rajesh Venugopal
 Adivasis and the State
Subalternity and Citizenship in
India’s Bhil Heartland

Alf Gunvald Nilsen

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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© Alf Gunvald Nilsen 2018
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no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2018
Printed in India
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ISBN 978-1-108-49653-7 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
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and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
For Srila
 Contents

List of Maps, Figures, and Tables ix

Glossary of Hindi Terms xi
Preface xv
1. Introduction 1
Part I: Subalternity
2. ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’: Everyday Tyranny in the Bhil
Heartland 29
3. ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’: Colonial State Space and the
Origins of Everyday Tyranny 59
4. ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’: Negotiations and
Consolidations 91
Part II: Citizenship
5. ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’: Making Oppositional Local
Rationalities 133
6. ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’: Law, Civil Society
and Citizenship in Subaltern Politics 170
7. ‘They Have Weakened Us’: Deciphering the Politics of Coercion 208
8. Conclusion 247
Bibliography 265
Index 295
 List of Maps, Figures, and Tables

Maps
1 Western India xxiii
2 The Bhil Heartland of Western India xxiv
Figures
3.1 Revenue Flows, Alirajpur State: 1908–1940 84
3.2 State Revenue, Alirajpur, 1909–1940 84
Tables
2.1 Incidence of Poverty in India by Social Groups—1993–1994
and 2004–2005 30
2.2 Incidence of Poverty in Madhya Pradesh (MP) and India,
2004–2005 30
4.1 Madhya Bharat Vidhan Sabha Election Results, 1951 121
4.2 Madhya Bharat Lok Sabha Election Results, 1951 121
4.3 Congress Hegemony in Madhya Pradesh 1: Vidhan Sabha
Election Results, 1957–1972 122
4.4 Congress Hegemony in Madhya Pradesh 2: Lok Sabha Election
Results, 1957–1972 123
4.5 Results in Scheduled Tribe Constituencies in Western Madhya
Pradesh Vidhan Sabha Elections, 1967–2013 126
 Glossary of Hindi Terms

Please note that many terms are represented in English using multiple different
spellings, particularly in archaic transcriptions, and so may be found under another
spelling.
ashram religious centre
abkari excise revenue
achha kaam good work
adivasi first inhabitant
atta flour
baniya trader
bazaar market
bazaariya/bazaariya-log person/people from the market; refers to non-Adivasi
city-dwellers
begar forced labour
Bhagwan God
bhai brother
bhauband kin-based group attached to a Bhil chieftain
bolai tax claimed by Bhils in Mewar on travellers on the
Udaipur–Ahmedabad Road
chanda donation
chappal shoe
chaprasi office assistant
charpoy bedstead
chowkidar guard
crore ten million
daal lentils
dalal broker/middleman
darbar, durbar princely court
daru liquor
dewan chief minister of princely state
xii Glossary of Hindi Terms

dharna sit-down demonstration

eki unity
elaka neighbourhood
faliya hamlet
forest-wallah forest guard
gameti village headman
gaonliya derogatory term for village-dweller
ghat mountain pass and/or valley
ghee clarified butter used for cooking
gherao demonstration where a building or person is surrounded.
giras hak tribute paid by caste Hindu villages to Bhil chieftains
goonda bully, muscleman
gram sabha village council
hak, haq right (also used to refer to tribute payments, cf. giras
hak)
jal water
jangal forest
khet, kheti field, cultivation
kowl written pledge/agreement
lakh one hundred thousand
lok Sabha parliament
maharana, maharani king, queen
mahua home-made liquor
makrani mercenary
mankar cowherd
nakedar forest guard
neta political leader
nevad field cultivated in the forest
pal hamlet
patel hereditary headman
patta title deed for agricultural land
patwari revenue official
pergunnah administrative unit in princely state
praja people
raja king
rajpramukh governor of a princely state
rakhwaldar chieftain claiming rakhwali taxes
rakhwali, rakhwaldari tax claimed by Bhils in Rajasthan on travellers on the
Udaipur–Ahmedabad road.
ram-ram polite greeting
 Glossary of Hindi Terms xiii

rasud supplies
roti flat-leavened bread
saab sir
saala, saala bhilre bastard, Bhil bastard
sahukar, sahukari moneylender
sangath, sangathan organisation
sarkar, sarkari, sircar state, belonging to the state
sarpanch elected village head
seekhna learning
sepoy soldier
seth moneylender/trader
seva service
sibandi arab mercenary
sowar soldier
tehsil administrative level (sub-district)
tehsildar, tehsil-wallah administrative official at tehsil-level
thakur landlord
thana police outpost
thanedar head of police outpost
thikanedar landlord
tika red vermillion mark placed on a person’s forehead as a
blessing
tukavee loan given to cultivators by state authorities
veth forced labour
vidhan Sabha state legislative assembly
zameen land
zamindar feudal landlord
 Preface

This is a book about subaltern politics in India—and especially about what happens
when subaltern groups organise and mobilise to stake democratic claims in relation
to the state. What makes it possible for them to come together? What kind of
claims and demands do these groups articulate? How do they engage with the state,
its representatives, and its institutions? What changes can subalterns bring about
through collective action? In the following pages, I try to answer these questions
through a detailed case study of local social movements among Bhil Adivasis in
western Madhya Pradesh.
The term Adivasi literally means First Inhabitant, and expresses a claim to being
indigenous.1 The origins of the term can be traced to 1930s, and the efforts of
activists from tribal groups in what is now the state of Jharkhand to stake a claim
for recognition in the context of the making of a new nation. ‘[M]ost of you here
are intruders as far as I am concerned’, the Adivasi leader Jaipal Singh Munda told
India’s Constituent Assembly in 1946. ‘I take you all at your word’, he continued,
‘that now we are going to start a new chapter, a chapter of independent India
where there is equality of opportunity, where no one would be neglected’ (cited
in Guha 2007a: 318). As it turned out, the Indian state did not recognise Adivasis
as indigenous people. Rather, in state discourse they are defined as Scheduled
Tribes under the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Indian Constitution, which
provide a range of protective legislation, special entitlements, and reservations for
Adivasis in public sector employment and higher education.2 Moreover, the Indian
state has fundamentally betrayed Jaipal Singh Munda’s hopes that Independence

1 For a selection of academic perspectives on the issue of indigeneity in the Indian context,
see Bétéille (1986), Singh (1985), Prasad (2003), Ratnagar (2003), Karlsson (2016), Baviskar
(2016), Bates (1995), Damodaran (2006), Shah (2007a), and Sundar (2016a).
2 Schedules are lists in the Constitution that categorise and tabulate the state’s bureaucratic
activity and policy. The Fifth Schedule applies to the overwhelming majority of tribal
communities in the Adivasi belt that stretches from Maharashtra and Gujarat in the west
to Bihar and Bengal in the east. The Sixth Schedule applies to the northeastern states
and bestows considerable autonomy upon tribal groups in Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal
Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura, and Manipur.
xvi Preface

would usher in a new age of greater equality and recognition—a betrayal that is
writ large in the fact that an estimated 45 per cent of India’s 104 million Adivasis
currently live below the country’s poverty line (World Bank 2011).
In recent years, Adivasis have occupied a fairly prominent place in public
debates in India. This is due in no small part to the fact that Adivasi communities
are widely believed to constitute the core support base of what former Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh once labelled as the country’s ‘gravest internal security
threat’—namely the Maoist insurgency in the so-called Red Corridor. Controlled
by the Maoist guerrillas, the Red Corridor is a largely forested area that stretches
from Bihar in the east to the northern fringes of Tamil Nadu in the south, and
encompasses some of the poorest parts of India’s territory. It is generally accepted
that Adivasi support for the Maoists is related to the rampant impoverishment
and dispossession that characterises tribal life in this area.3
This book is not about Adivasis and Maoists in central and eastern India.
Adivasis and the State focusses instead on a strand of tribal politics that has received
comparatively less attention in the existing scholarly literature, namely democratic
organising and mobilising at community-level among Bhil Adivasis in western
India. Most of this activism, which flourished from the late 1960s to the late 1990s,
was grounded in grievances related to everyday interactions with the local state
and basic livelihood issues revolving around land and forest rights. The origins of
the book can be traced to my doctoral research on the Narmada Bachao Andolan
(NBA).4 During the course of my fieldwork in the early 2000s, I interviewed a
number of Bhil activists in the submergence zone of the Sardar Sarovar dam in
Madhya Pradesh about their involvement with the NBA.5 While they were happy

3 Among the left and liberal intelligentsia in India, the Maoist movement and the issue
of Adivasi support and participation has given rise to a polarised debate over political
agency and strategy. This debate is played out between those—like Saroj Giri (2009),
Radha D’Souza (2009), and Arundhati Roy (2010)—for whom the Maoist movement
represents an authentic expression of the political subjectivity of Adivasis, and those—like
Ramachandra Guha (2007b), Jairus Banaji (2010a), and Aditya Nigam (2010)—for whom
Adivasis are caught in a bind between state violence and Maoist violence. The most recent
intervention in this debate is Nandini Sundar’s (2016b) seminal book on Maoism and
counterinsurgency in Bastar. See Pandita (2011), Mukherji (2012), Navlakha (2012), and
Choudhary (2012) for journalistic accounts of the Red Corridor.
4 This work was carried out from 2002 to 2006. My doctoral dissertation was subsequently
published as a monograph entitled Dispossession and Resistance in India: The River and the
Rage (Nilsen 2010).
5 The Sardar Sarovar dam is being built in eastern Gujarat, just across the border from
Madhya Pradesh. The majority of those who will be displaced—both Adivasis and caste
Hindu farmers—reside in Madhya Pradesh, where 193 villages lie in the submergence
zone of the dam (see Nilsen 2010: chapter 1).
 Preface xvii

to share their stories with me, I found that they were most enthusiastic, and their
narratives most detailed and textured, when they spoke about their involvement
in a movement that preceded the NBA—the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath
(KMCS). The KMCS was a relatively small outfit that organised and mobilised
Bhil Adivasi communities in Alirajpur, which at that time was a tehsil (sub-
district) in the southern parts of Jhabua district.6 The KMCS protested against the
corruption and violence of the local state and for the rights of Bhil communities
to cultivate land in the forest. Activists would speak with great passion about how
the Sangath, as it is also referred to, had made it possible for them, for the very
first time in living memory, to stand up and talk back to local oppressors such as
forest guards, police constables, and revenue officers. And, as I soon found out,
the KMCS was only one of many such movements in Madhya Pradesh, which had
existed somewhat in the shadow of the NBA and its spectacular struggle against
dam-building in the Narmada Valley.
It struck me that there was a story to be told about these movements—a
story with many layers. A story about how certain communities had come to be
cowed down by a state that should represent and serve them. A story about how
oppression wrecks life chances. A story about how overcoming fear and gaining
courage is at the heart of activism. A story about how democracy both shapes
and is shaped by the collective action of subaltern groups. And a story about how
powerful groups respond when those at the very bottom of the societal pyramid
challenge their rule. Adivasis and the State is an attempt to bring all these strands
together in a rich narrative about subalternity and citizenship in the region that
I call the Bhil heartland.
In order to tell this story, I had to return to western Madhya Pradesh for
fieldwork, which I did as a postdoctoral researcher over an 18-month period in
2009 and 2010. When I conceptualised the project, I had imagined that the data
collection would be carried out in a fairly conventional way—in-depth interviews
mediated by a translator speaking local tribal languages such as Bhili, Bareli, and
Bhilali. As it happened, things turned out quite differently. In August 2009, I
travelled to Sakad, a small village close to the market town of Sendwha, which
straddles the Agra–Mumbai highway close to the border with Maharashtra. I went
there to interview two former KMCS activists, Amit and Jayashree. After they
left the KMCS in the middle of the 1990s, this couple had bought a piece of land
in Sakad and established a school—Adharshila—which provided education for
Adivasi children from Alirajpur, Badwani, and Khargone districts. Drawing on

6 Alirajpur became a separate district in 2009. Some 26 villages in the area where the KMCS
was active were slated for submergence by the Sardar Sarovar reservoir (see Nilsen 2010:
chapter 4).
xviii Preface

alternative pedagogies and curricula, Adharshila was a much-needed and highly

regarded initiative in a region where educational opportunities for Adivasis are
few and far between.
In the evening after I arrived, Amit, Jayashree, and I sat outside the house that
was home for them and their two children, sipping tea and discussing my project.
I told them that I wanted to write a book that told the story of the KMCS and
other movements like it. After a while, Amit told me: ‘We want to talk to you
about your method’. The couple took turns explaining to me how they had also
been wanting for some time to collect oral histories from Adivasi activists in the
region, and asked me whether I would be interested in collaborating with them
in such an endeavour. I immediately agreed. It was obvious to me that this was
a rare and wonderful opportunity to collect data in a collective and cooperative
manner, rather than simply parachuting in and airlifting out again in the way that
is all too familiar in standard academic research.
We started discussing how we would go about this project, and Jayashree
suggested that I team up with some of the teachers at the school—several of
whose parents had been active with the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan (AMS), a
movement that I had selected as the second case study for the project—and carry
out interviews in the region. To prepare for the work that lay ahead, we organised
a two-day workshop at Adharshila where we discussed what research is, why it
was important to document the history of the KMCS and the AMS, and how
to carry out interviews. We designed a comprehensive interview guide in Hindi,
which was translated into Bareli. After a couple of pilot interviews with activists
from nearby villages and some fine-tuning of the interview guide, we began criss-
crossing Alirajpur, Badwani, and Khargone by bus, tracking down KMCS and
AMS activists and conducting a series of interviews—sometimes with individuals
and sometimes with groups. It is hard to tell exactly how many activists we
interviewed altogether, but a rough count suggests about 60. In addition, during
the same period, I interviewed about ten English-speaking middle class activists
like Amit and Jayashree on my own. That the lion’s share of the data gathering
that went into the research for this book was collective in nature is reflected in the
use of the first-person plural pronoun when referring to interviews carried out by
what we eventually came to refer to as the Adharshila research team.
A final reflection on the nature of the data that was collected in this way is
necessary. A key problem in researching the KMCS and the AMS is the fact that
neither movement has generated anything like a substantial written archive. With
the exception of one autobiographical account written by a middle class KMCS
activist, there are very few activist writings that can be drawn on to reconstruct
the overall trajectory of the two movements, or, for that matter, specific protest
events. Media reports were few and far between—both in English and Hindi
 Preface xix

newspapers—and the few newspaper clippings I was able to obtain were often
marred by very poor reporting. The KMCS archives were in disarray and more
or less impossible to investigate in a systematic way. The AMS archives were in
a slightly better state, and I was able to extract a number of reports that made it
possible for me to reconstruct a particularly decisive period in the Sangathan’s
history when it was violently repressed by a range of state and non-state actors.
It also proved very difficult to obtain police records and intelligence reports that
could throw light on specific protest events and more general movement activities
in any substantial way.
Consequently, my attempt to reconstruct and analyse both local state–society
relations in Chapter 2 and key dimensions of the organising and mobilising
processes in Chapters 5 and 6 are based almost exclusively on in-depth interviews
with Adivasi and middle class activists, who drew on their memories of events that
took place in the 1980s and 1990s. This means, of course, that I have worked with
a data set marked by that classical feature of oral history narratives: different people
remember the same events differently and in ways that might deviate to greater
or lesser extents from an objectively factual account of, for example, a specific
conflictual encounter with state personnel or a particular sit-in demonstration or
protest march. While I have tried, whenever and to the extent that it has been
possible, to craft reconstructions of trajectories and events that are as detailed and
factual as possible by comparing accounts and sounding out interviewees about
discrepancies, I have come to accept that the interview data that I draw on in this
book may be partial or otherwise flawed in point of fact. As Alessandro Portelli
(1991: 2) notes in his reflections on factual deviations in oral history narratives,
errors are not necessarily a weakness in the data. Whereas errors and deviations
might occlude what actually happened at specific moments and particular places,
they nevertheless enable us ‘to recognise the interests of the tellers, and the dreams
and desires beneath them’—and this, the dreams and desires of those who have
risked so much to change the worlds they inhabit, should of course be at the very
heart of a study of subaltern politics. Accordingly, what I have tried to do in my
analysis of the interview data is to try and decipher significant themes in activist
narratives—significant themes in accounts of both oppression and resistance—and
to reflect critically on what these themes tell us about what changes some of India’s
poorest, most excluded, and most violently stigmatised citizens want to see in their
worlds and how they have tried to make such changes a reality.
This book has been almost a decade in the making. I could not have begun the
journey towards its completion without the help of a number of activist friends
in Madhya Pradesh. Rahul Banerjee spent many hours with me during the early
summer of 2009 discussing the project, putting me in touch with former fellow
activists in the KMCS, and taking me along as he travelled to Alirajpur to
xx Preface

conduct meetings. My conversations with Rahul were a constant source of insight

and reflection—much of which is deposited in the following pages. Bijoy Panda
facilitated my access to the AMS, and spent time with me in Indore, discussing
politics late into the night. I am grateful for his support and his engagement with
my project.
Most importantly, however, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Amit and
Jayashree at Adharshila. If it had not been for their initiative, I doubt that the
fieldwork that underpins this work would had been possible. It certainly would
not have been carried out in such a meaningful and engaging manner. More than
just collaborating on research, Amit and Jayashree, and their children Revali and
Sarang, invited me into their home with open arms, fed me, hung out with me,
and spent long hours sharing invaluable stories and many laughs with me. I am
deeply grateful to them for all this, and to the research team from Adharshila—in
particular Majeli, Shevanta, Suresh, and Prakash—for their tireless efforts and
good companionship. I am thankful to all the activists of the KMCS and the AMS
who patiently gave of their time and experiences, and who often welcomed me as
a guest in their homes. I am particularly grateful to Shankar, Kemat and Mukesh
for their generous hospitality and help during my fieldwork. Sunita and Sarika
carried out extremely valuable work as research assistants—digging up valuable
and sometimes obscure archival resources and facilitating the transcription of
interviews. Zindabad!
In Indore, my big sister and big brother—Jaya Mehta and Vineet Tiwari—
provided a home away from home, help and support, discussions and distractions,
and, most importantly, the kind of committed friendship that truly nurtures the
soul. I am extremely lucky that my research in India has led me into their lives
and work and them into my life and my work. May it always remain so!
Several academic institutions in India have hosted me during the time when I
researched and wrote this book. Neera Chandhoke welcomed me to the Developing
Countries Research Centre at Delhi University in 2009–2010 and Amit Prakash
and Niraja Gopal Jayal enabled me to spend time at the Centre for the Study of
Law and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University during the autumn of 2015.
I benefited greatly from both affiliations, and especially from discussions of a
paper presenting some of the ideas contained in this book at CSLG in late 2015.
Little did I know at that point that several of my hosts would soon be subjected
to the stranglehold of the antidemocratic forces that currently hold power in
India. I extend my solidarity to them and the struggles they are currently engaged
in—Nijaat deeda o dil ki ghadi nahin aai/Chaley chalo ke wo manzil abhi nahin aai.
During the time that I have been working on this book, I have spent two
periods as a visiting fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The CPCP is a unique space
 Preface xxi

of insurgent scholarship, and a precious site of engaged learning. I cherish the

time I have been able to spend there. I extend my most heartfelt thanks to David
Harvey, Ruthie Wilson Gilmore, and Peter Hitchcock—hosts extraordinaires,
mentors, inspirations, friends, and intellectual comrades.
The arguments and perspectives in this book have benefited from discussions
with and critical readings by many friends and colleagues across the globe. I
would particularly like to thank John Harriss, Ajantha Subramanian, Adam
Morton, Ravinder Kaur, Jeff Witsoe, Sanjay Ruparelia, Nandini Sundar, Partha
Chatterjee, John Krinsky, Jeff Goodwin, Colin Barker, Manali Desai, Luisa
Steur, David Arnold, Andreas Bieler, Christina Heatherton, Prakash Kashwan,
Jackie Cock, Alpa Shah, Jim Jasper, Sanjib Baruah, Brian Jones, Ajay Skaria,
Dilip Menon, Beppe Karlsson, Aparna Sundar, Gayatri Menon, Ujju Aggarwal,
Carlota McAllister, and Subir Sinha for their generous engagement over the years.
I have also drawn intellectual sustenance from presenting papers at the South Asia
Institute at Harvard University, the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa and the
Society, Work and Development Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand,
the UCLA Center for India and South Asia, the Center for South Asia at Stanford
University, the Unit for Humanities at Rhodes University, the South Asia Studies
Colloquium at Yale University, the Human Rights Institute at the University of
Connecticut, the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western
Cape and the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town, the Centre
for the Study of Social and Global Justice at the University of Nottingham, the
CUNY Politics and Protest Workshop, the CPCP weekly seminar at the CUNY
Grad Center, the Center for Global South Asian Studies at the University of
Copenhagen, and the Department of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University.
While I worked on this book, I had the great pleasure of supervising the doctoral
work of Mercedes Biocca. Our discussions over the years have pushed my thinking
in important ways—gracias compañera! Ole Johnny Olsen has been there since I
took my academic baby steps. I am glad he was there during the writing of this
book too—his friendship, advice, and kind generosity mean a lot to me.
At my current institutional home at the Department of Global Development
and Planning at the University of Agder, I have benefitted greatly from my
conversations with Jonathan Baker—one of my first and most important teachers.
From 2014 to 2017, I was very fortunate to work alongside Kenneth Bo Nielsen
and Anand Vaidya. Our discussions—which have somehow tended to take place in
New York City and Grimstad, always with good beer within reach and sometimes
with freshly foraged oysters—and their critical readings of draft chapters have
enabled me to both enhance the arguments I put forward in this book, and to
deepen my understanding of subaltern politics and postcolonial democracy in
India more generally. Laurence Cox has not only read the draft manuscript from
xxii Preface

beginning to end and offered comments that have enabled me to steer clear of
several analytical pitfalls, but has also been a steadfast friend of the first order and
remains the one who has the most to teach me about how to think about social
movements in ways that actually matter.
I am very grateful to Partha Chatterjee for his interest in this book. Needless
to say, his support for this project is an expression of an intellectual generosity
that is all too rare in the academy. At Cambridge University Press, it has been
an absolute pleasure to work with Qudsiya Ahmed. I am thankful to the two
anonymous readers of the manuscript, whose comments enabled me to sharpen
key arguments in the text.
This book is for Srila—because I carry her heart in my heart, and she carries
mine in hers.
Colombo, January 2018
 Map 1 Western India
Source: Map drawn by Annita Lucchesi.
Note: Map not to scale and does not represent authentic international boundaries.
 Map 2 The Bhil Heartland of Western India
Source: Map drawn by Annita Lucchesi.
Note: Map not to scale and does not represent authentic international boundaries.
 Introduction 1

Introduction

‘Rozgaar guarantee amra kanoon che!—the employment guarantee is our law!’

This is a common refrain among activists of the Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan
(JADS), a local movement of Adivasis and Dalits in Badwani district in
western Madhya Pradesh (Nayak 2008). The statement is remarkable in many
respects, not least because it represents a distinct reversal of the entrenched
disenfranchisement that has characterised Adivasi relations to the state in
the western districts of Madhya Pradesh.1 As the narrative in this book will
show, it also expresses how claims for citizenship mediated by the law have
been instrumental in animating this reversal. Indeed, one of JADS’ main
achievements over the years has been to secure accountability and efficiency
in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
(NREGA) in Pati block of Badwani district.2
Ever since the NREGA was introduced in early 2006, JADS activists
have confronted the local administration to ensure transparent and effective
implementation of the programme—making sure, for example, that job cards
are issued, that written applications for work are accepted by the administration,
and that the minimum wage is in fact paid. Initially in 2006, state authorities

1 As the next chapter will make clear, I use the term ‘disenfranchisement’ not in a de
jure sense—Adivasis are of course formally fully enfranchised citizens of India—but to
point to the de facto absence of rights, participation, and entitlement that characterises
state–society relations in the Bhil areas of western Madhya Pradesh.
2 The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, later renamed
the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) is a law that
aims to guarantee the right to work for poor households in rural India. Under the
provisions of the law, 100 days of wage employment is guaranteed per financial year
to all households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. See
Chopra (2011a, 2011b) for a perspective on the making of the law and Roy (2014) for
an interesting argument about the workings of the NREGA in relation to subaltern
politics.
2 Adivasis and the State

refused to implement work schemes under the NREGA. Consequently, JADS

demanded that an unemployment allowance should be given to people who
would otherwise have been able to find work under the NREGA. A long
and passionate agitation followed, in which activists faced threats of violence
and trumped-up criminal cases. Lasting from June to October 2006, the
struggle ultimately succeeded in forcing the authorities to pay unemployment
allowances to 1,500–2,000 applicants. In the following years, Pati block 3
attracted attention as one of the areas in India where the NREGA was being
implemented with the highest level of success. A 2008 survey that covered
ten districts across six Hindi-belt states showed that almost half the workers
from Pati who had been interviewed had been able to obtain nearly 100 days
of employment through the programme, and on average workers from Pati
block had secured 85 days of work under NREGA in the 12 months preceding
the survey. This compared very favourably with results from the other states,
where the average number of work-days obtained under the scheme numbered
a mere 43, and only 14 per cent of all interviewed workers had managed to
secure a full 100 days of work under the scheme. The incomes that JADS
activists obtain from NREGA have been put to good use in securing necessities
like food, seeds, and clothing. Moreover, increased incomes have enabled
people to improve the quality of agriculture in the villages; at the same time
migration to urban centres to find work during the lean season has decreased.
Even more significantly, the experience of engaging successfully with the state
over the implementation of NREGA has created a sense of empowerment and
entitlement in local communities in the area (see Nayak 2012, 2016).
However, these victories were not easily won. Not only was the JADS up
against a state apparatus that was loath to pay heed to Adivasi demands, they
also challenged elites who were not averse to resorting to repression when
confronted with democratic mass mobilisation. This became abundantly
clear in early May 2012, when a ‘show cause’ notice was issued to Madhuri
Krishnaswamy, a leading JADS activist.4 In the notice, Madhuriben, as she

3 A block is an administrative sub-division below the district level.

4 Madhuri Krishnaswamy is one of many non-tribal, urban middle class activists who
have been involved as leading activists with local Adivasi organisations across western
India. Krishnaswamy started her career as an activist in the region in the early 1990s,
when she joined the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan, before moving on in the late 1990s
to found JADS as an organisation operating in Badwani district. See Nayak (2012)
for a rich and insightful analysis of JADS and its activism.
 Introduction 3

is known in local communities in the district, was called upon by the District
Magistrate to provide reasons as to why she should not be externed from
Badwani and six other districts of the state.5 The reason why the authorities
wanted to extern Madhuriben was that she and her organisation had allegedly
hindered ‘the development work of the administration’ and created ‘an
atmosphere of fear among the government functionaries’ engaged in the
implementation of this work (see Singh 2012a; Ghatwai 2012; AHRC 2012).
This move by the Badwani administration was decried by leading national
civil society activists like Jean Drèze and Aruna Roy as an unconstitutional
attempt at silencing an activist who had dared to challenge the local
administration.6 It soon emerged that of the criminal cases listed in the notice
to justify Madhuriben’s externment, all but one were old cases in which JADS
activists had been acquitted of all allegations. The remaining case had not even
made it to the courts at the time the notice was issued. Valsingh, an Adivasi
activist from JADS, drew a parallel to past and less democratic times in India:
‘This reminds us of British times. Is the government scared to face us? It is
our constitutional right to organise and agitate and it cannot be taken away
by the collector’ (Singh 2012a).
Responding to the allegations made against her, Madhuriben pointed out:
‘Far from “obstructing” government schemes our campaigns and protests have
been for the proper implementation of these schemes according to law.’ In
doing so, she argued, JADS had upset the powers that be in the area: ‘These
interests have been made very uncomfortable by an adivasi population that is
confident, aware, organised, and very vocal in demanding their legal rights’
(Krishnaswamy 2012).
Ultimately, the attempt to drive Madhuriben out of Badwani district
foundered—in part due to extensive national and international criticism of
the Badwani administration. However, a year later, the district administration
struck again. Along with four other activists, Madhuriben was summoned to
the offices of the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) of Badwani in connection

5 Externment is a form of punishment in which a person or a group are banished from

a specific area—a district, several districts, or a state for example—for a defined
period of time.
6 Indeed, even Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister for Rural Development at the time,
wrote to the Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh expressing his concern over what he
referred to as an ‘extreme step’ taken against an activist and an organisation that were
operating entirely within the parameters of the Indian constitution (Singh 2012b).
4 Adivasis and the State

with a case from 2008, in which she and other activists had been accused of
rioting and assaulting a public servant. The case had been filed after JADS had
protested severe negligence at a local primary health centre.7 Although local
police had rejected the case due to lack of evidence, the Badwani CJM refused
to accept this and ordered that the case should to go to trial. As she initially
refused to take bail, Madhuri was jailed for two weeks. However, once again
the attempt at repression failed, and she was released from prison. ‘Almost
every JADS protest and campaign has been accompanied by false police cases,
even though they are always completely peaceful and disciplined’, Madhuri
pointed out after her release. ‘Most campaigns have been for clear legal rights
and entitlements. The main reason for this harassment has been not so much
the protests themselves as because the politician-trader-bureaucracy nexus
has felt threatened by Adivasi self-assertion and unity’ (Krishnaswamy 2013).

The events that unfolded in Badwani district between May 2012 and May
2013, and the processes from which these events resulted, illustrate the political
dynamics that are the key concern of this book. On the one hand, processes
of democratic deepening are set in train when subaltern groups stake rights-
based claims in relation to a state that is often not only unaccountable and
unresponsive but also predatory and violent in its everyday workings among
the poor. On the other hand, dominant groups mobilise the coercive resources
of the state in order to curb the inroads made by subaltern claims-making. In
this way they seek to reproduce existing relations of power in specific locales.
These complex processes of negotiation, contestation, and struggle animate
a contentious dialectic of power and resistance that is integral to shaping the
political economy of democracy and development in contemporary India.
New forms of subaltern politics in India mobilise a wide variety of groups—
for example, Dalits (Gorringe 2005, 2017; Waghmore 2013), poor rural women

7 In early November 2008, a young Adivasi woman, Baniya Bai, was taken to the
primary health centre (PHC) in Medimata for her first delivery. After a journey of
15 kilometres by bullock cart, she and her family were met by the compounder and a
nurse, who allegedly demanded a bribe of Rs 100 to aid in the delivery of her child.
Being unable to pay this bribe, Baniya Bai and her parents-in-law were thrown out
of the PHC, and she ended up delivering her child on the road outside the PHC
with the assistance of a traditional Adivasi midwife (Srivastava 2013). Such cases of
neglect and corruption are common in the district, and directly related to the deaths
of 28 women during delivery in 2008 alone (Subha, Sarojini, and Khanna 2012).
 Introduction 5

(Sharma 2008; Madhok 2013), informal sector workers (Agarwala 2013; Nair
2017), and lower caste peasants (Jaffrelot 2003; Michelutti 2008; Witsoe
2013)—and have destabilised important structures of power that for a long
time underpinned the political economy of the postcolonial state (see Corbridge
and Harriss 2000: chapter 9). In recent years, these gains have manifested
themselves in the introduction of rights-based legislation—the NREGA
being a case in point (Ruparelia 2013). The considerable advances made by a
local social movement such as JADS in terms of ensuring the implementation
of the NREGA suggests that rights-based legislation has ‘reconfigured not
only material interactions between the state and India’s marginalised, but
also the imagined spaces within which marginal groups renegotiate their
relationships with the state’ (Williams, Vira, and Chopra 2011: 12). However,
there is nevertheless something partial and limited about the impact of these
mobilising processes.
This is above all evidenced by the way in which the Indian economy is
defined by a sociodemographic pattern in which Dalits, Adivasis, women,
small and marginal peasants, and landless and informal sector workers remain
systematically overrepresented among the 660 million people who live in
poverty in the country today (see Kohli 2012; Sen and Drèze 2013; Corbridge
and Shah 2013; Walker 2008; Breman 2016; Gooptu and Parry 2014).8 This
pattern combines with ever-widening inequalities to testify to how subaltern
groups remain adversely incorporated into power relations that perpetuate
uneven and unequal development in India today (Jayadev, Motiram, and
Vakulabharanam 2011). It is therefore necessary to ask critical questions about
the ways in which poorer and less powerful groups can effectively challenge
their relegation to the bottom of economic and political hierarchies by using
strategies that rely on the institutions, the languages and idioms, and the
procedures and interventions of the Indian state.
This book does precisely this by deciphering how subalternity is both
constituted and contested in and through state formation as a ‘hegemonic
process’ (Mallon 1995: 6). The empirical reference point is the region that I refer
to as the Bhil heartland—that is, the districts of northwestern Maharashtra,
southeastern Gujarat, southern Rajasthan, and western Madhya Pradesh

8 According to the most recent India country briefing from the Oxford Poverty and
Human Development Initiative, 46.3 per cent of India’s 1.23 billion strong population
lives in poverty (OPHDI 2017).
6 Adivasis and the State

that are home to the vast majority of India’s Bhil Adivasis.9 As I show in the
following chapter, this Bhil heartland is plagued by severe and chronic poverty,
and material deprivation has in turn been entrenched by the disenfranchisement
of Adivasi communities within local state–society relations. However, as the
example of JADS suggests, deprivation and subordination have not gone
unchallenged. Starting in eastern Maharashtra with Shramik Sangathana and
Bhoomi Sena in the early 1970s and Kashtakari Sangathana in the late 1970s,
the region has witnessed the emergence of local social movements in Adivasi
communities that have contested oppression by the local state and vindicated
the legitimacy of tribal rights to land and forests.10
This study concentrates on two local movements that emerged in western
Madhya Pradesh in the 1980s and 1990s—the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna
Sangath (KMCS) in what is now Alirajpur district and the Adivasi Mukti
Sangathan (AMS) in what are now Khargone and Badwani districts.11 As
with their predecessors in eastern Maharashtra, these sangathans12 registered
some significant achievements in terms of curbing the excesses of a notoriously
high-handed state and fostering a political culture of ‘insurgent citizenship’
(Holston 2008) among the Bhil communities in the area.
However, another salient feature of this arc of resistance is the mobilisation
of coercion by state authorities to curb the growth of these movements in
conjunctures when they have gathered enough momentum to threaten regional

9 The Bhils are one of the major Adivasi groups of western and central India. Consisting
of multiple sub-groups such as Bhilalas, Barelas, and Naiks, the Bhils inhabit
the largely hilly regions of northwestern Maharashtra, eastern Gujarat, southern
Rajasthan, and western Madhya Pradesh. For the sake of simplicity, I shall use the
term ‘Bhil Adivasis’ to refer to Bhils, Bhilalas, and Barelas in this book.
10 See Kulkarni (1974a, 1974b, 1975, 1979), Mies (1986), Basu (1990), Kashtakari
Sangathana (1986), and de Silva, Mehta, Rahman and Wignaraja (1979) for accounts
of these early movements in Maharashtra.
11 When the KMCS started its activities in the early 1980s, Alirajpur was a tehsil (sub-
district) of Jhabua district. It remained so until 2009, when it was carved out as a
separate district. When the AMS began its operations in the 1990s, Badwani was
part of Khargone district. It remained so until 1998, when it was constituted as a
separate district.
12 I emphasise the term sangathan here as it refers to a particular political form—the
local, democratic grassroots organisation—that became prominent in rural India
during the 1970s, particularly in the wake of the JP movement and the Emergency
(1975–1977) (see Kamat 2002).
 Introduction 7

elites and their hold on the levers of political power. In order to understand these
dynamics, my analysis fuses an ethnographic attentiveness to the micro-politics
of local state–society relations—that is, the power-laden nature of everyday
interaction and contention between subaltern groups and the institutions and
personnel of the local state—with a historical orientation towards the political
economy of regional and national state-formation. In doing so, I hope to
develop a politically enabling analysis of these trajectories of mobilisation that
can contribute to ongoing discussions about the prospects for emancipatory
change and democratic deepening in contemporary India.

Theoretical Orientations13
According to Partha Chatterjee—one of the founding members of the
Subaltern Studies project and a leading theorist of political modernity in the
postcolony—state–society relations in India have undergone a sea-change in
recent times:

… the spread of governmental technologies in India in the last three decades,

as a result of the deepening reach of the developmental state under conditions
of electoral democracy, has meant that the state is no longer an external
entity to the peasant community … Not only are peasants dependent on state
agencies for [theirs] services, they have also acquired considerable skill, albeit
to a different degree in different regions, in manipulating and pressurising
these agencies to deliver these benefits. Institutions of the state, or at least
governmental agencies (whether state or non-state), have become internal
aspects of the peasant community. (Chatterjee 2008: 54)

The significance of Chatterjee’s statement has to be gauged and understood

in relation to how he and other members of the Subaltern Studies project
conceived of state–society relations in colonial and postcolonial India.
Extending Ranajit Guha’s (1982a: 4) paradigmatic argument that the politics
of subaltern groups in colonial India constituted an ‘autonomous domain’ that
was separate from and independent of ‘elite politics’, leading figures in the
Subaltern Studies project developed a conceptual narrative in which the state
has persistently existed at a distance from subaltern lifeworlds.14 According

13 This section draws on a more extensive argument developed in Nilsen (2015a).

14 Guha (1982a, 1982b) defined the subaltern rather loosely as that part of the
population—the working classes, peasantry, and subordinate classes—who were not
8 Adivasis and the State

to this perspective, the precolonial state was manifest as ‘a distant, formally

all-encompassing empire’ that commanded ceremonial deference from its
subjects but had little capacity for actually intervening in their livelihoods and
communities (Kaviraj 2010: 12). The colonial state, Guha (1997: 64) famously
argued, ‘failed to generate a hegemonic ruling culture’ and existed only as ‘an
absolute externality’ which provided ‘no space for transactions between the will
of the rulers and that of the ruled’ (ibid: 65). Consequently, the colonial state
‘remained an entity which is not organic to the familiar sphere of everyday social
activity’ (Chatterjee 1982: 32). And, ultimately, the postcolonial state failed
to overcome this schism: the Indian nationalist movement was not capable of
translating the modern political vocabulary of democracy into a meaningful
vernacular language (see Kaviraj 2010; Chatterjee 1986). With the coming of
independence in 1947, this marginalisation came to be ‘written as the state–
society relation’, as India’s new ruling elite ‘could not create its own hegemony,
or create a dialogic relation with the subaltern classes’ (Kaviraj 2010: 23, 81).
So when Chatterjee (2012a: 132) in his recent work notes that poor people
in rural India now regularly press claims and demands on the state and in doing
so ‘learn how to operate the levers of governmental systems’, this is indeed a
significant analytical departure. Arguably, this departure was foreshadowed
in his book The Nation and Its Fragments, in which he pointed out a tenuous
rapprochement between elite politics and subaltern politics (see Chatterjee
1993). However, it only comes fully to fruition with his more recent work
on ‘the politics of the governed’ (Chatterjee 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012).
Central to the perspective he develops in this work is the claim that in order
to understand how subaltern groups in contemporary India engage with the
state, it is necessary to distinguish between ‘civil society’ and ‘political society’.
The former is a political space where the liberal precept of citizenship reigns,
and which is inhabited by India’s elites. By contrast, the latter is a political
space constituted by the governmental technologies—that is, the demographic
categories and bureaucratic interventions—that the state uses to target specific
population groups with development and welfare policies. It is in this space that

part of the elite. Subalternity was then defined in relation to identity, as being based
on ‘class, caste, age, gender and office’ (1982a: 7) and placed in binary opposition to
the elite. See Roosa (2006) for a particularly sharp criticism of Guha’s ‘structuralist
populism’ and Nilsen and Roy (2015) for an extended discussion of the various ways
in which the terms ‘subaltern’ and ‘subalternity’ have been deployed and developed
in the Subaltern Studies project.
 Introduction 9

subaltern groups forge ‘a certain political relationship with the state’ (Chatterjee
2010: 183). This relationship is forged as subaltern groups appropriate the
‘demographic categories of governmentality’—for example, that of living below
the poverty line or belonging to a disadvantaged caste group—and use these
to frame claims that they are entitled to various forms of protection, welfare,
and recognition from the state: ‘This is the stuff of democratic politics as it
takes place on the ground in India’ (Chatterjee 2004: 41). To this distinction he
adds that there are lower-caste and tribal groups who are so marginalised that
they cannot even make claims in relation to governmental categories: ‘In this
sense, these marginalised groups represent an outside beyond the boundaries
of political society’ (Chatterjee 2008: 60).
As compelling as Chatterjee’s perspective on contemporary subaltern
politics is in a number of respects, it is necessary to pursue two lines of
criticism in relation to his theorisation of state–society relations. The first
line of criticism concerns the historical aspect of his argument. It is of course
entirely uncontroversial to claim that the tributary states of precolonial India
were not enmeshed in the everyday lives of subaltern groups in the same way
that the modern state is. However, this does not entail that there was not a
considerable interface between peasant communities and the state.
Consider, for example, peasant cultures of resistance such as the dhandak,
documented in Ramachandra Guha’s (1985, 1999) early work. Protests against
the misdeeds of state officials were predicated on the moral economy of the
Raja–Praja relationship,15 and would culminate in peasant subjects seeking an
audience with the king to appeal to him to restore justice in the realm. As such,
the dhandak can be understood as a form of protest that operated through an
oppositional appropriation of a precolonial ideology of kingship.
A similar argument can be made about the colonial state and subaltern
resistance. For example, Uday Chandra’s (2013a: 178) research on Adivasi
uprisings in Chota Nagpur—in particular the Sardar movement of the
1870s and Birsa Munda’s revolt in 1899–1900—suggests that these are
best understood as ‘ineluctably modern political expressions, not as atavistic
responses to the modern state’. The tribal peasantry in this region would strive

15 This refers to the relationship between the king as ruler and his subjects, which was
centred on a moral economy in which loyalty and deference was contingent upon the
king’s ability to ensure peasant subsistence and to protect them against capricious
officials (see, for example, Guha 1999: 61– 67).
10 Adivasis and the State

to be recorded as bhuinhars (‘first settlers’) and petitioned the colonial state all
the way from the local level to London, deploying a rhetoric that ‘admirably
mimics the official discourse of colonial primitivism’ (ibid: 154). Even when
they made politico-theological claims to sovereignty and rose in violent revolt
to vindicate these claims, their demand was for ‘quasi-national autonomy under
British colonial overlordship’ (ibid: 157). And conversely, as Kaushik Ghosh
(2006: 525) points out, the fact that the colonial state came to recognise tribal
land rights through protective legislation cannot be understood as anything
other than ‘a cumulative effect of massive and persistent tribal revolts against
the colonial system of eighteenth and nineteenth-century India and Jharkhand’.
Contra Chatterjee, what these examples suggest is that subaltern engagements
with the ideologies, categories, and technologies of the state are far from being
a recent development, and—by extension—that it is problematic to maintain,
as the Subaltern Studies project has done, that the state has been persistently
distant from subaltern lifeworlds across historical time (see Nilsen 2015b). As
I show in Chapter 4, Bhils also actively appropriated idioms of state-making
and negotiated different echelons of the state as they mobilised to resist the
detrimental impacts of colonial state formation. This in turn compels us to
develop an alternative optic through which to study changes and continuities
in the character and dynamics of state–society relations in the longue durée,
specifically in terms of how subalternity is simultaneously constituted and
contested through these relations.
Chatterjee’s disaggregation of political space in contemporary India brings
me to my second line of criticism. The bifurcation between civil society and
political society, and the claim that subaltern politics is articulated within the
parameters of the latter, is undermined by the simple fact that ‘the politics of
subalterns have long been transgressive of such divides’ (Sinha 2012: 81). For
example, Rina Agarwala (2006: 428) has shown how the emergent mobilisation
of workers in India’s informal economy has fostered a new political strategy
in which claims and demands are directed at the state rather than employers,
and focussed on ‘welfare benefits (such as health and education), rather than
workers’ rights (such as minimum wage and job security)’. As a result of this,
the demands that are articulated by the movements of informal workers ‘appeal
to state responsibilities to citizens rather than to workers’ rights’ (ibid: 432).
Thus, the claims that are being crafted through this form of activism cannot
be neatly classified as belonging to the realm of political society. Rather, what
has been thrown up through the mobilisation of informal workers is ‘a notion
of expanded citizenship’ centred on ‘state recognition for their work and state
 Introduction 11

provision for their social consumption needs’ (Agarwala 2008: 394, 378;
see also Agarwala 2007, 2013). Moreover, Chatterjee’s claim that Adivasis
are not even able to make use of the mechanisms and categories of political
society—let alone civil society—is belied by the fact that tribal mobilisation
in contemporary India is often focussed precisely on demanding and framing
rights-based legislation and ensuring that such legislation is implemented
(Sundar 2011). Adivasi mobilisation tends to interweave customary law, state
law, constitutional principles, and regulations entrenched in international
conventions, which in turn fuels an expansive development of the meaning of
citizenship: ‘Struggles over legislation are thus quintessentially struggles about
citizenship’ (ibid: 422; see also Chandra 2013b).16
Significantly, then, what Chatterjee’s conception of the politics of the
governed ultimately does is to bring back a version of the problematic
‘structural oppositions’ (Baviskar and Sundar 2008: 88) between elites and
subalterns that were foundational to the historiographical template of the
Subaltern Studies project.17 In their current incarnation in Chatterjee’s work,
these oppositions prevent us from adequately grasping how citizenship is a far
more fluid and malleable political idiom than what Chatterjee would have
us believe (see Jayal 2013). This is a crucial analytical concern, as it is this
fluidity and malleability that makes it possible—as the examples discussed
above suggest—for subaltern groups to appropriate dominant idioms of
citizenship and inflect them with insurgent meanings. It is in this sense that
the collective agency of subaltern groups is ‘generative of new meanings and
subjects of rights’ (Subramanian 2009: 19; see also Chopra, Williams, and
Vira 2011; Nilsen 2016a). Indeed, as I show in Chapter 6, the struggles of
the KMCS and the AMS generated claims for citizenship centred on Adivasi
self-rule and resource control.
This dynamic is a central concern in an alternative usage of Foucault’s
conception of governmentality that has come to the fore in recent contributions
to the ethnographic study of the Indian state. At the core of these studies is
a concern with the mutually constitutive relationship between technologies
of government and subaltern politics (see, for example, Gupta 1995, 2001,

16 Customary law, as Sundar (2011: 430) has pointed out, often consists of accumulated
case law in which lawyers have pleaded custom.
17 See also several of the essays in Gudavarthy (2012) for critical engagements with this
aspect of Chatterjee’s model. Sinha (2015), Nielsen (2015), and Steur (2015) have
also developed incisive criticisms of his recent work.
12 Adivasis and the State

2012; Sharma 2008, 2006; Fuller and Harriss 2001; Corbridge, Williams,
Srivastava, and Véron 2005; Williams, Vira, and Chopra 2011; Bose, Arts,
and van Dijk 2012; Birkenholz 2009). A particularly good example of this
concern can be found in Aradhana Sharma’s (2008) study of the intersection
between NGO (non-governmental organisation) activism and state policy in
the Mahila Samakhya (MS), a flagship programme for women’s empowerment
that was pioneered in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). On the part of the state,
MS represents a turn away from a developmentalist form of governmentality
centred on welfare and towards a neoliberal form of governmentality centred
on efforts ‘to empower marginalised subjects to care for themselves’ (ibid: 45).
Against claims that such programmes depoliticise subaltern struggles, Sharma
argues that they in fact ‘open up new vistas and forms of political action’ (ibid:
64). She illustrates this by showing how MS staff engage in acts that defy the
disciplinary strategies of the state to achieve genuinely empowering effects.
This often entails using bureaucratic proceduralism against the state, which
illustrates how programmes such as MS both governmentalise the lives of
poor rural women and generate knowledge, skills, and aptitudes that enable
‘subaltern women to mobilise and demand accountability and entitlements
from state agencies’ (ibid: 75).18
What emerges from this dynamic is a politics of ‘ justice, rights, and
citizenship, albeit not one limited to the bourgeois precepts of the individual
rights-bearing citizen’ (Sharma 2008: 143). Rather, by appropriating and
politicising technologies of government, the subaltern women who are at
the heart of Sharma’s research developed alternative visions of citizenship
that challenge ‘the legalistic discourse … that writes out questions of class,
caste and gender inequality and appears to treat all citizens as formally equal’
(ibid: 144). This takes us well beyond Chatterjee’s bifurcations and towards a
perspective that recognises that subaltern groups are simultaneously the objects
of governmental technologies of power and the subjects of democratic rights
(see Subramanian 2009: 20). Furthermore, by consistently underscoring how
the state is ‘a multi-layered and conflictual ensemble’ (Gupta and Sharma
2006: 291) these ethnographies are also politically enabling, in that they make
it possible to pursue an informed debate about how subaltern groups can use
the frictions and schisms that exist between different scales and regions of the
state to their advantage (see Gupta 1995).

18 See Madhok (2013) for an analysis of similar processes in the Women’s Development
Programme in Rajasthan.
 Introduction 13

However, there is a gap in this kind of theory—a gap that goes back to
Foucault. Foucault’s early work focussed on the rise of new sites of power
that emerged with the development of modern capitalism and the liberal
state (Foucault 1989, 1991). Nevertheless, as Stuart Hall (1980: 71) pointed
out, he maintained a ‘thoroughgoing scepticism about any determinacy or
relationship between practices, other than the largely contingent … ’ (see also
Poulantzas 1978: 67; Kalyvas 2002). Foucault’s later work on governmentality is
significant in part because it constitutes an attempt to think about how different
technologies of government are linked together in particular state forms and
attain a temporary institutional stability (Foucault 2007, 2008; see also Lemke
2009). However, in his determination not to write like a traditional Marxist,
he still remained profoundly vague about how ‘a general line of force’ (Foucault
1990: 94) that traverses different sites of power and binds together various
governmental technologies emerged and what it was grounded in (see Jessop
2008: 140, 148, 152–153). This leaves us with a lacuna that has consequences
for the study of the dialectic of power and resistance in state–society relations.
For example, Akhil Gupta (2012) has recently argued that a disaggregated
view of the state is necessary in order to understand how its different
institutional modalities and technologies of government are implicated in
the production of poverty as a form of structural violence. The state, he
argues, is not a bounded entity but a multiplicity of dispersed sites of power
in the form of ‘a highly complex array of institutions with multiple functional
specialisations, modes of operation, levels, and agendas’ (ibid: 46). Within
this complex field, poverty results from the arbitrariness that characterises
bureaucratic interventions to provide welfare for the poor (ibid: 5–6, 21–26).19
Conversely, Gupta suggests, this dispersal indicates that political interventions

19 Gupta’s argument is marred by a failure to provide a clear and consistent theorisation

of exactly how arbitrariness produces poverty. However, in an instructive review,
Sapana Doshi (2013: 2) disentangles three ways in which Gupta deploys the term:
‘One usage refers to the structurally constituted sense of indifference and ambivalence
with which bureaucratic agents approach their work. In a second usage, arbitrariness
is leveraged to explain what appears to be state agents’ direct but haphazard exclusion
of poor individuals and groups from the biopolitical welfare programs that are meant
to benefit them. And finally, arbitrariness describes the myriad contingencies that
affect program implementation. Here it demarcates how life and death bureaucratic
processes are subject to random events and rampant inaccuracies in data collection.
In many instances, these three kinds of arbitrary processes converge in practice to
decide who among the poor will get access to life-saving supports’.
14 Adivasis and the State

to mitigate poverty should make use of ‘the conjunctural possibilities opened

up by the divergent agendas of different organisations and agencies that make
up the state at multiple levels’ (ibid: 69).
However, if we consider for a moment the immediate empirical context of
Gupta’s argument—that is, the state of UP—the problematic aspects of this
approach immediately come into view. Levels of poverty are extremely high
in UP; indeed, according to the World Bank (2002), UP is home to 8 per cent
of the people who live in absolute poverty worldwide. This poverty rate is in
turn characterised by a very clear sociodemographic profile. In the context of
a state where there are proportionately far more upper caste people than in the
Indian population as a whole, lower caste groups and Dalits have ‘the worst
social indicators or indicators of human well-being—not only compared to
the upper castes in UP but compared to much of the rest of India’ (Mehrotra
2006: 4261; see also Arora and Singh 2015). There is significant evidence
to suggest that this structure of poverty is intimately connected to the way
in which caste and class power is embedded in the political economy of the
state in UP (see Zérinini 2012; Hasan 1998). For example, Atul Kohli (1987)
demonstrated long ago that despite the fact that the Other Backward Classes
(OBCs) and the Janata Party had ousted the upper caste Congress regime
that came into power after Independence, UP has fared particularly badly in
terms of implementing anti-poverty policies. Rather, the state has displayed
a consistent ‘commitment to commercial farmers and a concurrent neglect of
the lower peasantry’ (ibid: 221). And the fact that this structure of poverty
has continued to exist despite the unprecedented rise to power of the Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP) on the crest of a wave of Dalit mobilisation testifies to
the resilience of caste and class power in the state (Jeffrey, Jeffery, and Jeffery
2008; see also Hasan 2014: chapter 23).
Ultimately, this resilience flows from the capacity of dominant classes and
castes to reproduce and maintain their power by acting in and through the state.
For example, Jeffrey and Lerche (2000) have shown how the Jat farmers who
constitute the dominant proprietary class in the prosperous agrarian region
of western UP have co-opted and colonised the local state apparatus through
extensive networks of contact and influence. Combined with their substantial
purchasing power in the informal market for government jobs, the agrarian
elite has deftly used the state system as a vehicle for the reproduction of class
advantage (see also Jeffrey 2000, 2001). In the face of such entrenched forms
of power, Dalit mobilisation has failed to effect ‘a substantial change in the
distribution of economic, social, and political opportunities’ (Jeffrey, Jeffery,
 Introduction 15

and Jeffery, 2008: 1365). The basic and fundamentally important implication
of this is—as Harris and Jeffrey (2013: 515) point out in a critical review of
Gupta’s work—that state power ‘operates in ways that are patterned over time’.
This patterning both stems from and reinforces determinate configurations
of unequal power relations in ways that ultimately produce distinctive ‘regime
types’ across Indian states (Harriss 1999).20 However, the problem with the
Foucauldian insistence on conceiving of the state in disaggregated terms is that
it prevents us from understanding these dynamics and their ramifications for
subaltern politics.
This also applies to those moments when the collective action of subaltern
groups encounters state-authorised coercion. Obviously, these moments assume
a wide variety of forms across different spatial scales—ranging from the
national suspension of civil and political liberties as witnessed during the 1975–
1977 Emergency in India, via military and paramilitary counterinsurgency
campaigns in specific regions or states, down to the collusion between local
administration, police authorities, political strongmen, and contractors which
lies at the heart of the kind of repression portrayed in the vignette that opened
this chapter, and to which I also return in Chapter 7 later.21 However, what
these all have in common is that they are based on and characterised by a
relatively high degree of coordination and unity between sites of state power
and between state and non-state actors.
Aspects of this dynamic are revealed in Sharma’s (2008: 82–85) fine-
grained and insightful analysis of how MS workers face and negotiate the risk
of repression. She shows how, when MS workers engaged in a campaign to
challenge upper caste control over land, senior bureaucrats and police descended
on a public meeting and attempted to label their activities as anti-government
and therefore liable for punitive sanctions. In doing so, they acted ‘to protect

20 According to Harriss (1999), it is necessary to differentiate between Indian states

according to the balance of caste and class power and the configuration of party
organisations that prevail within different states. His analysis shows how states that
have performed better in terms of alleviating poverty among subaltern groups are
those that have decentralised political power most substantially to lower class and
lower caste groups, and in which political parties are compelled to compete for the
votes of the poor.
21 See, for example, Frankel (2005: chapter 13) on the Emergency, Duschinski (2009)
and Baruah (1999) on the use of direct military force in Kashmir and the Northeast,
and Sundar (2016) on the Salwa Judum. I discuss the politics of coercion at greater
length in Chapter 7.
16 Adivasis and the State

the entrenched interests of land-owning upper caste men, to defend state

institutions from being challenged by subaltern women, and to safeguard their
own positions as powerful state officials’ (ibid: 82). As Sharma notes, there
is no clear boundary between state and non-state actors in moments such as
these, and the former are evidently deeply embedded in ‘entrenched webs of
power’ based on class, caste, and gender (ibid: 84).
However, the theoretical implications of this embeddedness are never
fully explored in Sharma’s study. Her conceptual point of departure is an
understanding of the state as ‘a performative effect or a product of everyday
bureaucratic work, people’s interactions with officials, and public cultural
representations … ’ (Sharma 2008: 22). And in her analysis of this repressive
encounter, the focus is partly on how officials enact the prerogatives of the state
as a defender of law and order that commands a monopoly over the legitimate
use of violence, and partly on how MS workers navigate the threat of violence
through tactical uses of state and non-state identities. As compelling as this
approach is, it does not enable us to understand how the mobilisation of
coercion in repressive encounters expresses the ways in which the patterned
working of the institutional modalities of the state across time undergirds the
reproduction of unequal power relations.
To gain analytical purchase on these dynamics, it is not necessary to fall
back on a reified idea of the state as a bounded entity with agentic capacities.
Rather, we have to decipher how the patterned working of the state across time
is related to ‘the power of the social forces that act in and through it’ (Jessop
1990: 113). Furthermore, it compels us to untangle how and why it is easier
for some groups than others to act in and through the institutional modalities
of the state to realise political projects, in terms of how specific forms of state
are congealed from what Poulantzas (1978: 147) referred to as ‘a relationship
of forces’ that has crystallised through struggle and contestation between
dominant and subaltern groups (see Nilsen 2015a).
The conceptual challenge that confronts us, then, is that of unravelling
how subalternity is simultaneously constituted and contested in and through state–
society relations. Moreover, it is necessary to understand how this dialectical
imbrication simultaneously enables and constrains the collective action of subaltern
groups. To engage this challenge is ultimately also to engage with the question
of how subaltern groups should organise and mobilise if they want to really
change their lives—and the extent to which this can be achieved by engaging
with the state and its institutions, languages, and policy interventions. And
to arrive at satisfactory answers to this question, it is necessary to explore the
 Introduction 17

composite relationship between, on the one hand, the enactment of power

and resistance in determinate state–society relations in specific places and,
on the other hand, the contested trajectories of state formation at regional
and national scales. It is only by bringing this relationship to the centre of
our analysis that we will be able to decipher how ‘[the] shaping of action by
structure and the transforming of structure by action both occur as processes
in time’ (Abrams 1982: 6). In the context of this study, this entails bringing
into view the complex dynamics of state formation and subaltern resistance
stretching from the 1820s up to the present.
It is quite common to interpret Gramsci’s (1971: 12) notion of hegemony
as denoting a way of constructing and exercising power that is rooted in the
consent of subaltern groups to ‘the general direction imposed on social life’ by
dominant groups (see Anderson 1976; Fontana 2008: 84–89). This is, however,
an overly simplistic reading of Gramsci’s notion of hegemonic rule. First, a
fundamental point is that consent does not equal passive belief in a dominant
ideology. Rather it is a relationship forged through ‘a set of nested, continuous
processes’ of contentious negotiation between dominant and subaltern groups
‘in which power and meaning are contested, legitimated, and redefined at all
levels of society’ (Mallon 1995: 6). In hegemonic processes, dominant groups
seek to gain the consent of subaltern groups. Gramsci (1971: 161) writes:
‘Undoubtedly, the fact of hegemony presupposes that account be taken of
the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be
exercised, and that a certain compromise equilibrium should be formed—in
other words, that the leading group should make sacrifices of an economic-
corporate kind.’
Second, it is imperative to note that the compromise equilibrium that
underpins consent is closely interconnected with what Morton (2007: 95)
refers to as the ‘coercive functions of power’—typically targeting those groups
who, in Gramsci’s (1971: 12) formulation, do not consent to the prevailing
order, either passively or actively. Hegemony, in other words, is a form of rule
that is ‘characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance
each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent’
(Gramsci 1971: 80n; see also Mallon, 1995: 6–7; Williams 1977: 108–114;
Roseberry 1994; Morton 2007: 87–95).
The exercise of power through hegemony, Gramsci (1971: 260) argued,
was a quintessentially modern phenomenon, which in contrast to the practices
of past forms of rule was predicated upon the construction of ‘an organic
passage’ between dominant groups and subaltern groups. The making of
18 Adivasis and the State

the ‘connective tissues’ (Gramsci 2000: 102) that link dominant to subaltern
groups in a hegemonic formation was in turn entwined with the making of
a particular form of state that sought to ‘invest itself in all levels of society
to an extent previously unimaginable’, and which ‘was no longer merely an
instrument of coercion for the imposition of the dominant class from above’
(Thomas 2009a: 143).
Gramsci (1971: 263) famously conceptualised the modern state—which
he referred to as ‘the integral state’ (ibid: 271)—as ‘political society and civil
society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion’. In this
equation, political society refers to ‘the apparatus of state coercive power’—that
is, the governmental, bureaucratic, and judicial modalities of the state—and civil
society is the ensemble of voluntary associations through which ‘the spontaneous
consent’ (ibid: 12) of subaltern groups is organised (see Buttigieg 1995). Now,
the distinction between political and civil society is ‘purely methodological and
not organic; in concrete historical life, political society and civil society are a
single entity’ (Gramsci cited in Green 2011: 72).22 What is central to Gramsci’s
argument is the claim that modern state formation mediates the construction
of hegemony through ‘an increasingly more sophisticated internal articulation
and condensation of social relations’ (Thomas 2009a: 140) within a form of
state that fuses consensual and coercive forms of power (see Crehan 2002: 104;
Morton 2007: 94; Thomas 2009a: 161–167).
This in turn leads us to a specific conception of subalternity and a specific
way of thinking about subaltern politics. If hegemony pivots on the construction
of a relation between dominant and subaltern classes that rests on an unstable
equilibrium of compromise, it follows—contrary to the analytical templates
of the Subaltern Studies project—that subalternity cannot be adequately
understood as an essential identity that inheres in specific collective agents, for
example, peasants, Adivasis, women, Dalits, or workers. Rather, it has to be
conceptualised in terms of how specific social groups come to be incorporated

22 As Morton (2007: 78, 89) points out, Gramsci’s ‘expanded notion of the state’
was ‘developed in order to counter the separation of powers embedded in liberal
conceptions of politics’. The mutually constitutive relationship between political
society and civil society is described as follows by Marcus Green (2002: 7): ‘The
hegemony within civil society supports the leading group’s authority over political
society, and the juridical apparatuses of political society protect the dominant group’s
hegemony within civil society through coercive measures’ (see also Buttigieg 1995;
Crehan 2002: 103; Morton 2007: 87–92; Thomas 2009a: 68–72, 137– 41, 172–94).
 Introduction 19

in adverse positions in sets of power relations that develop over time in specific
locales (Gidwani 2009; Nilsen and Roy 2015).23 In other words, subaltern
groups inhabit social fields of force24 and institutional forms that have been
shaped by the contentious dynamics that propel hegemonic processes. This
embeddedness is in turn inscribed in the ‘local rationalities’ (Cox and Nilsen
2014) that animate the oppositional collective action of subaltern groups—
that is, the practices and meanings that subaltern groups develop in order to
evade, subvert, or resist the power of dominant groups (see Gramsci 1971:
55). These practices and meanings are developed and articulated through
oppositional appropriations of institutions and idioms that might be referred
to as ‘social condensations of hegemony’ (Morton 2007: 92). And precisely
because hegemonic processes are mediated through the integral state, these
appropriations also encompass its institutional modalities, political forms,
discursive repertoires, and governmental technologies (see Nilsen 2015b).
In other words, subaltern groups are familiar with the kind of state they live
under; they are used to fighting particular kinds of battles for themselves, their
families, or their communities within its overall framework; and they have
developed more or less effective ways of diverting, reinterpreting, sidestepping,
and otherwise working with the official version of how the state is supposed
to work.
Now this insight is also crucial in terms of understanding how subaltern
politics is simultaneously enabled and constrained by its embeddedness in state–
society relations. When subaltern groups appropriate, for example, an ensemble
of laws or a set of bureaucratic procedures in order to pursue an oppositional
claim, they engage institutional modalities and governmental technologies
that have taken form through the contentious negotiations that animate
state formation as a hegemonic process. These modalities and technologies
are consequently shaped by ‘[the] internal limits imposed by the struggles of
the dominated’ (Poulantzas 1978: 151)—limits that are manifested in the

23 As Marcus Green (2011) has noted in a particularly rich and insightful article, the
claim that Gramsci used the term ‘subaltern’ as a code word for ‘working class’ is
fundamentally mistaken (see also Buttigieg 2013). Rather, Gramsci used the concept
to designate a positionality of subordination that ‘was not merely defined by class
relations but rather an intersection of class, race, culture, and religion that functioned
in different modalities in specific historical contexts’ (ibid: 395).
24 I use the concept ‘field of force’ here as proposed by Thompson (1978). See Roseberry
(1994) for a useful discussion of this concept in Thompson’s work.
20 Adivasis and the State

compromises that have been forged in and through the process of constructing
hegemonic power. And it is these limits, in turn, that generate ‘conjunctural
opportunities’ (Jessop 1982: 253) for subaltern groups to pursue collective
action in and through the state. For example, the law and legal procedures are
of course integral to the codification of hegemony and ‘set markers to which
those who resist must attend’ (Hirsch and Lazarus-Black 1994: 10). Yet, as I
argue in Chapter 6, the liberal commitment of the law to principles of equality
simultaneously makes it possible for subaltern groups to use legal provisions
and procedures to advance oppositional projects.
However, as Gramsci (1971: 182) noted, the equilibria of compromise that
underpin hegemonic formations are ‘equilibria in which the interests of the
dominant group prevail … ’ A given form of state, congealed from a particular
equilibrium between social forces, will consequently ‘offer unequal chances
to different forces within and outside the system to act for different political
purposes’ (Jessop, 2008: 37). Thus, conjunctural opportunities are entwined
with ‘structural constraints’ (Jessop 1982: 253)—constraints that are manifest
in the privileged access of dominant groups to the institutional ensemble
of the state and the ways in which the state is more open to some political
projects and strategies than others (see Jessop 1990, 2008). The state, then,
is neither a level playing field nor a fair referee: it is tied up with the interests
of the wealthy and powerful and their attempts to contain the struggles of
the poor and powerless. This means that it has to allow some space for those
groups to extract concessions when they organise well enough, but it also
sets real limits to what they can hope to achieve on terms which in practice
are written by the winners of previous conflicts. These limits, as I argue in
Chapter 7, emerge into view most clearly in those moments when dominant
groups mobilise coercion.
It is precisely at this interface between conjunctural opportunities and
structural constraints that critical scholarship—that is, scholarship that aims
to produce movement-relevant knowledge—finds its place. As Marcus Green
(2002) has pointed out, Gramsci conceived of the oppositional collective action
of subaltern groups as processes (cf. Gramsci 1971: 52). Needs, grievances,
aspirations, and claims are initially articulated through the extant political
forms and governmental technologies of the integral state. However, encounters
with the limitations and constrictions that are inherent to these forms and
technologies may impel subaltern groups to develop new strategic repertoires
that are more likely to result in emancipatory forms of transformation (see
Green 2002: 15). Gramsci (1971: 52) referred to this process as ‘the line of
 Introduction 21

development towards integral autonomy’, but stressed that it was a line of

development that cannot be taken for granted as it ‘is continually interrupted
by the activity of the ruling groups’ (ibid: 55)—for example, through co-
optation or coercion.
Movements of subaltern groups sometimes find themselves enabled by
the state and sometimes constrained; but in the longer term they are playing
for larger stakes, in terms of what kind of society they want to live in and
what place it has for them. Critical scholarship hopes to be able to offer
politically enabling insights to movements’ own strategic debates by asking
how the current situation relates to this bigger process and goal—especially
by investigating the dialectic of enablement and constraint that suffuses
subaltern engagements with the state. Needless to say, the task is a challenging
one, which involves unravelling in great detail the workings and lineages of
state–society relations in particular locales, reconstructing the many-layered
trajectories of subaltern movements in specific sites, relating these findings to
macro-structural processes across historical time and spatial scales, and in the
process gauging the adequacy of different conceptual apparatuses, and finding
ways of expressing what has been learned in these movements to activists
elsewhere and in other movements.

Structure of the Book

The first part of Adivasis and the State is devoted to a detailed ethnographic
deciphering of Bhil subalternity in local state–society relations and an
unearthing of the historical lineage of this subalternity.
In Chapter 2, I present a detailed account of how local state–society relations
in the Bhil communities of western Madhya Pradesh were characterised by a
profoundly predatory and coercive set of interactions, in which low-ranking
state personnel would use the powers vested in them in relation to law
enforcement as well as their role in dispensing crucial public services—coupled
with very real threats of violence and other forms of punishment—to exact
bribes of various kinds from ordinary villagers. I refer to these interactions as
everyday tyranny, and show how they were mediated through internal power
relations in the Bhil communities and embedded in a wider culture of caste-
based stigma that sanctifies Adivasi subordination. I then proceed to discuss
the local rationalities of deference and acquiescence that were constitutive of
and constituted by the everyday tyranny of the local state. I show how this
local rationality was grounded in an ‘emotional habitus’ (Gould 2009) of fear
22 Adivasis and the State

and resignation, which in turn was compounded by a lack of political and

bureaucratic literacy. Ultimately, this local rationality prevented the articulation
of rights-based claims and demands capable of challenging Adivasis’ subaltern
position in local state–society relations.
In Chapter 3, I begin to develop an analysis of the historical processes
through which Bhil communities have come to be constituted as subalterns
in the regional political economy of western India. I trace the origins
of contemporary material deprivation and political subordination to the
construction of ‘colonial state space’ (Goswami 2004) across western India
after the end of the Anglo-Maratha wars in 1818. Specifically, I argue that the
making of colonial state space in the Bhil heartland revolved around a two-
pronged process in which Adivasi communities were dispossessed of land and
other natural resources as colonial authorities promoted settled agriculture and
established state ownership of forests, and subjugated to new forms of political
and administrative domination—both by the colonial state and by princely
rulers who were propped up by British military power.
I develop this analysis further in Chapter 4, where I first consider how
Bhil Adivasis responded to colonial state-making by repeatedly mobilising to
negotiate their positionality within the new relations of sovereignty that were
crystallising in the region. When the Bhils revolted, I argue, they mobilised
various moral economies of rule to contest their subjugation and approached
the state as a disaggregated entity—often attempting to pit one echelon against
another as they staked their claims. I then detail how the power relations
that were forged between 1820 and the 1940s came to be reproduced after
independence in 1947, as a result of how the Congress party established its
electoral hegemony through a constellation of alliances with dominant castes
and classes who had benefited from the economic and political transformations
wrought by colonial rule in the region.
In the second part of the book, I turn my attention to the ways in which Bhil
communities have mobilised to democratise local state–society relations from
the 1980s onwards. In Chapter 5, I ask how it becomes possible for subaltern
groups living under conditions of everyday tyranny to engage in what Isin and
Nielsen (2008) have called ‘acts of citizenship’. My answer to this question
takes the form of a fine-grained interrogation of a series of encounters that
took place as urban middle class activists and ordinary Bhil Adivasis initially
grouped together to challenge the misconduct of local state personnel. These
encounters, I argue, are best understood as catalytic events that brought into
being the ‘moral courage’ (Moore 1978) that was necessary to claim the right
 Introduction 23

to have rights in relation to the local state. I then turn to an investigation of

how ‘reciprocal emotions’ (Jasper 1998) of trust, solidarity, and friendship
crystallised internally in the two movements. I show how middle class activists
forged emotional bonds with ordinary Bhils by showing genuine interest in
tangible problems, by articulating ideas of justice and dignity, and by proving
themselves capable of bringing about positive changes—often in the face of risk
and danger. My analysis also details how Bhil activists fused instrumentalism,
a concern with bringing about constructive change, with idealism, the desire
to serve the community, as they turned to activism, and how they negotiated
the familial conflicts that sprang from their decision to lead political lives.
In conclusion, I discuss how moral courage and reciprocal emotions came to
constitute the kernel of a new and oppositional local rationality in the Bhil
communities of western Madhya Pradesh.
In Chapter 6, I deepen my analysis of the struggle to democratise local
state–society relations in the Bhil heartland. This analysis is fundamentally
concerned with developing a nuanced understanding of how subaltern groups
appropriate the legal and political idioms of India’s postcolonial democracy,
and how such appropriations shape and reshape both the political subjectivities
of subalterns and the workings of India’s democracy on the ground. Returning
to my critical engagement with Partha Chatterjee’s recent work, I explore
collective agency among the Bhil Adivasis of western Madhya Pradesh along
three key axes—law, civil society, and citizenship. I show how the early activism
of the KMCS and the AMS is best understood as a form of ‘legalism from
below’ (Eckert 2006) that effectively undermined the everyday tyranny of the
local state. Rather than seeking an exception from legal norms, as Chatterjee
argues is typical of subaltern politics in contemporary India, the KMCS and
the AMS insisted on legality in local state–society relations, and by doing so
they also brought the rudiments of a civil society into substantive existence in
the tribal areas of western Madhya Pradesh. In the last part of the chapter, I
analyse the politics of forest rights and local self-rule in the later activism of
the KMCS and the AMS. Drawing on James Holston’s (2008) work, I argue
that these mobilisations inflected the idiom of citizenship with meanings
that exceed the confines of governmental and liberal moulds in crucial ways.
In Chapter 7, I decipher the politics of coercion that the KMCS and the
AMS confronted. In doing so, I return to a key conceptual concern in this
book, namely the need to develop a critical understanding of how the patterned
workings of state power over time sustain the reproduction of hegemonic
formations. The first part of the chapter focuses on what I call routine
24 Adivasis and the State

coercion—coercive practices which are not exclusively based on force and

which aim to discourage rather than eliminate oppositional collective action.
Routine coercion, I argue, works in tandem with concessions to and partial
accommodation of subaltern claims and demands to contain subaltern claims-
making within the political boundaries of a particular hegemonic formation. In
the second part of the chapter, I move on to investigate what I call extraordinary
coercion. I detail the trajectory of a sustained campaign of coercion directed
against the AMS by regional political strongmen, bureaucratic authorities,
and members of the local Adivasi elite. Such coercion, I argue, was successful
in raising the cost of activism to such an extent that it effectively undermined
the advance of the AMS. In mobilising coercion, dominant groups constantly
traverse the boundaries of political society and civil society in Gramsci’s sense of
those terms. This, I suggest, testifies to the significance of how state formation
as a hegemonic process has fostered regime types that are undergirded by
distinctive configurations of social power that endure over time.
I conclude Adivasis and the State by interrogating a fundamental question:
how might it be possible to move beyond the impasse that Bhil movements
have encountered as they confronted entrenched structures of upper caste
and upper class power? I start from a paradox in the political economy of
contemporary India. On the one hand, neoliberalisation has set in train
processes of dispossession and marginalisation that are nowhere more evident
than in the agrarian crisis that bedevils India’s rural poor and the precarious
working conditions that confront the country’s migratory proletariat. On
the other hand, the Indian state has in recent years introduced a series of
national laws that enshrine both civil rights and social entitlements in ways
that seem to accommodate the demands of social movements. To what extent
can rights-based mobilisation further Adivasi mobilisation in India today? I
discuss this question in light of recent advances in research on NREGA and
the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and argue that such laws can potentially be used
to consolidate the kind of democratic gains that the KMCS and the AMS
were able to bring about.
On its own, however, law-based mobilisation is unlikely to shift the kind
of hegemonic configurations based on caste and class power that the AMS
and the KMCS confronted. To achieve such change, I argue, law-based
mobilisation has to be integrated within a politics of what André Gorz (1967)
once referred to as ‘non-reformist reform’—that is, an agenda of reform that is
moulded not according to what can be, but according to what should be. Non-
reformist reform, in other words, seeks to modify relations of power in a way
 Introduction 25

that makes systemic transformations a possibility. I suggest that it is necessary

both to build alliances with non-tribal subaltern groups and to operate on the
terrain of electoral politics, but qualify this in light of the evident limitations
of OBC and Dalit politics in north India. I argue that in order to address
these limitations it will be necessary to reflect on the trajectory of left-wing
electoral politics in India in order to draw lessons that can be relevant for a
radical transformative politics in the Bhil heartland.
 Part I

Subalternity
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 29

‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’

Everyday Tyranny in the Bhil Heartland

If there is one thing that defines Adivasi subalternity in contemporary India,

it is chronic and abject poverty. At the national level, it has been estimated
that 44.7 per cent of India’s Adivasis lived below the poverty line in 2011;
while constituting only 8 per cent of India’s total population, they make up
as much as 25 per cent of the poorest decile of this population. Conversely,
altogether 30 per cent of India’s Adivasis are located in the poorest decile of
the country’s population. Scheduled Tribes (STs) also registered far lower levels
of poverty reduction than the non-ST population between the early 1980s and
2004–2005 (Mehta, Shepherd, Bhide, and Shah 2011; World Bank 2011).1 As
Maharatna (2005: 73) points out, the depth of Adivasi poverty is particularly
evident in terms of basic social development indicators, which suggest that ‘the
tribal population is even worse off than their [Scheduled Caste] counterparts,
especially in terms of healthcare and basic education. In fact, tribals … are the
most deprived section so far as the distribution of infrastructural facilities and
provisions of basic amenities … is concerned’. In other words, Adivasis can
rightly be described as one of the groups who ‘have gained least and lost most
from six decades of democracy and development in India’ (Guha 2007b: 3309).

1 It is worth noting that these estimates are based on the official poverty line proposed
by the Planning Commission in 2004–2005, according to which 27 per cent of India’s
population lives in poverty. This poverty line has been widely criticised for being a
gross underestimation, and it is therefore likely that the World Bank estimates of
Adivasi poverty are too conservative. Nevertheless, this data provides a clear indication
of the disproportionate level of poverty among Adivasis as one of India’s historically
marginalised groups (Mehta and Shah 2003: 502). See Mehta and Venkatraman
(2000), Patnaik (2005, 2007, 2010), and Deaton and Kozel (2005) for critiques of
the official poverty line suggested by the Planning Commission.
30 Adivasis and the State

Table 2.1 Incidence of Poverty in India by Social Groups—

1993–1994 and 2004–2005

Year Rural Urban

SC ST All SC ST All
1993–1994 48.3% 52.0% 37.3% 48.8% 40.1% 32.4%
2004–2005 36.8% 47.7% 28.3% 39.8% 33.9% 25.7%
Source: From Planning Commission 2011: 116.
Note: SC = Scheduled Caste, ST = Scheduled Tribe.

This national pattern is easily identified among the Adivasis of Madhya

Pradesh. Whereas an average of 38 per cent of the state’s population lived
below the poverty line in 2004–2005, the same is true for 58.6 per cent of
STs in Madhya Pradesh (see Ray et al. 2009: 64). In the districts of western
Madhya Pradesh which are home to the Bhils who are the focus of attention
in this book, poverty rates among Adivasis are not only higher than among
non-Adivasis, but have also increased quite significantly in recent years (Shah
and Sah 2003, 2004).’

Table 2.2 Incidence of Poverty in Madhya Pradesh (MP) and India, 2004–2005

Scheduled Tribes Scheduled Castes OBCs Other

MP—Rural 58.6% 42.8% 29.6% 13.4%
MP—Urban 44.7% 67.3% 55.5% 20.8%
India—Rural 47.2% 36.8% 26.7% 16.1%
India—Urban 33.3% 39.9% 31.4% 16.0%
Source: From Ray et al. (2009: 64).

Furthermore, across the central Indian tribal belt, stretching from Gujarat
and Maharashtra in the west to Jharkhand and Orissa in the east, poverty
rates among Adivasis are also disproportionately high: in India as a whole,
every fourth person lives in poverty, but in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh,
Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa, two out of every
three persons suffer this fate. The incidence of chronic poverty among Adivasis
is particularly high in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan—that is,
in the region which I refer to as the Bhil heartland (Sah, Bhatt, and Dalapati
2008: 49–50).
There is a very specific reason why I choose to argue that the chronic and
abject poverty endured by Adivasis is a defining feature of subalternity. Far
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 31

too often, particularly within mainstream development research, poverty

is understood to be a condition that befalls individuals and households
due to a lack of assets and skills that results in their being excluded from
normal economic processes (Harriss 2007). In recent years, such reductive
understandings of poverty have been challenged by critical perspectives which
maintain that poverty is in fact an outcome of how social groups come to be
adversely incorporated into determinate sets of intersecting power relations
(see Hickey and Du Toit 2013; Mosse 2010; Harriss-White 2006; Harriss
2007)2—in other words, poverty is an aspect of how certain social groups
are constituted as subaltern in specific locales and at specific points in time.
In economic terms, the forms of adverse incorporation that generate poverty
are related to the normal workings of capitalist accumulation—through the
persistent impoverishment of marginal cultivators and petty-commodity
producers; through dispossession of land and other productive resources;
and through the creation of precarious forms of labour and entrenched
unemployment (see Harriss-White 2006; Mosse 2010: 1159–1162).
Many of these processes are clearly at play in the Bhil communities of
western Madhya Pradesh. Subsistence agriculture is no longer capable of
sustaining livelihoods as a result of land fragmentation, deforestation, and
soil erosion (Ray, Shah, Chaurasia, and Banerjee 2009; Mosse, Gupta,
Mehta, Shah, Rees, and the KBRIP Project Team 2002; Mosse, Gupta, and
Shah 2005). Furthermore, as I have shown in great detail elsewhere, many
Bhil Adivasis in Alirajpur district have been subjected to total or partial
dispossession of their land as a result of the Narmada dam projects (Nilsen
2010). Dispossession and the erosion of subsistence cultivation combine to
compel Bhils in the western districts of Madhya Pradesh to migrate in large
numbers to neighbouring Gujarat—a hotbed of growth and accumulation in
neoliberal India (see Sud 2012; Bobbio 2012)—in search of work (Mosse et
al. 2002, 2005). For the majority of Bhil migrant workers, this strategy does
not offer an exit from poverty; rather, poverty is reproduced over time as they
come to be incorporated in an informal sector which Jan Breman (2003: 221)

2 Mainstream approaches to poverty are overwhelmingly concerned with delineating ‘the

characteristics of the poor’ and measuring ‘the correlates of poverty’ (Harriss 2007:
9). This concern tends to obfuscate ‘the structures and relationships that give rise to
the effects believed to define poverty’ (ibid: 6) and occlude the ways in which poverty
is engendered through the routine intrinsic workings of capitalist accumulation and
political power (see Harriss-White 2005, 2006; Mosse 2010 for instructive criticisms
of mainstream poverty research).
32 Adivasis and the State

has aptly characterised as ‘a regime of exploitation and exclusion’. I explore

the historical origins of these forms of adverse incorporation in the next two
chapters.
Poverty, however, is not just an outcome of economic relations. It is also—as
Hickey and Du Toit (2013) have argued—a result of the way in which subaltern
groups are incorporated on adverse terms into specific forms of state. Put
slightly differently, poverty is produced and reproduced as a consequence of
how subaltern groups are integrated in a given polity on terms that constrain
their ability to engage in the kinds of mobilisation that can shift ‘[the] power
relations within which chronic poverty is embedded’ (Hickey and Bracking
2005: 851).
In his sweeping discussion of the position of Adivasis in contemporary India,
Ramachandra Guha (2007b) has offered a reading of tribal poverty in these
terms. According to his analysis, poverty among Adivasis is compounded by the
relative insignificance of the Scheduled Tribe vote and the inability of Adivasis
to mobilise collectively at the national scale. Whereas these factors—as well as
the suggestive comparison that Guha makes with Dalit mobilisation—are by no
means insignificant, I believe it is necessary to start our inquiries at the point
of local state–society relations, and the historical formation of these relations,
if we are to fully grasp the nature of political subordination among India’s
Adivasis. The following statement from a group interview with activists of the
AMS, in which they describe how their community would relate to local state
personnel prior to their involvement in collective mobilisation, encapsulates
the reasons why I make this claim:

They didn’t know, and whenever any authority came to their house they
thought that God himself had come. They were very afraid and whenever
someone came they would get even more frightened and start to tremble with
fear. If the forest or police-wallahs came, then along with the children even
the elders would disappear into their houses. At that time, the looting was
extreme and whatever was asked for had to be given to these people. We didn’t
know anything about any laws or rules. The patel only would communicate
with the sarkar, the forest guards and the police, and everyone was scared to
interfere with what the patel said. They were afraid that if they did interfere,
they wouldn’t be allowed to live in the village anymore. If we went to the thana
(police outpost), the police would say: ‘Why have you come here? Are you the
patel? Go back and come with your patel ’. They would speak like this. (Group
interview, February 2010)
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 33

The scenario that these activists were describing is the state–society

relation that I refer to as everyday tyranny. At the heart of this relation was a
profoundly predatory and coercive set of interactions and encounters in which
low-ranking state personnel—above all, nakedars (forest guards), police, and
patwaris (revenue officials)—would demand bribes and ‘gifts’ in cash and in
kind (usually referred to as chanda) from tribal villagers on a wide range of
pretexts. These exactions would invariably be underpinned by threats and the
actual use of force—spanning verbal abuse and violent beatings in some cases,
in other instances arrest and detention, and in other cases again the filing of
criminal cases on trumped-up charges—if these demands were not met or if
they were opposed in any way. As a result—much like the scenario that Alpa
Shah (2010: 54–56) describes among Munda Adivasis in Jharkhand—the
state had come to be viewed as a dangerous and exploitative entity in the Bhil
communities in western Madhya Pradesh.
In the next sections I analyse everyday tyranny as a state–society relation
as follows. I start by mapping how the asymmetrical interactions referred to
in the statement above were characterised by a distinct pattern in which state
personnel would use the powers vested in them in relation to law enforcement
and their role in dispensing crucial public services to impose their illicit claims
on the Bhil communities. I then detail how interactions between tribals and
state personnel were, on the one hand, mediated in and through internal
power relations in the Bhil communities and, on the other hand, embedded
in a wider social field of force in which Bhil subalternity is sanctified by
ascriptive hierarchies of difference predicated on caste ideology. I discuss how
this contributed to the durability of everyday tyranny over time.
Following this, I move on to suggest a reading of how everyday tyranny
spawned a local rationality—that is, a set of practices and meanings developed
by subaltern groups to negotiate their adverse incorporation into specific sets of
power relations (see Cox and Nilsen 2014: 73–78; Nilsen 2009: 124–126; Nilsen
and Cox 2013: 74–76)—which was characterised, above all, by deference and
acquiescence in relation to the state and its personnel. This local rationality, I
argue, was rooted in part in pervasive feelings of resignation and fear and in
part in a lack of what might be called politico-bureaucratic literacy. I conclude
by showing how everyday tyranny was a durable form of political subordination
which ruled out the possibility of making collective rights-based claims on
the state, and discuss how this state–society relation lends itself to analysis
within the parameters of the Gramscian framework that I outlined in the
introduction to this book.
34 Adivasis and the State

The Anatomy of Everyday Tyranny

Chief among the state institutions that constituted a predatory presence in
the Bhil communities was the Forest Department. The narratives of village
activists are rife with examples of how forest guards would impose their illicit
claims on the communities. Consider, for example, this account from the
group interview with AMS activists of Jhiri Jamli Village in Khargone district:

There have been many incidents here that involved the Forest Department.
Two or three times, they took the wood away from us. They would come to
our houses and make cases against us—they even took away entire houses
from here. When we would go to the forest to fetch wood, they would come
in their vehicles and demand money from us, or they would seize our cattle
and take them away. When we would go to our fields to plough the land, they
would come there and start beating us up or ask for large sums of money. We
faced so many problems and so much harassment from the forest-wallahs.
(Interview, March 2010)

The fact that the corruption and violence of the Forest Department loom
so large in narratives such as this is due to the fact that Adivasi livelihoods
clash with the formal laws of the land.3 For the Bhil communities of western
Madhya Pradesh, forest resources are integral to survival. As the account above
suggests, the forest provides the timber that is needed for building houses,
grazing land for livestock, and fuel for cooking. The collection of minor forest
produce also provides crucial daily necessities and tradable commodities that
can be peddled in local haats (markets). Most significantly, however, clearing
and cultivating patches of land in the forest to complement the yields from
the revenue lands that border the houses in the village—a practice known as
nevad—is key to sustaining the agricultural livelihoods of the Bhils. But when
Adivasis make use of the forest in these ways, they are effectively breaking
the law. This is because Indian forest legislation—the lineage of which can be

3 The passing of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers
(Recognition of Forest Rights) Act in 2006 has entailed significant changes in this
respect. Under the provisions of the act, forest-dwellers—in other words, Adivasis—are
granted (among other things) the right to live on and cultivate forest land, a range
of community rights such as nistar (the right to buy wood cheaply for domestic use),
and the right to own, collect, and sell minor forest produce. I discuss the potentials
and limits of the Forest Rights Act as a vehicle of Adivasi mobilisation in the final
chapter of this book.
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 35

traced to the enclosure and commodification of India’s forests by the British

colonial state4 —establishes ‘the right of the state to exclusive control over
forest protection, production, and management’ (Gadgil and Guha 1995: 185).
As a consequence of this, customary uses of the forests for cultivation,
grazing, collecting wood for fuel, or felling timber for house construction came
to be designated as illegal encroachments on state property (see Prasad 2004).
The de jure criminalisation of Bhil livelihoods in turn provided the personnel
of the Forest Department with the pretext that they needed for levying corrupt
claims: whenever they came across Bhils using the forest, they would invoke
the fact that they were breaking the law and demand substantial bribes for
looking the other way. These demands were typically backed up with violence
and threats of prosecution:

To make something, if we cut a little bit of wood and brought it home, then
the forest-wallahs would trouble us and demand money: 1000 rupees, 2000
rupees, or even 5000 rupees they would take. If we didn’t pay them, they would
come to our villages and catch us. Then they would take us away. If they felt
like it, they would even burn our houses. (Interview, Ringnya, March 2010)
Yes, they used to beat us. They really beat us. Let me tell you my story: I had
dug up some land and sown the seeds before the rains came. A Deputy Ranger
and a nakedar came and saw my field, and they came to my house and beat me
a lot … They beat me a lot and then they took me to the thana. In the thana
they beat me even more … There used to be so much violence here before, and
everyone was terribly scared. (Group interview, Attha village, November 2009)
If they saw us on the road carrying wood, they would catch us and take us to
the Forest Depot and beat us up. They would abuse us verbally: ‘Ma ka choot,
behen ka choot—is this your father’s forest?’ In this way they would beat and
abuse us. (Interview, Kulsingh, November 2009)

In some cases, the demand for bribes in exchange for using the forests for
various purposes seems to have been regularised as informal systems of taxation
that prescribed specific amounts that had to be paid for various uses of the forest
(field notes and interviews, 2009–2010). In several interviews people pointed
out that they would have to get permission from the Forest Department for
using the forest and detailed the specific amounts that had to be paid before
nevad land could be ploughed (between 1,000 and 2,000 rupees), for wood to

4 I will discuss the trajectory of colonial forest legislation at greater length in Chapter 3.
36 Adivasis and the State

be collected as fuel (from 100 to 300 rupees per cartload), and smaller amounts
(25 to 50 rupees) for fodder collected from the forests: ‘They would put that
money in their pockets as they thought that it was rightfully theirs’ (Interview,
Karansingh, November 2009). In addition, forest guards would also demand
bribes in kind—typically chickens, ghee, and daru: ‘The forest wallahs would
take chanda as and when it pleased them. Chicken, ghee—they would just take it
from our homes as and when they wished. Even for doing kheti they would take
chanda’ (interview, Suraj, November 2009). In sum, the scenario that emerges
from these accounts of the interactions is one in which the personnel of the
Forest Department ruled supreme over the Bhil communities. As one AMS
activist put it: ‘Back then, we were the slaves of the forest-wallahs’ (interview,
Bhimsingh, February 2010).
Bhimsingh’s remark is also borne out by the fact that the Forest Department
would lay claim to forced labour—typically referred to as begar in the narratives
of village activists—from the Bhil communities. This would typically involve
forest guards demanding that various menial tasks were to be carried out free
of charge:

If the forest-wallahs came across one of us while they were out patrolling, they
would often force that person to carry their bags for them back to their dak
bungalow (forest guard quarters) … After reaching there, they would tell the
person to take the broom and sweep the place. Then he would be forced to
fill their water pots … In this way they would trouble the people here. Even
if a person had urgent work or if a relative had passed away, they would be
forced to do all this work. (Interview, Gujaria, March 2010)

In other cases, activists would recount how forest guards would order them
to build charpoys5 and deliver them to the Forest Depot without payment or to
bring chickens, ghee, or daru, also without any kind of payment. They would
also order the Bhils to provide them with firewood or to wash their clothes.
And it was not uncommon for forest guards to command Bhil villagers to carry
them on their shoulders when they were on patrol in the region (interviews and
field notes, 2009–2010). Indeed, the persistence of such predatory demands led
some village activists to make comparisons with the past when it was the duty
of tribal communities to provide begar to princely rulers: ‘First the kings used
to reign here, and we were their slaves. Then the country became independent

5 A charpoy is a light bedstead consisting of a wooden frame bordering a set of knotted

ropes.
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 37

and the Congress party came to power and those people also became netas—
they became prime ministers and MLAs. But nobody paid any attention to
us Adivasis. After the kings left, the sarkari people have come and we have to
give to them also’ (interview, Tersingh, April 2010).
These dynamics were also evident in other forms of interaction between
state personnel and the Bhils. Consider, for example, how forest guards would
demand to be treated as they passed through villages when they patrolled the
area:

When the nakedar came to the village, we would give them a charpoy to sit
on. Then we had to fetch water for them to drink. Then they would demand
milk and ghee, and we would have to cook a meal for them with chicken and
give them daru as well. And whether we had all these things at home or not,
we had to arrange for them—even if we had to borrow money to do so. If
we didn’t give them all these things, they would beat us. (Group interview,
Attha, November 2009)
If a forest-wallah asked us for ghee, atta, or chickens we had to give it to them
… If anybody refused to give, they would beat that person badly. We were
afraid of being beaten up, so everyone was forced to give these things to the
forest-wallahs. (Interview, Bhukaliya, September 2009)

Moreover, such material exactions were closely entwined with a profoundly

asymmetrical code of conduct, according to which Bhils were expected
to perform their subordination through the bodily postures and modes of
address that they adopted in their interactions with the forest guards. Beatings
would be meted out to those who failed to acknowledge and express their
subordinate position in relation to Forest Department personnel through
deferential behaviour. Karansingh—a KMCS activist from the village of
Attha in Alirajpur district—recounted to me how forest guards would expect
subordination to be expressed as follows:

If we were sitting on our charpoy when the forest guards came and we didn’t
immediately stand up, they would say: ‘You babaji—where do you come from?’
Then they would topple our charpoys and slap us. They would slap us for as
long as they wanted. One time when my father was working on his field, a
forest guard passed by. Seeing my father, he walked up to him and said: ‘Arrey
saala, haven’t you learned to say “Ram-Ram Saab” yet?’ My father replied:
‘Saab, you were so far away. How could I say “Ram-Ram” to you?’ Then the
forest guard slapped my father a couple of times and said that he’d arrest him.
38 Adivasis and the State

He forced my father into his jeep where he slapped him again before kicking
him out of the vehicle.

Indeed, the fear of being subjected to violence for failing to observe everyday
codes of subservient respect runs like a guiding thread throughout the narratives
of Bhil activists: ‘We were afraid. If these people came to our village and we
didn’t say “Ram-Ram” to them, then they would beat us and say: “Madarchod
[motherfucker], so now you’ve become very smart? How come you got so
smart?” And while they were saying things like this, they would also beat us
a lot’ (interview, Tembhriya, April 2010).
While the Forest Department might have been the principal pillar of the
everyday tyranny of the local state, the police was another significant source of
corrupt exactions and feared violence: ‘If we ever saw the police approaching,
we would become very afraid. We were never able to speak in front of them’
(group interview, Attha, November 2009). Much like the Forest Department,
the police would use encroachments and other so-called forest crimes as ploys
for demanding bribes from the Bhil communities:

What the police would do is that if they saw a person travelling along a road
near a forest with freshly cut wood, they would slap a fine of 1,000 to 1,500
rupees on that person—or they would demand to be given chickens. If they
weren’t given these things, they would start beating up the person. (Interview,
Lilubhai, April 2010)

The police would also use other pretexts specific to the domain of law
enforcement in order to leverage their exactions. This becomes particularly
clear if we consider the accounts of two KMCS activists from the village of
Kakrana in Alirajpur district. With a thana located nearby, the villagers of
Kakrana were perpetually plagued by the demands of the resident constables
and officers. According to Bhagat—a leading KMCS activist from the
village—police would use village disputes as a means of enforcing claims for
bribes. Despite attempts to resolve such disputes internally in the village, the
implicated parties—and sometimes also the patel and the sarpanch—would be
called to the thana, where they would be beaten and locked up, sometimes for
as long as a week, and finally a bribe of as much as 2,000 rupees would have to
be paid for charges to be dropped: ‘Since we didn’t know anything about laws,
we could not protest.’ In other cases, trumped-up criminal charges would be
used to levy illicit claims: ‘The police would act so strangely. If someone died,
then they would say that he died of illness. But if they wanted to earn money,
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 39

then they would say that this person has been killed and accuse someone else
of the murder in order to squeeze him for bribes’ (interview, May 2010).
The police would also crack down on the brewing of mahua liquor—an
activity that is illegal but of great importance in connection with festivals and
in Bhil social life more generally. According to Bhavsingh—also a key activist
with the KMCS—it would be necessary to get permission from the police to
celebrate major festivals and to brew and consume alcohol. Sometimes, before
celebrating the Indal festival, villagers would go to the thana in Sondwa and pay
the police a bribe of 500 to 1,500 rupees to avoid trouble during the festival.
If anyone was found by the police to be drunk, they would be taken to the
thana and forced to pay a bribe of 1,000 to 1,500 rupees to avoid criminal
charges (interview, May 2010). Bhavsingh also noted how weddings provided
the constables at the thana with another means of exacting bribes: ‘The police
did not allow people to do anything without their permission. After May and
June, engagements and weddings start in our community. But a boy and a girl
could not get engaged or married without getting permission from the police’
(interview, May 2010). Invariably, the groom’s parents would be called to the
thana, where they would be interrogated as to whether the bride had come to
settle in their house out of her own free will. To avoid charges of abduction,
bribes had to be paid: ‘People had to offer chickens and money to get permission
by the police to go ahead with the marriage. If anyone refused, the police would
not let the wedding go ahead’ (interview, May 2010).
The third major figure in activist accounts of everyday tyranny are the
patwaris—that is, the local personnel of the state’s Revenue Department,
who derive their power from the crucial role that they play in surveying and
recording information about the status of landownership and agricultural
cultivation at the village level. A consistent complaint that emerged from
conversations and interviews with village activists was that the patwaris would
charge exorbitant and illicit fees for registering land ownership in government
records and providing villagers with the all-important patta (title deed) for their
land (field notes and interviews, 2009–2010). This was particularly a problem
in connection with land mutations, for example, when land was to be divided
between a group of brothers in the wake of their father’s death:

Our patwari was quite a powerful man—no one could say anything against
him. They feared him, because the village land and the pattas, he could do
whatever he wanted with them. He could give a person’s land to someone else,
for example, so you would simply have to give him whatever he asked for—
40 Adivasis and the State

ghee, money, chickens, daal … Land would be registered in the name of the
family head—the oldest male member of the household—and so to divide the
land between the sons, the patwari would take money from us—500 rupees,
600 rupees, sometimes 800 rupees. My father passed away in ’82, and at that
time the patwari took 600 rupees to divide the land between five brothers.
(Interview, Dediya, April 2010)

The patwari is also responsible for tax collection, and this provided an
additional opportunity to extort bribes and chanda from the Bhil communities:

When the patwari came to collect the taxes on our crops, he would announce
that every household would have to give him approximately one kilo of daal
as well as chillies, peanuts, rice, and vegetables. When the corn ripened, we
had to give him a share of the crop. (Group interview, Attha, November 2009)

If a patwari discovered a small infraction of the official borders between

plots, he would be likely to threaten to register a case against the person whose
plough had veered off course, and demand bribes to let the matter go (interview,
Guliyabhai, November 2009). And it was not uncommon for patwaris to
demand bribes from Bhils working on each other’s fields: ‘When we would
go to each other’s fields, the patwari would trouble us: “Why did you go to
this field? Give me this much money, and give me milk also—then I won’t
say anything”, they would speak like this’ (interview, Nanibai, March 2010).
Similarly to the forest guards and the police, the patwaris would make
high-handed demands for chanda when they were passing through the villages:
‘Earlier, people would say that it is the job of the patwari to collect chanda
and when he does, we have to host him’, Barlibai, a female Bhil activist with
the AMS, explained. She continued: ‘Even if it was half a kilo of ghee, people
would give it to the patwari. They would give chicken also, with makka roti
(maize bread)—and after they had fed him they would even give him money’
(interview, Barlibai, February 2010). A group of AMS activists from the
village of Jhiri Jamli confirmed that similar practices were rife in their dealings
with the patwaris: ‘When the patwari came, our people would carry all his
things around for him. He would demand that food was cooked for him, and
that we gave him ghee and chickens … We would make rotis of jowar … So
he would eat and pack rotis for his entire family.’ Speaking with a great deal
of bitterness, one of the activists remarked: ‘In this way the patwari would
take away a full day’s work from us. This is how we were exploited’ (group
interview, March 2010).
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 41

So far, this account of the anatomy of everyday tyranny has pitted the Bhil
communities of western Madhya Pradesh squarely against the predatory reign
of the ground-level personnel of the local state. There is of course good reason
for this—the rapacity that characterised the interactions between the state and
the tribal communities was considerable. However, if the account were to stop
at this point, it would leave out a crucial element of this anatomy—namely that
everyday tyranny was mediated and enacted in and through the internal power
structures of the Bhil communities, and embedded in a wider social field of
force in which Bhil subordination was bolstered by caste-based forms of stigma.
The traditional headmen of the Bhil villages—the patels—played a crucial
role in enabling and facilitating the exactions of the local state. The patels owe
their powerful position in the village to administrative changes that occurred
during the colonial era, when the headmen were appointed by the colonial
administration to serve as the official link between the government and the
villages and to work closely with the patwaris in order to facilitate revenue
collection, maintain public records, and secure law and order (see Mosse 2005:
74).6 Today they no longer serve as government servants in a formal sense,
but nonetheless retain significant influence in and through the panch—the
informal village council that brings together the leaders of different faliyas
(village hamlets) to resolve intra-communal disputes of different kinds, as
well as through their persistent significance in mediating relations between
the village community and state personnel (various interviews and field notes,
2009–2010). Indeed, the patels tend to be part of a ‘village elite’ which also
comprises the elected sarpanches and the richer households of the village, and
which play crucial roles as dalals (brokers) between ordinary villagers and the
regional and local state apparatus (Mosse 2005: 74).7

6 I will elaborate on this process in substantial detail in Chapter 3. As evidence from

central and eastern India suggests, this trajectory was not necessarily a universal one
across tribal communities. See Ghosh (2006), Sundar (2007), Das Gupta (2011),
Chandra (2013a), and Bhukya (2017) for accounts of the nature of colonial state
formation in these areas.
7 As Mosse (2005: 74–75) points out, the patels have often been able to benefit from
agricultural loans and subsidies and other development funds that have flowed from
the local state to the Adivasi villages. This was made amply clear to me one evening,
after a group interview in a village in Khargone, when—while I was sitting around
chatting with the research team and some of the interviewees after dinner—I asked
the activists why their faliya was shrouded in darkness but a nearby faliya was brightly
lit. ‘Arrey, wahaan patel faliya hain, na!’ was the answer I got—it was the headman’s
42 Adivasis and the State

One key aspect of this brokering—commonly referred to as dalalgiri—

revolved around facilitating the corrupt exactions of the state personnel. Two
KMCS village activists provided the following explanations of how the patels
mediated the everyday tyranny of the local state:

The big officials … the authorities from the Forest Department and so on—all
these people would go to the patel’s house when they came to the village. The
patel had a chowkidar who would spread the word around the village that the
nakedar had come, and that we had to bring chickens and atta to the patel’s
house. We had to bring these things to his house—if we didn’t, the beatings
would start. (Interview, Bhukaliya, September 2009)
Earlier, the village patel, the patwari and the nakedar used to be one. The police
and the patwari would go to the patel for help in collecting money from the
people in the village, and demand chicken and daru from them. This is how
it used to be. (Interview, Bhuvan, April 2010)

It was understood that providing chanda in this way was a prerequisite for
having state personnel look the other way when, for example, forest laws were
violated: ‘If we gave them all these things, they would let us work in our fields
and build our houses. If we didn’t give, then they would not let us do anything.
I have never seen an injustice as big as this’ (interview, Suraj, October 2010).
Indeed, the patel’s role in mediating everyday tyranny would consist of
carrying out the actual collection of illicit fines and taxes imposed by the forest
guards, the police, and the patwaris. This would involve collecting bribes
according to the informal systems of taxation that the forest guards imposed,
as well as to decide on the size of fines to be imposed if someone had been
caught in the act of a so-called forest crime: ‘At that time, it was only the
sarpanch and the patel who would speak to the officers from the government
… The patel and the sarpanch would speak to them about what should be given
to them and by what time.’ In the process of doing this, they would also take a
cut of the money that was being handed over for themselves: ‘Through these
discussions the dalal would also take 1,000 or 2,000 rupees. That is what we
used to see’ (interview, Dediya, April 2010).
Conversely, villagers would only be able to approach local state institutions
such as the tehsil office or the thana through the patel and other members of

hamlet, and through his contacts in the local administration, he had been able to
secure a stable supply of electricity. For some headmen, their role as dalals has also
taken them into the field of local and regional politics (see Mosse 2005: 75).
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 43

the village elite: ‘What happens here in the village is that we have a patel, a
sarpanch, and a chowkidar. And it is through these people that the villagers
would go to the thana. Putting these people in front, they would follow’
(interview, Sunil, February 2010). For example, if a crime had been committed
in a village, the guilty party would often go with the patel to the local thana
in order to negotiate the ‘punishment’ that was to be meted out—or, rather,
the size of the bribe that had to be paid in order for the case to be ignored.
Talking about how such settlement would be reached, a veteran activist of the
KMCS laid out the following scenario:

… we would sit far away from the thana. Only the patel and the guilty party
would go inside. After the guilty party had given his account of what had
happened in the village, he would step outside and the patel would discuss
the matter with the police and settle his punishment. (Interview, Karansingh,
April 2010)

In exchanges like these, the patel would also pocket a cut of the fine—for
example, from a fine of 1,200 rupees he would typically siphon off 200 or
300 rupees for himself (various field notes and interviews, 2009–2010). And
in ensuring that ordinary villagers remained dependent on them for access
to local authorities, the patels efficiently reproduced their dominant position
within the community’s hierarchies of power:

We always had to listen to and accept whatever the sarpanch and the patel
said. They wouldn’t let us speak. If someone spoke against them, they would
beat and punish that person. Their fear was that if we were allowed to speak,
we would go forward and leave them behind. (Interview, Bhukaliya and
Maganbhai, April 2010)

If everyday tyranny was a state–society relation that was mediated in

and through the internal power relations of the Bhil communities, it was
also embedded in a wider social field of force in which tribal subordination
is sanctified through the forms of stigma that are ascribed to Bhils by and
through the ascriptive hierarchies that are at the heart of caste ideology. This
dimension of Bhil subordination is brought into sharp relief if we consider
the nature of interactions between Adivasis and non-Adivasis in the market
towns that constitute important nodes of economic, politico-bureaucratic, and
symbolic power across the rural hinterland of western Madhya Pradesh. As
Baviskar (1995: 82–84, 103–105) notes, it is in the context of these towns that
44 Adivasis and the State

the boundaries between Adivasis and non-Adivasis become particularly clear—

in particular in relation to the precepts of a caste ideology in which tribals are
designated as ‘sub-human, as objects of contempt and ridicule mingled with
an underlying current of fear’ (Baviskar 2001: 366).8
Now, for the Bhils, their subordination in relation to non-Adivasis was
already manifest in the humiliations they would suffer as they traversed the
distance from their villages to the market towns by bus.9 It was entirely common
for conductors to order Bhils to vacate their seats for a caste Hindu passenger:

If we travelled by bus and we had gotten a seat for ourselves, and some big or
rich man boarded the bus, they would make us get up and give up our seat to
that person. Sometimes they would even throw us off the bus … There was
a lot of inequality and discrimination, a big gap between those at the top and
those at the bottom. (Interview, Tersingh, February 2010)

The orders would always be accompanied by abusive language and an

aggressive mode of address that served to emphasise the inferiority of the
Bhils in relation to caste Hindus: ‘“Get up, saala Bhilre—get lost! Go stand!”
This is what they would say to us’ (interview, Karansingh, November 2009).
The abuse would continue once they entered the market towns, where
markers of stigma and performances of subordination moulded the interactions
that took place between Adivasis and non-Adivasis. Many of the activists we
interviewed recounted how they were not allowed to move freely in the towns

8 Interactions between Bhils and caste Hindus, then, are shaped by notions of purity
and pollution and characterised by the ‘brutal contempt of the Hindu bazaaria for
adivasis because they eat meat and drink alcohol’ (Baviskar 1995: 82). Transgressions
of the scripts of caste-based ideology would typically result in what Mendelsohn
and Viciany (1998) refer to as ‘extravagant revenge’—see, for example, Baviskar
(2001). It is significant to note, in this respect, that Madhya Pradesh has the second
highest incidence of atrocities against Scheduled Tribes in India, surpassed only by
Rajasthan.
9 In the mixed villages of the Nimad plains, caste Hindus seem to have been practising
forms of untouchability in relation to Adivasis. For example, in narrating how tribals
would be treated when they attended social functions like weddings, Tersingh
remarked as follows: ‘When they had any marriages or weddings and they called
us, then at the time of serving, they would serve from the top so that they don’t
accidentally have to touch us or they would serve very little food to us. They would
themselves eat the good food and give us the stale food from yesterday’ (interview,
February 2010).
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 45

and had to congregate in groups in specific spots. Others spoke of how non-
Adivasis would expect the Bhils to sit at a lower height than them as they
carried out errands and transactions. For Bhil women, venturing into the
market towns would often entail being subjected to sexual harassment and
abuse (field notes and interviews, 2009–2010). And, as the following account
makes clear, the demands for labour services that were familiar from the village
setting would be made in the towns:

… when we would go to the bazaar, people wouldn’t give us water to drink

and they would make us do their housework—like fetching wood or water. It
was very common for them to abuse us; it was a standard thing to do. And if
we ever made a mistake, they would beat us also. They would make us clean
their toilets and garbage, and wash their clothes also. And at every opportunity
they would shout very bad abuse at us. (Interview, Bhukaliya, September 2009)

The experience of humiliation and insult in the market towns was

compounded by the material disadvantages that Bhils encountered in their
dealings with the local commercial class of seths (traders) and sahukars
(moneylenders).10 In selling surplus grain to caste Hindu traders, Bhils found
themselves persistently cheated and short-changed: ‘They would give us five
rupees for grain that was worth ten rupees. In this way they took all our grain
from us … For this reason they became rich and began to build big houses’
(interview, Maganbhai, April 2010).
Borrowing money from the sahukars was an equally exploitative affair in
which Bhils—in blatant violation of the Madhya Pradesh Scheduled Tribes
Sahukar Act of 197211—were charged exorbitant interest rates when they
took loans of seed or money: ‘They would charge very high interest rates
from us—double, triple, sometimes four times the amount we had borrowed’
(interview, Tersingh, February 2010). The moneylenders would demand
collateral—sometimes in the form of land, but more often silver jewellery—
and those who defaulted on their loans often found themselves dispossessed

10 I explore the historical origins of Bhil subordination to moneylenders and traders in

the next chapter. See Hardiman (1996) for a seminal study of usury in western India.
11 The Act stipulates that the annual rate of interest on unsecured loans cannot exceed
12 per cent, and on secured loans it cannot be more than 6 per cent per annum.
Moreover, detailed records must be kept of the objects that are held by moneylenders as
security, and it is illegal to keep objects, land, or animals that are used in agricultural
operations (see Banerjee 2002: 18).
46 Adivasis and the State

of precious assets: ‘Many times we were not able to get our jewellery back
because the sahukar charged such high interest rates that we couldn’t repay
our loans. So our jewellery remained with him only’ (interview, Gujaria, April
2010). And finally, sahukars would often resort to heavy-handed and violent
methods when they collected debts from Adivasi borrowers (field notes and
interviews, 2009–2010).12
Ultimately, in looking at the accounts that activists offered of their
relationship to the state and the market towns, what emerges are narratives that
revolve around being enmeshed in a web of overwhelmingly powerful vested
interests; as Dediya put it: ‘This whole system to skin us had been put in place’
(interview, April 2010). Within this web, the lines between state personnel
and dominant caste Hindu groups are often blurred, and the two groups were
typically defined by what they tended to have in common, namely a violent
proclivity for appropriating assets from the Bhils:

When we would go to work on our fields the patwari would ask for a map of
the field and ask for money. When we went to the tehsil, they would say: ‘This
much money will be necessary.’ If we go to the babu [official], he takes money;
if we go to the typing-wallah, then he demands a cut for himself. Everywhere
work only gets done if we pay money. In order to be able to pay our way we
would have to go to the baniya, who would charge two or three times the
normal interest rate. Sometimes he could make as much as 500 rupees from a
loan of ten rupees. The patwari would harass us in his way, the tehsildar in his
way, and the sahukar in his way. Our goods were in their mouths. (Interview,
Nanibai, February 2010)

Indeed, this perception was also reflected in the ways in which village
activists would distinguish between themselves and state personnel. Very
often they would invoke markers of hierarchical difference related to attire,
such as the town dwellers’ wearing of trousers and shoes versus their own

12 This is just one of many ways in which Adivasis are exploited in the rural credit
systems. As Banerjee (2002: 13) notes, the siphoning off of rural credit is also a
common practice. For example, moneylenders typically arrange a deal with a bank
manager in which they will take out an agricultural loan in the name of an Adivasi
to whom they have previously extended credit. The bank manager will arrange for
the Adivasi to sign off on the loan, and then pocket a cut before handing the funds
over to the moneylender. The moneylender will in turn lend out this money to tribal
debtors at an interest rate that can range from 100 per cent to 150 per cent. By
contrast, the usual interest rate on an agricultural loan is around 20 per cent.
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 47

wearing of shorts and going barefoot, to distinguish between themselves and

state personnel:

Earlier, Adivasis didn’t have chappals. That’s why in the forest, whenever we
saw the mark of chappals, we could tell that a nakedar had come and we would
throw down our wood and run away. (Group interview, Attha, November 2009)
Earlier, if we saw some pant-wallah, we would run away. Whether it was
a doctor or a policeman didn’t matter. ‘The pant-wallah has come and he
will catch you’—this is what our elders would say. (Interview, Govindbhai,
February 2010)

This observation is corroborated by an argument made by Amit Bhatnagar—

one of the founding members of the KMCS, who has worked as an activist
in the region for more than 30 years—when I queried him about the nature
of the relationship between Bhil communities and the state. Recounting his
early impressions of Alirajpur, he argued that in the eyes of most Bhils, state
personnel were not different from the caste Hindus who resided in and reigned
over the market towns; rather, the main division was between ‘bazaariya,
people who live in the bazaar, and gaonliya, people who live in the village’
(interview, August 2009).
The fact that everyday tyranny was simultaneously both mediated through
the internal power relations of the Bhil communities and embedded in a wider
field of ascriptive hierarchies that sanctified Bhil subordination no doubt
contributed to another key feature of this state–society relationship—namely
its durability. As a state–society relation, everyday tyranny endured across
generations: ‘People—well, they had seen this happen for a long time, even
since before independence’, Dediya explained. He continued: ‘When the Raja’s
jeep or horses would pass by, they would all bow … And those people used to
… take whatever they wanted, so there was always a fear of the state and of
rule in that sense. So this was almost tradition’ (interview, Dediya, April 2010).
In fact, it was quite common for village activists to talk about how they had
witnessed the kind of interactions that defined everyday tyranny occurring
between state personnel and older generations in their communities: ‘When
we were small, these people used to harass our elders. This we have seen
with our own eyes. Whenever any government worker came here earlier, they
would demand a charpoy to sit on, and then they would demand food and
water’ (interview, Buriyabhai, April 2010). The extortion and violence that
they suffered in the present was thus seen as a persistent feature of Adivasi
48 Adivasis and the State

social conditions in western Madhya Pradesh: ‘The elders of our community

were subjected to the same exploitation and atrocities as we were’ (interview,
Bhukaliya, September 2010).
This in turn had important ramifications for how Bhils related to the
demands imposed on them by state personnel. Having seen their parents and
other elders comply with exactions from forest guards and police, the idea of
refusing such demands became unthinkable:

Q: Did you ever refuse to give money and chickens to the nakedar?
A: No—because our forefathers were also only acting like this. So who are
we to refuse? Whoever would come, we would give them chicken to eat. If
they asked for money, we would give them that too. (Interview, Dongarsingh,
February 2010)

In some cases it was quite clear that the received wisdoms of everyday
tyranny were deliberately passed down from generation to generation: ‘Our
elders would tell us that the sarkar is very bad. “The educated people and the
coat-wearing people, you should never confront them”—they would talk like
this’ (group interview, Attha, November 2009).13 Such instructions to comply
with corrupt demands and expectations of deference from state personnel were
of course intended to teach young Bhils how to stay out of harm’s way in a world
structured by profoundly unequal power relations, but the inculcation across
generations of deference and acquiescence also contributed to the reproduction
of everyday tyranny across time.
The fact that everyday tyranny endured over time and that its logic and
character was witnessed, experienced, and inculcated by multiple generations

13 Intergenerational exchanges and parental instructions such as those that are alluded to
in this statement can arguably be compared to the ways in which African American
parents in the Jim Crow South imparted lessons about ‘racial etiquette’—that is, the
set of scripted rules that undergirded the process through which white domination
and black subordination were negotiated on a daily basis and through face-to-face
interaction—to their children as a means of survival (see Ritterhouse 2006; Berrey
2009, 2015). In saying this, I am of course not suggesting that black subalternity
in the Jim Crow South and Bhil subalternity in postcolonial western India are fully
homologous, but rather pointing out what appears to be a significant parallel in terms
of how subaltern groups develop practices to negotiate and protect themselves from
the vagaries of power in everyday life.
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 49

had important consequences for how Bhil communities understood the state
and their own subordination to it. Developing his account of how subjection to
the state had deep historical roots in Alirajpur, Dediya went on to argue that
in the eyes of most ordinary villagers, corrupt exactions and violent coercion
appeared to be in accordance with the laws of the land:

People thought that these must be the rules—that there is some rule about
chickens, that beating people was the law, because the thanedars … represented
the law and they were always beating people up—so they thought that this must
be in accordance with the law. A lot of people assumed that these were the laws
and accepted them—and it became tradition. (Interview, Dediya, April 2010)

Similar statements were made by several of the village activists we

interviewed across the three districts of Alirajpur, Badwani, and Khargone. For
example, according to Sunil, an AMS activist residing just outside the town
of Badwani, villagers would think that state personnel had a right to make
demands for money or other assets, such as poultry and ghee: in other words,
the durability of everyday tyranny entailed that corrupt exactions and violent
coercion were routine affairs that had come to be perceived by the Bhils as the
prerogatives of the state and its personnel.

The Local Rationalities of Everyday Tyranny

‘People didn’t have any faith’, Dediya said. ‘I mean the thought had got stuck
in their heads that these problems are not within our control, that it is not for
us to question how things are. This will always happen because it has always
happened. They didn’t have any confidence … that they could change things’
(interview, April 2010). Dediya’s statement—a statement corroborated by
many other activist narratives—captures something essential about the local
rationalities that had emerged in the context of everyday tyranny, namely that
Bhil Adivasis throughout western Madhya Pradesh had come to negotiate
their subalternity through practices of acquiescence and deference in relation
to the local state and its personnel. As the above account of the anatomy of
everyday tyranny makes clear, rapacious demands for bribes and chanda were
heeded, unlawful coercion went unchallenged, and Bhil subordination was
obediently performed according to the expectations of forest guards, police,
and patwaris. These practices seem to have been grounded, above all, in the
certainty that defiance would provoke violent reprisals from state personnel
and village elites: ‘If we refused, we would be isolated’, Dediya explained, ‘but
50 Adivasis and the State

the police, the patel, and the patwari who made all these demands would be
united, and because of this we were forced to give. And if we didn’t give, then
we were beaten up.’
Practices of acquiescence and deference were closely related to the meanings
that Bhils ascribed to their relationship to the state. When activists spoke of
how they had perceived the state and its personnel they would return, time
and again, to representations of the state as a God-like entity—they would
refer, quite literally, to the state as Bhagwan—and themselves as inferior
underlings: ‘The tehsil-wallah, the patwari, the chaprasi—if any one of these
people said anything, then it felt absolutely right. They were gods and we had
no knowledge. Our job was just to work on the khet and do mazdoori [wage
labour] to fill our stomachs. What can the poor and the kisan do anyway?’
(Group interview, Attha, November 2009). Another way in which political
subordination was represented was in contrasts between the sarkar as ‘big’—a
term that was used to denote a despotic and all-powerful being whose biddings
were to be obeyed—and Adivasis as ‘small’—that is, as subjects bound by a
duty to obey. An activist of the AMS put this across as follows:

Everybody would say and think that the sarkar is the biggest among us—the
bazaariya-log are big and whatever they say must be done … They thought that
the hands of the sarkar were very big. Whatever the authorities say, that must be
done. The village had no status at all. (Interview, Bhimsingh, February 2010)

Kulsingh—also a veteran of the AMS—drew on the same register of

meaning to explain how ordinary villagers would think of their relationship
to the state:

Our people always thought that they were very small and that the government
was very big. Even though the government was based in Delhi, we used to be
afraid here in our villages and thought that there was nothing bigger than the
government … We thought the jungle, water, and even the goats belonged
to the government … even if they tried to take away our women we would
say that this is the long arm of the sarkar acting. We would regard the sarkar
to be very big and felt that nothing could happen without the government’s
permission. (Interview, November 2009)

In trying to understand how acquiescence and deference had come to

define the local rationalities through which Bhil Adivasis negotiated everyday
tyranny, it is useful to think of these practices and meanings as emerging out
of an ‘emotional disposition’ (Gould 2009: 34) that had been moulded by the
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 51

lived experience of subalternity. More specifically, acquiescence and deference

seem to have been grounded in resignation and fear as a set of ‘cementing
emotions’—that is, emotions that work in such a way as to reproduce regnant
relations of power (see Flam 2005: 19–20). Resignation typically came to the
fore when we prompted activists to reflect on how they felt about the constant
exactions and threats that they were subjected to: ‘We would feel bad’, Dediya
said with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘but what could we do?’
When we queried Ringnya—a Bhil activist from Khargone district—as to
whether people in local communities were aware that the corrupt demands
they were subject to were in fact unlawful, his response was suffused with a
similar sense that their perceptions of right and wrong were of little consequence
given the power that was wielded by state personnel: ‘What is wrong and
what is right? We had to give—otherwise we would be beaten up’ (interview,
February 2010). A group of village activists from the AMS expressed similar
sentiments as they offered the following pithy reflection on the violence of
the forest guards: ‘Earlier they would beat us up. What was, it was’ (interview,
February 2010).
This pervasive sense of resignation is perhaps best understood as ‘a
psychological adaptation to the state of being without power’ (Gaventa
1988: 17)—and the impacts of this adaptation were amplified by the fact
that resignation was closely interlaced with a deep and widespread fear of
the state and its personnel. A veteran activist of the KMCS explained this
in the following way: ‘They would take all these things from us by force and
by beating us. Whoever would oppose them, they would call that person and
beat him even more. Because we were afraid of their beatings, we couldn’t say
much.’ The conversation continued:

Q: Did you ever complain against this behaviour?

A: Our elders were frightened that if we tried to complain against those people,
then they would beat us a lot and maybe catch us and take us away somewhere.
Q: So did you ever refuse to give them things like chickens or money?
A: If we asked them ‘What have we done wrong?’ then they would say ‘This
is what you have done!’ and then they would take money from us and call us
all sorts of bad things. They would threaten us that if we didn’t give them
money, then they would catch us and throw us in jail.
Q: How did you deal with things like this? How did you feel about it?
52 Adivasis and the State

A: Whatever we thought, we had to listen to the patel, the sarpanch, and

the minister. We were made to feel frightened every step of the way and for
everything.

In day-to-day interactions with the state and its personnel, it was the
knowledge that being subjected to violence was a distinct and real possibility
that was the main source of fear: ‘We Adivasis would meet all their demands
without creating a fuss’, recounted Lilubhai, a Bhil activist from one of the
villages that are being submerged by the reservoir of the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
‘If anyone refused to give’, he continued, ‘then they would beat that person and
start harassing him—demanding chickens and ghee and other things from that
person. So because of this fear, nobody was willing to raise their voice against
them’ (interview, April 2010).
This is not to say that resignation and fear were the only emotions to emerge
in response to the everyday tyranny of the local state. Quite naturally, anger also
figured in activist accounts. Consider, for example, how Kulsingh recounted his
bitter memories of how forest guards would behave as they came to his village:

One time, I had to take some new land, and so I had to wash their feet and
their chappals. I had to make mutton in ghee for them and give them milk to
drink also. If they stayed at my place for a night, I would have to provide them
with a good bed and with chickens also. They didn’t take just one—I had to
cook two chickens and even then they wouldn’t give any to me. We would
watch them eat like dogs, and they would lick their fingers with such relish.

Hinting at the insult that would routinely be added to injury by the

asymmetry of these interactions, he added: ‘And then, when we went to the
bazaar, nobody would even recognise us there’ (interview, November 2009).
Kulsingh’s account is only one example of how Bhil activists would convey
the anger that they felt towards the injustices and indignities that they were
subjected to. But crucially, the anger that they spoke of would never find a
confrontational outlet: ‘We would talk amongst ourselves’, a group of activists
said, ‘but things would never go further than that’ (group interview, Attha,
November 2009). At most, defiance found an expression in individual attempts
to evade the exactions of state personnel, for example, by concealing evidence
of having made use of forest resources: freshly cut timber would be smeared
with mud, buried in the ground, or blackened with the soot of burnt sagwan
(teak) leaves in order to escape the attention of the forest guards (field notes and
interviews, 2009–2010). Yet overt defiance—for example, refusing a demand
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 53

for a bribe or for chanda—remained beyond the perceived horizon of possibility:

‘People would feel angry, and they would curse too. But what could they do?
They had to give’ (interview, Nanibai, February 2010).
The fact that resentment and anger remained muted and spoken only—to
paraphrase James Scott (1990)14 —behind the backs of the powerful tells us

14It is with some hesitation that I invoke Scott’s work in my analysis of subalternity in
the Bhil heartland, seminal though his analyses of everyday forms of resistance and
hidden transcripts certainly are. Of course, his argument that subaltern groups often
choose to avoid resistance in the form of open confrontation with dominant groups,
due to an awareness of the likelihood that they will be subjected to severe repression
and other retributive measures, resonates well with some of the key dimensions of
the local rationalities that undergirded everyday tyranny in the Bhil communities.
However, other aspects of his argument are more problematic. Chief among these is
his rejection of the possibility that subaltern groups can be complicit in the imaginaries
that legitimise domination, and—concomitantly—the claim that acquiescence is only
ever a feignful performance of an ideological script, and never a measure of some
degree of consent.
   In conceptual terms, these claims are at their most problematic in his discussions
of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony (Scott 1985: chapter 8, 1990: chapter 4). As Timothy
Mitchell (1990: 553) has pointed out, Scott defines hegemony in very narrow terms
as ‘domination at the level of ideas’—that is, as a form of false consciousness. As
Mitchell notes—and as should be clear from my discussion of Gramsci’s perspectives
in the introductory chapter to this book—this is not the way that Gramsci uses the
term. Most importantly in this respect is a key point that I made in the introductory
chapter, namely that hegemony—to use William Roseberry’s (1994: 77) formulation—
is never ‘a finished and monolithic ideological formation’ but always ‘a problematic,
contested, political process of struggle’. It is necessary to add to these objections that
in Gramsci’s work, subaltern consciousness is never posited as being either entirely
false—that is, defined and circumscribed by dominant ideological scripts—or entirely
oppositional.
  Rather, Gramsci (1971: 327–328) thought of subaltern consciousness as being
composite and therefore contradictory. Thus, he argued that subaltern groups ‘may
indeed have its own conception of the world’—a conception he referred to as ‘good
sense’—but this is intertwined with elements of dominant ideologies to create a
‘common sense’ that subaltern groups live by when their ‘conduct is not independent
and autonomous, but submissive and subordinate’ (see also Cox and Nilsen 2014:
66–68, 74–75; Robinson 2006; Crehan 2013). This brings us back to subalternity as
it was constituted in the Bhil heartland, for what we encounter in activist narratives
of how ordinary villagers lived their relationship to the local state fuses fear and
resignation—emotions that have a resonance with Scott’s perspective—with a certain
degree of consent and complicity—for example, the belief that the illicit claims of state
54 Adivasis and the State

something significant about the nature of the fear that permeated and moulded
the practices through which the Bhils negotiated everyday tyranny. Fear was
not present in the Bhil communities of western Madhya Pradesh in the form
of individual and transient responses to specific experiences of danger that the
term normally refers to, but rather in the collective and routinised form that
Linda Green (1996: 105) found to be present in indigenous communities living
in the context of civil war in Guatemala where fear had become ‘a way of life’.
Now, the ‘chronic fear’ that Green (1996: 230) depicts in her work was of course
associated with violence of a significantly different scale and intensity than that
which occurred in the Bhil communities in western Madhya Pradesh, as well
as with an entirely different political context and form of state.15 However,
the parallel is nevertheless suggestive in the sense that fear was integral to the
ways in which the Bhils lived their relationship to the state and to the ways in
which they experienced this durable relation of power in their daily lives (see
also Flam 2005: 23–24).
This becomes even more evident in light of how fear was an integral part
of the language that Bhil activists would mobilise to describe the relationship
between themselves and state personnel. ‘We people who live in the jungle aren’t
as frightened of the lions as we are of people who wear pants’, said Govindbhai,
an AMS activist from Badwani district. He explained the experience of living
in and with fear in evocative terms:

Our people were very afraid of the sarkar and the town. They would say that
they are like tigers when they are in the jungle. While they were never afraid
in the jungle, our elders were very afraid of the sarkar. They would sleep with
the tigers and live with them, and they did not fear them. But if anyone said

personnel were lawful and legitimate, and that state personnel were exalted whereas
ordinary villagers were lowly. The fact that these beliefs in turn co-existed with anger,
resentment, and bitterness as well as with practices that one might refer to as everyday
forms of resistance—a form of good sense, one might say—only adds to the reasons
why Scott’s reading ultimately fails to capture the complex character and dynamics of
subaltern consciousness and resistance (see also Theodossopoulos 2014).
15 In the context of Latin American dictatorships, systematic state terror dissolved and
isolated the civil institutions that could protect citizens from state power. This in turn
created an unprecedented level of personal insecurity among the citizenry—fear became
‘a paramount feature of social action … characterised by the inability of social actors
to predict the consequences of their behaviour because public authority is arbitrarily
and brutally exercised’ (Conradi, Fagen, and Garretón 1992: 2; see also Lechner 1992).
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 55

that the sarkar has said that things are like this, then they would believe this
to be true.

Indeed, fear, according to Govindbhai, was so deep-seated that it came to

inform an inferior sense of self under everyday tyranny: ‘So much fear was
inside us—not to go with the sarkar, not to climb any steps, not to educate our
children. What is the Adivasi? Nothing at all! We only know how to work hard’
(interview, February 2010). In other words, fear, along with resignation, can
be understood as constituting the foundational pillar of an ‘emotional habitus’
(Gould 2009: 34–35)—that is, a set of collective and only partly conscious
emotional dispositions shared by a social group—which contributed in crucial
ways to cementing the political subordination of the Bhils.
As Sumi Madhok (2003: 164) has noted in her work on the complex
articulations of women’s empowerment in rural Rajasthan, the ability to
make rights-based claims and to engage the state in a competent and assertive
manner requires a degree of ‘political literacy’, which she defines as ‘knowledge
not only of institutions, but also of the rules that govern their functioning’.
A recurring theme in activist accounts of how they related to the state prior
to their involvement with the KMCS and the AMS was that they lacked
knowledge of how the political and bureaucratic apparatuses of the state actually
worked and the rights- and law-based precepts underpinning these workings,
as well as the attendant skills necessary in order to practically engage with
these apparatuses and their various procedures—what in a slight extension of
Madhok’s choice of term I would call politico–bureaucratic literacy (field notes
and interviews, 2009–2010). Consequently, the same state that was fearsome
and overpowering was also opaque and unfamiliar to most ordinary Adivasis.
As one Bhil activist put it: ‘What is the state? Who is the ruler? Earlier we
didn’t know any of these things’ (interview, Jalsingh, February 2010).
In more specific terms, most of the activists that we interviewed would point
out how they were unaware of basic civil and political rights and entitlements:
‘Nobody knew anything about rights and entitlements before. If the forest
guard beat us, then people would say that this is their right. If the police-wallah
came to our home and took away two litres or five litres of daru, then people
thought that was their right’ (interview, Suraj, November 2009). Similarly,
activists would report that they were not aware of welfare and development
schemes that the state was supposed to implement and provide: ‘Nobody knew
that for this amount of work this amount of money has been allocated to the
village, or that if this work would be done, this amount of money would come
56 Adivasis and the State

to the village’ (interview, Barlibai, November 2009). Their lack of familiarity

with bureaucratic procedures—typically expressed in terms of being unable to
submit complaints against errant state personnel—was similarly debilitating:
‘At that time, we did not know how to complain … Who should complain?
How should we talk? All this we didn’t know … We were entirely dependent
on the patel. If anyone came forward with any matter, whatever the patel said
was regarded to be the truth. In those days, the patel was also a dalal ’ (group
interview, Kundar, April 2010). Ultimately, the lack of politico–bureaucratic
literacy converged with the emotional habitus of resignation and fear to
preclude collective mobilisation around oppositional claims: ‘People were
suppressed and there was nobody to tell us about the laws and the rules’, one
AMS activist said. ‘If we had to fight, what would we fight with?’ (interview,
Suraj, October 2010).

Concluding Remarks
In this chapter, I have explored how subalternity is constituted among the Bhil
Adivasis of western Madhya Pradesh.
Starting from the claim that poverty is a defining feature of subalternity
among Adivasis in general, and that this poverty is produced in crucial ways
by political subordination, my exploration proceeded through a detailed
mapping and analysis of the local state–society relationship that I refer to
as everyday tyranny. At the heart of everyday tyranny, I argued, is a set of
predatory interactions in which low-ranking state personnel impose corrupt
exactions on Bhil Adivasis, and sustain these impositions through violence
and coercion. The basic pattern that structured these interactions was one in
which state personnel would use their positions in law enforcement and the
provision of public services as levers by which to enforce illicit claims on the
Bhil communities. Everyday tyranny was bolstered, I argued, by the fact that
it was simultaneously mediated in and through internal power relations in the
Bhil communities and embedded in a wider social field of force in which the
ascriptive hierarchies of caste validate Adivasi subordination. Mediation and
embeddedness were important contributors to the durability of everyday tyranny
as a state–society relation in the Bhil communities of western Madhya Pradesh.
From this mapping, I moved on to consider how subaltern Bhils negotiated
their incorporation into this state–society relation in their daily lives. I did
this through an analysis of a local rationality in which practices and meanings
of acquiescence and deference figured as the central elements. Acquiescence
 ‘So Much Fear Was Inside Us’ 57

and deference, I argued, were grounded in part in an emotional habitus of

resignation and fear—Bhil Adivasis had resigned themselves to the vagaries
of the overwhelming power that they were subject to and feared the capacity
of the state for violent reprisal against acts of defiance—and partly in a lack of
politico-bureaucratic literacy which rendered the state opaque and unfamiliar to
most ordinary tribals. The convergence of these emotional dispositions and the
lack of knowledge and skills about the political and bureaucratic apparatuses
of the state ultimately precluded collective mobilisation and rights-based
claims-making in the Bhil communities of western Madhya Pradesh. In sum,
then, everyday tyranny was a state–society relation predicated on political
subordination and which in effect denied Bhil Adivasis even the most basic
democratic rights and constitutional entitlements.
Now, considering the nature of everyday tyranny as a state–society relation,
it could well be objected that a Gramscian orientation towards hegemonic
processes such as the one outlined in the introduction to this book is of little
relevance in terms of understanding this particular form of subalternity.
Hegemony, after all, involves some degree of consent, constructed in and
through civil society, but the state–society relations that have been mapped
and analysed in this chapter are primarily coercive in character and constructed
in and through political society—that is, the formal machinery of government
and its technologies of rule. In a context where the de jure democracy of the
postcolonial state was so blatantly negated by the de facto tyranny of the local
state apparatus, surely it makes little sense to interpret state–society relations
in terms of the construction of hegemony?
As much as such an objection might make immediate sense, there are good
reasons to not jump to such a conclusion. The reason for this is—as I pointed
out in the introductory chapter—that such a reading of Gramsci is arguably
based on an overstated distinction between consent and coercion in hegemonic
processes. As Peter Thomas (2009b: 164) has noted, Gramsci did not think of
hegemony as a form of rule devoid of coercion and based purely on consent;
rather, he was concerned with deciphering ‘the dialectical integration of
hegemony with domination, of consent and coercion, united in their distinction’
in specific historical conjunctures (cf. Hart 2013: 191–193). What this means
in concrete terms is that at specific points in time, some subaltern groups will
find that their claims and demands are conceded and accommodated within
hegemonic formation—with a view, of course, to defusing the subversive
potential of their collective agency—while other subaltern groups will find
themselves subjected to various forms and degrees of coercion.
58 Adivasis and the State

There is no standard formula that enables us to predict which subaltern

group ends up at what end of the spectrum of coercion and consent. Rather,
these are contingent equations that have to be studied in terms of specific
hegemonic processes, with a view towards disentangling how the connective
tissues woven through state formation in particular locales incorporate some
subaltern groups on terms of accommodation and others on terms of coercion.
In the context of the Bhil heartland, such a mode of enquiry will have to take
into account the transition from precolonial forms of rule to colonial forms of
rule and focus on how Bhil subordination originates in the transformations of
relations of sovereignty that resulted from this transition. And such an approach
would also have to untangle the dynamics through which this subordination
was reproduced in the postcolonial context. This requires a fine-grained study
of the conflictual encounter between colonial state-making projects and Bhil
resistance as it played out across time from the 1820s to the twilight of the
Raj, as well as a discussion of how the political subordination of the Bhils
in postcolonial India is linked in fundamental ways to the construction of
Congress hegemony in the erstwhile princely states of present-day western
Madhya Pradesh. This task—essentially a historicisation of contemporary
forms of subalternity—is at the centre of the next two chapters of this book.
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 59

‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’

Colonial State Space and the Origins
of Everyday Tyranny

The Bheel now feels a relish for that industry which renders subsistence secure,
and life peaceful and comfortable: he unites with the Ryut [peasant] in the
cultivation of those fields which he once ravaged and laid waste, and protects
the village, the traveller, and the property of Government, which were formerly
the objects of his spoliation; the extensive wilds, which heretofore afforded
him cover during his bloody expeditions, are now smiling with fruitful crops;
and population, industry, and opulence are progressing throughout the land.
(Graham 1856: 222)

This is how D. C. Graham, a colonial officer writing not long before the
outbreak of the Great Uprising in 1857, described the impact of a quarter-
century of colonial rule on the Bhils of Khandesh—a region in today’s north-
western Maharashtra,1 where the first sustained encounters between the British
and the Bhils took place. The former Bhil Agent’s writings—contained in A
Brief Historical Sketch of the Bheel Tribes, Inhabiting the Province of Khandesh—are
expressive of two central and entwined objectives of colonial state-making in
the region, namely the promotion of settled agriculture and the pacification
of the ‘hitherto untameable Bhil banditti’ (ibid: 223). These objectives were
pursued not just in Khandesh, which fell under direct British rule, but also
in the princely states that made up large parts of the Bhil heartland after the
end of the Anglo-Maratha wars in 1818. It is the central contention of this
chapter that this project of colonial state-making spawned the power relations
that constitute the kernel of contemporary Bhil subalternity.

1 Khandesh is made up of the present-day districts of Jalgaon, Dhule, Nandurbar, and

parts of Nasik district.
60 Adivasis and the State

In order to understand why and how the project of colonial state-making

was so significant in terms of bringing about the political subordination which
is manifest today in the form of everyday tyranny, it is necessary to take into
account how this project pivoted on a significant restructuring of the relations
of authority and sovereignty that existed between Bhil forest polities and the
states of Rajput and Maratha rulers in the precolonial era. These were tributary
states—that is, states undergirded by tributary modes of production. As John
Haldon (1993) has argued, tributary states were based on a political economy
of appropriation that was constituted of a latticework of relations between fief-
holders and landowners who made up a ruling class that often constituted a
political counterweight to the monarchical ruler. As a consequence, tributary
states were defined by an inherent contradiction between ‘the ruler or ruling
elite and those who actually appropriate surplus on their part’ (ibid: 157). This
contradiction manifested itself in a form of governance that was not centred on
the consolidated extension and administration of power and authority outwards
from a singular central point situated within a clearly bounded territorial space,
but that hinged instead on the ability of kingly rulers ‘to manage the ebb and
flow of this internal tension that was part and parcel of the historical dynamics
of all traditional agrarian subject-peasant … societies’ (Berktay 1991: 160; see
also Banaji 2010a: 23–40).
If we consider the longue durée from approximately the eighth to the
eighteenth century in the Bhil heartland, we can discern this dynamic—a
dynamic that Haldon (1993: 219) refers to as a ‘dialectic of centrifugal and
centripetal tendencies’—in the manner in which Bhil forest polities2 were

2 Precolonial Bhil communities are arguably best thought of as being founded on kin-
ordered modes of production. Eric Wolf (1982: 88–99) defined ‘kin-ordered modes
of production’ as modes of production in which kinship through its various symbolic
constructions relates social actors to each other in such a way as to ‘permit people in
variable ways to call on the share of social labour carried by each, in order to … effect
the necessary transformations of nature’ (ibid: 91). The chief difference between kin-
ordered modes of production and tributary modes of production (as well as capitalist
modes of production) is that the latter is based on a division of the population into ‘a
class of surplus producers and a class of surplus takers’ which in turn renders necessary
‘mechanisms of domination to ensure that surpluses are transferred on a predictable
basis from one class to the other’ (ibid: 99). In kin-ordered modes of production, the
exercise of political power depends ‘essentially upon the management of consensus
among clusters of participants’ (ibid: 99). Among the Bhils, this was achieved in the
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 61

neither wholly autochthonous nor wholly subordinated to Rajput and Maratha

states. Rather, their position in the regional political economy was one of partial
and liminal incorporation, in which their political authority was recognised in
ways that were expressive of what Ajay Skaria (1999) has referred to as ‘shared
sovereignty’.
The first historical example of this can be found in the relations that came
into existence between Bhils and the Rajput rulers of Mewar and Dungarpur
between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries in what is today southern
Rajasthan.3 As Chattopadhyaya (1997: 62) has pointed out, it is very likely
that ‘the territorial expansion of what came to be known as Rajput power
was achieved, at least in certain areas, at the expense of the erstwhile tribal
settlements’. Conquest and dispossession, however, was only one dimension
of this process. As Kapur (2002) argues, Bhil–Rajput relations were also
characterised by the construction of alliances and negotiation of power. While
Bhil integration into the fabric of Rajput rule was neither seamless nor free
from antagonism and conflict, it was nevertheless quite comprehensive.
Indeed, the partial integration of Bhils in relation to the Rajput states
emerges quite clearly from several Bhil creation myths. In these myths, a claim
is typically made about the existence of an ancestral relationship with a Rajput
lineage, which is then broken or violated as the result of ‘a wicked deed, an
incestuous union, or a defect’ or alternatively following ‘a misfortune, a quarrel,
or by mistake’ (Deliège 1985: 29, 32; see also Naik 1956: 15–17; Kumar 1997:
18–19; Prasad 1991: 45–46). This integration spanned the economic in the
form of exchange and employment, the political in the form of the recognition
of Bhil authority in certain parts of the Rajput domains, and the cultural by
virtue of the important role played by Bhil chieftains in rituals of state and
the honorific economy of the Rajput polities (see also Fattori 2012). This is
perhaps most clearly evidenced by the pivotal role that Bhils once played in
Rajput coronation ceremonies. When a new king was installed, his coronation
had to be sanctified by a Bhil chief who would apply blood from his own thumb

form of the bhauband—that is, a group of followers that were closely associated with
specific chieftains, who in turn secured the loyalty of these followers through the
redistribution of various forms of revenue (see Skaria 1999: 82–83).
3 The Rajput states initially emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of the Gupta
empire, as distinct clans began to emerge as ‘independent dynasties ruling over
kingdoms’ and espousing a distinct Kshatriya identity (see also Thapar 2002: 418;
Chattopadhyaya 1997; Kapur 2002).
62 Adivasis and the State

to make a red tika on the king’s forehead and then seat the king on his throne
(Naik 1956: 19; Deliège 1985: 50–51). 4
Another significant example of the partial incorporation and liminal position
of Bhil forest polities in relation to precolonial tributary states can be found in
the structuring of relations between Bhils and Marathas in Khandesh during
the eighteenth century. Sumit Guha (1999) has documented how Maratha
rulers acknowledged the right of Bhil chieftains to claim dues from villages
in the Khandesh plains, as well as the right to levy tolls on traffic that moved
through mountain passes that they controlled. In exchange for the recognition
of such rights, Bhils performed services in villages located close to forested
areas—for example, as village watchmen and wood cutters. Ajay Skaria’s (1999)
study of the Bhils of the Dangs reveals a similar dynamic. Bhil chiefs in this
region would raid peasant villages in the plains of Khandesh and in Baroda
state in order to obtain resources that they would in turn redistribute to secure
the loyalty of their followers. Such raids, Skaria argues, cannot be understood
outside the logic of shared sovereignty that prevailed in the region: the payment
of dues—or giras haks as they were known—amounted to a recognition of Bhil
authority on the part of Maratha rulers (see also Skaria 1998).

4 According to James Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, the origins of this
ceremony can be traced back to the usurpation of the Bhil state of Idar by Goha, the
ancestor of the Sisodia Rajputs, who as the first Rajput ruler of the state received a tika
of blood from a Bhil (see Tod 1920: 259). T. B. Naik (1956: 18) has commented on this
legend that it functions as ‘a euphemism for the fact that the Rajputs conquered and
dispossessed the Bhils of Idar … ’ However, he adds to this that there is an element
of negotiation reflected in the symbolism of the coronation ritual. Clearly, the Rajput
rulers ‘did not consider themselves to derive the land merely from the conquest, but
wished to show that it passed to them by the free consent of the Bhils’ (ibid: 19). The
element of negotiation and conciliation also appears in another story that locates the
role of Bhils in the coronation ceremony as originating in their protection of Bhappa
Rawal—Goha’s descendant and founder of the Guhila dynasty of Mewar. Bhappa,
who had been brought up among the Bhils, was protected by Bhil chiefs when the
kings of the Solanki lineage threatened his life (see Tod 1920: 262). In this account,
too, the meaning of the ceremony is considered ambiguous: writing in the Rajputana
Gazetteers, K. D. Erskine noted that ‘the Rajputs considered [the ceremony] to be a
sign of Bhil allegiance, but it seems to have been rather a relic of Bhil power’ (cited in
Sen 2003: 256). Ultimately, as Deliège (1985: 58) suggests, this ambiguity expresses
precisely the liminal position that Bhils occupied between being, on the one hand,
subjugated royal subjects and, on the other hand, rebellious autochthons opposing
Rajput supremacy.
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 63

In what today is western Madhya Pradesh, Bhil communities had by the late
eighteenth century become embedded in a multi-tiered political structure that
had emerged since the Peshwa defeated the Mughal army in 1728 and divided
Malwa between his leading generals: Scindia, Holkar, and Pawar (Gordon
1977, 1994: chapter 1, 1998: chapter 5). At the apex of this structure sat the
Peshwa at Pune, and immediately below him the Maratha conquerors who
between them controlled the Malwa–Nimad region.5 Below the Marathas in
turn stood several major and minor Rajput clans who controlled states such
as Alirajpur and Badwani. Within this structure, relations between Bhils and
Rajput rulers were similar to those that have been described above. Not only
did Bhils play important ritual roles in political ceremonies, but they also
collected tolls on roads running through areas that fell under their control,
collected dues from local courts for their services, and claimed customary dues
in kind and in money from villages in the plains (Kela 2012: 61). Such claims
were enforced by raiding if necessary, and local Rajput elites ‘could only govern
in partnership with Bhil clans: if this partnership preserved them from the
unwelcome attention of larger states, it also placed insuperable obstacles in
the untrammelled exercise of their authority’ (ibid: 73).
It is against the backdrop of the partial integration and liminal position of
Bhil forest polities in relation to tributary states that colonial state-making
assumes particular importance, in terms of understanding the origins and
emergence of everyday tyranny as a contemporary state–society relation. The
coming of the British Raj in the Bhil heartland entailed a transition away
from rule based on shared sovereignty and towards rule based on the premise
of singular sovereignty. In many ways, this transition reflected the fact that
by the 1820s the rule of the East India Company had come to be increasingly
oriented towards the pacification of colonial subjects, as the military asserted
itself as the dominant force within the Company state (Washbrook 2001: 405;
see also Bayly 1988).
However, my contention is that what unfolded in the Bhil heartland from
the 1820s onwards initially foreshadowed and gradually came to be coeval with
an agenda of state-making that emerged after the accumulated contradictions
of Company rule exploded in the Great Uprising of 1857—namely the making
of what Manu Goswami (2004) has referred to as ‘colonial state space’.
According to Goswami, British rule after 1857 saw mercantile colonialism give

5 See Jain (1972), Day (1965), Singh (1993), and Srinivasulu (1996) for the history of
precolonial Malwa.
64 Adivasis and the State

way to territorial colonialism—that is, a form of colonialism which did not

merely base appropriation on tribute and trade, but sought instead to develop
colonised territories as ‘substantially and functionally internal supplements of
a globe-spanning and hierarchically configured imperial space economy’ (ibid:
44). Revolving around the transformation of the socioeconomic geography of
colonial India, the consolidation of modes of state power, and the deepening
of the reach of state-generated schemes of classification, this transition
witnessed the emergence of a new colonial regime whose claims to rule were
‘comprehensive’ and whose institutional reach was ‘invasive’ and ‘tentacular’
(ibid: 31).
In the following discussion, I disinter how the making of colonial state space
changed the terms of Bhil integration into the regional political economy of
western India in a way that produced the economic and political subalternity
that I portrayed in the previous chapter. At the heart of my analytical narrative
lies a Gramscian concern with delineating how the crystallisation of Bhil
subalternity revolves around modern state formation as a hegemonic process.
I begin the narrative in this chapter by investigating how colonial state-
making simultaneously transformed the economic geography and consolidated
modes of state power in the Bhil heartland.* In the next chapter, I first shift
the focus of attention to the ways in which Bhil communities negotiated the
construction of colonial state space through various forms of contention from
the 1820s to the 1920s, before showing how Bhil subalternity was reproduced
and entrenched after 1947 as a result of the way in which the Indian National
Congress constructed its hegemony as it established itself as a state-bearing
political party in the postcolonial context. Through these steps I hope to
elucidate how the subalternity of Bhil Adivasis flows from the ways in which
they have come to be woven into historically specific equations of consent and
coercion, and to prepare the ground for the analysis of contemporary forms of
resistance that constitutes the second part of this book.

Transforming the Economic Geography: Sedentarisation and

Forest Enclosures
In the decades prior to British conquest, Khandesh had been devastated by
endemic conflict, severe famines, and crop failures that caused cultivators to
leave the region in large numbers. According to the colonial annals, when the
British assumed power in the region in 1818, they found it ‘overgrown with
forest and brushwood, the towns in ruins, the villages destroyed, the soil though
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 65

fertile and well watered untilled, the roads cut up, the country empty of people,
and the revenue collected with great difficulty and generally with the help of
military force’ (Khandesh Gazetteer 1880: 272). In this context, the Khandesh
Bhils had taken to raiding widely across the plains; peasants, the Khandesh
Gazetteer reports, were so afraid of the Bhils who ‘carried sword and fire over
the greater part of the province’ that they refused to accept advances from the
authorities for seed and tillage (ibid: 257; see also Paranjape 1981; Guha 1999).
The task of making ‘quiet and obedient cultivators’ (Graham 1856: 219) out
of the unruly Bhils whose livelihoods had been based primarily on combinations
of shifting cultivation, hunting and gathering, and the sale of timber and forest
produce was therefore a particularly pressing one from a British point of view.6
At the behest of Mountstuart Elphinstone, Lieutenant-Governor of Bombay
from 1819 to 1827, Khandesh was divided into three Bhil Agencies, each of
which was placed under the charge of resident European officers known as Bhil
Agents. Efforts to promote settled agriculture among the Bhils were focussed
on the southern Bhil Agency, covering the districts of Jamner, Bhadgaon,
and Chalisgaon, as well as the districts near the Satmala range. Two British
officers were put in charge of ‘bringing the Satmala Bhils to tillage’ (Khandesh
Gazetteer 1880: 259). Their efforts appeared to be quite successful as ‘the Bhils
continued to settle in the plains; the south colonies prospered and many of
the wild Bhils in the east of Jamner took to agriculture’. Indeed, in 1854, the
gazetteer of the East India Company claimed in a celebratory tone that ‘the
Bheels, from outcasts have become members of civil society, daily rising in
respectability and becoming useful and obedient subjects of the state’ (cited
in Paranpaje 1981: 6; see also Graham 1856: 220).
However, a more measured assessment was presented by Captain J. Rose who
served as a military commander in the region in the mid-1850s. In his view, it
could not be said that the Bhils had become ‘successful and prosperous farmers’
as they lacked experience in cultivation (Rose 1856: 225). Agricultural land in
the jungle tended to become unproductive as the soil was not manured; crops
did not grow satisfactorily and could not be efficiently guarded. As a result,
the Bhils would often earn their keep by working as crop-guards for other,
non-Adivasi peasants (ibid: 225). This situation worsened with the transition

6 Indeed, it is quite evident that the primary purpose of the sedentarisation of the
Bhils was to work towards their pacification. For example, D. C. Graham (1856: 222)
argued that the ‘addition that may accrue to the revenue’ if Bhils succeed as ‘sturdy
cultivators’ was of ‘secondary’ importance compared to the goal of securing ‘to the
country a state of quiet and repose unknown to it for nearly half a century’.
66 Adivasis and the State

from Company Raj to colonial rule proper from the late 1850s onwards, as
processes were set in train that spurred land alienation and the growth of
bonded labour in Khandesh.
During the early 1850s, survey settlements had been implemented and
revenue levels assessed anew. In addition, the administrative structure in the
district was streamlined in order to function more effectively, and a civil court
system was established. By the early 1860s, railroads had connected Khandesh
to Bombay—one of the key nodes through which colonial India was linked to
the orbits of global capitalist accumulation. The sum effect of these changes
was to encourage a massive and rapid influx of Gujar peasants who settled in
Khandesh and expanded cotton production (see Paranpaje 1981; Upadhyay
1986). Taking advantage of the global market opportunities that the US Civil
War had generated in this sector, the Gujars, with the enthusiastic backing
of the colonial state, colonised the fertile lands along the Tapi river, and thus
propelled a significant expansion of tillage in Khandesh. In 1852, an average
of 7 to 8 per cent of all land in the district was cultivated; by 1878, districts
like Nandurbar, Shahada, and Taloda had witnessed increases in tilled area
ranging from 60 via 72 to 78 per cent respectively (Upadhyay 1986: 46).
Writing in the late 1860s, a British official lauded the changes that had taken
place in Khandesh in the following way: ‘To one who knew Khandesh twenty
years ago … the change seems wonderful … Now, save in parts of Chalisgaon
on the borders of the Nizam’s territory, no tracts of good land lie waste …
Cultivation has been pushed almost to the very slopes of the Satpura hills,
and even in the west—where the climate is bad and population scanty—the
area of arable waste has been immensely curtailed’ (Khandesh Gazetteer 1880:
297). The advance of commercial farming, however, was far from a blessing
for the Bhils in Khandesh. Rather, as demand for land and labour increased,
the rise of commercial agriculture in the region created ‘the basis for the initial
subsumption of the Bhils by the landed gentry’ (Upadhyay 1986: 46). The
dynamic that was set in train was one in which Bhils became indebted to the
Gujars, who had also established themselves as the key moneylenders in the
region. Bhils would take out loans at usurious interest rates for cultivation, for
paying taxes, and for consumption. As prices for agricultural produce declined
in the late 1860s and crop yields were undermined by scanty rains, Gujar
creditors increasingly forced their Bhil debtors into the newly installed and
profoundly unfamiliar system of the civil courts, and effectively took control
of their land (Paranjape 1981; Upadhyay 1986).
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 67

Dispossession compelled the Bhils to turn to agricultural labour under

conditions of semi-bondage in order to survive. The scenario is depicted in
the Khandesh Gazetteer in great detail:

Of late the demand for Bhil labour has increased, and wages have greatly risen.
On the other hand, the settlement of their disputes with their employers has
been transferred from the magistrates to the civil courts, and the Gujar, by the
ignorance and carelessness of the Bhil, has him again at his mercy. The Gujar
agrees with the Bhil that the Bhil is to till the Gujar’s land and that they are
to share the produce. An advance is made to the Bhil to buy bullocks, and a
bond is drawn up with a premium of twenty-five per cent. The Bhil grows the
crops and is fed by the Gujar. At the end of the year the Gujar takes the crop
and puts off the Bhil on the ground that he has to pay for the bullocks. Next
year the Bhil again gets clothes and food and is told he has still something to
pay. He asks for a settlement of his account, and as a preliminary is sent for a
new stamped paper. With a few soft words, some money to buy a robe for his
wife, and a little liquor, a new bond is made, the meaning of which the Bhil
does not understand, and he goes back to his work hoping for better luck next
year. (Khandesh Gazetteer 1880: 197)

Better luck, however, generally eluded the Bhil debtors, who would find
themselves subjected to new claims by their Gujar creditors: ‘The master has
still some outstanding debts and the threat of the civil court again brings the
Bhil to order. Thus things go on from year to year’ (ibid: 198). Another form
of bonded labour often resorted to by Bhils who had been dispossessed of
their land was annual labour mortgages: a landless labourer and a rich peasant
would sign a saalkhat (a labour mortgage bond) in which the former pledges
to work for the latter for a full year against a stipulated sum of money that is
advanced to the saaldar (the labourer) either in part or in whole. According to
the Khandesh Gazetteer, it would take a Bhil labourer ‘from three to four years
to work off a debt of Rs. 100’ (ibid: 199).
Khandesh was arguably the area within the Bhil heartland that witnessed
dispossession in its most direct form—that is, land alienation as a result of
usury. This, of course, was a result of the fact that the incorporation of the
district into the orbits of the global capitalist economy gave a considerable
boost to the demand for land and labour.7 The more interior parts of the Bhil
region of western India seem to largely have avoided land alienation per se.
For example, in western Madhya Pradesh, some land did indeed pass from

7 See Banaji (2010a: chapter 10) for a brilliant analysis of this process.
68 Adivasis and the State

Bhils to moneylenders prior to Independence in 1947, but overall merchants

and usurers never took much interest in Adivasi land as it was considered to
be ‘of submarginal productivity’ (Aurora 1972: 181).
However, this does not mean that these areas of the Bhil heartland were left
untouched by the colonial drive towards sedentarisation. Rather, dispossession
in the interior parts of the heartland took a more indirect form, as the Bhils
became more and more dependent on sahukari (moneylending). As Kela (2012:
208) points out, ‘[t]he necessity of raising money to pay taxes in cash put both
ordinary peasants and patels in the power of sahukars’. Indeed, this was the
central complaint made in a petition that was submitted to colonial authorities
by a group of Bhil patels in 1883; it complained that ‘the sahukars charge us
with compound interest, and when we are unable to pay … file claims against
us’ (cited in Kela 2012: 208). Indebtedness in turn enabled many moneylenders
to exercise control over the land and labour of Bhils without actually taking
formal ownership of their land. The fact that these relations of dependence
through usury endured across time is evidenced by the description of the Bhil
peasantry of Jhabua state in a colonial report published in the early 1940s.
The Bhils, the report stated, were found to be ‘in a state of economic serfdom.
They worked and toiled throughout the year and literally lived for others as
they were denied the benefits of what they earned, the moneylender sucking
their very life blood’ (RCAJS, 1941: 15–16).8
The subordination of Adivasi land and labour to usury—a process that has
been described in great detail by David Hardiman (1996)—can be understood
as a particular moment in the more general process of capitalist development
that unfolded in the Deccan in the nineteenth century. As Banaji (2010a:
304–310) has argued, this process was propelled in important ways by monied
capital and played an important part in enabling revenue-collection by the
colonial state.9 Another key process that transformed the economic geography

8 See also Nath (1960) for a similar account of the impact of usury on the Bhils
of Ratanmal in Gujarat in the 1950s. As I show in the last chapter of this book,
indebtedness is still a key feature of the economic subalternity of Bhils in western
Madhya Pradesh.
9 The power of the sahukars came in for a challenge in the Deccan riots of 1875 and
legislation was subsequently passed to come to grips with the problem (see Hardiman
1996: chapter 10). However, it is quite evident that the colonial state never managed
to effectively check usury in rural western India: as late as 1938, an official inquiry
found that Bhils were extremely dependent on moneylenders throughout the region
(see Guha 1999: 184; Catanach 1970: 162).
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 69

of the Bhil heartland and drove the incorporation of the natural resources of the
region into the orbits of global capitalist accumulation was the forest enclosures
that were set in train in India during the second half of the nineteenth century.10
Indeed, forest enclosures arguably fuelled a more unequivocal process of
dispossession than what had been the case with sedentarisation in the Bhil
heartland (see Whitehead 2012).
The process of enclosing India’s forests was ignited by the economic
compulsions generated by Britain’s rise to hegemonic status within the capitalist
world-system. Having exhausted other available sources of forest resources
through the expansion of shipbuilding, iron smelting, and farming, India’s
vast forests—and especially its teak forests—moved centre stage in the colonial
project. The early days of colonial exploitation of forest resources, from the late
eighteenth century, were driven partly by the need for timber for shipbuilding
to sustain British naval supremacy, but also by the revenue orientation of land
policy, which demanded that forests be cleared so as to expand agricultural
cultivation. From 1840 onwards, the extension of the railway network in India,
and consequently the need for durable wood for railway sleepers, came to fuel
forest extraction. Moreover, forests also supplied fuel for steam trains before
coal became a viable option (Gadgil and Guha 1993: 118–123; Whitehead
2012: 10).
In her seminal study of Adivasis and state formation in Bastar, Nandini
Sundar (2007: 5) has remarked that the transformation of ‘local economies’
during colonial rule was first and foremost achieved ‘through administrative
and legal means’. Nowhere does this seem to be truer than in the case of
colonial forest enclosures. When the first India Forest Act was introduced
in 1865, a key concern of the Legal Council during this period was that ‘the
finest forests in the world are being rapidly lost to the government of India’
(cited in Whitehead 2012: 12). It was therefore perceived as necessary to forge
‘legal mechanisms to assert and safeguard state control over forests’ (Gadgil
and Guha 1993: 122). The Act of 1865 was designed to do precisely this by
defining as government-owned forests ‘all those wastelands that were covered
with trees, brushwood, or jungle, and which were not privately owned; that is,
those containing the most potentially valuable timber’ (Whitehead 2012: 11).
Government-owned forests were to be managed by the Forest Department,

10 See Grove (1996), Rangarajan (1996), Sivaramakrishnan (1996, 1998, 1999, 2009),
and Gadgil and Guha (1993) for analysis of the history of colonial forest policy in
India.
70 Adivasis and the State

whereas other areas that contained less valuable timber were designated as
District Forests and left to the management of the District Commissioners
in cooperation with the District Forest Conservators (Gadgil and Guha 1993:
123; Whitehead 2012: 11).
More or less immediately, the search commenced ‘for a more stringent and
inclusive piece of legislation’ (Gadgil and Guha 1993: 123). This was brought
about by the Indian Forest Act of 1878, whose prime concern was to erase
ambiguities in the 1865 Act that made it difficult to establish a hard and fast
distinction between Government forests and District forests (Whitehead 2012:
13). What the Act of 1878 did was to establish two crucial legal categories:
reserved forests and protected forests. Whereas some cultivation was allowed
in the latter, none was allowed in the former. Enabling ‘the enclosure of large
areas of landscape as reserved forests’ (ibid: 15) the Act—which was revised
multiple times between the late 1870s and 1927—brought a far more radical
abrogation of the usufruct rights of tribal groups than its 1865 predecessor
had done (see also Gadgil and Guha 1993: 134).11
In Bombay Presidency, institutions geared towards management of forest
resources had been established as early as 1847, with an initial focus on
generating revenue for the colonial state by taxing on-going felling of trees by
Bhils and timber contractors. As Guha (1999: 165) notes, this was an approach
that ‘would obviously produce an easy revenue, but would have little effect on
the actual management of the forests, and hence on their conservation’. As
the profits of the Bombay Forest Department started to decrease from the
late 1850s onwards, the forest bureaucracy sought to extend its control by
‘instituting departmental extraction of timber instead of relying on contractors
as it had hitherto done’ (ibid: 165). At this point, a conservationist critique of
existing practices started to gain ground and exercised significant influence on
the legislation that followed in 1865 and 1878. The impact of these changes
on the Bhil communities can be seen most clearly in the Dangs (Hardiman
1994; Skaria 1999).

11 It is imperative to note that the forest laws were accompanied by the development of
legislation that allowed the acquisition of land by the crown. Starting with the Bengal
Regulation I in 1824, this process proceeded via the extensions of the principles of
this Act to Bombay in 1839, to Calcutta in 1850, to Madras in 1852, and finally to
the whole of India in 1857. Following amendments in 1870, this process yielded the
Land Acquisition Act of 1894. By this point the colonial state had ‘established and
consolidated its authority over and ownership of land and other natural resources’
through eminent domain (Parasuraman 1999: 38).
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 71

In and of itself, trade in timber was nothing new in the Dangs; indeed,
in precolonial times, Bhil chieftains would engage extensively with timber
merchants from southern Gujarat and then funnel the income from this
trade into the maintenance of the alliances that were crucial to sustain their
local networks of authority known as the bhauband. In the 1830s, the timber
merchants of Gujarat sought to work the Dangs through more intensive lease
agreements with the chieftains. Although this potentially increased the power
of the timber merchants relative to the Dangi chiefs, they nevertheless had
to recognise their authority, could only access the forests through them, and
were in no position to impose any limits on the way in which ordinary Dangis
used the forest (Skaria 1999: 179–181).
This all started to change in the 1840s, when the British, who until then had
bought the timber they needed for ship construction from Gujarati merchants,
felt that they were paying too much (Hardiman 1994: 113). Thus, in 1842, the
Dangi chiefs signed a series of leases with the British, allowing them direct
access to their forests. This was a moment when the increasing subordination
of the Dangi forest polities to the crafting of colonial state space started to
become evident (Skaria 1999: 179). The chiefs were quick to realise that they
had signed leases that ‘took a lot while giving very little in return’ (Hardiman
1994: 113) and therefore withdrew from the agreement. The leases were then
redrafted and signed anew the following year (Skaria 1999: 181).
The new leases gave the British full and exclusive power to cut, conserve, and
plant timber in the Dangs, and empowered the government to establish customs
posts and to levy taxes on timber and other commodities that were removed
from the forests. Furthermore, the leases were supposed to be restricted to 16
years, but this was inconsequential, as the British insisted on being granted the
prerogative of renewing the leases according to their own wishes (Hardiman
1994: 112–116). Thus, whereas the Bhil chiefs saw the leases in terms of the
shared sovereignty that had prevailed in the region prior to 1818, and as an
alliance that affirmed their political power in the Dangs, this was not how the
British perceived the arrangement: ‘British officials were … set on treating the
leases as granting them a control over forests which excluded even Dangi chiefs
… Besides, by excluding Dangis from the use of trees, the British implicitly
made a claim to political sovereignty … And all this for a payment that the
merchants would have willingly topped’ (Skaria 1999: 185).
From the 1860s onwards, the rise of discourses of forest conservation in
colonial policies, coupled with the increase in timber extraction from the
Dangs, engendered demands for stronger protective interventions in the Dangi
72 Adivasis and the State

forests. The Forest Department conceived of protection primarily in terms of

protecting the forests from the people for whom it was a habitat (Hardiman
1994: 121). Thus, the Forest Act of 1865 established the category of ‘Reserved
Forests’ as areas in which the government could ban all cultivation. The
subsequent Forest Act of 1878 further extended colonial attempts to exclude
the tribals from the forest by adding the category ‘Protected Forests’. Now,
the Dangs were of course formally under the authority of the Bhil chiefs and
the laws of the Bombay government did not apply there. This, however, was
addressed in 1879, when the Forest Department was instructed to delineate
forests for reservation in the region. Ten years later, the demarcation of the
forests had been completed and 34 per cent of the area was classified as Reserved
Forests, thus banishing many Dangi Bhils from their habitat and livelihoods
(ibid: 122–129).
In western Madhya Pradesh, the enclosure of forests started in 1869, when
the British deposed Gangadev, the raja of Alirajpur, and put the state under
the superintendence of the Bhil Agent, Thomas Caddell (Kela 2012: 204). At
this point in time, the state treasury was empty and the state was in dire fiscal
straits, owing some 113,990 rupees to various creditors and with expenditure
far in excess of receipts (Ali-Rajpur Administrative Report 1869: 8, 2). The
forest, therefore, was eyed as a potential source of much-needed revenue.
However, Caddell noted that ‘[t]he forests formerly rich in teak have been
ruthlessly destroyed, and they now contain very little valuable timber’ (ibid:
6).12 Nevertheless, there was a rich yield of bamboo, mahua, lac, honey, and
wax, which was being ‘exported in considerable quantities to Guzerat and
Malwa’ (ibid: 6). Some of these products had been subject to taxation before
1869, but the new arrangements that Caddell put in place declared the forests
to be the property of the state, and even the sale of bamboo and timber within
Alirajpur state was subject to taxation (Kela 2012: 206). Between 1870–1871
and 1880–1881, duties on timber and bamboo yielded as much as 26,253
rupees (ibid: 207).
A more comprehensive forest policy was put in place in Alirajpur in the
early twentieth century. At this point, ‘indiscriminate clearing of forest for
cultivation [was] prohibited and [t]imber cutting was brought under the control
of the Forest Department’ (Luard cited in Kela 2012: 223). In 1909–1910,
the Diwan of Alirajpur still complained that the local staff of the Forest

12 This contrasts to a comment made by a colonial officer in 1839, who remarked that
Alirajpur at this point had ‘a great export of teak timber’ (cited in Kela 2012: 202).
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 73

Department was ‘not such as can be relied upon and requires strict and constant
supervision by the higher officials of the state’ (Ali-Rajpur Administrative
Report 1910: 19). At this point in time, 289 square miles of forest had been
declared as falling into the category of Reserved Forests—that is, more than
one-third of the entire area of the state. Outside the reserves, local Bhils could
apply for permits to fell trees, but this system was widely abused by the Forest
Rangers, who enriched themselves through the extraction of bribes (ibid:
19). However, the Forest Department was gradually restructured, and forest
revenue figures from 1909–1910 to 1939–1940 suggest that it became a far more
efficient apparatus of extraction: forest revenue increased from 38,473 rupees in
1910 to as much as 115,534 rupees 10 years later, and after 1917 forest revenue
never fell below 100,000 rupees per year, thus contributing substantially to the
fiscal recovery of the state. Timber sales remained the most important source
of forest revenue throughout the period (see figure 3.1).
Although the data offered by colonial records is somewhat more limited
in the case of Badwani state, it is quite possible to discern a similar process
unfolding there. An administrative report from 1865 reports that the state at
that point was rich in teak and other kinds of valuable timber, but that no steps
were being taken to conserve the state’s forests. There was at this time a great
demand for timber, and ‘large quantities were being cut and the forests were
being greatly injured; it therefore became necessary to preserve them’ (Badwani
State Administrative Report 1865: 4). Interestingly, at this point the Bhils were
not being singled out as the chief threat to the forests, as it was assumed that
‘their numbers are so small that they cannot do much injury’ (ibid: 4).
As a protective measure, the cutting of teak was prohibited, and by 1870
timber exports were being taxed. Within a decade a forest department had
been established and rules introduced that allowed the Bhils to cut timber for
sale during one month every year. Additional taxes were imposed on forest
produce for sale and consumption, as well as on grazing and the collection
of firewood in the forest. By 1894 a forest officer had been appointed and in
1897 forest boundaries were demarcated in the state (Kela 2012: 230). By 1909,
when the state was to pass from British superintendence to the rule of Rana
Sahib Ranjit Singh, it was claimed that the introduction of forest taxes and
‘the establishment of a proper forest administration’ had contributed greatly
to improving Badwani’s fiscal position (ibid: 233).
The combined effect of sedentarisation and forest enclosures was to set in
motion a process of primitive accumulation that in different ways inserted the
land, labour, and forests of Bhil Adivasis into the circuits of the global capitalist
74 Adivasis and the State

economy. The access of Bhil communities to crucial means of subsistence was

abrogated in both direct and indirect ways, and it is in this abrogation that we
find the origins of the abject poverty that I described in the previous chapter.
However, colonial efforts to transform the economic geography of the region
should not only be thought of in these terms. As I go on to detail in the next
section, both sedentarisation and forest enclosures were inextricably entwined
with the development and consolidation of new modalities of state power in the
Bhil heartland. And it was this consolidation that brought about the political
subordination which in contemporary times has found its manifestation in the
everyday tyranny of the local state.

Consolidating State Power: Settlement, Pacification, and

Infrastructural Power
‘From 1818 till 1825’, writes James Outram in his memoirs, ‘Candeish stood
to Western India in the relation which Ireland still bears to Britain.’ The
legendary commander of the Khandesh Bhil Corps proceeded to argue: ‘It
was “the difficulty” of the government. It was a difficulty which all regarded as
insuperable … ’ (Outram 1853: 8). This difficulty was not so much the result of
the recalcitrance of previous Maratha rulers. Rather, the difficulty was related
to the Bhils, who according to John Malcolm—Governor of Bombay from
1827 to 1830—had ‘become the enemies of order and peace’ (cited in Gordon
1994: 158). Malcolm’s statement expresses the fact that from the perspective of
the colonial state the Bhil raids, which were so widespread during the 1820s,
could not be conceived as anything other than hostile attacks on a sovereign
territorial domain (Skaria 1999: 157–161). Indeed, from the colonial vantage
point, the Bhils were a group ‘whose sole occupation was pillage and robbery,
whose delight alone consisted in the murderous foray, and whose subsistence
depended entirely on the fruits of their unlawful spoil’ (Graham 1856: 210).
Their raids, therefore, were not to be met with negotiation, but rather with
military retaliation aimed at putting an end to the practice once and for all—a
task that the British turned their attention to from the 1820s onwards.13

13 The pacification of the Khandesh Bhils was preceded by similar campaigns targeting
Pindaris and other mercenary groups who operated in the market for military labour
in the Maratha Deccan during the first two decades of the 1800s (see Vartavarian
2016).
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 75

The initial British strategy was centred on dispatching military troops into
the hills to quell the unquiet Bhil chieftains. Those among them who were
willing to cease raiding were offered state pensions in exchange for functioning
as watchmen over a certain part of the district. Despite some initial successes,
these efforts eventually foundered as the insurgent Bhils refused to settle in
the plains (Khandesh Gazetteer 1880: 257). In 1822 there were new outbreaks
of raiding and revolts by the Bhils, and in the next year Khandesh was still
reported to be ‘harassed and unsafe’ (ibid: 258). By the middle of the decade
it had become evident that military efforts had so far been an abject failure,
and that a change of strategy was required.
Under the aegis of Elphinstone’s ‘conciliatory’ approach, this change came
in the form of the establishment of the Khandesh Bhil Corps (KBC) in the
northeastern division of the district. Commanded by James Outram, recruits
for the KBC were enlisted from among the Bhils, and over time the strength
of the corps rose to some 690 troops headquartered at Dharangaon. Several
successful military expeditions were made in response to raiding and revolts
among the Bhils in 1826 and 1827, and in 1828 the Khandesh Collector ‘reported
that, for the first time in twenty years, the district had enjoyed six months rest’
(Khandesh Gazetteer 1880: 259). Indeed, the success of the KBC in suppressing
tribal resistance was such that it would be emulated through the establishment
of the Malwa Bhil Corps in 1838 and the Mewar Bhil Corps in 1841.
Having secured ‘the overthrow of the patriarchal authority of the Naiks’
(Graham 1856: 214) by military means, the colonial authorities proceeded
to promote the settlement of the former insurgents as peasant cultivators. A
pardon was offered on condition that the Bhils would not challenge British
authority in the future, and this was inscribed in a kowl, signed by the Bhil
Agent, that all Bhils had to carry with them:

You have lived in the hills, and plundered the roads and country of the Sirkar,
and committed thefts and various crimes: now you are present, and have
petitioned the Sirkar that if pardoned you will not again offend, and that if
Tukavee be given to you, you will cultivate and thus earn a subsistence. On
this your prayer has been considered, and the Sirkar has shown favour to
you, and has this once pardoned your past crimes, and has given you for your
support Tukavee, and land to cultivate; and this Kowl is written and presented
to you that you may remain in your village, and cultivate, and thus gain your
livelihood. After this, if you again commit any offence, your former crimes
will not be considered as forgiven, but you will have to answer for both them
and the new crime. (Graham 1856: 218)
76 Adivasis and the State

As part and parcel of this effort to bring an end to Bhil raiding, the haks of
the Bhil chieftains were investigated, settled, and paid as ‘colonial pensions’
(Guha 1999: 141). Arrangements were also made for strict police surveillance
of the Khandesh Bhils (ibid: 214; see also Kela 2012: 123).
Drawing the Bhil communities more closely and firmly within the
parameters of the colonial state was also effected by a redefinition of the role
of the patels. The village headmen were now made responsible for assisting
the British in promoting settled agriculture and for ‘forwarding to the Agents
correct returns of all the Bhils within their range, of the mode by which they
subsisted, and of the adequacy or otherwise of the provision allotted by the
state for their maintenance’ (Graham 1856: 214). In return for such services,
the patels were awarded honorary forms of dress that signified recognition of
their authority as well as tax exemptions. It is here, in fact, that the roots of the
present-day role of the patels and their co-optation as the state’s bridgehead in
the Bhil communities can be located, as they now came to have a vested interest
in collaborating with the emergent colonial state structure. Skaria (1999:
232–236) notes a similar process in the Dangs, where the fluid organisation of
the bhauband was undermined as the British devised a system in which a group
of 14 chieftains came to exercise absolute authority over a clearly demarcated
territorial area. The chiefs that became the fulcrum of this new system were
strengthened in relation to other members of the bhauband as they became the
sole recipients of colonial largesse: they had greater control over the distribution
of resources and could easily give less to rivals and contenders.
In these ways, the making of colonial state space was not just about
restructuring the relationship between Bhil forest polities and larger state
entities, but also about restructuring forms of organisation and authority
internally in these polities in order to underpin the consolidation of state power.
In doing so, colonial rule was instrumental in creating the Bhil elite that, as I
showed in Chapter 2, has been significant in mediating the everyday tyranny
of the local state in the contemporary era.
It was also the Dangs that would provide the KBC with its next ‘opportunity
of displaying its soldierly qualities in the field’. In so doing, its Commander
boasted, ‘[the Corps] surpassed the expectations of even its most ardent
friends’ (Outram 1853: 27). Early in 1830, the KBC undertook a three-month
campaign against Dangi chiefs who raided in the Khandesh plains (Skaria
1999: 160). The incursions of the Corps, notes Skaria, made it clear to Dangis
that the British could not be kept at bay, and simultaneously also generated ‘a
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 77

profound fear of British military power’ (ibid: 161). Eventually, ‘all the Rajahs
of the Daung … were captured; their followers subdued; their whole country
explored’ (Outram 1853: 28).
The process that followed, in which the chiefs’ claims to giras haks were
settled by the colonial state, illustrates the centrality of the extirpation of shared
sovereignty in the construction of colonial state space. The key transformation,
much like in Khandesh some years before, was that giras haks now came to be
paid to the Dangi chiefs from the coffers of the Khandesh treasury. As Ajay
Skaria (1999: 162) argues, these customary dues had previously ‘been a marker
of shared sovereignty over specific villages’ and integral to ‘the formation of
shifting alliances’ between Bhils and Marathas: ‘Its irregularity and variability
was constitutive of giras, and indexed the shifts in alliances and power.’
This transformation, Skaria (1999: 162) notes, entailed that ‘the association
between giras and shared sovereignty over specific villages in the plains
was weakened’. He proceeds: ‘An annual lump payment associated with no
particular village, giras was not so much a right claimed from plains villages as
a conferral from above. Its association with the active wielding of power, and
with a role in plains polities, was attenuated and made superfluous’ (ibid: 162).
This transformation is expressive of the significance of singular and exclusive
sovereignty in colonial state-making: ‘ … the British insisted on making each
Bhil chief owe allegiance only to one plains power—themselves in the case of
the Dangi chiefs’ (ibid: 166).
The strategy for pacification and settlement that had been pioneered in
Khandesh and the Dangs was also applied in other parts of the Bhil heartland.
As Skaria (1999: 174) notes, when it was applied in smaller princely states,
the outcome was often that the British ‘helped small kings consolidate their
authority’ over Bhil communities whose authority they had previously been
compelled to recognise to some extent. This becomes particularly evident
when we consider the impact of colonial state-making in Mewar and Malwa.
As I showed in the introduction to this chapter, one of the ways in which
Rajput rulers in precolonial Mewar recognised Bhil authority was by granting
the chiefs of Bhomat and Magra the right to levy fees and taxes on merchants
and travellers on the Udaipur–Ahmedabad road, which ran through their
territory (see also Vidal 1997: 9). In this sense, the bolai and rakhwali taxes that
Bhils levied from merchants and travellers in return for safe passage through
and protection in their territory can be compared to the giras haks claimed
by the Dangi chiefs as expressions of shared sovereignty in the Bhil–Rajput
78 Adivasis and the State

relation. This, however, was to change quite substantially in the wake of the
establishment of British paramountcy in the region in 1818.14
A key concern of the British in Rajputana, as it had been in Khandesh, was
to restore fiscal health to the princely states by consolidating their revenue base
(Sen 2003). Crucially, trade and trade routes came to occupy a very central
role in the efforts to do so, and in Mewar securing merchant travellers on the
Udaipur–Ahmedabad road was seen as a particularly pressing concern. For the
British, the bolai and rakhwali taxes claimed by the Bhils were key impediments
to the resuscitation of mercantile activity; echoing their perception of Bhil
raiding as hostile attacks on sovereign territory, the bolai and rakhwali were
typically characterised as ‘blackmail’ and ‘highway robbery’ (ibid: 265–270).
Consequently, efforts to bring an end to the claiming of bolai and rakhwali
were implemented from the 1820s onwards in a complex field of force that
encompassed British colonial authorities, princely rulers, Rajput nobility, and
Bhil chieftains (see Mathur 1988: 30–32; Sen 2003). However, as I discuss
in greater detail in the next chapter, it was only after a series of military
interventions across the decade of the 1820s that the Bhils finally agreed to
give up their claims to these taxes in exchange for an annual payment from
the British (Mathur 1988: 34; Singh 1995: 39).
From this point onwards, the British also increased their military presence
in the region, and concerted efforts were made to expand the policing powers
of Mewar state. In 1837, the Mewar Bhil Corps (MBC) was established on
the model pioneered by James Outram in Khandesh in the second half of the
1820s (Mathur 1988: 34). The Maharana in Udaipur, who was responsible
for providing half of the funds needed to finance the MBC, sought to take
advantage of this development by attempting to increase the level of revenue
demand from Bhil communities in the state. When faced with refusals to pay
and new outbreaks of raids to protest the new revenue claims, the Maharana
made repeated requests for the forces of the MBC to be deployed against the
recalcitrant Bhils (Sen 2003: 270).
Parallel to the extension of colonial military capacities in Mewar and the
southern parts of the Rajputana Agency more generally, attempts to grapple
with bolai and rakhwali, which were still being collected in defiance of previous
agreements, were on going. Whereas their original approach had been that
these taxes should be abolished, the colonial authorities had clearly had a

14 See Rudolph and Rudolph (1966) on the creation of the Rajputana Agency and the
meanings of ‘paramountcy’.
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 79

change of heart by the middle of 1850s, as it was decided that the Bhils should
be allowed to retain bolai levies. The argument behind this change of policy
was that the income derived from claiming the bolai would give the Bhils a
stake in keeping the roads safe and in a state of good repair, thus supporting
the colonial aspiration of promoting trade in the region (Sen 2003).
In the wake of this, attempts were made to systematise and organise the
collection of bolai and rakhwali, so that by 1869 there had been established 14
fixed and regular payments that merchants and travellers had to make to the
Mewar court, the Rajput nobles, and the Bhil villages along the road. Rates
varied according to the number of persons who travelled and the quantity of
goods they carried with them. Fixed fees were also charged for rakhwaldari
if the travellers stopped to spend the night in a village (Sen 2003: 265–270).
What this arrangement in effect did was to erode the significance of the right
to claim bolai and rakhwali as a marker of Bhil power and sovereignty. Much
like the way in which the British authorities in Khandesh transmuted giras
haks into a payment from state coffers and thereby constituted it as a concession
from above rather than a rightful claim on subordinate villages, these changes
in how bolai and rakhwali were to be claimed watered down its significance
as it now became a regulated service that the Bhil chieftains provided to the
Anglo-Sisodia regime.
The re-routing of the lucrative opium trade in the region was soon to hollow
out this arrangement even further. As much as 50,000 acres of land were
devoted to cultivation of poppy in southeastern Mewar in the second half of
the nineteenth century. From 1869 onwards, this brought substantial rewards
to the Bhils of the Bhomat and the Magra, as the opium was transported
from Udaipur to Ahmedabad on a route that cut through their territory (Sen
2003 : 265). However, with the coming of the Rajputana–Malwa Railway in
1876, this started to change. The opium traders offered the Mewar Darbar
additional duty payments if they were allowed to make use of the opportunity
for safer, cheaper, and faster transport that the new railway system offered,
and the Maharana was only too happy to oblige. As a result of this, the Bhil
pals situated on the Udaipur–Ahmedabad road lost a significant part of their
income. The Sisodia Darbar in Udaipur were aware that this loss of income
on the part of the Bhils brought with it a clear risk of unrest, and in order to
avoid this they used part of the income that they derived from the re-routing
of the opium transport to build a series of posts staffed by salaried Bhil guards
along the Udaipur–Ahmedabad road (ibid: 270). However, as Sen points out,
this did little to repair the damage done to the Bhil incomes, as the money
80 Adivasis and the State

spent by the court on Bhil guards ‘added up to less than what the pals received
directly from Bolai, and the amounts that each pal received for the road guards
was much less than what they got from the escort fees’ (ibid: 267).
The material and symbolic erosion of the substance of bolai and rakhwali
loomed large among the factors that drove the Bhils of Mewar into large-scale
rebellion again in 1881 (see Chapter 4). The rebellion was brought to an end
after two months of substantial conflict, and yielded a series of concessions
from the Anglo-Sisodia regime, including that the Mewar court’s posts on the
Udaipur–Kherwara road would be closed and the responsibility for policing
the road was given to the Bhil villages along the road. The Bhils were also
given the right to charge bolai from pilgrims travelling to Rikhabdeo and Shri
Nathji according to old customs. At this point the Mewar Resident wrote to the
Governor General in Calcutta that the bolai tax ‘is not one that can in any way
be considered as pressing heavily upon or discouraging trade’. He proceeded
to argue that the bolai was ‘thoroughly understood by and acceptable to all the
travellers through the Bhil districts’ and its abolition would leave the Mewar
court to face the challenge of securing the roads through the Bhomat and
Magra territories—a game which had been proven not to be worth the candle
by the 1881 rebellion. The Calcutta authorities accepted this argument, but as
Hari Sen points out, the Bhil communities ‘on the Udaipur–Kherwara road
lost a sizeable part of their annual incomes, and the Darbar and the opium
merchants gained much larger ones’ (2003: 268), at the same time as central
authority over the Bhomat and Magra Bhils had been substantially extended
and deepened.
A similar trajectory is clearly present in Shashank Kela’s (2012) analysis of
the process of establishing settlements with the Bhil chieftains of Alirajpur
and Badwani. In the Vindhya hills, where Alirajpur state was located, John
Malcolm’s colonial bureaucrats negotiated a series of agreements as early as 1818
onwards. According to the terms of these agreements, the Bhil chiefs would
cease their raiding and undertake to protect roads and passes in exchange for a
grant of revenue villages or monthly payments called tankha. In this early stage
of the process, Malcolm was more than ready to deploy military force against
those chieftains who failed to live up to the terms of the agreement, and Kela
shows that local Rajput rulers were keen to turn this against the Bhils in order
to squash their claims to dues and stipends from the courts (ibid: 105–120).
On the southern side of the Narmada, in Badwani state, military pacification
and settlement picked up momentum from 1833 onwards, when the KBC, with
Outram at its helm, entered the Satpura hills in pursuit of a fugitive. Outram
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 81

disapproved of the law and order situation in the state, and the Resident Officer
argued that it was necessary to guarantee ‘the Bheel Naicks of this district the
regular payment of their acknowledged dues from the Burwanee Rajah and by
holding an even balance between them to prevent oppression on the one hand
and to secure obedience on the other’ (cited in Kela 2012: 130). Such sentiments,
however, had little impact: the payment of dues to the Bhils was still in arrears
in the late 1830s, and raiding consequently continued. Until the early 1840s,
the colonial strategy centred on military reprisal against raiders, now aided
by the Malwa Bhil Corps, which had been founded in 1838 (ibid: 130–136).
By the mid-1840s, the time was ripe for a more conciliatory approach.
Leading colonial officials toured the Badwani hills on an annual basis and an
investigation into the chieftains’ claims was ordered. The payments of dues
were to be closely monitored by colonial officials, but as Kela (2012: 138)
correctly points out, there was little incentive for the Rajput courts to comply
with the agreements that had been negotiated, given that raids were subject
to military retaliation by the colonial state. This situation finally came to a
head with the outbreak of a large-scale rebellion in 1857 under the leadership
of Bhima Naik. Lasting for five years until 1862, a significant cause of the
uprising was the non-payment of haks by various Rajput courts (see Chapter
4). When Bhima’s rebellion was finally suppressed in 1862, the British were
quick to establish military outposts in the Satpura hills in order to be better
prepared to counter future outbreaks of unrest and rebellion. In doing so, they
strengthened the hand of local rulers in relation to the Bhils significantly,
and ensured that Badwani state and the wider Nimad region joined the
ranks of those princely states who by the late nineteenth century ‘possessed
almost uncontested authority over [their] “kingdom” … These developments
increasingly led small kings to dissociate themselves from the now relatively
powerless forest polities’ (Skaria 1999: 174).
In sum, the process of settlement and pacification that unfolded across
the Bhil heartland from the 1820s onwards effectively brought an end to the
sharing of sovereignty that had been central to the organisation of power and
authority during the rule of precolonial tributary states. Authority and power
were now concentrated in a singular locus—the colonial state in Khandesh and
princely rulers that were supported in crucial ways by the British in Mewar and
Malwa—and the relationship of the Bhil communities to both colonial rulers
and princely states was increasingly characterised by political subordination. In
the princely states of what is today western Madhya Pradesh, this subordination
was deepened and entrenched in the first decades of the twentieth century
82 Adivasis and the State

due to the further development of ‘infrastructural power’ (Mann 1984) in the

fiscal and coercive domains of the state. It is worth considering in some detail
how this happened in Alirajpur, Badwani, and Jhabua.
In the case of Alirajpur, the process of enhancing the infrastructural powers
of the state can be traced back to the 1860s, the decade when sedentarisation
started to gain momentum in the Satpuras, when the British intervened to
bring ‘[t]he benefits of good rule’ (Ali-Rajpur Administrative Report 1869: 4)
to what they perceived to be an ill-governed princely state. In 1839, the annual
revenues of Alirajpur state amounted to less than 20,000 rupees. Land revenue
was collected both in cash and kind, with taxes being levied collectively on
village communities and collected in a single instalment (Kela 2012: 202).
When Thomas Caddell arrived in the state in 1869 he ‘found the treasury
empty, and this was said to be its chronic state’ (Ali-Rajpur Administrative
Report 1869: 1).
As the state was taken into British superintendence, the priority of fiscal
reform was ref lected in a number of initiatives: for example, collective
assessments were replaced by plough rates calculated between five and fifteen
rupees and the patels were awarded rent-free ploughs and an award of 5 to 7
per cent of the revenue collected from their villages by way of compensation
for the abolition of other perquisites (Kela 2012: 204–205). Significantly from
the point of view of unearthing and understanding the origins of everyday
tyranny, the office of the village patwari was created in 1870 in order to create
a group of men ‘who were directly interested in exacting the greatest amount of
revenue from the cultivators’ (cited in Kela 2012: 205). In addition to this, and
again directly significant for our understanding of the lineage of contemporary
state–society relations, regulations were also introduced on the distillation of
liquor in order to extract revenue for the state in the form of excise duty. The
reforms clearly had an impact: total revenue in Alirajpur state increased from
39,521 rupees in 1868–1869, via 79,176 rupees in 1869–1870, to a record 94,893
rupees in 1870–1871 (ibid: 205–206).
At this point, however, the level of land revenue and taxation caused a mass
emigration of Bhil peasants to Badwani state, and land revenue plummeted.
Indeed, the discontent generated by the fiscal reforms of the late 1860s and
1870s was central to fuelling the fires of the Alirajpur rebellion of 1883, which,
after it had been savagely suppressed by military force, elicited only ‘trifling
concessions’ in the form of temporary abolition of the patwari system, minor
relaxations of the forest laws, and of taxation levels (Kela 2012: 221; see also
Chapter 4).
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 83

A new phase in the crafting of fiscal capacities began from the second decade
of the twentieth century onwards. In the administrative report of 1909–1910,
the Diwan of Alirajpur complained bitterly about the shortcomings of the
plough system that was introduced in the 1860s. In his view, it prevented the
cultivators from developing a concern for agricultural improvement: ‘The Bhils
and Bhilalas are accustomed to this system which is of very long standing and
they would scarcely be inclined to favour any other, being by nature averse
to any kind of innovation’ (Ali-Rajpur Administrative Report 1910: 6). The
plough tax, he argued, created a situation in which the Bhil peasant would
try and cultivate as much land as he could with the smallest possible number
of ploughs: ‘It is, however, now high time to introduce some method under
which the extent of each holding should be fixed and assessment levied on a
consideration of the quality of the land comprised in each’ (ibid: 7).
Once bitten by the rebellion of 1883, however, the Alirajpur rulers were
twice shy of introducing a more rigorous revenue system, as they feared that
the Bhils would resent it (Ali-Rajpur Administrative Report 1911: 7). Even
though land revenue was found to be ‘way below the mark’ (ibid: 10) the
plough tax was retained for some years still, until 1925, when a system was
introduced that imposed different levels of taxation for different qualities of
soil. The patwaris had by this point been reintroduced as stipendiary servants
looking after designated groups of villages, and although complaints about
the insufficient levels of land revenue persisted throughout the entire period
of 1910 to 1940 the trend was nevertheless one of a steady increase, which in
turn is testimony to the enhanced fiscal capacities of the state.
The strengthening of the fiscal capacities of the state is also evident in
the excise system. In 1909, the so-called Madras system was introduced in
Alirajpur. Sixty-four liquor shops were established in the state, and alcohol
depots were built in the market towns of Rajpur, Bhabra, and Umrali. Moreover,
the Alirajpur Darbar passed laws to punish violations of the ban against private
distillation more severely; this was explicitly done to target Bhils and Bhilalas
and their customary distillation of mahua liquor (Ali-Rajpur Administrative
Report 1925: 18). This revamping also paid dividends, as revenue from excise
duties increased from 15,687 rupees in 1909–1910 to a high of 111,424 within
a decade, before vacillating between good years (from the point of view of the
Darbar) that yielded in excess of 100,000 rupees to bad years when, due to an
erosion of purchasing power among the Bhils, yields stooped to as low a level
as 10,682 rupees. Overall, the combined effect of augmented land and excise
revenues, along with the increase in forest revenue discussed above, clearly had
a positive impact on the fiscal health of Alirajpur state.
84 Adivasis and the State

Figure 3.1 Revenue Flows, Alirajpur State: 1908–1940

Source: Compiled from Ali-Rajpur Administrative Reports, 1909–1910 to 1939–1940.

Figure 3.2 State Revenue, Alirajpur, 1909–1940

Source: Compiled from Ali-Rajpur Administrative Reports, 1909–1910 to 1939–1940.

Similar processes can be discerned in Badwani and Jhabua. In Badwani,

the year 1910 marked the end of a long period of British administration of a
state which in the closing decades of the nineteenth century registered a total
revenue of less than two and a half lakh rupees (1 lakh = 100,000). By 1910,
this had been increased to approximately five and a half lakh rupees as a result
of revisions to the land revenue system, the introduction of a new forest policy,
and significant improvements to the excise system—including the settlement of
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 85

‘troublesome questions relating to the Bhil Naiks in the matter of distillation

… ’ (Badwani State Administrative Report 1910: 5). If we consider the overall
revenue trends of the state in the 30-year period between 1912 and 1942, they
are very similar to those of Alirajpur: from an annual total of 706,055 rupees in
1912–1913, total revenue increased to 1,164,760 in 1942.15 What this testifies
to is a state that had significantly developed its institutional reach and capacity
in relation to its Bhil subjects.
In the case of Jhabua, the first clear view of this process emerges from the
report of the Council Administration of the state, which covers the period from
1935 to 1941. The Government of India had taken Jhabua into administration
in 1934 after its ruler at the time was found to be unfit for his role, and a
council had been appointed to reorganise the administrative structure and
functioning of the state. These reforms were wide-ranging, and encompassed
increased salaries for the state’s revenue staff, the appointment of an assistant
to revenue officers and surveyors, the establishment of two new patwari circles,
and the appointment of a new patwari in each tehsil. Patwaris had to live in
their respective circles, and state supervision was also enhanced as tehsildars
were made to tour the areas they presided over.
Additionally, in each village a headman—referred to in the report as tadvi—
was appointed who was made responsible for the collection of revenue, the
prevention of encroachments on village boundaries, the improvement of excise
claims, and for informing the police of occurrences in the village. Whereas the
strengthening of the role of the village headmen was not something new, the
Council report noted that ‘turbulent and useless Tadvis have been replaced by
better and influential cultivators’ (Report on the Council Administration of
Jhabua State 1941: 21). In order to enhance revenue collection, each headman
was given a 2 to 3 per cent share of the revenue collected in his village. The
report notes: ‘Now every Tadvi tries to collect as much as possible and increases
the number of holdings in his village’ (ibid: 20). The results were evident in
an increase in land revenue from 140,128 to 179,384 rupees over the six years
in question.
The number of excise inspectors was increased, their wages were upped,
and they were required to tour the state. As a result, a large number of illicit
cases of distillation were uncovered, and excise revenues increased from 31,862
rupees to 69,623 rupees between 1935 and 1941. In terms of forests, the report

15 This estimate is based on the available administrative reports for Badwani state from
1909–1910 to 1939–1942.
86 Adivasis and the State

mentions that these were extensive in the state, but not of good quality due to
the excessive felling of teak in the past. Nevertheless, forest revenues increased
from 33,779 rupees to 46,529 rupees in the period in question. Total revenue
increased from 465,990 rupees to 759,079 rupees. The administrative reports for
the ensuing years from 1942 to 1945 suggest that these upward trends continued
after council administration came to an end, and quite substantially so.16
If the military pacification and settlement of the Bhils served the purpose
of eliminating their claims to power and authority within the region and
subjecting them to the rule of states whose sovereignty was defined in exclusive
and singular terms, the administrative developments that took place in the
princely states of Malwa–Nimad further extended and entrenched this process.
In effect, a comprehensive ensemble of legislation, institutions, and personnel
was brought into being that enabled these states to burrow deeper into the fabric
of Bhil communities. As a consequence, the princely rulers who had initially
benefited from the altered balance of power between themselves and the Bhil
forest polities flowing from British military intervention were able to deepen
and intensify the subordination of tribal communities through new forms of
infrastructural power that enabled, inter alia, the extraction of revenue, the
regulation of control and use of natural resources, and the enforcement of law
and order on a hitherto unprecedented scale.
And, of course, it is through these processes that the all-too familiar
personages who feature in contemporary Bhil narratives of everyday tyranny
appear: the forest guard, the police constable, the patwari, and the patel. Indeed,
this was not just a process that shaped emerging state–society relations in the
Malwa–Nimad region. Rather, it was a reality throughout much of the tribal
areas of western and central India: ‘ … over most of the great forest belt’, Sumit
Guha (1999: 169) writes, ‘new structures of authority, legal and paralegal, were
taking shape, with forest, excise and police employees and their associated
contractors prominent in them; these were the new kings of the forest.’

Concluding Remarks
In this chapter I have developed an analysis of how everyday tyranny originated
in the project of colonial state formation. I argued that contemporary Adivasi

16 All figures and estimates in this paragraph are based on the Report on the Council
of Administration, Jhabua State, 1935–1941 and the administrative reports for the
state for the years 1942–1943, 1943–1944, and 1944–1945.
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 87

subalternity—manifest in material poverty and political disenfranchisement—

has to be understood in relation to the century-long construction of colonial
state space that followed the end of the Anglo-Maratha wars in 1818, and
which fundamentally changed the terms upon which Bhil forest polities were
incorporated into the regional political economy of western India. I showed how
the transformation of the economic geography of the region—primarily through
the expansion of settled agriculture and forest enclosures—impoverished Bhil
communities through indebtedness and dispossession.
These processes have played a key role in generating the livelihood crisis that
Bhil Adivasis in western Madhya Pradesh confront today, and which compels
them to enter the ranks of India’s migrant working class in increasingly greater
numbers. Political disenfranchisement and subjection to everyday tyranny, I
argued, stems from the restructuring of relations of authority and sovereignty
under the aegis of colonial rule. In place of the shared sovereignty that animated
relations between tributary states and the forest polities of the Bhils, a singular
sovereignty emerged that was predicated on military pacification and the
gradual development of technologies of rule that fortified the infrastructural
power of the colonial state and reformed princely states. This not only resulted
in the political subordination of the Bhils, but also brought into being the laws
and institutions through which everyday tyranny has been enacted.
There are clear parallels between the processes that I have discerned in the
Bhil heartland and those that unfolded in other parts of the central Indian
tribal belt during the same period. Nandini Sundar’s (2007: 51) seminal
study of Bastar, for example, shows the mutual imbrication of tribal and
caste Hindu communities in precolonial times and the existence of a form of
shared sovereignty characterised by ‘numerous kingdoms locked into a fairly
stable routine of contention and co-existence’. Whereas the British began their
incursions into Bastar after 1818, they refrained from military interventions
and the Bastar raja retained control of internal administration. Following
the lapse of the Bhonsle regime in 1853 and the establishment of the Central
Provinces in 1861, Bastar was constituted as a feudatory state in 1865. This
effectively meant that the British ensured the consolidation of a substantial
area by co-opting the local hierarchy while simultaneously avoiding the costs
and difficulties of direct administration. During this period, rents increased
substantially, and the British also laid claim to forest and mineral resources.
When Bastar came under direct British management in 1890, a significant
escalation of administrative intrusions ensued. This was particularly marked
in terms of the enforcement of forest regulations, regulation of trade in minor
88 Adivasis and the State

forest produce, and grazing dues: ‘People now had to pay for items which they
had been accustomed to taking by right, and restrictions were placed on their
access to these’ (ibid: 113). The law, Sundar points out, was key to driving
these processes of change, and as much as the law negotiated, appropriated and
contested by Adivasi communities, the result was ultimately ‘the consolidation
of the colonial state, and the recasting of existing patterns of ownership and
rights in common resources’ (ibid: 130; see also Rangarajan 1996; Prasad 2003).
Similar findings emerge from Bhangya Bhukya’s (2017) recent study of
the Gonds of the Chanda territories in the Deccan. The making of the tribal
periphery, he argues, can be traced to the precolonial era, but was tempered at
that point by the sharing of sovereignty typical of tributary states. This enabled
the Gond rajas to emerge as the rulers of large territories in central India.
Colonial rule and its focus on ‘exclusive sovereignty’ (ibid: 69) fundamentally
skewed the balance of power between the mainland plains and the Adivasi
margins. According to Bhukya, this happened through three interrelated
processes.
First, state power was extended through settlements and treaties that
constituted the Gond rajas as zamindars dependent on the British. Second, a
new land revenue system was introduced and settled cultivation was encouraged
among the Gond peasants. As in the case of Khandesh, land alienation soon
became a major problem in the region, and caste Hindu peasants established
themselves as the dominant cultivators. Third, the Chanda forests were
enclosed with dramatic effects: ‘After establishing its power over the forest,
the colonial state policed it systematically’ (ibid: 93). The combined effect of
land alienation and the criminalisation of customary uses of the forest was
to reduce many Gond peasants to the status of landless labourers. The main
impact of colonial legislation that attempted to check these processes through
a certain measure of protection was to create a ‘tribal slot’ (Li 2000) that would
in turn be appropriated by Adivasis as they made claims for redistribution and
recognition on the postcolonial state (Bhukya 2017: chapter 5; see also Sundar
2007: chapter 6).17
Jharkhand and Chota Nagpur provide yet another example of how the
emergence of contemporary Adivasi subalternity must be understood in
terms of the confluence of economic and political processes of change that
were set in train by colonial state-making. In her fascinating study of the

17 I discuss the dynamics of this politics of appropriation at greater length in Chapter

6 below.
 ‘Quiet and Obedient Cultivators’ 89

Hos of Singhbhum from the 1820s to the 1930s, Sanjukta Das Gupta (2011)
argues that precolonial Ho communities were enmeshed in the regional state
system of the Singhbhum rajas through revenue collection and shared ritual
practices. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this system
began to fragment and the Kolhan region was in a state of perpetual revolt.
In this context, British intervention in the region took on a new character, as
rebellions—much like raids in the Bhil heartland during the same period—
came to be viewed as a law and order problem.
From the 1830s onwards, the British regime began to intervene more directly
in Ho communities—purportedly to protect the Hos from the capriciousness
of the native ruling class—and this became even more entrenched after
the revolt of 1857. The key pillars of this regime are familiar enough: first,
settled agriculture was promoted alongside a new land revenue system,
which resulted in land alienation and vulnerability to famine; second, forest
reservations effectively dispossessed the Hos of access to a crucial livelihood
asset. Interestingly, Das Gupta notes that that—not unlike what happened with
the patels and the patwaris in Alirajpur and Badwani—it was the traditional
village leadership who were made responsible for the rent collection and
the administration of law and order as this system was consolidated: ‘The
traditional village system had thus given way to a situation where the leadership
functioned as government functionaries’ (ibid: 150).
Uday Chandra (2013a: 48) has recently challenged readings of Adivasi
history that focus on colonial rule as a ‘driver of cataclysmic changes’ in
Adivasi societies. Precolonial Chota Nagpur, he maintains, was characterised
by a polycentric order in which Adivasi and non-Adivasi political cultures
blended into each other, and processes of modern state formation were already
under way prior to the British ascent to power in the region. In this sense,
the unravelling of the old polycentric order was not imposed from outside
by colonial conquest. Rather, internal forces fuelled the transition towards
modernity. The entry of the British offered traditional Adivasi leaders—the
Mankis and the Mundas—a chance to ‘abandon their former rajas and embrace
a new overlord’ (ibid: 97). In this sense, colonial state formation in the tribal
margins was not ‘a top-down conquest, but a complex process negotiated from
both above and below’ (ibid: 142).
There is much that is compelling in Chandra’s argument, especially from
the point of view of an analytic that seeks to move beyond Manichean views
of political cultures and processes of state formation across the longue durée.
Above all, Chandra is absolutely right in calling attention to the significance
of dynamics of negotiation in colonial state formation. For example, as Sundar
90 Adivasis and the State

(2007) points out in her analysis, as much as law drove the restructuring of land
revenue systems and forest enclosures, Adivasis also appropriated the law when
they rose in resistance. Law, in this sense, was ‘a site of contradiction, being
both a maker of hegemony and a means of resistance’ (ibid: 130). However,
Chandra’s argument risks an analytical underestimation of the significance
of colonial rule and state-making in relation to Adivasi subalternity. As
much as these processes were negotiated and as much as tribal communities
appropriated the idioms of the colonial state and engaged with its institutions
when they staked their claims, these dynamics took place within the context of
highly unequal power relations. Precisely because of these asymmetries—and
despite the fact that Adivasi resistance left its marks on colonial policies and
laws—the outcome of these processes ultimately consolidated these power
relations. And this consolidation is manifest in our present in the kind of
deprivation and subordination that, as I showed in Chapter 2, ultimately
results in disproportionate exposure to premature death among Adivasis. If we
relegate colonialism to the extent that Chandra seems to suggest we should,
we will arguably lose sight of a key modality through which the political
economy that reproduces such poverty and subordination was constituted. As
an alternative, therefore, I turn in the next chapter to an analysis of the co-
existence of negotiation and consolidation in colonial and postcolonial state
formation in the Bhil heartland of western Madhya Pradesh.
*Throughout this chapter I have made used of a range of archival resources—in particular,
administrative reports from Alirajpur and Badwani from the early 1900s to the 1940s.
For the the sake of convenience, I list the archival reference for these sources here:
IOR/V/10/689: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1909/10–1916/17
IOR/V/10/690: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1917–1928
IOR/V/10/691: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1928–29
IOR/V/10/692: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1929–30
IOR/V/10/693: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1930–31
IOR/V/10/694: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1931–32
IOR/V/10/695: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1932–33
IOR/V/10/696: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1936/37–1939/40
IOR/V/10/697: Ali-Rajpur State Administration Report 1940–41
IOR/V/10/824: Barwani State Administration Report 1909–1924
IOR/V/10/825: Barwani State Administration Report 1939/40–1941/42
IOR/V/10/1312: Jhabua Administration Report, 1935/41 (Report on the Council of
Administration, Jhabua State)
IOR/V/10/1313: Jhabua Administration Report, 1941/42–1944/45 (Report on the
administration of the Jhabua State
Badwani State Administrative Report 1865: L/PS/6/538
Ali-Rajpur Administrative Report 1869: L/PS/6/567
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 91

‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’

Negotiations and Consolidations

The hundred-year period stretching from the end of the Anglo-Maratha wars
in 1818 to the early 1920s was not just an era of state-making from above in the
Bhil heartland. It was also a ‘rebellious century’ (Tilly, Tilly, and Tilly 1975)
during which the unequal power relations that were forged between dominant
and ruling groups, on the one hand, and subaltern and ruled groups, on the
other hand, were vigorously contested from below. Across the century, Bhil
communities mobilised in a variety of ways to resist the adverse terms upon
which they were being incorporated into the politico-administrative structures
that underpinned the new forms of colonial and princely power that were
being consolidated in the region. One of the key objectives of this chapter is to
interrogate this resistance as an integral dimension of the making of colonial
state space in the Bhil heartland.
Importantly, what emerges from this investigation is a portrait of resistance
that is considerably at variance with that proposed by key contributions to the
early Subaltern Studies project, in which peasant insurgency was understood
as constituting ‘the necessary antithesis of colonialism’ (Guha 1983: 2). As I
pointed out in the introductory chapter, the collective action of the peasantry
in colonial India was understood by authors such as Ranajit Guha, Partha
Chatterjee, and Sudipta Kaviraj as acts of absolute opposition to the intrusions
of the colonial state. In contrast to this portrayal, the resistance that was
mobilised by Bhil communities during the period in question took the form of
what might be called contentious negotiations of the terms on which they were
being incorporated into the new state–society relations that were crystallising
in the region.
Two features characterised these negotiations in particular. First, the
rebels justified their insurrections through oppositional appropriations of
moral economies of rule and idioms of state-making that defined what was
92 Adivasis and the State

legitimate and what illegitimate in terms of how relationships between the

state and the population over which it reigned were constituted.1 Second,
insurgent Bhils pursued their opposition to adverse incorporation in the
emerging politico–administrative structures in ways which suggests that
they conceived of the state not as an entirely alien and external Leviathan,
but rather in disaggregated terms, as an institution consisting of separate

1I draw my conception of moral economy from E. P. Thompson’s (1971) classic

study of food riots in seventeenth century England. Thompson, of course, argued
that participants in these riots understood their actions as a legitimate defence of
traditional rights and customs which were supported by a consensus within the local
community. This consensus was based on ‘a consistent traditional view of social
norms and obligations, of the proper economic functions of several parties within the
community, which, taken together, can be said to constitute the moral economy of
the poor’ (ibid: 79). Significantly, the understanding of social norms and duties that
animated food riots was grounded in a popular interpretation of a state ideology based
on a paternalistic tradition, in which an established hierarchy of power was accepted,
but popular deference and loyalty to the authorities was nevertheless contingent upon
the ability of the authorities to guarantee the livelihoods of common people (ibid: 88).
Food riots, then, erupted when popular classes felt that their legitimate and customary
right to a livelihood was being violated, and authorities were held accountable to the
precepts of a subaltern appropriation of a paternalistic moral order (see also Thompson
1978: 154).
   James Scott (1976) has of course mobilised the concept of moral economy to analyse
peasant revolts in colonial South–East Asia. Scott takes moral economy to refer to
peasant notions of ‘economic justice and their working definition of exploitation—
their view of which claims on their product were tolerable and which intolerable’
(ibid: 3). At the heart of this moral economy, he claims, is a subsistence ethic: ‘The
minimal formulation was that elites must not invade the subsistence reserve of poor
people; its maximal formulation was that elites had a positive moral obligation to
provide for the maintenance needs of their subjects in time of dearth’ (ibid: 33).
For peasant communities in South–East Asia, Scott argues, this ethic served as ‘a
standard of equity against which the moral performance of elites might be judged’
(ibid: 34). Orthodox Marxists such as Tom Brass (1991) have taken Scott to task for
paying insufficient attention to the class differentiation of the peasantry and how this
in turn impacts on agrarian protest. However, from a Gramscian point of view, in
which subalternity is understood as being always already a compound form of adverse
incorporation in power relations, and where oppositional subaltern agency is studied
in terms of appropriations, inflections, and inversions of hegemonic idioms, such
objections matter less than the fact that, as Thompson (1991: 343) himself noted of
Scott’s work, his conception of the moral economy of the peasant has enabled a subtle
analytical engagement with ‘the limits which the weak can impose upon power’.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 93

and hierarchically ordered echelons. These different echelons could be pitted

against each other by turning to one with an appeal for redress of the wrongs
perpetrated by another (see Nilsen 2015b).2
In this chapter, I show how this dynamic unfolded in different parts of the
Bhil heartland. I start by examining a series of early encounters between the
British and the Bhils in Khandesh during the initial attempts at pacification
that were made between 1818 and 1823. I then turn to look at how Bhil
resistance manifested itself in the princely states in the region. I focus first on
the different forms of opposition that was mounted in Mewar from the 1820s
to the 1880s, then on three large-scale uprisings that took place in Malwa and
Nimad during the same period, before turning to a discussion of two mass
movements that erupted among the Bhils in the Rajputana Agency in the 1910s
and the 1920s. Throughout, I concentrate on teasing out how the collective
action of the Bhils was geared towards the negotiation of power ‘even if this

2 The dynamics I chart and discuss in this chapter bear some degree of resemblance to
the manner in which Adivasis in Chota Nagpur actively negotiated with the colonial
government from their position of subalternity (see Chandra 2013a). However, the
form and content of such negotiations in the Bhil heartland differed in some key
respects. For example, although petitioning did take place, it was of a less elaborate
kind than that witnessed in Chota Nagpur, where, as the introduction noted with
reference to Chandra’s work, tribal groups petitioned the colonial state all the way to
London. Moreover, the Bhils did not make use of colonial idioms of primitivism—
idioms that foreshadowed oppositional claims to indigeneity in crucial ways—in
the same way as tribal groups in Chota Nagpur did in their defense of land and
forest rights. Extending such contrasts, one might ask why the Bhil heartland never
witnessed the emergence of a movement like the Adivasi Mahasabha, which emerged
in the late 1930s to champion Adivasi rights in Chota Nagpur (see Devalle 1993;
Damodaran 2006; Shah 2007). This is a question that exceeds the scope of this
study—indeed, it can only be adequately answered through a comparative historical
sociology of the trajectory of Adivasi communities in the context of colonial and
postcolonial state formation across western, central, and eastern India. However,
with specific reference to Chota Nagpur, it is tempting to speculate whether it
might be related to the relatively early and relatively more pronounced emergence of
a tribal middle class in this region. As Susanne Devalle (1993: 135) has noted, the
development of urban-based organisations such as the Adivasi Mahasabha ‘followed an
intricate pattern of continuous fission that mirrored the cleavages among the emerging
strata of well-to-do adivasis and the sectoral interests that guided their proposals’.
It was above all a Christian Adivasi elite which propelled these organisations, with
support from the churches in the region (see also Corbridge 2000).
94 Adivasis and the State

took place in contexts where the forest chiefs were aware of the balance being
skewed against them’ (Skaria 1999: 273).
The vigorous resistance that was mounted during this period contrasts
starkly with the acquiescence and deference that I discussed in Chapter
2. How can this contrast be explained? Obviously, this question has to be
answered in no small part with reference to how the consolidation of new
modalities of state power across this hundred-year period gradually came to
circumscribe the capacity for, and the scope of, oppositional collective action
among the Bhils. But it would nevertheless be wrong to think of the kind of
political subordination manifested in everyday tyranny solely as the result of
colonial state-making. As I show in the final part of this chapter with specific
reference to western Madhya Pradesh, the processes of subjugation that were
set in motion under the aegis of colonialism were brought to their conclusion
after 1947 as a result of how the integration of a patchwork of minor princely
states into the newly independent nation converged with the construction of
Congress hegemony in postcolonial electoral politics.
On the eve of independence, India was home to approximately 600 princely
states, which had been cultivated as pillars of support for the British Raj since
the Great Uprising of 1857 (Copland 1997: chapter 2; Ramusack 2004).3 The
incorporation of these states into the Indian nation ultimately unfolded very
rapidly between 1946 and 1948. In the case of Hyderabad and Kashmir, of
course, the process of integration involved the use of military force by the
Indian state,4 but overall the process was achieved relatively smoothly (see
Copland 1997: chapter 8; Ramusack 2004: chapter 8). In what is western
Madhya Pradesh today, the incorporation of princely rulers took its form from
the way in which Congress built its hegemonic position in electoral politics
more generally: ‘Within each region, they recruited from among those who
were typically members of the dominant landowning castes and who were
the leading members of the large landowning caste. Such local notables put
together the basic units of the Congress party organisation’ (Frankel 2005:

3 The states, of course, were of widely different sizes and accordingly also highly varying
significance—ranging from those (such as Kashmir, Travancore, and Hyderabad)
that were ‘considerable countries in their own right’ to those that were small enough
to ‘have fitted into some suburban back yards’ (Copland 1997: 8). Manu Bhagavan
(2009: 428n) estimates that there were some hundred ‘major, politically viable states’
involved in the process of integration that took place between 1946 and 1948.
4 See for example Benichou (2000), Pernau (2000), Sherman (2007), and Zutshi (2010).
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 95

23). As I will show in this chapter, it was the princely rulers who came to play
this role during the first decades of independence in western Madhya Pradesh
(see Pai 2012; Jaffrelot 2009).
The gaining of the princes’ consent in exchange for influence in the domain
of electoral politics can be considered as a specific regional manifestation of
the ‘passive revolution’ that shaped the political economy of postcolonial India
in significant ways—above all, perhaps, by ruling out a determined attack
on dominant elites in the Indian countryside (see Chatterjee 1993; Kaviraj
1997; Riley and Desai 2007). As I will also show, this process was closely
entwined with the coercive handling of a radical movement among the Bhils
that opposed many of the practices associated with everyday tyranny. These
coeval processes were integral to the consolidation of a political regime in
Madhya Pradesh in which the power of upper castes and upper classes has
remained entrenched and stable across time (Harriss 1999: 3371). The full
significance of this fact will become clear in the second part of the book, in
which I put forward an analysis of the forms and trajectories of contemporary
Bhil resistance in the state.

Early Bhil Resistance: Khandesh, 1818–1823

Writing in early 1819 as part of what seems to have been an exchange between
him and the Resident of Indore State about their respective experiences in
dealing with the Bhils of Khandesh and the Malwa–Nimad region, John Briggs
(1885: 79) noted: ‘Goomanee Naig of the Sindwa Ghaut has lately conducted
himself in a manner which seems to be approaching downright rebellion.’ The
person that Briggs was referring to, Gumani Naik, was significant not only
because he and his 250-strong bhauband controlled Sendhwa ghat—a crucial
gateway for trade between Malwa and Khandesh—but also due to the fact that
he was the first chieftain that the British came to terms with as they set about
the task of pacifying the Bhils of the region (Deshpande 1987: 85).
To achieve this goal, Briggs had been ordered by Mountstuart Elphinstone
to make inquiries about the chiefs’ claims ‘on the adjoining country and to
satisfy those claims as soon as possible, either by allowing the Bhils for the
present to make the collections to which they have been so accustomed or by
such a commutation as may afford full satisfaction to them in the manner least
burdensome to the people’ (cited in Prasad 1991: 122). In the case of Gumani
Naik, this resulted in a settlement that was concluded in early March 1818,
in which the chieftain agreed to refrain from raids and attacks on villages
96 Adivasis and the State

in Thalner district. He also agreed to help the colonial authorities in the

further settlement of the region. Prior to the coming of the British, Gumani
had collected taxes for the Holkars from travellers who passed through
Sendhwa ghat, and a portion of the earnings from this had accrued to him.
According to the terms of his settlement with the British, he vowed to not
attack or otherwise harass those who travelled through the pass. Customs
duties were to be collected by the Government Customs House, which was
established in Sendhwa ghat. The customs master would then pay Gumani’s
share to him. The chieftain’s duties were restricted to ensuring safe passage
and informing colonial authorities of disquiet and unrest among other Bhil
groups. The British on their part agreed to pay Gumani ‘all those Huks which
are proved by the records of the Mahal to have been customary … ’ (Briggs
cited in Deshpande 1987: 86). All in all, this amounted to an annual sum of
2,000 rupees.
However, on four separate occasions between October 1818 and January
1819, Gumani Naik violated the terms of his agreement with the British: he
engaged in raiding, collected tolls from travellers, and, finally, stole cattle
from the village of Chopda. When he was questioned about his reasons for
engaging in these actions, Gumani argued that he and his followers had
resorted to stealing cattle as the Scindia’s officials at Chopda had refused to
pay his haks. The mamlatdar (village official) at Chopda was instructed by
Briggs to pay Gumani what he was owed, and his status was also upgraded,
as he was allowed to maintain troops. His pension, however, was reduced to
1,200 rupees annually (Deshpande 1987: 86–88; Prasad 1991: 132–133).
Now, it may be tempting to see Gumani’s infractions of the agreement
he had reached with Briggs as rejections of the British attempt to reorganise
sovereignty in the area. However, such a reading of his infractions of the terms
of his settlement is not tenable. It is crucial to bear in mind that, according to
Gumani, he did not violate the terms of the agreement with the British in order
to protest the terms of his settlement, or to dispute his subordination to colonial
authority as such. Rather, he engaged in raiding and stole cattle because the
minions of the Scindias had not honoured the terms of that settlement. That
his discontent should take the form of raiding and cattle-theft is only natural
given, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, that this was an established way
of claiming unpaid dues—and thus also political authority and sovereignty—
during the precolonial era (see Skaria 1999: 135). And Gumani Naik was not
the only Khandesh chieftain to resort to such measures when the terms of the
new agreements with the British were violated.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 97

For example, in May 1818, the British attempted to settle the claims of the
Satmala, Satkunda, and Kaldwary Bhils. Their haks were deemed to amount
to 648 rupees per annum, and after the conclusion of the settlement, raiding
ceased for some time. However, in late January 1819, one of their leaders, Cheel
Naik, rebelled and attacked and plundered the village of Dharangaon. In an
exchange with British authorities, he pointed out that out of the 648 rupees
that had been promised to him and his followers, only 175 rupees had been
received. He proceeded to justify his revolt as follows:

… the letter which you sent to us, stating that the village of Dharangaon had
been plundered and desiring the restoration of the property taken has been
received and understood, and this is the answer: when our naiks met you at
Dharangaon, you promised to cause our Huks to be paid, but as yet, we have
not received them nor have we received the Bheit Bukra and other dues from
the Pergunnah. It is necessary to let you know that you have not performed
your engagement, on which account we attacked the village. If you will now
provide for us, we will refrain from plundering. Is it right for you to desire us
not to plunder and yet make no provisions for us? First cause to be paid to us
our just claims and then call us to account for any robberies committed by us.
Do as you please, but to give us nothing to eat and leave us to feed on leaves
and grass is an admirable plan—we are Sirdars. What occasion is there for us
to write more? … you promised us 600 rupees for the pergunnah for Bhaul of
which we received 175, our Hucks in the Pergunnah of Lulling amount to 800
rupees; and 800 Rupees are due to us for the Pergunnah of Dhoolia, which
you know. (Cited in Prasad 1991: 148–149; see also Deshpande 1987: 103)

Briggs did not acknowledge these claims, and ordered the military to hunt
down and capture Cheel Naik. Eventually he surrendered, and was executed
in early June 1819 (Deshpande 1987: 104).
Yet another example can be found in the trajectory of Kaniya Naik, a
chieftain in the easternmost part of the Satpura range. Kaniya was a chief of
some substance, who in 1818 had some 650 men—both Bhils and sibandis5—
under his command. Like many of the other Satpura chieftains, he settled
with the British after being subjected to a military campaign, and was paid
haks in exchange for police services. However, when the payments of his haks
stopped, Kaniya took to raiding. When questioned by Briggs as to the reasons
for his actions, he responded as follows:

5 Sibandis were Arab mercenaries who were frequently found in the employ of various
rulers throughout western India in the eighteenth century.
98 Adivasis and the State

The Cawlnamah which was sent through the medium of Jemad-ud-deen Shah
has been received. My situation is thus: there are 5000 men under me and their
ancestors for generations have subsisted by plunder. You are now the Masters
of the Country and thousands look to you for protection and support. If by
your means I and my followers are provided with subsistence, we will abstain
from plundering. I have a great many Sibandies and Sowars [soldiers] in my
service which are maintained at considerable expense … I am ready to obey
whatever order may be conveyed through him. (Cited in Deshpande 1987: 91)

Briggs instructed his officers in the area to settle Kaniya’s claims. Kaniya,
however, refused to take the offers from the British seriously, and instead
joined forces with other chieftains in the region and carried on raiding. At
this point, Briggs was convinced that negotiations were no longer adequate
in relation to the Bhils: ‘It is towards their extirpation’, he wrote to one of his
officers in late January 1819, ‘that we should direct our first attention’ (cited
in Prasad 1991: 137). Further military campaigns were pursued against the
Bhils of the Satpuras, and eventually, in March 1819, Kaniya surrendered to
the British. In order to secure his allegiance to colonial authorities, he was
given a personal grant of 600 rupees per year, as well as 620 bighas of land
(Prasad 1991: 137).
Despite such efforts, Khandesh was still ‘harassed and unsafe’ (Khandesh
Gazetteer 1880: 253) when Briggs left the province in 1823, and the Bhils rose
frequently against the colonial authorities until the onset of the next decade.6
What is interesting about this early phase of tribal resistance from the point of
view of understanding how Bhils related to colonial state-making is the way in
which chieftains such as Gumani Naik, Cheel Naik, and Kaniya Naik justified
their rebellions. In their exchanges with the British, the theme is not so much
one of rejecting the colonial state and vindicating an autochthonous existence,

6 In the wake of Briggs’ departure, the British opted for an alternative strategy in
Khandesh centred on the formation of the Khandesh Bhil Corps as a military outfit
of Bhil recruits headed by a British officer to carry out military pacification, paralleled
by the implementation of more comprehensive efforts to promote sedentary agriculture.
Writing during the middle of the nineteenth century, D. C. Graham (1856: 223)
concluded that it was no longer possible for the Bhils to ‘unite in general insurrection,
without punishment, few individuals who offend against the laws can elude the arm of
justice, and by thus wisely employing a small portion of the community a numerous
race is kept in subjection, the tranquility of this immense province is satisfactorily
obtained, which no military force nor expenditure of treasure could have otherwise
effected … ’
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 99

but rather a claim that the rulers of a particular domain are obliged to respect
certain rights and prerogatives that are held by their subordinates. And in
these contentious negotiations the notion that acquiescence was dependent on
rightful subsistence seems to have been particularly significant: ‘It is better to
eat and die’, claimed a group of Bhils who rebelled against the non-payment
of haks, ‘than die without food’ (cited in Deshpande 1987: 105). This was also
a foundational theme on the many occasions when the Bhils of the princely
states of Mewar mobilised between the 1820s and the 1880s.

Raids, Petitions, Uprisings: Bhil Resistance in Mewar, 1820s–1880s

The changes that were brought about in the extant relations between
monarchical rulers and Bhil chieftains in Mewar in the wake of the
establishment of British paramountcy sparked a series of conflicts during the
1820s and 1830s. Initially, most of these conflicts centred on the bolai and
rakhwali taxes that had customarily been claimed by the Bhils. Attempts to
curtail Bhil claims to these taxes between 1821 and 1823 only succeeded in
provoking widespread resistance among the chieftains, who often collaborated
with local landlords in challenging colonial restrictions on their prerogatives.
Therefore, in the wake of an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a settlement of
the issue directly with the chieftains, British military forces marched on the
Bhil domains in Mewar for the first time in 1823 (Sen 2003). The presence of
a superior armed force compelled the Bhils to accept an agreement in which
they swore obedience to the Maharana’s court in Udaipur as well as to abstain
from conducting raids and claiming taxes from merchants and travellers.
However, they soon reneged on these promises when the British troops
withdrew, and from 1825 to 1828 Mewar again witnessed new Bhil uprisings
(see Brookes 1859: 74–78). As noted in Chapter 3, a temporary resolution to
this conflict was reached through the negotiation of an agreement in which
the Bhils gave up their claims to bolai and rakhwali in exchange for an annual
payment from the British. A new axis of conflict crystallised in the wake of
the Maharana’s attempts to use the increased military and policing capacities
that had been put in place by the British to increase the land revenue demanded
from the Bhils. This move provoked a new wave of raiding and rebellion
that lasted from 1835 to 1841. Commenting on the outbreak of raiding and
a series of attacks on police outposts in 1839, a British colonel observed that
the disquiet in the region was ‘solely attributable to injudicious taxation’ (cited
in Brookes 1859, 85).
100 Adivasis and the State

In the wake of military repression in the early 1840s, the character of Bhil
resistance to what was perceived as unfair taxation changed quite significantly:
‘By the middle of the century, Bhil villages were petitioning British officers
against oppression at the hands of the durbar’s officials’ (Sen 2003: 281; emphasis
added). Thus, in 1856 the Bhil villages of Peepli and Paduna submitted a petition
to the political agent in Mewar, complaining about unjust levies being charged
by the Maharana’s durbar. In the case of Paduna village, they argued that they
had, in the 1840s, been assessed for an annual plough tax of 80 rupees per year.
However, after the village had been resumed into khalsa (state land), the Mewar
court levied an annual plough tax of 50 rupees and a koot levy—a share of the
grain collected from the threshing floors after harvest.
The attempt by the Sisodia regime to tighten its fiscal grip around the
Bhil communities testifies to the persistent efforts of the Maharana to use the
enhanced military capacities of the state to his advantage. Indeed, in 1850,
Paduna was attacked by the Maharana’s troops as a result of the village not
having paid its taxes; all the cattle was seized and a heavy fine imposed on
the village. The petition from the village of Peepli told a very similar story:
during the 1820s, the petition stated, they paid 52 rupees as an annual plough
tax. However, in the 1840s, the tax burden increased with the imposition of a
fauj barar (a tax towards the funding of military troops) that was levied twice
under the name of Tirsala. According to the villagers of Peepli, they could
not afford to pay the 200 rupees every second year in addition to the annual
plough tax (Sen 2003: 281–82; Mathur 1988: 61–62; see also Brookes 1859: 88).
Thus, in Mewar as in Khandesh, Bhil resistance took the form of contentious
negotiations of the terms of integration into the polity, rather than the outright
rejection of colonial state space. In contesting the increasingly adverse terms
upon which they were incorporated within the Mewar polity, the Bhils sought
to defend past arrangements and the compromises that had been reached
between forest polities and tributary rulers. Moreover, they did this on the
basis of a moral economy that attached to this relationship, within which there
was a degree of mutual recognition of power and sovereignty, as well as of
the legitimate prerogatives of the different parties. Indeed, resistance erupted
when this moral economy was sundered by a monarchical order bolstered
by the military power of the new colonial overlords. Initially, this resistance
took the form of raid—the customary way in which Bhils would enforce their
haks—but, in the aftermath of armed reprisals and the further extension of
military and political power, petitioning came to the forefront as a strategy
for assertion. This is significant as it suggests a readiness to engage with the
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 101

emergent new state apparatus in a way that was acknowledged as legitimate

and, furthermore, an expectation that the upper echelons of this apparatus
might find subaltern grievances to be reasonable.
The gradual hollowing out of the bolai and rakhwali taxes during the 1850s
and 1860s had been a vexing experience for many Bhil chieftains. In March
1881 these frustrations coalesced with fears thrown up by the ongoing census
operations in the state and anger at the introduction of new levies, taxes,
and excise laws, the durbar’s new revenue settlement, and harassment by
local officials to provoke a large-scale armed uprising. After an initial clash
between Bhils from the village of Paduna and representatives of the Udaipur
court in March 1881, a large group of Bhils gathered together, marched to the
nearest thana, and attacked it. The thanedars, five sowars, and sixteen others
were killed and their bodies mutilated. The thana was burned along with all
the baniya shops in Bara village. Bhils from the nearby area joined the revolt
and a series of armed encounters took place between them and the troops
of the Maharana, as well as British troops, leaving more than 70 Bhils dead
(Sen 2000, Mathur 1988). With the ranks of the insurgent Bhils numbering
between 2,000 and 3,000, the British Resident in the state was concerned that
the uprising was ‘almost a general one among the Bhils residing in … Meywar
… ’ (cited in Sen 2000: 84).
The clashes in March were followed by negotiations between the Bhils
and the durbar the following month. In the weeks preceding the negotiations,
the Bhils had demanded that the Udaipur court bring an end to the ongoing
census operations and revenue settlements, remove police and customs posts,
and refrain from interfering in community disputes. They also complained
about harassment at the hands of the durbar’s personnel, and the increasing
exactions imposed by the court. Several of these demands spilled over into
the negotiations: the Bhils demanded that the census be called off, that their
land should not be brought under revenue settlement, and the levy that had
been imposed to finance the MBC should be abolished. These demands were
combined with a new positioning in relation to the durbar and the British.
Whereas mid-century petitions had called upon the British to intervene against
the abuses of the court, the Bhils now sought to appeal to the Maharana and
to position themselves as his loyal subjects. In their negotiations with the
durbar’s officials, they stated that they would willingly drive the foreigners—
that is, the British—out of the state if the Maharana refrained from punishing
them for their actions during the uprising (Sen 2000: 82, 86–92). Conversely,
when a British military commander approached them, they expressed their
102 Adivasis and the State

unwillingness to engage with him as follows: ‘ … you are from Delhi, go away.
The Maharana is our sovereign; the officers sent by him have come and we
will talk only with them’ (cited in Sen 2000: 89).
The rebellion of 1881, then, was in many ways a departure from the
petitioning of the 1850s. However, even when they resorted to armed rebellion
in large numbers, it still seems to have been a key objective for the Bhils to
negotiate the terms of their incorporation into a political and administrative
structure in which their customary prerogatives were increasingly coming
under pressure. And to a certain extent, the Bhils were successful in this, as
the Udaipur court granted a series of concessions in response to their demands
(see Chapter 3). Indeed, a British colonial official complained bitterly: ‘The
Bhils have succeeded in extorting by fire and murder unreasonable concessions
and this is sure to have the most mischievous effect, although it may ensure a
temporary truce’ (cited in Singh 1985: 49).

Dhar, Badwani, Alirajpur: Bhil Resistance in Malwa and Nimad,

1830s–1880s
Malwa and Nimad had been subject to British efforts to pacify the Bhils since
the end of the Anglo-Maratha wars. By the onset of the 1830s, these efforts had
tilted the balance of power decisively in favour of the Rajput princely states of
the region. Knowing well that the British would use military force to suppress
Bhil militancy, local rulers refused to pay dues and stipends to chieftains,
despite the fact that these were stipulated in settlement agreements that had
been established over the past decade (Kela 2012: 102–110). In October 1832,
discontent over the non-payment of dues and stipends coalesced with anger over
other abuses by the court and its personnel to ignite rebellion in Dhar state: in
the wake of an attack on a police outpost by a group of Bhils, which left seven
soldiers dead, tribal communities across the state rose in insurrection. Cattle
were stolen, raiding was widespread, and attacks on wayfarers became common
occurrences (ibid: 112). A petition submitted by a group of Bhil headmen to
the British justified the uprising as follows:

Our women who carry loads of wood to Dhar for sale are there insulted. The
custom has hitherto always been for one stick per bundle [being taken as
perquisite] for the Sircar, but now two or three are; if we go into the bazaar we
are seized to carry loads. The people from Dhar who enter the hills for grass
tie up bundles of our juwar, makka [maize], and other grain and carry them
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 103

off. We have never paid ground rent; it is now demanded from us. Our land
is seized and cattle graze upon it; our fields near the Ghuree in the vicinity of
Mohunpore are now counted as being within the limits of its boundary. Let
enquiries be instituted and whatever we are found to be entitled to, of huks,
customs, and lands be awarded to us—and a settlement made for us. (Cited
in Kela 2012: 113)

The petition leaves little doubt that the rebellion was grounded in grievances
spawned by the transformation of relations between Bhil communities and
Rajput rulers that had occurred since 1818. Yet the objective nevertheless
seems to have been that of protesting illegitimate abuses and negotiating a set
of legitimate entitlements in relation to the Dhar court, rather than rejecting
its rule as such.
The Dhar rebellion petered out by the end of October 1832; as Kela (2012:
115) notes, there was no ‘decisive clash’ that ended the rebellion, nor did an
acknowledged leader spearhead it. This had changed significantly by the second
half of the 1850s, when the next large-scale revolt broke out in Malwa and
Nimad—this time in Badwani state. In Badwani, as I noted in the previous
chapter, raiding had persisted during the 1820s and 1830s, in large part due
to the non-payment of haks. The more conciliatory approach of the 1840s did
little to compel the Badwani Darbar to honour the terms of the settlements
reached with the Bhils, who in turn were unwilling to cooperate with the new
police outposts that had been established in the hills (ibid: 143–144). During
the first half of the 1850s, a number of factors—failed monsoons, a cholera
outbreak, and suspicions sparked by census operations—exacerbated Bhil
discontent. Finally, in 1856, Bhima Naik—who was deemed by the British to
be ‘one of the most respectable and civilised’ chieftains that they had dealings
with in Badwani state—was accused of killing a woman suspected of being a
witch.7 As the Bhil Agent in the state demanded a full inquiry of the killing,
Bhima fled into the nearby hills (ibid: 144).

7 As Skaria (1999: 88) points out, Bhils regarded witches—dakans—as ‘extremely

malevolent and dangerous, capable of killing people through their spells’. Their
malevolent power was believed to be drawn from female forest spirits, and in this
sense, witches were ‘the epitome of female wildness’ (ibid: 88). Any woman could in
principle be a witch, and witch-killings—essentially an assertion of masculinity—
happened on a regular basis. Colonial authorities banned the practice, which in turn
provoked resentment and opposition among the Bhils (ibid: 258–260; see also Skaria
1997a, 1997b).
104 Adivasis and the State

In August the following year, 1857, news reached Bombay that the Bhils of
Badwani were rallying behind the leadership of Bhima and another chieftain,
Mavasiya, in large numbers. They were joined by Khajia Naik—the rakhwaldar
of Sendhwa road—and by the end of the month reports were emerging that
‘Bhima Naik of Burwani Ilaqa’ had attacked and plundered villages and caused
‘great depredations’ across Nimad (cited in Singh 1998: 83). Over the next
few months, the three chieftains led raiding parties of as many as 800 to 900
Bhils, leading the British to conclude that ‘the whole Bheel population are
in insurrection and most stringent measures are required to put them down’
(cited in Kela 2012: 147).
During the revolt, the chieftains sent a number of dispatches to the ruler of
Badwani. The contents of these messages provides us with rich insights into
the moral economy that fuelled the rebellion:

I do not go to plunder Mauza Datware of my own accord, as you suspect. I

was ordered by Maharaja Jaswant Singh, the Raja of Barwani, Bhoodhgeer
Lilubhai and Dowlatsingh Mama that I should go and plunder the country
within my reach, except Barwani, and was further directed that I should take
possession of and plunder Mauza Datware because he said the village belonged
to Barwani. Fifty rupees and a dress of honour were then given to me with
instructions to perform the required services. But the Raja did not afterwards
support me in the undertaking, and therefore, I have now determined to make
aggressions upon his own territories. He now prefers complaints against me
to you and himself wishes to stand aloof. (Cited in Singh 1998: 83)
   I have to add that you are not justified in preferring any complaints against
me, because I am an old servant of the Raja and acted under his orders. You
can claim compensation from the Raja and not from me. I shall encroach
upon your districts or else you should make some arrangements for my pay.
(Cited in Singh 1998: 84)

In these statements, it is closeness to, rather than distance from, the state
and the ruler which is being emphasised. Bhima is highlighting his closeness
to the princely ruler—he has been the servant of the Raja of Badwani and has
acted on his orders—as well as his dismay that this ruler has betrayed him.
In a letter in which Bhima addressed an attack on the village of Datwada,
the failure to honour his rightful claims to haks is emphasised as the reason
for his actions: ‘ … we plundered the village of Dutwada because we have not
received our Huks due from the Sirkar [state government] Holkar since the
arrival of the British here. But we will not be satisfied until we plunder some
other villages in other elakas’ (cited in Kela 2012: 150).
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 105

Statements such as these express a theme that would run throughout

Bhima’s communications with his adversaries during the uprising: it was not
so much an encroaching state that was objected to as a state that had failed to
honour the terms of an agreement. For example, in another letter to the Raja
of Badwani, he wrote:

Baboo Hunner Lall has not yet made any arrangements for our pay and very
likely he will go away after realising the money without making arrangements
for us. We therefore advise you to detain him until he does something for us.
If the Baboo has a mind to fight with us let him come, but don’t you join with
him as you are our master. Let those of our men at liberty whom you have
captured and let our Rasud [supplies] come without molestation. We will do
for the Europeans and their servants as Holkar and the King of Delhi will
direct us and see how does the Baboo go safe. (Cited in Kela 2012: 148)

According to Kela, Babu Hunner Lall is most probably a merchant or tax

farmer who has been mandated by the then Raja to negotiate with the naiks
(ibid: 148). The terms of whatever agreement might have been reached between
him and the chieftains have been breached, Bhil insurgents have been captured,
and their supplies have been intercepted or blocked. In this missive, the intent
is to overthrow the British, but the overlordship of the princely ruler, to whom
the rebels appeal for support, is also clearly stated—‘you are our master’.
The next communiqué from Bhima and his followers, however, was less
indulgent towards the Rajput ruler:

We have written to you before about the capture of our sepoys and provisions.
You capture the men who bring us Rasud. Very well, we will take prisoners all
the sepoys of Burwani and other thanas in Sirkar elaka. Take care, we have
received orders from the King of Delhi to cut off the heads of Europeans and
those in their employ, with assurances that success will reach us after Dushera.
So if you have a mind to attack us you will meet the same end as the four
Sahib logs and 150 sepoys whose heads are hanging after having been cut off.
(Cited in Kela 2012: 149)

As Kela points out, the stipends of the Bhil chiefs had been held back for a
long period of time; the Raja of Badwani had promised to pay, but then reneged.
He pleaded with the colonial authorities to ‘arrange that some forces might
be sent against these Bheels from Candeish’ (cited in Kela 2012: 150). The
rebellion, however, was hard to kill and the conflict rolled on for several years.
106 Adivasis and the State

Bhima carried out his last raid during the monsoon of 1861, and remained on
the run until his capture in 1868 (ibid: 155–166).
During Bhima’s trial, the narrative of princely betrayal as a justification for
revolt re-emerged. His brother Sewa argued that their rebellion was triggered
by deprivation: ‘We began to be in want and could get nothing to eat so we
went and plundered Kantool … we went again for grain, being in a state of
starvation … after some twenty days we plundered Datwada and returned
to Dhaba Bowree’ (cited in Kela 2012: 168). Bhima confirmed much of his
brother’s testimony, but also stressed the loss of rightful claim by pointing out
how he had rebelled because his village had been taken from him:

When the Mutiny broke out I heard nothing of it. The Rana of Burwanee
summoned me and told me to bring Mowassia with me and one or two hundred
men. I collected [them] … [but] went alone to the Rana and said to him that I
would assist the sirkar if my inamee [revenue] villages which had been taken
for granted were restored. The Rana said this could not be done at present and
I went into rebellion and plundered all the grain in the village of Bulkoa and
went into the hills. All our supplies were stopped and I sent a message to the
Rana that our men must have something to eat or else they would plunder.
The Rana said that he could do nothing, so we began to plunder but only
took the necessaries—food, clothes, cooking utensils, and such like things.
(Cited in Kela 2012: 169)

He added: ‘Of course we plundered wayfarers, but we were obliged to do

that for our subsistence’ (cited in Kela 2012: 170). In other words, the theme of
violated agreements and rightful claims to subsistence remained a guiding thread
throughout the course of the rebellion and its aftermath. However, as I pointed
out in Chapter 3, Bhima’s revolt ultimately resulted in a fortification of British
military presence in the Satpura hills, which in turn strengthened the position
of the princely rulers in Badwani in relation to the Bhils and their chieftains.
The last major act of resistance by the Bhils of Malwa and Nimad took
place in the neighbouring state of Alirajpur in the early 1880s. As I showed
in the previous chapter, the administrative workings of the kingdom were
subjected to thoroughgoing reforms from the late 1860s onwards under British
supervision. This resulted in a series of restrictions being imposed on Bhil
communities, along with new taxes and levies. A group of leading patels had
protested against these changes as early as in 1869, by submitting a formal
petition objecting to the new system of land assessment that had been put in
place. In 1871, the patel of Richwi village submitted a petition that asked for
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 107

the old revenue arrangements to be restored, and began collecting revenue

on these terms. And in 1873 the Bhils of Sorwa, lead by Chitu Patel, began
raiding. In a petition submitted to the court, Chitu complained about the
impacts of the new revenue system and abkari regulations, and demanded a
hike in the haks he was entitled to (Kela 2012: 209–210).
From the late 1870s onwards, Alirajpur witnessed a series of bad agricultural
years as a result of both failed monsoons and heavy rains, which continued into
the early 1880s. When open rebellion finally erupted, Chitu Patel was once
again at the forefront, along with a group of makranis who were frustrated by
their declining significance in the state. On 7 January 1883, a crowd of Bhils
and makranis with Chitu at the helm looted the town of Nanpur. Chaktala
was the next village to fall prey to the rebellion, followed by Bhabra, a market
village between Alirajpur and Jhabua. Crucially, the rebellion was first and
foremost aimed at traders and state functionaries (Kela 2012: 214).
A few days after the attack on Bhabra, some three to five thousand Bhils
and makranis encircled Alirajpur town. The rebels laid siege to the treasury
and presented their key demand, namely that British superintendence should
be abolished and the king’s rule restored: ‘Events had coalesced popular feeling
around the king’s person’, the Political Agent noted (cited in Kela 2012: 214).
The king had thus come to represent the pre-1869 revenue system, which
was marked to a far greater extent by the prerogatives of shared sovereignty.
This impression is further reinforced if we consider a petition submitted by
12 Bhil patels in February the same year. The petition singled out the changes
that had followed in the wake of these reform as the source of their troubles—for
example, the non-payment of haks, the new and more rigorous land revenue
system, the expanded powers of the patwari, the new abkari system, and
the taxes that were imposed on sales of firewood, cattle, and bamboo mats
(Kela 2012: 208). A lament over the passing of the old form of rule in the
state prefaced the list of complaints: ‘The late Maharana … treated us very
kindly. The land revenue was assessed in lump for each village according to
the means of cultivation. Each cultivator had to pay three or four rupees per
plough, and consequently the patels as well as the cultivators were satisfied’
(cited in Kela 2012: 208).
The siege in Alirajpur developed into a stalemate. The former king’s mother
approached the Bhils to hear their grievances. Whereas her account may well
reflect the bias of the princely rulers, it nevertheless confirms the theme of
restoration of past arrangements and prerogatives as being at the heart of the
Bhil rebellion. Chitu Patel complained that his haks had been withdrawn, and
108 Adivasis and the State

asked for the restoration of the king, whom, he said ‘ought to live in Rajpur,
so that his subjects may always pay their respects … and get consolation at
his hands’ (cited in Kela 2012: 216). The rebels also complained that the
patwaris carried out assessments ‘at full rates, without considering that the
cultivators have suffered by the death of their bullocks, and that the number of
their ploughs have been reduced to half what they were in former years’ (ibid:
216). Moreover, the avaricious dewan was a key target of Bhil grievances: ‘Let
another Dewan be appointed’, the Bhils pleaded, ‘and then our grievances
will be heard by him, but we don’t want these dewans and patwaris’ (ibid:
216). This demand was reiterated throughout the course of the rebellion, until
Chitu ultimately surrendered under pressure from the Malwa Bhil Corps in
April 1883. During his trial he claimed that he and his men had been ‘driven
to desperation by … maladministration’ (ibid: 219) and were forced to rebel
in order to call attention to their plight. Ultimately, the rebellion yielded little
for the Bhils, and colonial state space would only become more entrenched
over the course of following decades.
The Alirajpur rebellion of 1883 was in many ways similar to the Mewar
uprising of 1881: it erupted as the result of the grievances generated by
administrative reforms that led the durbar to increase both restrictions on and
exactions from the Bhil communities, was exacerbated by agrarian distress, and
aimed at the restoration of previous and less stringent forms of governance,
particularly related to taxation. Again, then, it is possible to discern how the
Bhils engaged in attempts to negotiate the terms of their incorporation into
colonial state space on the basis of a moral economy of rule that accepted the
presence of the state, but protested interventions that were deemed to deprive
them of rightful claims to subsistence.8 More generally, the rebellions in

8 Dynamics such as these figure quite prominently in the early Subaltern Studies
project. For example, Gyan Pandey’s (1982) study of agrarian protest in Awadh from
1919 to 1922 shows that a Raja–Praja idiom played a prominent role in providing
legitimacy for the revolting peasants: ‘The idea of a just, or moral, struggle appears
to have been fundamental to the peasants’ acceptance of the necessity of revolt.
Exploitation as such was not unjust. It was inevitable that some ruled and some
conducted prayers and some owned the land and some laboured, and all lived off
the fruits of that labour. But it was important that everyone in the society made a
living out of the resources that were available’ (ibid: 171). In the early phase of the
movement, then, insistence on rightful claims to subsistence, but also a recognition
of what was perceived to be the fair rights of the landlord, figured prominently in
peasant consciousness.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 109

Dhar, Badwani, and Alirajpur seem to have been animated by a similar logic
to that which characterised Bhil resistance in Khandesh and Mewar. Given
the military power marshalled by the British, Bhil chieftains were willing to
accept the initial terms of the settlements offered to them. When resistance
broke out, it did not so much challenge the settlements that had been reached
as the violations of these settlements by Rajput rulers. And in carrying out
resistance the Bhils appealed to different strata of the state, in the hope that
echelons perceived to be located at a higher scale in the hierarchy of power
would take actions against its lower echelons—for example, by complaining
to the king about the dewan, or calling his attention to the avaricious ways
of the patwaris.
In this sense, Skaria’s (1999: 273) argument that Bhil resistance in the
Dangs in the nineteenth century was not a form of anti-state insurgency, but
rather a form of conflictual encounter in which ‘power was being negotiated’
can be generalised to apply to the Bhil heartland as a whole. Skaria, of course,
goes on to argue that the early twentieth century witnessed a change in this
respect: resistance became more radical as insurgency was carried out ‘in the
name of Bhil Raj’ (ibid: 274)—that is, Bhil rule in total opposition to the state.
However, as I show in the following section, which investigates Bhil resistance
in Dungarpur and Mewar from 1910 to the early 1920s, the emergence of Bhil
Raj as an idiom of resistance co-existed with rather than displaced the kind
of appropriations of moral economies of rule and state-making idioms that
characterised the contentious negotiations of the nineteenth century. Moreover,
in the 1920s, notions of Bhil Raj were fused with appropriations of nationalist
idioms that circulated at both regional and national scales at the time.

  Partha Chatterjee’s (1984) study of the land question in late colonial Bengal
reveals similar idioms at play in rural uprisings: ‘To start with, the state is always
distant, an entity with which relations are bound by certain norms of reciprocity,
where obedience is contingent upon fulfilment of the requirements of justice, but
an entity which is not organic or integral to the familiar sphere of everyday social
activity’ (ibid: 137). However, as I have argued elsewhere, the problem remains that
the project and its participants failed to draw the logical conceptual and analytical
conclusions from this—namely that subaltern resistance cannot be conceptualised in
terms of autonomous domains, but rather has to be theorised as relational practices
of appropriation, inflection, and inversion of dominant political forms and idioms
(see Nilsen 2017: chapter 1).
110 Adivasis and the State

Govind Giri, Motilal Tejawat, and Bhil Raj: Dungarpur and

Mewar, 1910s–1920s
The rebellions of 1881 in Mewar and 1883 in Alirajpur seem to mark the end of
a form of resistance that combined raids, petitioning, and armed confrontations
with colonial authorities and princely rulers under the leadership of Bhil patels.
The next major upheavals in the Bhil heartland were lead by non-tribals who
fused idioms grounded in social reform, millenarian visions, and nationalist
struggle in their efforts to mobilise Bhils on a mass basis. The first of these
movements crystallised in Dungarpur state from 1911 onwards, where the Bhils
rallied under the leadership of Govind Giri, a banjara (nomadic caste) ascetic
who in the wake of having lost his family and his livelihood to the famine of
1899–1900 dedicated his life to preaching social reform among the tribals.9
Drawing on the ritual practices of the Dasnami Panth—a Hindu monastic
order whose origins can be traced back to the eight century CE—Govind
Giri encouraged his followers to tend the dhuni (fire pits) and hoist the nishan
(flags) outside their houses. Moreover, he called upon the Bhils to behave
like sahukars—that is, to adopt the ways and mores of the upper castes, for
example by giving up alcohol and adopting vegetarianism. ‘In this way’,
Govind Giri declared, ‘I preached them the path of truth’ (cited in Hardiman
2003: 261–262). These injunctions for social reform were drawn from Bhagat
movements that had been active in southern Rajasthan since the eighteenth
century (see Bordia 2015: 59).10
As David Hardiman (1987: 157–161) has argued, it is problematic to simply
equate social reform movements among Adivasis with Sanskritisation.11 Rather,
the practices constitutive of these movements enabled Adivasis to appropriate
and subvert norms and values that would otherwise ascribe them an inferior
social status, and to evade the power that non-tribal groups such as liquor-
dealers exercised in relation to their communities: ‘Moral self-reform along such
lines provided a potent means for a legitimate and effective form of assertion

9 The following account of Govind Giri’s movement draws on Hardiman (2003), Jain
(1991), and Singh (1995). Only direct quotes will be referenced in what follows.
10 See Tilche (2015) and Shah (2011) for discussion of contemporary Bhagat practices
in Gujarat and Jharkhand respectively.
11 Sanskritisation was defined by M. N. Srinivas as ‘the process by which a “low” Hindu
caste, or tribal, or other group, changes its customs, ritual ideology, and way of life
in the direction of a high, and frequently, “twice-born” caste’ (cited in Hardiman
1987: 157).
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 111

within the new political order’ (Hardiman 2003: 264). However, Govind Giri’s
preaching soon took a more explicitly confrontational turn as he developed a
strong critique of hierarchy and exploitation. In his sermons he would tell the
Bhils that they were in no way inferior to any other community, and that their
destitution was caused by the exactions of the rajas (princely rulers) and the
thakurs (landlords). Adding a millenarian dimension to this critique, Govind
Giri claimed that the Bhils were the rightful owners of the land, and therefore
also had the right to rule over it. He prophesised the coming of a Bhil Raj in
the hills of Sunth and Banswara states, in which the Bhil kingdom that existed
eight hundred years back would be restored.
Colonial authorities were quick to label Govind Giri and his followers as a
‘disloyal and anarchical movement’ (cited in Singh 1995: 95) as they continued
to make headway in the princely states. In October 1913, the political agent of
Southern Rajputana sent word to his counterpart in Rewakantha, ordering the
arrest of Govind Giri. A search began, provoking a series of clashes between
the Bhils and police forces. For example, towards the end of the month,
Bhils under the leadership of Punja Dirga Patel attacked a police outpost in
Sunth, which he followed up with an attack on the fort of the raja of Sunth in
November. Govind Giri claimed that this was provoked by the Raja having
ordered the confiscation of the flags and tongs that his followers used in their
rituals. When they had gone to the durbar to retrieve these items, they had
been fired upon by the raja’s troops.
As the persecution of his movement continued, Govind Giri assembled his
followers on Mangarh hill, which is situated between the states of Sunth and
Banswara. A large police force was assembled within a few days and was soon
joined by military reinforcements. The messages that were sent from Govind
Giri to the police and the representatives of the colonial authorities during the
standoff allow us a glimpse into the movement’s rationale. First of all, Govind
Giri expressed a strong critique of the dominant social groups in the region:

The Hindus and Muhammadans have forsaken their religions. Hindus have
become atheists. Rajputs have destroyed our worship, and forced us to eat flesh
and drink. Muhammadans force us to eat beef and destroy our religion. For
all these reasons we have gone to the hills as we are helpless. Rajputs are so
cruel that they kill their girls so that they may not give in marriage to others.
In the same way they have been so cruel towards the Bhils that they beat them
without enquiry whether they are right or wrong. The Rajputs do not allow
their young widows to re-marry and if these girls become widows in young age
the sin of infant widowhood is on their head because they remain unhappy in
112 Adivasis and the State

that life and are miserable. The Sarkar is also to blame for this shortcoming.
No true Brahmin is seen. The thread is now only mark of Brahminism and
whoever puts it on is a Brahman. They are as sinful as Rajputs … These three
castes dare not come to us. The Muhammadans are infidels and take interest
on money and eat boar’s flesh which is prohibited in their religion. These
people who are infidels destroy our worship. They do not like a religion which
preaches good morality. (Cited in Hardiman 2003: 266)

As Hardiman points out, Govind Giri’s attack on the Rajputs was expressive
of widespread disgust in the region at the workings of Rajput hierarchy, and
in this way he ‘combined his attack on Rajput political power with a critique
of the treatment of Rajput women’ (ibid: 267). His admonishment of ‘the
Muhammadans’ ref lected a popular dislike of the fact that Muslims—
commonly known as ‘Sindhis’—staffed the state police and thakur militias;
some were also known to be particularly predatory moneylenders. Similarly,
the Brahmins are taken to task for failing their role as righteous servants of
the state. Overall, his is an argument that portrays the moral corruption of
the princely regime through a religious idiom, and contrasts this to the moral
rectitude of his movement—a moral rectitude which, he asserts, is feared
among the ruling groups in the state: ‘They do not like a religion which
preaches good morality.’
Interestingly, as Hardiman (2003: 267) notes, Govind Giri ‘was far
less critical of the British than he was of the Rajputs and their henchmen’,
something which is also brought out in the following passage:

We take you to be just and fair … The strong should not make a bad use of
their power and you should not destroy our devotion … You are the monarch
of the country … Do not use force. Have some regard for our feelings. God
will bless you … You are the guardian saint of our people. You are sensible
people. (Ibid: 267)

In many ways, this echoes the appeals made by insurgent Bhil chieftains
in the nineteenth century, who would ask that the British intervened against
the venality of Rajput rulers. In other words, despite his references to the
restoration of Bhil Raj, Govind Giri does not reject the entire edifice of the
state. Rather, as Hardiman argues, he recognises that ‘much of what he stood
for was in line with the transformation that the British were trying to bring
about in India, and he seems to have been trying to argue that they should
act as his allies and back him and his followers against the local rulers’ (ibid:
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 113

267). This was made even clearer in another appeal, in which he implored
the British authorities to appoint their own chief minister in Sunth state and
recruit a military force from the ranks of his followers. In this way, he argued,
he and his disciples would be ensured fair treatment (ibid: 267).
The fusion of social reform and millenarian visions in Govind Giri’s
movement sets it apart from the appeal to moral economies of rule that figured
so prominently in Bhil protests during the nineteenth century. However, even
when Bhil resistance turned more adamantly against the sarkar in the name of
Bhil Raj, the state was nevertheless seen as a disaggregated entity with which
it was possible to negotiate. In these negotiations it would be possible to pit
higher echelons against lower echelons by pointing out how the latter, in the
way that they abused their power and authority, betrayed the principles of the
former. However, in the case of Govind Giri’s movement, their expectation
that the British would refrain from using force was belied by the events that
unfolded two days after his appeal. At about eight o’clock in the evening of
16 November, following orders from the Political Department in Bombay, the
troops opened fire at the Bhils who had gathered on the hill. The firing went
on for about two hours; the Bhils suffered substantial losses, and at the end
of the attack some 900 Bhils, along with Govind Giri himself, were arrested.
Govind Giri was prosecuted and imprisoned in Hyderabad jail until 1919. He
passed away in Gujarat in 1931.
In the first half of the 1920s, yet another charismatic leader appeared at
the helm of a Bhil movement that unsettled both Rajput rulers and colonial
authorities.12 Motilal Tejawat was an Oswal Baniya who worked as a munshi
(representative) for a firm based in Udaipur. As part of his job, he used to travel
far and wide across Mewar state, and through his travels he came to know the
abuses that the Bhils were subject to at the hands of thakurs. After he himself
fell foul of the thakur of Jharol estate and was thrown in jail, he decided to
devote his life to social reform work among the Bhils.
Motilal’s most immediate source of inspiration was the Bijolia movement—a
peasant mobilisation against thakur dominance that originated in the late
nineteenth century and made significant headway under nationalist leadership
from 1915 to the early 1920s. Motilal came into contact with the movement and
its insurgent message through pamphlets that were being circulated throughout

12 The following account of Motilal Tejawat’s movement draws on Hardiman (2007),

Jain (1991), Sen, (2007), Singh (1995), and Vidal (1997). Only direct quotes will be
referenced in what follows.
114 Adivasis and the State

Mewar at the time. The pamphlets denounced thakur oppression and incited
villagers not to pay their dues. Motilal made copies of these pamphlets and
set about distributing them in Jharol—a Bhil majority district where the local
thakur was a source of terror and exploitation. Following this, he called a series
of meeting in Bhil villages in the area, which eventually led to the formation
of a committee that sought to articulate the grievances and demands of the
Bhil peasantry.
In May 1921, Motilal and his followers used the annual peasant fair,
Matri Mundiya, held near Chittaur, to spread their message. Among the key
complaints were begar and unfair taxation. During the fair, the group was able
to mobilise a large group of Bhils, and together they set out for Udaipur where
they were going to petition the Maharana and convince him to address their
grievances. Over a period of three or four days, some seven or eight thousand
Bhils assembled at the site. Tejawat ordered the village representatives to
organise meetings and record complaints regarding the thikanedars so that a
catalogue of grievances could be prepared. Every day would draw to a close
with a meeting in which the Bhils could express their thoughts about the issues
that had been recorded. Tejawat busied himself with writing a book—Mewar
Pukar (The Voice of Mewar)—which contained a list of hundred complaints
levelled against oppression endured by the Bhils of the state. On this basis,
a charter of 21 demands was prepared, which was to be brought before the
Maharana himself.
Ultimately, Maharana Fateh Singh agreed to meet the representatives of
the gathered Bhils, who at the peak of the agitation were said to number some
10,000 people. Eventually, he conceded eighteen demands, but left out the three
most important issues from the point of view of the Bhils, namely the right
to use the forests freely and without restrictions, that begar should be brought
to an end, and that Bhils should no longer be rounded up as servants for the
royal shikhar (hunt). Motilal and his followers withdrew in disappointment,
but swore to uphold the movement.
In the following months, the movement’s idiom of resistance expanded.
Motilal declared himself to be a follower of Gandhi, who at this point in time
was at the helm of the Non-Cooperation Movement. Drawing inspiration and
legitimacy from this campaign, Motilal and his followers began to circulate
letters during the summer of 1921 in which they called upon the peasants to
stop paying taxes. Over the next three months, the movement escalated, and
Tejawat’s appropriation of nationalist idioms took on millenarian overtones:
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 115

… Tejawat told the Bhils that once Gandhi Raj was established they would
only have to pay one anna in the rupee to the state, and that if they refused
to follow him they would be cursed. The boycott of the courts, the refusal
to pay the unjustly high rates of revenue and the denial of rasad and begar to
functionaries of the state followed. (Sen 2007: 160)

In August, the movement signalled its considerable strength when the

thakur of Jharol had Motilal arrested. As soon as the news spread, between
six to seven thousand Bhils gathered outside the jail and forced the police to
release their leader. By September 1921 the movement had spread throughout
Mewar as well as many of the other, smaller princely states in the Rajputana
Agency and in British Gujarat in the Bombay Presidency. At this point, the
movement was known as the Eki (Unity) League: its followers were made to
swear an oath whilst holding one hand on an unsheathed sword, in which they
pledged ‘to respect all the decisions and actions of Motilal, and never by their
actions break the unity of the movement’ (Vidal 1997: 127).
The impact of the movement was manifested in a series of complaints
brought against the dominant groups in the region. For example, in December
1921, some 4,000 gametis (village headmen) presented a petition to the British
authorities on behalf of the Bhils of the Bhumat and the Magra, in which they
claimed ‘that traditionally they had not performed begar, but had been forced to
do so over the preceding half century, while simultaneously old taxes had been
enhanced and new fines and levies imposed … The Bhils fixed the revenue
of crops and proposed to pay directly to the British or the darbar’ (Sen 2007:
160–161). In a letter to the Rana of the state of Panarwa, a group of Bhils
made it clear that ‘we intend never to pay new taxes, and what we propose
to give is more than the old rates; if … you will not accept it … and if the
[Udaipur] darbar will not accept it, we shall pay to the British government’
(cited in Sen 2007: 161).
When, in the same month, a Bhil gameti was arrested on the orders of the
Umrao of Madri, a small district in the southern part of Mewar, and later killed
in custody, the movement again showed its strength by assembling at Jharol
and forcing the Maharana’s official to refund revenue that had been taken
from the Bhils. At this point, the British started making overtures to the Eki
movement: in one case, they sent a petition prepared by Motilal to the thakurs
and pressured them into announcing that they would reduce the number of days
of begar demanded from the villagers; in another case, they asked Motilal to
meet with the Political Superintendent to discuss the grievances of the Bhils.
These overtures, however, were flatly rejected.
116 Adivasis and the State

The Eki movement surged ahead in the first months of 1922. At this point,
Tejawat had been denounced by Gandhi: ‘I understand that these brave but
simple rustics have been induced to refuse payment of taxes due to the State
to which they belong’, the leader of the national liberation movement wrote. ‘I
would like to tell them that they should lay all their grievances before the state
authorities and never resort to arms’ (cited in Hardiman 2007: 35–36). But
Motilal proceeded unabated in his work. For several months he and his partisans
criss-crossed the area that is now the border between Rajasthan and Gujarat, and
which in the 1920s contained the princely states of Mewar, Sirohi, Danta, and
Palanpur: ‘Wherever the impromptu army halted, Motilal’s camp was visited
by tribal people offering him the traditional homage normally reserved for local
chieftains or for deities: the gift of a coconut and a rupee’ (Vidal 1997: 126).
It is possible to recognise in the Eki movement some of the salient features
of the Bhil uprisings of the nineteenth century—chief among them ‘the belief
that it was still possible to appeal for justice to the British, the maharana, and the
thikanedars’ (Sen 2007: 161). Similarly, the predations of the local authorities
‘were denounced less as the result of an old order that was naturally oppressive,
than as the outcome of a modern perversion of the system’ (Vidal 1997: 126).
And the quest for the establishment of a new era in which the Bhils would
cast off the yoke of oppression echoes the millenarian visions of Bhil Raj that
propelled Govind Giri’s movement.
What was new in the context of the Bhil heartland was that their attempt
to establish a just order in which lost rights would be reinstated was dubbed
Gandhi Raj and clearly derived a significant part of its rationale and legitimacy
from their appropriation of the nationalist message of non-cooperation and
swaraj (self-rule). This appropriation, however, was not unique during the
Non-Cooperation Movement. As we know from the Subaltern Studies project,
there were many instances in which subaltern groups imbued nationalist idioms
with meanings that resonated with their specific experiences of exploitation
and oppression and expressed their desire for social change (see, for example,
Pandey 1982, Hardiman 1984, Dasgupta 1985). Such acts of appropriation
‘could help the peasant to conceptualise the turning of his world upside down’
(Amin 1984: 25) and at times fuelled acts of militancy that far exceeded the
political ambitions and strategic orientations of Congress.13 However, this

13 Amin’s reference point in making this argument is the infamous incident that took
place at Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur in February 1922. After a long period of political
unrest, a group of peasants, many of whom claimed to be fighting to further Gandhi
Raj, attacked a police outpost and killed more than 20 policemen as well as some
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 117

dynamic also runs counter to central aspects of the analytical template of

the Subaltern Studies project: rather than the Bhils mobilising a timeless
and autonomous culture of resistance in the face of an ever more entrenched
colonial state space, the form of their protest changed over time through the
appropriation of idioms from a range of different state-making projects.
By early 1922, it was quite evident that the British strategy of appeasing
the Eki movement by encouraging the princely rulers to grant certain selective
concessions had clearly failed. This was due in large part to the fact that rulers
and notables were unwilling to cede any substantial ground to the assertive
Bhils. The Eki movement kept moving between Mewar, Sirohi, Idar, Danta,
and Palanpur. Whilst avoiding any direct confrontation with large military
troops, they would attack officials, police outposts and isolated patrols. At this
point, as Hardiman (2007: 51) points out, the colonial authorities ‘had a choice:
either to force the local princes and thakurs to change their ways profoundly
and remedy the grievances of the people, or to suppress a largely peaceful and
morally justified protest by the use of force’.
They chose the latter: in early March, the Mewar Bhil Corps intercepted
Motilal and his followers, who were on their way to Udaipur to negotiate once
again with the Maharana, and opened fire. According to colonial authorities,
the attack left 22 Bhils dead. There is, however, reason to doubt this number.
A local missionary estimated that there were around hundred casualties: ‘Our
little hospital was filled, and we were bringing in stretcher cases until 10 pm’
(cited in Hardiman 2007: 46). Local Bhils claim the number of dead to have
been between 1,200 and 1,500. There were still some instances of protest
after the massacre in Sirohi, but the Eki movement petered out as the Bhils
accepted concessions offered by the princely rulers in order to restore peace
in their realms.

Postcolonial Consolidations: Politics and Power in Western

Madhya Pradesh after 1947
I have shown both in this chapter and in Chapter 3 that the origins of everyday
tyranny, as it was manifest in western Madhya Pradesh, can be located in a
shift in the balance of power between princely rulers and Adivasi communities
that was wrought by colonial interventions from the early nineteenth century
onwards. However, if we are to genuinely understand the contrast between a

civilians (see also Amin 1995). Gandhi called off the Non-Cooperation Movement
as a direct result of the attack.
118 Adivasis and the State

formally democratic political order and the lived experience of everyday tyranny,
it is necessary to explore how the power relations that emerged as a result of
colonial state-making and which undergirded the political subordination of
the Bhils were reproduced and consolidated after the coming of independence
in 1947. In Malwa and Nimad, this process was animated by the convergence
between the integration of princely states into the newly independent Indian
nation and the construction of Congress hegemony in the electoral arena.
As I noted in the introduction to this chapter, the princely states had been
carefully cultivated as bulwarks of support for colonial rule since the Uprising
of 1857—initially as a response to the revolt itself, and subsequently as part
of British efforts to counter the nationalist offensive and to secure princely
support for the war effort from 1914 to 1918. The foremost manifestation of
this was the willingness of the British to grant substantial autonomy to the
princely rulers—albeit without undercutting their ability to exercise influence
and control in important ways—and the creation of the Chamber of Princes
in 1919 (Copland 1997: chapter 2).14
Despite the emergence of a mass-based movement for independence in
British India from 1920 onwards, many of the princes still laboured under the
assumption that they would remain in charge of their domains in the early
months of 1947. However, the autumn of 1947 witnessed Sardar Patel and V.
P. Menon concentrate their efforts on securing the accession of the princely
states. This entailed merging smaller units into new states and in some cases
fusing minor principalities with erstwhile provinces, introducing democratic
rule, and subordinating the princely states to the law-making powers of the
central government (Copland 1997: chapter 8; Ramusack 2004: chapter 8).
April 1948 was also the month in which Menon and Patel oversaw the
creation of Madhya Bharat out of a merger of the princely states of Gwalior,
Indore, and more than 20 other small Rajput states in Malwa and Nimad,
including Alirajpur, Badwani, Jhabua, and Dhar.15 Menon’s (1956: chapter

14 The Chamber of Princes was established in 1919 and launched two years after in 1921,
after a long period of negotiation between princely rulers and colonial authorities. As
Copland (1997: 45) notes, the 120-seat council was intended to give voice to India’s
princely rulers in the constitutional negotiations that were to follow in the coming
decades, but it quickly came to be dominated by a small group of Rajput rulers with
previous political experiences, and ‘never matched the expectations of its founders’.
15 Most important among the minor states that were incorporated into Madhya Bharat
were Dhar, Dewas, Ratlam, Alirajpur, Jhabua, Badwani, Khilchipur, Narsingarh,
Sailana, Sitamau, Jobat, Kathiwara, Mathwar, Rajgarh, Nimkhera, Jamnia, and
Piploda.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 119

11) account of the creation of Madhya Bharat reads mainly as an account of

discussions with the rulers of Gwalior and Indore states over the terms of
accession, which is probably a reflection of the fact that the rulers of the smaller
states showed very little interest in discussing their futures as India approached
independence.16 Having settled questions related to the form of the union and
the privy purses that the rulers would be entitled to, the negotiations turned
to deal with the fact that in some of the states in the union the majority of
the population ‘was predominantly Bhil’ (ibid: 160). Menon’s account of how
this issue was handled bears quoting in full, in no small part due to its tenor,
which is not far removed from the tropes of colonial paternalism:

The Bhils are an aboriginal race and extremely backward. They are very
excitable and it would be risky to entrust them to the care of an inexperienced
democratic government. It was therefore decided to treat the regions where
more than fifty per cent of the population were Bhils as Scheduled Areas, and
to confer the authority to make laws for the peace and the good government
of these areas on the Rajpramukh, subject to the control of the Government
of India. (Ibid: 160)17

Thus, in Madhya Bharat, the district of Jhabua and parts of West Nimar
and Dhar districts were declared as Scheduled Areas in 1950 (Baviskar 1995:
80).18 The state of Madhya Pradesh finally came into being in 1956 through
the merger of Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh, and Bhopal with Mahakoshal
and Chhattisgarh.19
The end of monarchical rule in India did not equal the end of princely
power. In the wake of independence, the parties that vied for power in the

16 Copland (1997: 231) notes that only a ‘handful’ of princes from the Malwa–Nimad
region turned up for a meeting to discuss the potential for a union of states in the
region which was called by the ruler of Dewas in April 1947.
17 The Rajpramukh was effectively the governor of a princely state. The title existed in
India from 1947 to 1956.
18 Jhabua district was constituted in 1949, with Jhabua town as the district headquarters,
and with Alirajpur and Jobat merged in it. Badwani was incorporated into West
Nimar district in 1948.
19 Vindhya Pradesh was created in 1948 by merging 35 princely states in the eastern part
of the Central India Agency. Mahakoshal and Chhattisgarh were previously part of
the Central Provinces, and were merged to form Madhya Pradesh in 1950. Madhya
Pradesh was finally constituted as a fusion of Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh, Bhopal
state, Mahakoshal, and Chhattisgarh in 1956, and the Marathi-speaking parts of the
former Central Provinces were transferred to Bombay state.
120 Adivasis and the State

postcolonial electoral arena were quick to offer former princely rulers ‘political
status in exchange for the votes they could deliver from among their former
subjects’ (Richter 1971: 540). Despite the rhetoric that it had levelled against
the princes in the decades leading up to Independence,20 Congress spearheaded
the integration of the former princely rulers into political life in postcolonial
India (ibid: 240). This strategy was at the heart of Congress dominance in
Madhya Pradesh in the decades after Independence, and yielded a distinct and
significant structure of power that sustained the dominance of upper castes
and upper classes in the decades after 1947.
The consolidation of upper caste and upper class power in Madhya Pradesh
has to be understood in relation to how Congress developed as a movement in
this part of the country prior to Independence. As Sudha Pai (2013: 29–33)
points out, the Madhya Pradesh Congress originated in the Central Provinces,
which were split between a conservative Hindi-speaking north (Nerbudda and
Saugor) and a more progressive Marathi-speaking south (Nagpur and Berar).
Mobilisation was initially propelled by local notables from the landed and
trading classes, and centred on Nagpur and the southern Marathi-speaking
districts and was slow to take root in the northern districts.
Whereas members of the urban educated middle classes and the non-
Brahmin movement eventually challenged the dominance of upper castes
and upper classes in the southern districts of the Central Provinces, no such
development took place in the Hindi-speaking districts in the north. Here
leadership remained in the hands of big landowners, bankers, traders, and urban
professional groups drawn from the ranks of the upper castes. The reorganisation
of Congress on linguistic lines in the 1920s further entrenched the dominance
of upper caste and upper class groups in the organisation in the northern parts of
the Central Provinces, and this in turn resulted in the adoption of a particularly
conservative political orientation on the part of its leadership.
With the formation of Madhya Pradesh in 1956, the Congress moved
swiftly in order to consolidate its position in what was now the largest state
in the country. From its base in the northern parts of the erstwhile Central
Provinces, the party had to gain a foothold in three strongholds of princely
power—Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh, and Bhopal—and this was achieved
by soliciting the support of their former rulers. In the case of Madhya Bharat,
this was not altogether unproblematic, as the Hindu Mahasabha had established

20 See Hira Singh (2003) for a critical perspective on Congress strategy in relation to
the princely states.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 121

a strong base with princely patronage and support from large landowners
(Jaffrelot 1996: 109–113). The right-wing communalist party registered strong
results in the 1951 elections in Madhya Bharat, winning eleven seats in the
Vidhan Sabha and two seats in the Lok Sabha (Election Commission of India
1951a: 4–6; Election Commission of India 1951b: 24; see tables 4.1 and 4.2
below).21 In order to build a stronger position for Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru
solicited the support of Vijaya Raje Scindia—the maharani of Gwalior—in
the elections of 1957.22 The move was successful: the Hindu Mahasabha was
reduced to seven assembly seats and one parliamentary seat and Congress had
made important progress in winning over the former princely rulers, who had
traditionally been hostile to the party due to its strong republican stance in the
years leading up to independence (see Jaffrelot 1996: 132–149).

Table 4.1 Madhya Bharat Vidhan Sabha Election Results, 1951

(Total seats = 96)
INC 75
HMS 11
SP 4
BJS 4
RRP 2
Source: Based on ECI (1951a).
Note: INC = Indian National Congress; HMS = Hindu Mahasabha; SP = Socialist Party;
BJS = Bharatiya Jana Sangh; RRP = Ram Rajiya Parishad.

Table 4.2 Madhya Bharat Lok Sabha Election Results, 1951

(Total seats = 10)
INC 8
HMS 2
Source: Based on ECI (1951b).

21 In addition, the Jana Sangh won four seats in the Madhya Bharat legislative assembly
in the 1951 elections (Jaffrelot 1996: 134). It should be noted, however, that Congress
won the majority of the Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha seats (232 of 288 and 35 of
36 respectively; see tables 4.1. and 4.2; see also Election Commission of India 1951a:
4–6; Election Commission of India 1951b: 24).
22 Jaffrelot (2009: 110) estimates that 170 out of 296 Vidhan Sabha constituencies and
20 out of 37 parliamentary constituencies were located in former princely states in
the 1957 elections in Madhya Pradesh.
122 Adivasis and the State

As Pai (2013: 33) notes, the success of this strategy is also evident in
the fact that the Madhya Pradesh Congress witnessed an influx of thakurs
and Rajputs from the former princely families in the post-Independence
years. Thus, Jaffrelot (2009: 111) notes: ‘Until 1967, the princely families of
Madhya Pradesh, when they participated in politics, sided with Congress,
either because they were anxious to find themselves in the camp of those in
government, or because they did not dare oppose the solicitations of the ruling
party.’ This was reflected in the social profile of the party in the decades after
independence. From 1957 to 1967, upper caste groups made up between 40
to 51 per cent of all Congress MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly)
in the state (Table 4.3 and Table 4.4).
During the late 1960s, princely support waned due to discontent with the
authoritarian ways of the Chief Minister at the time, and this trend was further
reinforced when Indira Gandhi called into question the privy purses of the
princes in the early 1970s. However, the princes returned to the Congress fold
after the privy purses had been abolished in 1971 (ibid: 121–127; see also Mitra
1990: 176).23 A similar pattern of upper caste dominance can be found in the
Congress governments in the state—the upper castes constituted between 66
and 86 per cent of the state-level ministers from the early 1950s to 1967 (Pai
2013: 35)—and in the party organisation, both at state and district levels
(Jaffrelot 2009: 127–134).

Table 4.3 Congress Hegemony in Madhya Pradesh 1: Vidhan Sabha Election

Results, 1957–1972

1957 INC: 232 BJS: 10 PSP: 12 CPI: 2 RRP: 5 IND: 20

(Total seats = 288)
1962 INC: 142 BJS: 41 PSP: 33 SOC: 14 SWT: 2 CPI: 1
(Total seats = 288)
1967 INC: 167 BJS: 78 SSP: 10 SWT: 7
(Total seats = 296)
1972 INC: 220 BJS: 48
(Total seats = 296)
Source: Based on ECI election reports for Madhya Pradesh, 1957–1972.
Note: PSP = Praja Socialist Party; SOC = Socialist Party; IND = Independents; CPI =
Communist Party of India; SWT = Swatantra Party.

23 Note that the number of seats in the Vidhan Sabha had been increased from 288 to
296 between the elections in 1962 and the elections in 1967.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 123

Table 4.4 Congress Hegemony in Madhya Pradesh 2: Lok Sabha

Election Results, 1957–1972

1957 INC: 35 BJS: 1

(Total seats = 36)
1962 INC: 25 BJS: 3 PSP: 3 SOC: 1 RRP: 1 IND: 4
(Total seats = 37)
1967 INC: 24 BJS: 10 SWT: 1 IND: 2
(Total seats = 37)
1971 INC: 21 BJS: 11 SSP: 1 IND: 4
(Total seats = 37)
Source: Based on ECI election reports for Madhya Pradesh, 1957–1972.

However, securing princely consent was only one aspect of the process
through which Congress built its hegemonic position in Madhya Pradesh.
In the tribal-dominated areas of the western parts of the state—Jhabua in
particular—Congress hegemony was predicated on a coercive response to a
militant Bhil movement. The movement in question was the Lal Topi Andolan,
which emerged under socialist leadership in Jhabua, Dhar, and Ratlam districts
in the 1950s and 1960s. The origins of this movement can be traced to the
social work and activism of Baleshwar Dayal Dixit, a caste Hindu teacher from
Uttar Pradesh who first came to the tribal areas of western Madhya Pradesh in
the early 1930s.24 While working as a schoolmaster in the town of Thandla in
what was then Jhabua state, Mama Baleshwar, as he would come to be known,
became aware of the toll that forced labour was taking on the Bhil community,
and wrote to the king to protest the practice. The letter earned him a six-week
jail sentence, and brought him to the attention of colonial authorities. ‘He
soon began to identify himself with persons of extreme views’, a report from
an official of the Central India Agency noted of Mama Baleshwar’s time in

24 Mama Baleshwar’s political career arguably began in 1923, when he was expelled
from his school in Etawah for hitting a teacher who had criticised Gandhi. Fearing
his parents’ reaction, he ran away to Ujjain, where he worked as a teacher for some
time. He arrived in Thandla in the early 1930s. One of the first references to Mama
Baleshwar that I have been able to locate in colonial records is from an intelligence
report on a meeting organised by the Central India States Peoples’ Conference in
1939. Describing the participants, the report states: ‘One Baleshwar Dayal, an old
agitator from the State who has taken refuge in the Indore enclave of Bamnia,
collected some Bhils from the Thikanas and took them to the conference’ (IOR/
PS/13/1145).
124 Adivasis and the State

Thandla, ‘and started taking an active part in activities subversive of law and
order, for which he was prosecuted … ’25
This was only the first of many stints behind bars for Baleshwar during
the decade of the 1930s, which culminated with the demolition, on orders
of the monarch, of the school where he worked. In 1939, Mama Baleshwar
moved to the village of Bamniya, which fell under the jurisdiction of Indore
state, and opened a school for Adivasi children there. ‘From this place of
vantage he resumed his activities against the Jhabua state’, colonial authorities
noted. ‘He established a “Bhil ashram” and exerted himself to make the Bhils
dissatisfied with the conditions in which they lived, and to embarrass the Jhabua
administration.’26 A core group of 15 students from the surrounding area,
who had been given some basic training in how the political system worked,
was then put in charge of teaching in schools that were established in Jhabua,
Ratlam, Dhar, Banswara, and Dungarpur (Bhatnagar 2015; Banerjee 1999).
With Bamniya as his base and with links to the surrounding tribal districts
in what are now western Madhya Pradesh and southern Rajasthan, Mama
Baleshwar started a campaign against forced labour and rent payments to
feudal estates in the region, attracting a large following among the Bhils.
Following a successful campaign against alcohol consumption, which cut into
the revenues of the princely states, he was banished from the region in 1944,
but kept campaigning while he was in exile in the Panchmahals and Dahod.
His efforts attracted the attention of Jawaharlal Nehru, who, in a meeting
that took place in Srinagar, promised Congress support for the abolition of
feudal estates once independence had been achieved. This, however, came to
nothing, and towards the end of the 1940s, Mama Baleshwar left Congress
and organised a new campaign against the payment of rents to feudal estates
among Bhils in southern Rajasthan and western Madhya Pradesh, as well
as new initiatives against the consumption of alcohol. As a result, he was
imprisoned for a period of nine months in 1949 (Bhatnagar 2015; Banerjee
1999; see also Baviskar 1995: 79–80, 79n).
At this point, Mama Baleshwar’s activism attracted the attention of
the leader of the Socialist Party, Jayaprakash Narayan, who campaigned
successfully for his release from jail and came to play a crucial role in steering
the movement—which at this point had adopted the Lal Topi Andolan
moniker—towards the field of electoral politics. This strategy was initially

25 IOR/PS/13/1145.
26 IOR/PS/13/1145.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 125

very successful: whereas the Socialist Party only attracted 7.34 per cent of the
vote in the 1951 Vidhan Sabha elections in Madhya Bharat, its four successful
candidates were all Bhil activists with the Lal Topi Andolan, and it won four
(Jhabua, Alirajpur, Jobat, and Thandla) of the eight constituencies reserved
for Scheduled Tribes in the western parts of the state (Election Commission
1951a: 4–7).27 Writing about Bhil support for the Socialist Party in Alirajpur
in the early 1950s, G. S. Aurora (1972: 211) argues that its success can be
attributed in part to its efforts in seeking out Bhil communities and teaching
them how to vote; in part from electoral promises that resonated with these
communities, for example, that Bhils should be free to collect wood from the
forests; and in part from the fact that the tribals associated Congress with
their oppressors—the merchants and moneylenders of Alirajpur town.28 In
the 1957 elections for the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha, the Socialist Party
suffered a major setback in the Scheduled Areas of western Madhya Pradesh,
as Congress won six out of eight reserved constituencies in the region (Election
Commission of India 1957: 5–6).29 But the party then bounced back in the
1962 elections, regaining its seats in Alirajpur, Jhabua, Jobat, and Thandla
(out of a total of 14 seats won) (Election Commission of India 1962: 11).30
However, the Lal Topi Andolan—and with it, Bhil support for the Lal Topi
Andolan—started to flounder towards the end of the 1960s. Part of the reason
for this was the general failure of the Socialist Party to establish itself as a force
to be reckoned with at state and national levels, but equally important was the
deployment of coercive measures against the rank and file members of the Lal
Topi Andolan in the form of false court cases, widespread arrests, and severe
custodial violence. Parallel to this coercive offensive, Congress co-opted several

27 The three constituencies where the Socialist Party did not win were Badwani, Kukshi,
and Sailana. Congress candidates won in Kukshi and Sailana, while the Hindu
Mahasabha was successful in Badwani (Election Commission of India 1951a: 4–7).
28 The Congress candidate in Alirajpur for this election was a Bhilala patel. However,
Aurora (1972: 211) notes that the Congress leaders took little interest in Alirajpur
as they themselves could not run for office in a constituency that was reserved for
Scheduled Tribes.
29 The Jana Sangh won Sendhwa. This victory is in all likelihood due to the long-
standing presence of the Jana Sangh in what was then West Nimar district, where
its activities were geared explicitly towards tribal welfare and the redressal of tribal
grievances in relation to forest laws (see Jaffrelot 1996: 144).
30 Sendhwa remained a Jana Sangh seat in the 1962 elections (Election Commission of
India 1962: 11).
126 Adivasis and the State

of the leading members of the movement into the party—for example, Jamuna
Devi, who initially entered the Vidhan Sabha as a Socialist Party representative
from Jhabua and subsequently Kukshi (Banerjee 1999: 948, 2002: 15–16). As
table 4.5 makes clear, this strategy bore fruit: barring the exceptions of 1977
and 1990, Congress remained dominant in the Scheduled Areas of western
Madhya Pradesh until 2003, when the BJP took power in the state.31

Table 4.5 Results in Scheduled Tribe Constituencies in Western Madhya Pradesh

Vidhan Sabha Elections, 1967–2013

1967 Elections – Total of 13 seats

INC: 8 SSP: 2 BJS: 2
1972 Elections – Total of 13 seats
INC: 10 BJS: 1 SOP: 1
1977 Elections – Total of 14 seats
INC: 6 JNP: 7
1980 Elections – Total of 15 seats
INC: 15
1985 Elections – Total of 15 seats
INC: 15
1990 Elections – Total of 15 seats
INC: 6 BJP: 8 JD: 1
1993 Elections – Total of 15 seats
INC: 14 BJP: 1
1998 Election – Total of 15 seats
INC: 10 BJP: 4 IND: 1
2003 Election – Total of 15 seats
INC: 2 BJP: 13
2008 Election – Total of 15 seats
INC: 9 BJP: 6
2013 Election – Total of 16 seats
INC: 5 BJP: 10 IND: 1
Source: The table is compiled from the reports of the Election Commission of India for the
years 1967, 1972, 1977, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2013.

31 Congress was ousted in 1977, following the Emergency, but even then the party took
6 of 13 seats. In 1990, Congress lost to the BJP, led by Sunder Lal Patwa, but still
won 6 of 15 seats (Jaffrelot 1996). It is worth noting that, despite the strong swing
in favour of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh from 2003 onwards, Congress has still done
relatively well in the Scheduled Areas in the western part of the state. See Manor
(2004) for an analysis of the BJP victory in the 2003 elections.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 127

Despite the fact that the Scheduled Areas of western Madhya Pradesh
were marginal in many ways, the consolidation of Congress hegemony in
this part of the state was nevertheless somewhat of an achievement. With the
exception of Gwalior and Indore, Congress—in V. P. Menon’s (1956: 156) pithy
words—‘existed only in name’ in Madhya Bharat before 1947. In Alirajpur state,
nationalism was a negligible presence: according to G. S. Aurora (1972: 210),
the Quit India movement of 1942 only registered with a small segment of the
residents of Alirajpur town, and had no impact whatsoever among the Bhils
(see also Baviskar 1995: 79).32 It was only after 1947 that a Lok Parishad was
formed in Alirajpur. Initially teachers and lawyers ran the organisation, but it
soon attracted the attention of professional politicians representing the interests
of merchant groups based in Alirajpur town; by the 1952 elections, it had
become the district branch of Congress. Its links to the Adivasi hinterland were
mediated through the Bhil elite, consisting of patels and a handful of Bhilala
landowners (Aurora 1972: 210–211). 33 In this way, Congress successfully
defused a considerable subaltern challenge to a hegemonic formation that was
underpinned by princely, upper caste, and upper class power.

32 There was a Praja Mandal in Jhabua state, which was active during the middle of
the 1930s with significant Bhil participation. The movement produced pamphlets
that put forward strong criticisms both of the king of Jhabua and the governance of
the state when it was under council administration. However, colonial authorities—
who were hardly prone to downplaying potential insurgencies—do not seem to have
perceived this to be a threat of any significance. In 1936, the Central India Agency
asserted that the mobilisation in Jhabua was driven by ‘self-interested Mahajans’
and that all other sections of the public ‘dissociated themselves entirely from these
few noisy propagandists and declared that the accusations made against the Council
Administration were false’ (IOR/PS/13/1145). In connection with a States Peoples’
Conference in 1939, the Agency produced a similar assessment: ‘… the public
of Jhabua appear to have displayed little interest in the proceedings, though it is
perhaps too early to be optimistic’ (IOR/PS/13/1145). I have not found any evidence
of similar mobilisations in Alirajpur and Badwani. Indeed, Jhabua was the only
state in the Central India Agency that was thought to be a potential flashpoint for
popular agitation against princely rule. This was in part due to the impact of ongoing
mobilisations in the nearby princely states of the Panchmahals (IOR/PS/13/1145).
33 A faction of the princely family supported a Bhilala patel who ran on a Ram Rajiya
Parishad ticket (Aurora 1972: 211). Aurora elaborates on this candidacy as follows:
‘One of the important workers of the Tehsil Congress told me that just after the
merger of the state with Madhya Bharat, a section of the royal family was actively
co-operating with certain Hindu revivalist elements and trying to upset the communal
harmony in the state and thus nullify the Congress leader’s efforts to stabilise the
new administration’ (ibid: 212).
128 Adivasis and the State

This achievement was further consolidated through the internal workings of

the party organisation. Within Congress, the small elite of Bhil politicians—
along with a similar elite of Dalits representing Congress in constituencies
reserved for Scheduled Castes—became part of what Jaffrelot (2009: 121) refers
to as a ‘coalition of extremes’ with the upper castes and upper classes. As Jaffrelot
argues, Adivasis and Dalits remained the junior partners in this coalition—often
lacking in education, unable to organise and coordinate among themselves,
and rarely given positions of power within the party, the Scheduled Tribe and
Scheduled Caste MLAs had more often than not ‘been co-opted because of
the reservation system … ’ (ibid: 121).34 In other words, tribal participation
in electoral politics through Congress did not translate into anything like a
downward devolution of power within the party (see Pai 2013: 35–39).
The political dominance of upper castes and upper classes has been further
reinforced by the fact that, in contrast to states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar,
Madhya Pradesh has not witnessed a sustained independent challenge from
the OBCs (Jaffrelot 2009; Pai 2013; Gupta 2005). Similarly, the crystallisation
of a two-party structure in Madhya Pradesh from the late 1960s onwards has
done little to challenge the extant balance of political power in the state. As
Jaffrelot (2009: 135–142) notes, Baniyas, Brahmins, and Rajputs dominated
the Jana Sangh, which emerged as the main competitor to Congress from 1967
onwards, and upper caste and upper class groups have similarly dominated
the BJP since the early 1980s—especially in terms of the composition of its
state governments and its party organisation. Within Congress, OBC and
Scheduled Tribe representation increased under Digvijay Singh’s leadership
in the 1990s, yet as both Pai (2013) and Jaffrelot (2009) argue, this did not
result in anything like shift of power within the party: ‘It proved to be a way
in which the lower castes and tribes could be included in the system without
upsetting the existing political order’ (Pai 2013: 75).

Concluding Remarks
This chapter brings my analysis of Adivasi subalternity in the Bhil heartland
to a close. In Chapter 2, I argued that what defines Adivasi subalternity is a
poverty that flows from adverse incorporation in regional political economies

34 Pai (2013) notes that, in contrast to what has been the case in other states, internal
Congress factionalism has not resulted in downward devolution of power in the party
in Madhya Pradesh.
 ‘You Are Now the Masters of the Country’ 129

and results, ultimately, in disproportionately high levels of premature death.

This poverty, I suggested, is compounded and reproduced by political
subordination in local state–society relations. In the Bhil heartland, this
subordination takes the form of everyday tyranny—that is, a set of coercive
and violent interactions in which state personnel used the powers vested in
them in connection with law enforcement and the provision of public services
to extract bribes from local tribal communities. Mediated by village elites and
embedded in a caste ideology that ascribes inferiority to Bhil Adivasis, everyday
tyranny was reproduced over time through the workings of a local rationality
in which power was negotiated primarily through acquiescence and deference.
This local rationality, I argued, was grounded in an emotional habitus of fear
and resignation, which was itself, in turn, spawned by the enduring presence of
everyday tyranny, and the absence of the kind of politico-bureaucratic literacy
that is necessary for staking rights-based claims on the state.
This kind of political subordination cannot simply be understood in terms
of the interactions that occur across dispersed sites of governance. Rather, it
has to be understood in terms of how state formation as a hegemonic process
generates complex constellations of power across sites and scales, in which
some subaltern groups are accommodated on the basis of consent while others
are subjected to coercion. In the case of the Bhil heartland, I argue that this
process originated in the making of colonial state space in the period from the
1820s to the 1920s. In Chapter 3, I located the crux of Bhil subordination in
the transition from the shared sovereignty typical of precolonial tributary states
towards a singular sovereignty under the aegis of colonial and princely rule. I
showed how this was achieved through the pacification and settlement of Bhil
chieftains in the region and a considerable expansion of the infrastructural
power of both the colonial state and princely states.
As the present chapter has shown, the Bhils contested this process vigorously
across this century-long period of state formation. Resistance took the form
of contentious negotiations of colonial state space, rather than an outright
rejection of nascent forms of authority and rule, and these negotiations were
carried out through oppositional appropriations of moral economies of rule
and idioms of state-making. Crucially, rebellious Bhils engaged with the
emergent politico-administrative structures of the colonial state and the
princely states as disaggregated entities, often trying to pit one echelon against
another. And the idioms through which they claimed legitimacy for their
revolts changed over time, from precolonial notions of Raja–Praja relations to
130 Adivasis and the State

the ideology of Gandhian nationalism. This certainly suggests that colonial

state formation was characterised by the kind of negotiations that are typical
of hegemonic processes to a far greater degree than what is often assumed to
be the case—especially, perhaps, in relation to rural subalterns. Nevertheless,
it is also necessary to recognise the overall direction of the transformations at
play, which was towards the political subordination of the Bhils in relation to
both colonial authorities and princely rulers.
As I have shown in this chapter, the subordination of the Bhils of western
Madhya Pradesh was consolidated after Independence, as the princely rulers
in the region were incorporated into the hegemonic apparatus through which
the Congress governed India’s passive revolution from 1947 to the 1970s. In
Madhya Pradesh, this gave rise to a political regime founded on the persistent
power of the upper classes and upper castes, and everyday tyranny was a
routine manifestation of Bhil subordination in this regime. The importance
of recognising these links between local state–society relations and macro-
structural processes of state formation will become evident as my analysis of
the emergence of insurgent citizenship in Bhil Adivasi communities in western
Madhya Pradesh unfolds in the second part of this book.
 Part II

Citizenship
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 133

‘The Fears Have Gone Away’

Making Oppositional Local Rationalities

Barlibai is one of the most senior female activists of the AMS. She began her
story about her involvement with the Sangathan by recalling her first meeting
with Bamniya, who encouraged her to join the movement: ‘He asked me where
my land was: “Do you have any problems?” So then I told him that my land
is old but the forest guards keep troubling me: “They dig holes. The forest-
wallahs—they plant trees and tell me that the sarkar will throw me off the
land. I tell them this land is from the time of my ancestors and they have been
farming this land for years—this is an old settlement and I won’t leave it. Then
they threaten to kill me.” Then he said: “Barlibai, if you join the Sangathan,
then your land can be saved.”
Bamniya encouraged Barlibai to call a meeting in her village to mobilise
for forest rights, which she did. Gradually, she turned more and more actively
towards organising and mobilising: ‘… I helped to establish the Sangathan—I
organised meetings … I told [people] that “you must do your farming; this
is your right—what will the forest-wallahs do?” So by acting like this, the
Sangathan was made stronger.’ Supported by her husband and children, she
also struggled to vindicate her land rights with the help of the AMS: ‘Fighting
the case for twelve years’, she told us, ‘I myself became a lawyer. When I spoke,
the lawyers could only stare at me. With the Sangathan, the interactions I
had, the meetings—everywhere people knew me and that’s why, even in jail,
I was never afraid. The fears had gone away and I could sit in a relaxed way
and talk’ (interview, November 2009).
Barlibai’s account of her turn to activism and her struggle for land and
forest rights illustrates how Bhil resistance in western Madhya Pradesh can be
thought of, most fundamentally, as ‘acts of citizenship’ (Isin 2008)—that is,
as acts that rupture those sociohistorical constellations of power that deprive
134 Adivasis and the State

subaltern groups of the right to have rights.1 When Barlibai—an Adivasi

woman—emerged, through her participation in collective action, as a rights-
bearing and—crucially!—rights-claiming citizen, she acted in defiance of
everyday tyranny and the local rationality that reproduced Bhil subalternity
in local state–society relations across time. As Isin notes, acts of citizenship
require ‘the summoning of courage, bravery, indignation, or righteousness to
break with the habitus’ (ibid: 18).
In the first part of this chapter, I show how the moral courage to resist
was produced in conflictual encounters with state personnel that reversed
the grammar of everyday tyranny. Barlibai’s statement that her fears went
away was echoed by most of the activists interviewed during the course of my
fieldwork, and in what follows I draw once again on the literature on social
movements and emotions to understand how this transformation happened,
and how it enabled Bhil Adivasis to both imagine and practise resistance as a
viable alternative to deference and acquiescence.
I present a series of fine-grained accounts of the initial confrontations that
marked the onset of the KMCS in the early 1980s and the AMS a decade later
and propose that these confrontations should be thought of as catalytic events—
that is, to draw on William Sewell’s (1996: 843) formulations, as ‘sequences of
occurrences that result in transformations of structures. Such sequences begin
with a rupture of some kind—that is, a surprising break with routine practice’.2

1 Isin formulated the concept ‘acts of citizenship’ in part to overcome the singular
concern with the linear, formal and legal language of rights, status, and obligations
that prevails in most liberal strands of citizenship studies as well as in the more
recent turn to studying practices of citizenship. Significantly, acts of citizenship ‘may
transgress practices and formal entitlement, as they emerge from the paradox between
universal inclusion in the language of rights and cosmopolitanism, on the one hand,
and inevitable exclusion in the language of community and particularity on the other’
(Isin and Nielsen 2008: 11). I will return to the significance of locating citizenship in
acts rather than statuses in the next chapter. The notion of citizenship as the right to
have rights is drawn from Margaret Somers’ (2008) recent engagement with Hannah
Arendt’s work. I will discuss this approach in more detail in Chapter 6.
2 I prefer the term ‘catalytic event’—a term I coined in my study of the Narmada Bachao
Andolan (Nilsen 2010)—to Sewell’s concept of historical event, due to the difference
in scale between the mobilisations in question. Sewell discusses the storming of the
Bastille in July 1789 and subsequent events as the origin of modern revolutions at
the scale of the nation-state. In contrast, my study is focused on mobilisations that
democratised state–society relations at the local scale—that is, in specific districts in
the state of Madhya Pradesh. Whereas these mobilisations—and the confrontations
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 135

Participation in collective action broke with routine practices, as it entailed a

refusal to submit to the compulsions of everyday tyranny. Consequently, the
emotional habitus of fear and resignation, which had been instrumental in
fostering a dominant local rationality in which power from above had been
negotiated primarily through acquiescence and deference, was ruptured and
a new and oppositional local rationality began to form.
In the second part of the chapter, I shift my focus of attention from the
making of moral courage in relation to opponents to the crystallisation of
‘reciprocal emotions’ (Jasper 1998; see also Goodwin 1997) of trust, solidarity,
and friendship internally in the two movements—between middle class
activists and ordinary Bhils on the one hand, and between Bhil activists and
their families and households on the other hand.3 My analysis shows how
middle class activists built relations of trust and solidarity by showing genuine
interest in tangible community problems, by articulating ideas of justice and
dignity that resonated with subdued Bhil anger, by proving themselves capable
of bringing about positive changes, and by being willing to put themselves in
harm’s way while doing so. I also show how conviviality and civility in everyday
interactions played a central role in fusing middle class and Adivasi activists
together as collectives.
I then move on to discuss how Bhil activists practised and negotiated their
political lives—and especially how they negotiated the turn to activism in
relation to families who tended to be sceptical of the losses and risks that
this entailed. I show how instrumentalism and idealism are fused in the
way that Bhil activists think of their movement participation: activism is a
way of bringing about tangible and constructive change, but it is also a way
of serving the community. I also detail how familial conflicts around the
turn to activism were negotiated in different ways: sometimes families were
persuaded to support those who turned to activism; in some cases, a modus
vivendi was reached; and in other cases again, activists distanced themselves
from the notion of family as defined by kinship. The emergence of reciprocal

with which they begun—were unprecedented in a number of ways at this scale and
in this particular context, they cannot be labelled historical events in Sewell’s sense
of the term.
3 This is not to say that internal emotional dynamics in social movements cannot be
characterised by substantial rifts and animus; indeed, as Colin Barker (2010) has
demonstrated, such dynamics are especially common when ideological and strategic
disagreement erupts. As I show below and in Chapter 7, this was also true for the
KMCS and the AMS.
136 Adivasis and the State

emotional bonds, I argue, fused with moral courage in the oppositional local
rationality that was being forged through collective action in Bhil communities
in western Madhya Pradesh.

Catalytic Events and the Moral Courage to Resist

‘Activism begins within fields of possibility’, writes Naisargi Dave (2012: 9)
in her rich exploration of queer activism in India, ‘in the form of an emergent
sense that something is now possible.’ She argues that this emergent sense
is fundamentally affective: it gravitates around what Raymond Williams
(1977) called ‘structures of feeling’ which turn something that was ‘previously
unthinkable’ into ‘a flickering possibility’ (Dave 2012: 10).
Now, one of my core arguments in Chapter 2 was that Bhil subalternity
in relation to the state and its personnel was reproduced through a local
rationality of acquiescence and deference, which in turn was underpinned
by an emotional habitus of fear and resignation. In this context, I argued,
collective resistance to everyday tyranny was not considered to be possible.
But nevertheless, collective resistance—resistance that in this violence-riven
context undoubtedly qualifies as what Doug McAdam (1986) calls ‘high-risk
activism’—happened. This obviously raises questions about what exactly it
was that created an emergent sense among Bhil Adivasis that resistance was
now possible. It is possible to find an answer to these questions by looking in
detail at the initial mobilisations that gave rise to the KMCS and the AMS
as social movements.
In 1982, Khemraj Choudhury, a young Jat from a poor rural family in
Chittorgarh district of southern Rajasthan, arrived in Jhabua to get involved
with mobilising among Bhil Adivasis. His radicalism stemmed from his
schooldays, when he had become aware of and attracted to communist ideas and
inspired by the Naxalite revolt that was going on in West Bengal. He became
a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). The party
decided that it would be necessary for Khemraj to earn some kind of income,
and he was dispatched to the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC)—an
NGO based in Tiloniya village in Ajmer district and headed by Bunker Roy
since 1972—for training in rural development work. However, Khemraj soon
became disillusioned with the work that he was doing at the SWRC. Seeing
that a lot of the funds that the NGO provided were appropriated by baniyas
and sahukars, he started to arrive at radical conclusions about local power
structures: ‘As long as this system exists, there can be no development for the
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 137

poor, because the system depends on exploitation … So I thought the work I

wanted to do, changing society … that was not happening.’ Khemraj decided
to break away from the SWRC and to dedicate himself instead to political
mobilisation: ‘I wanted to go to a place with the most poverty, exploitation,
backwardness’, he explained, ‘and it seemed to me that Jhabua was a place like
this, with many Bhils and a lot of poverty, exploitation, and backwardness’
(interview, August 2009).
When Khemraj arrived in Jhabua, he soon came across Khemla Ajnaharia—a
young Bhilala man who lived in the village of Badi Vaigalgaon with his family.
Perhaps due to the fact that he had grown up with a father who was active in
the Lal Topi Andolan, Khemla was known to be rebellious and assertive in
relation to errant state personnel: ‘When we went to school, the master would
ask us for eggs and chickens, and I would get very angry. So then I thought that
I should also do something in life so I told all the others who went to school
with me all this, and the master heard about it. He kicked me out of the school
and said that I was doing netagiri.’ 4 Khemla’s rebelliousness was also directed
against Forest Department personnel who took bribes from people in his village
on various pretexts: ‘I raised my voice against them and made a group of four or
five people, and we made sure that the money and the chickens were returned
to us.’ At one point, Khemla told me, he was badly beaten up on the order of
the police, the Forest Department, and the tehsildar: ‘They said that I should
be punished so much that I wouldn’t forget for the rest of my life, and so that I
would never do such work again’ (interview, August 2009). Khemla, however,
was not deterred. An erstwhile student leader from the area introduced him to
Khemraj, and the two struck up a friendship: ‘Khemraj said he wanted to come
to our area,’ Khemla stated matter-of-factly as he recounted the origins of the
KMCS, ‘so I brought him to my home’ (interview, August 2009).
The meeting of Khemla and Khemraj was a meeting between two rebellious
individuals determined to do something about the exploitation and oppression
that was so evident all around them: ‘Between the central state, the state
government, their personnel and the Adivasis’, Khemraj told me, ‘it was like
the relationship between a king and his subjects. The Adivasis treated the
government personnel well, but they in turn treated the Adivasis as their
slaves.’ However, as the two started moving around in the area, their efforts to
mobilise communities against the everyday tyranny of the local state met with

4 The word netagiri generally refers to the activity of political leaders. In this context,
it refers to stirring up trouble by leading others in protest.
138 Adivasis and the State

little response. Khemraj recounted his experience of those early days: ‘They
would laugh—their fathers were tortured like this, they were tortured like
this, so they thought it was normal and acceptable’ (interview, August 2009).
What Khemla and Khemraj encountered was the local rationality of
deference and acquiescence that ensured the durability of everyday tyranny
across generations: ‘They believed that this was the work of the state and this
is our work—what we are and are not to do. The police may beat us if they
wish; the patwaris may take chickens if they like. They took it from their
fathers too, so they didn’t find this too hard’ (interview, Khemraj Choudhury,
August 2009).
As chance would have it, it was the necessity of earning a living that
provided the budding activists—now joined by Amit Bhatnagar, a student
from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi who had also passed
through the SWRC in Tiloniya—with their first opportunity to rupture the
stranglehold of everyday tyranny. ‘We didn’t have any grain to feed ourselves
with’, Khemla explained, ‘so we would go to do daily labour—Khemraj, Amit,
and I. In this way we became friends.’ One of the places where they found
work was on the construction of a large earthen dam being built on a stream
in Atthava village, not far from Badi Vaigalgaon where the three were staying
at the time. A local non-tribal sahukar had been given the contract for the
project by the Madhya Pradesh state irrigation department. As soon as they
started working, the three discovered that there was something amiss: the daily
minimum wage for the 400 or 500 workers was supposed to be seven and a half
rupees, but the contractor only paid four rupees to men and three rupees to
women. ‘The contractor’, as Khemla put it, ‘was eating up the workers’ wages’
(interview, August 2009).
The three activists started discussing this underpayment with other workers
on the site: ‘We told everyone that [seven and a half rupees] is the sarkari rate,
and they are paying only four to men and three to women. Do women work less
than men? Do you work less to receive only four rupees? We work as long as
they say, so why should we receive less? People said “This is right!”’ (interview,
Khemraj Choudhury, August 2009). Amit explained how they went about
mobilising the workforce around this issue: ‘We did a calculation with them,
basically, in the villages, and we said that “OK, if there are so many people
and you are getting this much, actually you should be getting this much—so
this is the amount that the contractor takes from you every day.” This became
a very big amount when it was multiplied’ (interview, August 2009). Khemla
then led the workers in a one-day strike.
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 139

Predictably enough, the initial result of this act of defiance was that Khemla
was beaten up badly by the contractor and his men. The activists, however, were
not daunted: along with the workers, they set out on a march to the office of
the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) in Alirajpur. The SDM, however, met
them halfway and tried to convince them to return to work on the condition that
he would settle the matter with the contractor. The activists and the workers
did not relent: in addition to the full payment of wages, they wanted criminal
charges to be brought against the contractor and insisted that talks should
be held in Alirajpur. Ultimately, the issue was resolved as the workers were
paid the wages that were due to them, while the demand to pursue criminal
charges against the contractor was dropped (interview, Khemraj Choudhury,
August 2009; interview, Amit Bhatnagar, August 2009; see also Banerjee,
2008: chapter 4).
When Amit recounted this story to me, he paused to note the significance
of the strike action and the fact that a group of Adivasis had brought their
grievance to the tehsil headquarters: this was ‘[the] first time there was a rally
in Alirajpur where workers had struck for wages—proper wages—which was a
big thing for everyone in Alirajpur. They had never imagined this’ (interview,
August 2009). It is precisely in this unusual and even unprecedented nature
of these confrontations that we can begin to discern what it was that made
resistance possible. What was unusual was of course that the exploitative
ways of a locally powerful figure—in this case a caste Hindu sahukar holding
a government contract—were challenged by Adivasis, and furthermore, that
this collective challenge, despite being met, initially, with a violent response,
was crowned with success. It is of course also important to note that the
success followed in the wake of negotiations with the SDM—a significant
representative of authority in the local context, and one who would usually be
out of reach of ordinary Adivasis, whose interactions with the state typically
gravitated around encounters with low-ranking personnel such as police
constables, forest guards, and patwaris.
It is in this sense that these confrontations can be thought of as catalytic
events, which are defined by a rupture of routine practices and received
wisdoms. Now, as Sewell (1996: 844) notes, a localised rupture caused by a
specific event always has ‘the potential of bringing about a cascading series of
further ruptures’ that may bring about transformations in regnant structural
constellations and power relations. And this was exactly what happened in the
wake of the initial confrontation in Alirajpur—the experience of opting for
collective action, persisting in the face of violence, negotiating with a figure
140 Adivasis and the State

of authority, and winning economic concessions contradicted the received

wisdoms of everyday tyranny to such an extent that the idea of mobilisation
started to catch on.
‘When everyone got six [sic] rupees’, Khemraj said, ‘the story spread
everywhere.’ As a result of this, Khemla, Amit, and Khemraj soon received an
invitation from the nearby village of Chotti Gendra. One of its residents was
keen to talk to the three activists about the behaviour of the Forest Department
and its personnel. An initial meeting with the villagers of Chotti Gendra met
with a mixed reception. About half of the 200 people who had gathered left
when they realised that Khemraj and Amit were not at all political netas in
the conventional sense. Those who remained, however, sat down to talk to the
activists about their problems with the Forest Department: ‘So then, basically,
people narrated their stories of how forest officials come to villages: “They
collect money from us, and they take hens and eggs. They beat us.” This, that,
and the other—lots of stories’ (interview, Amit Bhatnagar, August 2009). From
Chotti Gendra they proceeded to other villages where they held meetings to
discuss forest-related issues, particularly related to nevad: ‘We wrote down
everything—about the issue of nevad, about how many people farmed in the
forest and how much land they farm, and about how much they paid the Forest
Department as penalties every year. From that we felt that the problem was
major’ (interview, Khemraj Choudhury, August 2009).
In a first attempt to do something about this problem, a delegation of
activists and Adivasis travelled to Jhabua to meet with the Divisional Forest
Officer (DFO). In the meeting, the delegation demanded that unless the DFO
came to Alirajpur to familiarise himself with local conditions, they would resort
to direct action. The DFO agreed, and a meeting was organised at the Forest
Range headquarters in Bakhatgarh. Several hundred people from villages in the
area attended the meeting. In the face of the local MLA who warned villagers
against siding with the activists, the Bhils who had gathered gave testimony
about the importance of nevad to their livelihoods and the corruption of the
local Forest Department personnel. While nothing more concrete came from
the meeting than a vague promise to bring an end to corruption and violence,
it was nevertheless a significant display of defiance that hinted at the gradual
emergence of a more assertive disposition in the Bhil communities in the area
(see Banerjee 2008: chapter 4).
Other more minor incidents pointed in the same direction. For example, on
several occasions the activists successfully challenged the practice of offering
food and drink to forest guards, police constables, and patwaris as they passed
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 141

through the villages. They also took issue with the beatings that were regularly
meted out to Adivasis who failed to greet forest guards and other state personnel
with a deferential Ram-Ram Sahib. In one case, the activists called a meeting
after a Deputy Ranger had beaten up five or six people: ‘We decided to go and
ask his boss—the Ranger—whether beating was an official punishment for
not greeting an officer, very simply. If there was something in the law about
it, then fine … and if not, well … ’ (interview, Khemraj Choudhury, August
2009). When they met the Ranger, they confronted him with these questions,
and despite his many attempts at evasion, he finally stated very clearly that the
practice was illegal: ‘So we all went home and celebrated that we had won—
from that day on, we would not have to say Ram-Ram to officers’ (interview,
Khemraj Choudhury, August 2009).
The major turning point, however, came in 1984, two years after the activists
had initially started moving around in the area. Khemraj received news from
the village of Gondwani that a large group of people had been rounded up by
the Forest Department, beaten up badly, and taken to the Forest Range Office
in Attha: ‘We had a meeting and decided to go ask why these people had been
taken.’ When they reached Attha, a group of women—including several of the
wives of the men who had been arrested—first approached the Forest Range
Office to ask why their fellow villagers had been arrested. The staff refused
to talk to them and asked for their neta—they were referring to Khemraj—to
come forward. Khemraj recalled what happened next: ‘So I went in with two
or three of the Adivasis and I sat in a chair … As soon as we sat down, one
of the Forest Rangers punched me and said: “Saala, you have sat in a chair,
have you?”’ The Forest Department staff then laid into Khemraj—they beat
him viciously and burnt his arms with beedies (home-made cigarettes) before
he managed to escape through the back door to be taken away by the group of
Adivasis waiting outside (interview, Khemraj Choudhury, August 2009; see
also Banerjee 2008: chapter 4).
The next morning, Amit—who had arrived the previous evening after
learning what had happened—and a group of Adivasis set out for Alirajpur.
Khemraj, who was being carried on an improvised stretcher, needed medical
attention, and the group was determined to submit a formal complaint to the
administration there. Before long, they were stopped by a group of forest guards
who tried to prevent the group—first with threats of criminal charges, and
then with threats of murder—from proceeding any further. A standoff ensued,
but ultimately the group advanced to Alirajpur where they submitted a formal
142 Adivasis and the State

complaint to the police and staged a dharna outside the tehsil headquarters
(interview, Amit Bhatnagar, August 2009; see also Banerjee 2008: chapter 4).
With the help of the contacts that Amit and Khemraj had at the SWRC,
they were able to gain access to Arjun Singh of the Congress Party, who at this
point was Chief Minister (CM) of Madhya Pradesh. The incident also made
headlines in local papers, and ultimately the authorities in Bhopal ordered the
Forest Conservator—one of the highest-ranking officials in the state Forest
Department—to conduct an inquiry. The Deputy Ranger and the nakedars
who had beaten up Khemraj were suspended, and the Forest Conservator was
sent to Mathvad village on the CM’s orders to attend a meeting to discuss the
conduct of the Forest Department in the area. The villagers that gathered
asked him whether forest guards had the right to demand bribes and beat
people. The Conservator confirmed that these practices were illegal and
encouraged people to file complaints if such incidents took place (see Nilsen
2010: 56–57).
What I have tried to show in the account above is that the origins of what
was to become the KMCS can be traced to a series of confrontations that were
unusual both in form—in the sense that subaltern groups collectively defied
and challenged dominant groups—and in outcome, that is, in the sense that
claims made by subaltern groups resulted in rightful achievements, such as
the disbursement of unpaid wages or the suspension of violent forest guards.
These were catalytic events because they disarticulated existing structural
constellations and power relations and in so doing paved the way for change.
Furthermore, I want to suggest that a central constellation that was being taken
apart in these confrontations was the emotional habitus of fear and resignation
that had underpinned the reproduction and durability of everyday tyranny.5
In making this argument, I am again drawing on Deborah Gould’s (2008)
perceptive analysis of the transition from interest group lobbying to militant
direct action in American AIDS activism in the mid-1980s. This shift, she
argues, was animated by the emergence of ‘new emotional practices and new
sentiments about gay selves’, which created ‘a new counterhegemonic emotional

5 Sewell (1996) is keenly aware of the role that emotions play in historical events. As he
puts it, historical events are ‘characterised by heightened emotion’, and these emotions
are not only responses to or signs of ‘dislocation’, they are also forces that ‘shape the
very course of events’ (ibid: 865). In arguing along these lines, Sewell was arguably
ahead of the analytical game. Writing in the 1990s, he was quite correct to note at
the time that ‘[m]ost social scientists avoid emotions like the plague’.
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 143

habitus and challenged the limits of the previous political horizon’ (ibid: 134).
In this particular case, the catalyst for this change was the ‘moral shock’—a
term that Gould draws from the work of James Jasper (1997)—of a US
Supreme Court judgment that upheld anti-sodomy legislation and effectively
criminalised consensual same-sex intercourse.6 As Gould puts it, this denial
of basic civil and human rights for queer people—a denial that occurred in
the context of blatant governmental disregard of the escalating AIDS crisis
in the country—‘spurred a reconfiguration in lesbians’ and gay men’s feelings
and emotions about state and society, as well as about themselves, heightening
in particular gay anger, indignation, even rage’ (ibid: 134).
In Alirajpur, it was not so much a moral shock that catalysed emotional
changes. The disjuncture between the democratic precepts at the heart of the
Indian Constitution and the reality of actually existing state–society relations
was not shocking to subaltern Bhils. On the contrary—this was what they lived
every day, and most often without being aware of their rights as citizens and
as members of a Scheduled Tribe (see Chapter 2). Rather, the confrontations
that I have described above came to work as catalytic events because they
constituted an experiential counterweight to and a disruption of the received
wisdoms of everyday tyranny: for example, the certainty that forest guards and
police could demand bribes and dole out beatings at will and with impunity
was gainsaid by state personnel being held accountable to the law, and the sure
knowledge that defiance would only result in violent reprisals was negated by
significant concessions from the state apparatus. ‘When Khemrajbhai was
locked up and beaten a lot, we all protested’, Kamalsingh—a KMCS activist
from Attha—recalled with evident pride in their achievements: ‘We got him
released from there and took him to Alirajpur. There we lodged a case against
the Deputy Ranger and got him suspended. This made people feel that there
is power in the Sangathan’ (interview, September 2009).
The fact that these catalytic events were crucial in generating ‘a new
emotional–political space’ (Gould 2009: 163) is not only shown in the
gradual emergence of a more assertive disposition in Bhil communities in the
area—a process that yielded, among other things, the readiness to take issue
with an exploitative contractor, the willingness to give testimony about the
transgressions of the Forest Department in public, and the ability to pursue
collective protest at the tehsil headquarters. It also emerges from the way in

6 See Roy (2015) for a similar analysis of the affective response to the 2013 Supreme
Court verdict that upheld anti-sodomy laws in India.
144 Adivasis and the State

which activist narratives of participation in what was in effect ‘high-risk

collective action’ (Loveman 1998) tended to emphasise ‘emotional alterations of
the self ’ (Young 2001: 105) centred on the loss of fear. Consider the following
statement by Lalsingh—a key activist from Attha:

… I don’t feel scared if the Collector or anyone else comes. Being in the
Sangathan and having fought there, all fears have left me now. We fought for
our rights in the village here and also took out rallies in the cities and towns.
In every village, people would hold meetings and discuss what the problems
and issues were and then we would go and meet the Collector for a solution
to the problems. So by doing all this, the fears have gone away. (Interview,
November 2009)

What he emphasises is how he lost his fear of the state through the act
of movement participation itself—participation that involved previously
unthinkable acts such as confronting state personnel in the village and
publicly protesting their conduct, collective strategic discussions about issues
and problems faced by the community, and constructive engagements with
significant local officials. Other activists emphasised how the experience of
moving beyond the space of the village and making claims on the state had
been instrumental in overcoming fear: ‘By roaming around in the bazaar and
by talking to all the big authorities—in this way, my fears left me’ (interview,
Buriyabhai, April 2010).
Crucially, activists would consistently link these emotional transformations
of the self to the collective nature of the opposition that was being mounted
to everyday tyranny. For example, when I asked Kamalsingh whether people
were not hesitant to join the KMCS due to fear of reprisals, he responded: ‘Yes,
they did think like this but if we ourselves become scared, then the others will
also get scared. So we didn’t budge and remained unmoved. We had decided
that now if anyone were beaten even once, then all of us, men and women,
would come forward and save that person’ (interview, September 2009).
Similarly, Bhukaliya—an activist from the village of Vakner—emphasised
the importance of the opportunity that the Sangathan offered for collective
discussions to mitigate fear: ‘ … due to the Sangathan, unity was created among
us and we got a channel through which we discussed about our welfare, our
issues, and our rights. In this way, slowly the fears began to leave us’ (interview,
September 2009).
The significance of the erosion of fear—and with fear, resignation—
becomes even clearer if we consider how the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan first
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 145

crystallised in the early 1990s. As with the KMCS, the initiative for the
formation of the AMS came from two urban middle class activists, in this
case two former members of the student wing of the Communist Party of
India—Bijoy and Nikunj—who were looking for new turf and new issues to
work with after they had become disillusioned with the bureaucratic nature
of conventional communist mobilisation. Once the two had decided that
they would concentrate their efforts on western Madhya Pradesh, they made
contacts with Adivasi communities close to the market town of Sendhwa
through a local ashram where Gandhian social workers had been providing
education to tribal girls since the early 1950s. According to Bijoy, the fear that
local Adivasis felt in relation to their oppressors was immediately evident to
Nikunj and him as they became more familiar with the area: ‘We analysed
the problems, and there were so many problems that could be made into a
political issue. But the most critical problem was the fear factor among the
tribals of this area. That is—they were exploited, suppressed, brutally killed.
And even if they were cheated, they were not able to open their voice.’ It was
this that would become the focal point of their early mobilising strategy:
‘Our initial strategy was to create a situation where people can have their
own voice before anything. So that was the motive behind the organisation’
(interview, November 2009).
As a first step in this direction, Bijoy and Nikunj organised a four-day
workshop for a group of people from nearby villages at the local ashram. As
they discussed local issues and problems, it soon emerged that most of the
agricultural land in the villages had been mortgaged to sahukars, who in turn
decided what crops would be grown and who would then lay claim to the
harvest at a price that had been fixed at an earlier time: ‘They were penniless.
Indebted’, Nikunj remarked, ‘and there was no social or political organisation
working in the community’ (interview, April 2010). In this way, forest rights,
the corruption and highhandedness of the police, and the power of the baniyas
and sahukars, emerged as significant issues. In order to bring home how it might
be possible to address these issues through collective mobilisation, Bijoy and
Nikunj organised a visit to Thane district where the Kashtakari Sangathana
had organised Bhil Adivasis since 1978.7 The visit was clearly inspirational.

7 See Kulkarni (1974a, 1979), Mies (1986), Basu (1990), and Kashtakari Sangathana
(1986) on the Kashtakari Sangathana. The KMCS organised a similar visit to the
Bhoomi Sena in Dhule district of Maharashtra early in its trajectory. See de Silva et
al. (1979) on the Bhoomi Sena.
146 Adivasis and the State

Munnibai, a prominent female AMS activist, recalled how when the people
from her village who had gone to Thane returned, they raised their fist and
shouted ‘Zindabad!’—a common greeting among activists in the region, but
alien to her and many others in her community (interview, February 2010).
The meaning of the slogan and what the group had witnessed in Thane
soon became clear as a large meeting was called on the first of January 1992
in the village of Jhiri Jamli: ‘There, those who went to [Thane] told us how
the people there had formed their own organisation and explained to us what
the organisation did. Then we had a discussion’ (interview, Munnibai, April
2010). The meeting in Jhiri Jamli—which attracted between 300 and 400
people—was followed by a larger gathering in Khutwadi village: 800 people
came together for two days of discussion, which concluded with the decision
to form an organisation and to name it Adivasi Mukti Sangathan. ‘It took two
days to arrive at this decision’, Suraj explained: ‘We thought that the Adivasi
people shouldn’t be robbed. We should also have independence and freedom’
(interview, November 2009). A committee of 20 people was formed across
three areas—Niwali, Chachariya, and Warla—to coordinate the work of the
newly founded organisation (interview, Nikunj Bhutia, April 2010).
How would this organisation get off the ground? According to Bijoy and
Nikunj, they chose the first issue around which to mobilise—the absence of
teachers from village schools and the lack of drinkable water in the villages—
with great care and with a specific purpose in mind. It was important, Bijoy
pointed out to me when he explained this decision, to identify an opponent
outside the Adivasi community: ‘ … the basic principle is that you have to
identify the enemy which is not with them but outside.’ He added: ‘It has to
be very simple … the first struggle needs to be won, not lost. If we lose, then
the inspiration and commitment will not crystallise.’ To start the mobilisation
around these two issues, the Sangathan carried out a survey of 26 villages,
carefully documenting teacher absenteeism and the lack of hand pumps. The
survey, Nikunj explained, was intended as a learning experience in ‘how to
raise issues’ in relation to state authorities (interview, April 2010).
The survey was followed by a demonstration in which some 5,000 Bhil
Adivasis marched to the office of the tehsildar in Sendhwa carrying empty clay
pots. Participants in the march delivered angry speeches outside the tehsildar’s
office, and women smashed the pots they had been carrying on his doorstep.
When the tehsildar—a man who otherwise inspired fear among Adivasis around
Sendhwa—finally emerged from his office, he was presented with the survey
and eventually responded with a written statement promising that his office
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 147

would ensure that the protesters’ grievances would be addressed (interview,

Bijoy Panda, November 2009).
As Bijoy’s statements above make it clear, this catalytic event was carefully
and deliberately planned, and intended to enable villagers to air their grievances
and make their claims in public. In this sense, the confrontation with the
tehsildar was obviously an experiential counterweight to the received wisdoms
of everyday tyranny in itself, but interestingly it also yielded tangible results
that helped the mobilisation gain momentum. Bamniya—one of the most
seasoned activists of the AMS—explained the changes that occurred as follows:

Slowly, wherever there was no access to good drinking water, [the tehsildar]
immediately made arrangements for water to be brought on bullock carts,
and hand pumps were installed where it was possible. Wherever there were
schools without teachers, arrangements for teachers were made. Wherever
nurses were not there, they were sent. It was like this in the beginning … and
if it wasn’t coming, then we would complain again, and slowly things started
happening like this routinely.

The result of this was that ‘people’s work was getting done, so people
thought there was strength in the Sangathan, and the sarkar and the sarkari
workers became afraid of the Sangathan’. At that point, Bamniya argued,
‘people thought: “No bhai—there is strength in the Sangathan, and when it
fights there are results; it works!” For this reason, the Sangathan spread in
the whole area’ (interview, November 2009). Munnibai’s assessment of the
aftermath of the demonstration concurs with that of Bamniya: ‘When we got
victory on the issue of water and also on other issues, people developed an
interest in the Sangathan. They thought this way their problems can be solved.
Therefore, all men and women started coming to the Sangathan’ (interview,
February 2010). What Bamniya’s and Munnibai’s statements throw into relief
is once again how catalytic events struck at the heart of the emotional habitus
that sustained everyday tyranny. Here, what is most striking is perhaps the
emphasis they put on how the results of the initial agitation contradicted the
widespread feeling of resignation among Bhil Adivasis in the region: rather
than being futile, the act of confronting and protesting achieved significant
and beneficial concessions. And, crucially, this in turn added momentum to
the mobilising process.
It is important to note that catalytic events such as these took place not
just between Bhil Adivasis and state personnel. Mobilisation also entailed
confrontations with the patels who mediated everyday tyranny in the villages
148 Adivasis and the State

and with the caste Hindu merchants and moneylenders who ruled the roost
in the market towns. The KMCS often targeted more marginal faliyas when
they began mobilising in a village, as these were less tightly embedded in
the existing power structure. The Sangath also concentrated on attracting
younger members of the community, as they were somewhat less fearful of
the authority of the patels (interview, Amit Bhatnagar, August 2009). Patels
would often respond to mobilisation by attempting to intimidate activists: ‘The
patel in Attha’, Dediya recalled, ‘threatened us openly. He threatened us with
beatings, jail, loss of land, and death’ (interview, April 2010). In some cases,
as I discuss in greater detail below, villagers would respond by recoiling from
mobilisation. In other cases, they would quietly defy the patels. Some activists
organised social boycotts against attempts by patels to intimidate them: ‘I
didn’t allow anyone to go to the patel’s house … Like this, I did meetings all
the time, and I also stopped going to the patel’s house … Nobody would go to
the patel’s house … The patel’s family was entirely separated from the rest of
the village’ (interview, Hersingh, April 2010). Valsingh of the AMS recounted
how the movement had taken on traders and merchants in the following way:

… our main fight was against the plunder by the traders. We coined a slogan:
‘Whose building is this? It is ours! It is ours!’ … Because the buildings were
constructed by looting us … They used to stay in small mud huts. Now they
have built huge buildings. They have been able to do so because they have
looted us. So these buildings belong to us. (Interview, February 2010)

In addition to taking on exploitation in the marketplace—whether through

fraudulent weighing or usurious interest rates—the Sangathan also challenged
caste-based abuse and discrimination, and achieved significant results: ‘They
don’t call us chemtiya [monkey] after we made the Sangathan. They don’t trouble
us because they’re under pressure from the Sangathan now. They feel that the
Sangathan-wallahs will put a case against them and send them to jail. So they
don’t hit us or even say a wrong word now’ (interview, Barlibai, February 2010).
But if fear and resignation were giving way, what were they giving way to?
What was the kernel of the new emotional habitus that was crystallising in
the Bhil Adivasi communities that were about to join the ranks of the KMCS
and the AMS? There is one particular theme that emerges from interviews
with Bhil activists, namely that of having gained the ability to speak. This was
perhaps most clearly stated by an activist from Chotti Gendra: ‘We are no longer
scared of the police. We can speak with freedom now’ (interview, Bhuvan, April
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 149

2010). This theme emerged time and again in activist narratives. ‘Gradually
we learnt to speak’, Valsingh, an AMS activist from Ronsanimal village, said.
‘We got educated. Now we were not afraid to speak our mind. We will say:
“Do not boss over us!”’ (interview, February 2010). And similarly, Govindbhai,
another senior AMS activist, noted that ‘change has happened and the fear
that we can’t speak, today that fear has gone away. When the Sangathan was
made, we saw their people speak out and we also felt then that we could also
speak out’ (interview, February 2010). What these statements suggest is that the
waning of fear made it possible to speak out about injustice and oppression by
confronting and talking back to those who imposed everyday tyranny through
coercive demands and violent exactions. Clearly, a ‘counterhegemonic emotional
habitus’ (Gould 2009: 134) was starting to crystallise around what Barrington
Moore (1978: 91) referred to as ‘moral courage’—that is, the ‘capacity to resist
powerful and frightening social pressures to obey oppressive or destructive
rules or commands’.8
Importantly, gaining a capacity to speak and the sense of moral courage
that this imparted to Bhil activists tended to be linked to being able to direct
rights-based claims at figures of authority in the local state structure: ‘Yes, it
was the case that earlier, whenever I had to go to some authority and talk, I
wasn’t able to. And someone else had to speak. But now the fear in my mind
has slowly reduced. In the beginning, the chaprasi himself would scare us.
Now I can talk to all the authorities’ (interview, Guliyabhai, November 2009).
Similarly, an AMS activist pointed out how, initially, he had been hesitant to
address state personnel with claims and complaints, but had been encouraged to
do so by more senior activists in the movement, who told him that this is how
he would overcome his fear and learn how to speak: ‘And it’s true, I began to
learn. Now I can meet the SDM and the Collector also. The tehsildar, the SP,
police, DSP9—I can talk to all departments now. I can talk to the politicians
also. Now I don’t feel afraid’ (interview, Tersingh, February 2010). Reflecting

8 Interestingly, Srila Roy (2015: 164) notes in her analysis of lesbian politics in
eastern India that mobilisation was predicated on similar emotional and affective
transformations—in particular overcoming fear and shame. ‘Such a transformation’,
she writes, was ‘fundamental to making it possible for subaltern groups to imagine
“other worlds” in which they can be assertive, proud, powerful, and openly defiant
of existing power structures’.
9 The abbreviations stand for Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Superintendent of Police,
and Deputy Superintendent of Police.
150 Adivasis and the State

on her involvement with the AMS, Barlibai first explained how the experience
had caused her to lose her fear: ‘What should I be afraid of? Because of roaming
every day, the fear had left me. I have even gone to jail and back and I’m not
even afraid of the jail.’ She went on to add: ‘The way in which to talk, how to
talk to officers and authorities, how to get the work done—this knowledge I
have got. I got this seekhna [learning]’ (interview, February 2010).
In Moore’s (1978: 91) work, the notion of moral courage—although
implicitly infused with all sorts of emotional and affective connotations10 —is
understood in an almost exclusively cognitive manner as ‘the intellectual
ability to recognise that the pressures and rules are in fact oppressive’. What
the activist narratives that I have engaged with above emphasise, however, is
that the very possibility of political assertiveness—manifest in the refusal to
accept the exactions and the violence that defined everyday tyranny and the
concurrent ability to make rights-based claims on state authorities—depended
on the creation of emotional and affective alternatives to dominant norms (see
Dave 2012: 3). Through a multiplicity of catalytic events which reversed the
emotional grammar of everyday tyranny, this process of invention spawned
the moral courage to resist among Bhil Adivasis.
Dave (2012: 13–14) proposes a distinction between resistance and invention.
Resistance, she argues, is predicated on clear fault lines between those who
resist and the institutional apparatus they resist against, as well as a situation in
which the difference of subaltern groups is inscribed in space and collectively
enforced through certain practices of social exclusion. This is neither the
case with heteronormativity as a form of oppression—an apparatus that is so
naturalised that it is invisible—nor with the lesbian as a subaltern. Lesbians,
she argues, are ‘excluded from all forms of social and cultural recognition,
so that even the comfort of collective anger, the possibility of resistance, and
the knowledge with what to resist and with whom is unavailable’ (ibid: 13).

10 Most obviously, courage is an emotion. Indeed, moral courage can arguably be

compared to moral indignation as a political emotion (see Romanos 2014 for
an interesting discussion of moral indignation in relation to high-risk activism).
Furthermore, moral courage is linked to Moore’s (1978) notion of ‘iron in the soul’ as a
necessary precondition for resistance to oppression—another fundamentally emotional
configuration (see also Gamson 1992). In all likelihood, the cognitive bias in Moore’s
work reflects the fact that he was writing at least a decade before emotions and affect
again became respectable domains of inquiry in research on social movements and
resistance (see Jasper 1998, 2012; Goodwin and Jasper 2006; Goodwin, Jasper, and
Polletta 2000, 2001; Gould 2004; Flam 2005; and Eyerman 2005).
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 151

Consequently, queer activism could only come into being as a result of the
invention of a form of liveable lives and practices centred on the possibility of
pleasure and love. In Alirajpur and Badwani, the fault lines between subalterns
and the institutional apparatus that carries out repression were of course clear
as day and indeed also inscribed in space and enforced through a distinct set
of practices of exclusion. Nevertheless, Dave’s notion of invention—or, as she
puts it, of activism as revolving around ‘inventing heretofore unimaginable
possibilities’ (ibid: 8)—makes sense precisely because, as Chapter 2 showed,
everyday tyranny had come to be so entrenched that resistance was unthinkable.
In this context—a context where the last acts of collective defiance and
opposition had taken place in the 1950s and 1960s, and ended with coercion
and defeat (see Chapter 4 above)—the possibility of resistance had to be
invented, or, rather, reinvented, and this is precisely what happened through
the confrontational episodes that I have referred to as catalytic events. In other
words, the emotional transformations they brought about were ‘constitutive of
radical collective action’ (Young 2001: 105).

Reciprocal Emotions and the Making of Bhil Resistance

The moral courage to resist generated through the catalytic events discussed
above can be understood as what Jasper (1998: 417) refers to as a ‘shared’
emotion among activists—that is, an emotion directed outwards from the
activist collective, typically towards opponents or objects of protest. However,
the counterhegemonic emotional habitus and, as an extension of this, the
oppositional local rationality that crystallised in and through the early activism
of the KMCS and the AMS consists of more than just the moral courage to
resist the local state and its personnel, as well as other oppressive figures such as
merchants, moneylenders, and patels. Indeed, it is clear from activist narratives
that what Jasper refers to as ‘reciprocal’ emotions—that is, those ‘close, affective
ties of friendship, love, solidarity, and loyalty’ that emerge between activists as
a result of movement participation (ibid: 417)—were also of great importance
in sustaining the capacity of the KMCS and the AMS to engage in acts of
citizenship and enabling activist self-making (see also Goodwin 1997: 55;
Gould 2009: chapters 3 and 4; Barker 2001; Taylor and Rupp 2002).
As Fernando Bosco (2007: 546) notes in his research on the Madres de Plaza
de Mayo in Argentina, emotions that gravitate around ‘proximity, solidarity,
and shared identities’ have the capacity of bringing activists together despite
social and territorial distances. While Bosco focusses on how the ‘reciprocal
152 Adivasis and the State

emotional bonds generated by activism’ (ibid: 551) enabled the construction

of national and transnational movement networks, his observation is also
relevant in relation to the KMCS and the AMS as local and community-based
movements, in particular in terms of how trust, solidarity, and friendship
emerged between urban middle class activists and Bhil Adivasis in the initial
phase of mobilisation. For the middle class activists who were central in
bringing the two movements into existence, the Bhil heartland was largely
unfamiliar terrain—indeed, for most of them, it was their first direct encounter
with rural India and with political mobilisation. For the Bhil Adivasis who
joined them as activists in the KMCS and the AMS, it was not just a matter
of mobilisation being a new and hitherto unthinkable way of acting. It was also
that the middle class activists whom they joined were non-Adivasi outsiders—
that is, for all immediate intents and purposes, they were bazaariyas or sarkari
people. So how did ‘emotional and affectual solidarity’ (Goodwin 1997: 55)
emerge between the two groups?
The most immediate answer to this question is: slowly—and through
persistent engagement and negotiations. Talking about the first two years
of activity in Alirajpur, Amit emphasised that it was very often difficult to
get villagers to talk about their problems with forest guards and other state
personnel and to commit to challenging the everyday tyranny of the local state:
‘So they would collect people, but when they heard what we had to say, they
would say “No no no—our village is not like that, everything is fine here, you
don’t have to worry—you go.”’ The three activists—Khemla, Khemraj, and
Amit—would often seek out hamlets and villages where they had heard that
someone had been beaten or made to pay a bribe and discuss the necessity of
taking action with the villagers there: ‘Then we would say: “What should we
do about it? Do you want to take this up ahead to some senior official, or you
want to keep quiet? It’ll keep happening.” So they would say: “Yes, yes—we
will take it up … we will tell you tomorrow.”’ In most cases, this meant that
the villagers would consult the patel about what to do, who would in turn warn
them against joining with the activist: ‘And next day, nobody would turn up
… So for one or two years this thing just kept on—we would just be talking
to people’ (interview, August 2009).
As the news of the strike for minimum wages and the removal of the
forest guards who beat up Khemraj started spreading in the area—often, it
seems, through kinship networks between villages (field notes and interviews,
2009–2010)—the three activists started to be approached by villagers who
would share their stories about being subjected to corrupt demands and violent
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 153

treatment at the hands of forest guards and police. However, this did not entail
an immediate resort to collective defiance. In one case, Amit recalled, they
were approached by a mankar (cowherd) who wanted to submit a complaint
against forest guards who had taken away both chickens and logs of wood from
his house. However, he wanted the three activists to do it on his behalf, which
they refused: ‘We said that: “No no—we don’t do such kind of complaints,
you hold a meeting in your village, we’ll talk to your villagers, then we will
see what is to be done.” Because if you complain individually, nothing will
happen.’ The aggrieved villager agreed, and a meeting was organised in his
village, but the turnout was very poor: ‘There were just seven families there,
he didn’t call anybody else. He said: “Nobody will help me, from outside
hamlets. These people will do it.” So then we talked to them at length about
“what are you getting into?”’

… so we said ki everything that is happening is bad, but now when you say
that you are complaining, you must realise what you’re getting into. Because
once you complain, definitely they are going to retaliate, because they’re not
used to this, hain na, so they are going to use everything that they have in
their power to, you know, threaten you. So maybe they will not let you tend
your cattle in the forest, they will beat you, they will book you under false
cases, you will have to go to jail … And therefore, because there are definitely
going to be problems, you have to be united, only if all seven of you, the whole
hamlet, women, men say that ‘No, we will help this guy—hain na, suppose
he goes in jail, then who’s going to feed his children? You will have to feed
his children. Who will do his farm? You will have to do his farm, hain na. So
unless you take this decision that you will take collective action, it is better
that you don’t do anything.’

The villagers who had congregated responded that they would need some
time to think about the proposal.
Some ten days later, they contacted Khemla, Khemraj, and Amit and asked
them to return to their village to hold further meetings to try and convince
other hamlets to join them in challenging the forest guards: ‘So after about
three, four meetings … we were also convinced that “OK, these guys are strong
and they will not go back on what they are saying”, so then we took … them to
the senior official and there they explained the case and they said that this has
happened, that has happened … and they even gave a complaint to the police
department, hain na, saying that he came and beat us and took my chicken
away, for theft and things like that.’ An apprehensive wait followed—everyone
154 Adivasis and the State

was anxious as to whether the forest guards would retaliate against the villagers
who had submitted the complaint: ‘But for one year, no forest official came
to their hamlet … So this was a big thing, big success … They were grazing
their cattle; they were doing agriculture … and they were bringing wood also
… So that was one big success that happened, and gradually from there also
the story spread … ’ (interview, August 2009).
Amit’s account of their initial difficulties in mobilising in Alirajpur as well
as the protracted negotiations that resulted in a successful challenge against
the forest guards reveals a lot about the making of ‘emotional connections
among participants’ (Bosco 2007: 546) in the KMCS. Their initial problems in
convincing villagers of taking forward complaints against errant state personnel
were not just grounded in the pervasive fear of reprisals from their oppressors,
but also in the fact that the Bhils were often—and with good reason, given
their interactions with non-tribal state personnel and bazaariyas—sceptical of
non-Adivasi outsiders: ‘At first, we thought they were sarkari people. Before,
if anyone came here wearing pant-shirt and chappals, then we would always
feel afraid of such people. Their clothes were also different—they wore kurta-
pajama. So people were a bit frightened of them initially.’
Patels and state personnel actively stoked this scepticism by encouraging
rumours about the three activists: ‘People said that these men eat other people’,
a group of activists from Attha told us: “They enter people’s houses to do
this”—this is what people said about Amit and Khemraj initially. So we were
afraid of them’ (group interview, November 2009). Similarly, Gujaria recalled
how they were warned from joining Amit, Khemla, and Khemraj: ‘We were
told not to go with these people because they were terrorists. “They will eat
you”—they would speak to us like this, and in this way they would try to stop
us from going with the Sangathan’ (interview, April 2010). This trepidation
also fed into Bhil perceptions of their initial interactions with the activists
when they turned up in villages. Consider, for example, Karansingh’s account
of one of his initial conversations with Amit and Khemraj:

One time, Amit and Khemraj came to my field when I was ploughing: ‘Where
are you from?’ they asked. ‘I am an Attha-wallah’. ‘What is your name?’
‘Karansingh’. ‘Come here, we want to talk to you’. I was feeling scared that
they would eat me. ‘We won’t do anything to you. Tell us something—do you
have nevad or not? Does the nakedar demand things from you or not?’ ‘He
does—money, liquor, chickens. I will go now—nobody is there in my house’.
Saying this, I left. (Interview, September 2009)
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 155

Nevertheless, scepticism and reticence gradually yielded to trust—in part

through the kind of protracted dialogues described by Amit in which the need
for a collective response to specific grievances and the risks that this entailed
were discussed.11 It is quite clear from activist narratives that these dialogues
were instrumental in building the sense of trust that was needed to take on
formidable adversaries such as the Forest Department or the police. Bhil
activists would often refer to how these initial dialogues convinced them that
the middle class activists were genuinely interested in their everyday problems.
Telling us about his first encounter with Amit and Khemraj, Shantilal—a
KMCS activist from Attha—recalled how his suspicions gave way to trust:
‘At that time, the people spread rumours about Amit and Khemraj—that
these were people who ate humans. Later on, when I went to Gulab’s house
and spoke to them, I felt that these two were our own people, and the kind of
people who want to discuss with us about our problems’ (interview, November
2009). AMS activists reflected in similar ways about how they came to trust
the middle class activists:

Madhuriben came to this area and in the bazaar and in the town, she organised
a dharna on the issue of electricity. They went to the electricity department and
did a dharna there. I also went there and wanted to understand that when they
are taking the bills from us, why don’t they provide electricity? Why are they
taking money just like that for no reason? Why are the wires being cut? Such
issues were being discussed there. When I saw this, I felt that this sangathan
is a good thing and we should also do this … On that day, I saw for myself
that these people, in full public view, are speaking out. Seeing this, I began
to trust them. (Interview, Sunil, February 2010)

To Sunil, the activists’ interest in daily problems contrasted with the callous
rapaciousness of local state personnel: ‘Now, when there is so much exploitation
and atrocities going on, we also felt that there should be someone to raise their
voice against this.’ This sentiment is echoed in Barlibai’s account of her initial
encounter with Vijaybhai and Nikunj:

We believed them as everyone was looting us. Money. Ghee. Chickens. The
forest guards and police were looting all this. They would keep troubling

11 According to Amit, such dialogues and negotiations could sometimes unfold over
an entire year before resulting in concrete action. In some cases, of course, nothing
would come of the discussions in terms of mobilisation.
156 Adivasis and the State

us. After listening to them it felt like that these are our people and they are
speaking the truth. The looting has to reduce; the government will take our
land away unless the Sangathan is established. And we will all be finished.
Thinking like this, we joined the Sangathan. (Interview, February 2010)

In addition to displaying a genuine interest in concrete community problems,

middle class activists were also often perceived as being able to convey ideas
of justice and dignity that resonated with the subdued anger that many Bhils
felt in relation to local state personnel: ‘First Khemraj came to Umarla. He
told us that this is right for the Adivasi people and this is wrong’, Kamalsingh
explained. ‘Then we realised that this man is good and we began to support
him. We benefitted from this as we were spared the exploitation and the
beatings’ (interview, September 2009). This is of course very significant, given
the fact that everyday tyranny had generated a local rationality in which fear
and resignation prevented the articulation of anger and resentment in the form
of collective grievances and claims in the public sphere. Kulsingh of the AMS
explained this in the following way:

The Sangathan-wallahs had come and sung songs, then we had joined with
them. We felt that they were singing good songs and everyone also felt that the
Sangathan was doing good work. The Sangathan was scaring off the baniyas
and the nakedar. Whenever anyone brought wood to build their house, the
Sangathan would support them and that’s why we talked about joining the
Sangathan … They talked about the Sangathan and about our rights. They
said: ‘These are your rights and you will have to fight to get them.’ They took
meetings in all the villages and gave out the information regarding rights …
‘The sarkar is equivalent to a matchstick. You people are much bigger and you
have full rights over this land—you haven’t gone anywhere nor have you come
from outside. But the sarkar has come from outside and it is small, you are
big. The plants and the shrubs that grow in the forest—you have full rights
over these as you have over the land’ … Because they spoke of our rights, we
began to trust them and believe in them. And what they were saying was right.
Earlier we people thought that everything belonged to the sarkar. (Interview,
November 2009)

Similarly, Bhagat—a KMCS activist from Kakrana village—recounted

how the idea of building an organisation to challenge corrupt exactions and
violence enabled him to begin to act on subdued inclinations: ‘When all this
exploitation was going on in the village, I always felt that it wasn’t right and
that it shouldn’t be happening. But I didn’t have the courage to fight against
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 157

it. I knew that it was wrong but I didn’t have the courage to speak out. I got to
know about the Sangathan when I heard that in Attha village, they are trying
to stop the oppression’ (interview, April 2010).
Bhagat proceeded to explain how, once he saw how KMCS activists were
able to force the police to return a bribe they had taken from a fellow villager,
he made up his mind to turn to activism: ‘When I saw this, I felt that we
can fight … I felt that this is good work and worth doing’ (interview, April
2010). Bhagat’s statement points to how—in addition to articulating notions
of dignity and justice—the ability to bring about changes that were thought
to be impossible in the context of everyday tyranny was crucial in building
trust and confidence between middle class activists and ordinary Bhil villagers.
Indeed, Kulsingh of the AMS reflected in very similar ways on the importance
of the ability of the Sangathan to bring the ideas of rights and equality that it
promulgated: ‘After that we fought, took out rallies and told the sarkar this.
Then the sarkar got frightened seeing us. Then we began to believe in Vijaybhai
also. We felt that this is right and that’s why the sarkar is getting afraid of us
along with the baniyas, nakedar, police and the collector. They were all afraid
of us and thus, we felt that what Bijoybhai was saying was correct. And we
began to trust him’ (interview, November 2009).
This was closely related to an appreciation of the willingness of middle
class activists to subject themselves to risks of various kinds—violence and
imprisonment, for example—in the process of mobilising to achieve such
changes. For example, speaking of the episode recounted above, when
Khemraj was severely beaten by forest guards, a KMCS activist remarked:
‘That is when we understood the true meaning of Sangathan’ (interview,
Karansingh, November 2009). Similarly, Bhagat of the KMCS argued that the
willingness to face coercion had galvanised support for middle class activists
among ordinary Bhil villagers: ‘The people who came from outside were also
threatened, but they refused to be scared. They were fearless people … They
were put in jail. After that, the people from the village had more faith in them
and knew that they were fighting for us. They thought that they should help
them’ (interview, April 2010).
However, there were also other aspects of the interactions between middle
class activists and Bhil villagers that contributed to the emergence of reciprocal
emotional bonds. Consider this excerpt from Karansingh’s account of a later
encounter with Amit and Khemraj, whom he had initially feared as man-
eaters:
158 Adivasis and the State

They would talk slowly in Hindi. They had trouble speaking in our language
in the beginning. Then Amit and Khemraj asked me: ‘Should we come to your
house?’ ‘Chalo [let’s go]—you should come. Should we make food separately
for you?’ ‘No. We will make food along with you and eat together.’ There
was roti and bhaji [deep-fried snacks] already in my house, so they took half a
roti and said: ‘Why do these sarkari people trouble you so much?’ (Interview,
September 2009)

Two things are particularly significant in this exchange, both of which

contradicted the precepts of the caste ideology that normally mediated
interactions between Adivasis and non-Adivasis. First is the contrast with how
local state personnel behaved: Amit and Khemraj asked if they could come to
Karansingh’s house, and made no demands for food—on the contrary, it was
Karansingh who asked if they wanted to be fed. Secondly, when Karansingh
made this offer, he also asked—in accordance with the received wisdom of
everyday tyranny—whether their meal should be cooked separately. Against
the grain of interactions between Bhil Adivasis and state personnel, Amit
and Khemraj insisted that they would cook and eat with him and his family.
In doing so, they once again distanced themselves from local state personnel
and from the caste-based ideological scripts in which everyday tyranny was
embedded.
This is just one example of how conviviality and civility in everyday
interactions enabled Bhil Adivasis to trust and befriend a group of non-Adivasi
outsiders. The KMCS based its mobilising strategy on middle class activists
settling in Adivasi villages. In Bhil narratives of the making of the Sangath,
their ability to settle into village life—by learning the tribal language, by
participating in daily agricultural activities, by learning how to cook staples
like rabri [a grain-based gruel, often eaten for breakfast], and by participating
in festivals and other social occasions—figure prominently as explanations
for the trust they gained in the communities. So too did the demeanour and
comportment that middle class activists adopted in interactions: one Bhil
activist in particular recalled that he was impressed with how, when they
conducted meetings, the middle class activists would sit on the ground along
with everyone else and address villagers respectfully (interviews and field notes,
2009–2010)—a marked contrast to local state personnel, who, in accordance
with prevailing caste ideology, would insist on being seated higher than
villagers, and who would speak to them in an authoritarian and condescending
tone. ‘Slowly, we got to know one another’, Karansingh remarked, ‘and then we
took to roaming around with them’ (interview, November 2009). Significantly,
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 159

the middle class activists of the KMCS were often referred to by Bhil
activists in familial terms—‘amra Rahul’ (our Rahul) or ‘amri Jayashree’ (our
Jayashree)—and, conversely, middle class activists would refer to the women
and men in whose houses they stayed as ‘aai’ (mother) and ‘baap’ (interviews
and field notes, 2009–2010).
Alpa Shah (2013) has reached similar conclusions in her analysis of how
Maoist insurgents have established a durable presence in Adivasi villages in
Jharkhand. Their ability to do so, she argues, hinges on more than simply
addressing community grievances with the state—it is ‘dependent on the
development of intimacy between the mobilising forces and the people in
the area of expansion’ (ibid: 486). Her ethnography details how upper caste
Maoist leaders have become ‘part of an extended family’ (ibid: 494) due to
the readiness of these leaders to behave in polite and friendly ways, to refuse
special treatment, to perform menial household tasks that non-Adivasis would
normally shun, and to ‘treat the villagers as equals, overriding differences
of caste’ (ibid: 496).12 This is not to suggest that relations between middle
class activists and Adivasi villagers were always harmonious and free from
hierarchical dynamics. As Baviskar (1995: 189) notes in her analysis of the
KMCS, middle class activists would ‘get their way by getting angry, by nagging
and cajoling. Authority accrues to those who behave authoritatively.’ Moreover,
although many Bhil activists acquired crucial forms of politico-bureaucratic
literacy through their participation in the Sangath (see Chapter 6) there
remained, as Baviskar points out, important gaps in skills and knowledge that
perpetuated Adivasi dependence upon middle class leadership (ibid: 189–190).13
Nevertheless, this does not detract from the central role that sociability and
everyday egalitarianism played in generating reciprocal emotional bonds that

12 However, as George Kunnath (2012) has pointed out in his study of the Maoist
movement in Bihar, caste has remained an axis of tension. Dalit Maoists have criticised
the movement for neglecting Dalit interests and concerns, and have also abandoned
the movement due to the perception that members of the landowning Kurmi caste
increasingly control it. Caste has not been the only axis of tension within the Maoist
movement in India. As Srila Roy (2012) has pointed out in her study of gender and
violence in the Naxalite movement, sexual harassment by male activists against female
activists was a widespread phenomenon. Female activists, she argues, ‘faced multiple
forms of threat, and not at the hands of the enemy alone’ (ibid: 12).
13 The persistence of these discrepancies would eventually create tensions that drove
wedges between non-Adivasis and Adivasis in the KMCS. I will discuss these
developments in Chapter 7.
160 Adivasis and the State

were important in enabling the KMCS to come into being and to exist as a
social movement.
The AMS opted for a different strategy: instead of having middle class
activists settle in Adivasi villages, the Sangathan set up an office in Sendhwa
town in order—in the words of Bijoybhai—to ‘see and understand how this
citadel of exploitation or exploitative forces are really working’ (interview,
November 2009). Consequently, the narratives of Bhil activists do not revolve
so much around the ability of middle class activists to settle into village
life in a convivial manner. Rather, what emerges from these accounts is the
importance of the fact that Bijoybhai and Nikunj—and the project of forming
a Sangathan—were introduced and vouched for by trusted intermediaries,
both non-tribal and tribal.
That Bijoybhai and Nikunj first approached local communities via the
Gandhian ashram in Niwali—a trusted institution among Bhil Adivasis in the
area around Sendhwa—seems to have been crucial in this regard: ‘[Bijoybhai]
had come to didi [big sister]’s ashram. There the children would study, so we
weren’t afraid there … They would talk nicely and we developed faith based on
that’ (group interview, Jhiri Jamli, February 2010). In the wake of the initial
workshop at the ashram and the visit to the Kashtakari Sangathana in Thane,
a core group of Bhil activists was formed. The fact that community members
had decided to join Bijoybhai and Nikunj in building an organisation then
became something that in and of itself generated trust among other villagers.
Speaking of how Bamniya first came to her village to conduct a meeting and
discuss prospects for mobilising, Munnibai said: ‘We knew him. If our own
man has come, why shouldn’t we trust him? Why shouldn’t we listen to what
he is saying? We knew him as our own man. We understand outsiders less’
(interview, February 2010).
Veteran activist Valsingh’s account of how the AMS spread to his village
also underscores the decisive importance of familiarity in building the trust
needed to turn and join the movement. A meeting had been called in which
Jhagrusingh—a respected person in the area—spoke about the need for forming
an organisation:

He said that through the organisation we would struggle together to stop

the looting and solve our problems. We should come together and end the
rule of political parties like Janata and Congress. Then they asked me to say
a few words … I said: ‘Jhagrubhai, Janata, and Congress people also used to
say the same things, but our development did not happen. We would join the
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 161

organisation. We have tried the BJP and the Congress. Now we will test the
Sangathan also. But I request you to not make any mistakes—we depend on
you’ … After that, I also started moving to different villages along with them.

He added: ‘I was not afraid of them as they were known to me. Doorsingh
was also there—he came to our village along with Jhagrubhai. I had known
him since we were children’ (interview, February 2010). Activism was a leap
of faith. Making that leap was clearly less intimidating in the company of
friends and acquaintances.
The processes discussed above were not merely ones of creating middle
class leaders and Adivasi followers. If we return to Dave’s (2012: 3) powerful
interpretation of activism as an effect of three affective exercises—one, the
problematisation of social norms; two, the invention of alternatives to those
norms; three, the creative practice of these newly invented possibilities—it is
crucial to note that Adivasis were equally involved in the creative practice of
newly invented possibilities for how to be in the world.14
When Bhil Adivasis spoke about how they practised these new possibilities
as activists with the KMCS and the AMS, they often did so in an instrumental
register in which activism was portrayed as a form of practice that enabled them
to solve concrete problems in their daily interactions with the state. Consider,
for instance, Valsingh’s account of the initial AMS meeting in Khutwari:

When a conference was held at Khutwari we got the idea that we can put an
end to the atrocities and loot of forest guards, the patwari, and the police. We
will fight for our rights and be our own leaders. We thought the Sangathan
was on the right track. At some places the organisation managed to restrain
the forest guards. Rallies were held. The forest-wallahs began to fear the
Sangathan and our strength grew. People started flocking to the organisation.
We didn’t know what would happen next—whether we would be leaders in
future or get beaten up. We had no idea. But seeing the large congregation of
people we joined the Sangathan. The organisation taught us that everything
belongs to us. (Interview, February 2010)

14 Activism of course also entailed substantial transformation for middle class activists
too—indeed, for many of them, their turn to activism redefined their life courses.
However, in this study I choose to focus on how Adivasis practised the possibility
of activism. For studies of the making of activist selves among urban middle classes
in India, see Roy (2012), Kamra (2013), and Chandra (2013c).
162 Adivasis and the State

This of course echoes Bamniya’s account earlier of the impact of the

Sangathan’s first mobilisation around the right to water and education: it was
the experience of actually bringing about tangible changes in state–society
relations that constituted activism as a possible alternative to acquiescence
and deference. In a similar way, Gujaria and Buriyabhai spoke about how,
as the KMCS started mobilising in their village, a false charge of vandalism
was levelled against them. However, they protested against the charges and
obtained results that boosted the movement: ‘The SDM suspended some
of the nakedars. We applied our maximum strength in this region … Then
slowly all the villages of the entire region joined us’ (interview, April 2010).
Indeed, given the context of everyday tyranny, many ordinary Bhils made
an extraordinary transition to becoming full-time activists with the KMCS
and the AMS. For many, this transition was motivated by the experience of
having their individual problems solved with the support of the movements.
For example, Barlibai, whose struggle for land opened this chapter, explained
how she turned to activism to ensure that others would be able to reap similar
benefits:

I went from village to village and organised meetings. I made the people
understand and I explained the goals of the Sangathan. I talked about the
forest, electricity, the patwari and other issues. I explained that if we unite over
these issues, then our work will get done fast. And so people began to join.

She added: ‘I taught the people to claim the land and the trees—saying that
this belongs to us and we will not give these away … This is our land and
our jungle. We have rights over these. I made them realise this’ (interview,
November 2009).
Activism, however, was never spoken of only in an instrumental register.
Rather, the emphasis on the ability to bring about tangible and useful change
was consistently coupled with an emphasis on idealism. ‘I had a desire from
the start to go in the Sangathan. I wanted to do something for my community.
Some sort of contribution should happen’, Guliyabhai told us when we asked
him why he had chosen to join the Sangathan: ‘This was my wish from the
start. Even now, I leave the work at home and go to the Sangathan. I roam here
and there in connection with the problems of other people. I am there in our
society to do work’ (interview, November 2009). Similar themes of selflessness
and dedication to the common good of the Adivasi community were central in
Govindbhai’s reflections on why he had chosen to become an activist:
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 163

We joined having a conviction that we must protest wrong practices. We

got to learn a lot from the Sangathan, and slowly both our personal and
social problems began to be resolved. Even if I had to give up my life for my
community and even if my family members would scold me, I would still go as
I liked this work. I have to work for my community and even if my life goes in
the process, it doesn’t matter. I have to die—with this decision, we had gone
forward. We would tell everyone that these are our rights and there must be
unity as there is strength in unity. We took out rallies and also began to speak
on an individual level—this I liked. (Interview, March 2010)

When activists spoke in this register, they often referred to their activism
as ‘good work’ (achha kaam) or ‘service’ (seva). As Manuela Ciotti (2012) points
out, the lineage of seva as a political idiom stretches back to late colonial times,
when it referred to charitable work carried out by the upper caste and upper
class patrons of lower caste and lower class communities (see also Watt 2005).
While the notion of seva still evokes selfless sacrifice as a contrast to venal
and self-seeking political activity in public discourse, the appropriation of
the term by subaltern groups is shot through with significant and potentially
transgressive ramifications.
As Ciotti’s (2012: 152–155) analysis makes clear, when women activists of
the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)15 use the term to refer to their activities, they
are effectively repositioning themselves as providers rather than receivers of
social service and social work. In doing so, they also posit the possibility of
subaltern self-emancipation. A similar argument can be made in the case of
Bhil activists, who, when speaking of their participation in activism, would
often emphasise the significance of making the transition to being someone
who would not only speak up against the local state, but also train others in
activist skills: ‘After joining, I did the work of going from village to village and
organising the people. And I would tell them about the problems we have. And
that’s why we need unity among us and that there is strength in the Sangath.

15 The Bahujan Samaj Party is a major political party in the north Indian state of Uttar
Pradesh, which has built a support base primarily among Dalits—and more specifically
among the Chamars—of the state. The party originated in Kanshiram’s All India
Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF)—an
organisation formed in the late 1970s to represent the interests of upwardly mobile
Dalits—and was formally founded in 1984 (see Chandra 2004; Jaffrelot 2003; Pai
2002).
164 Adivasis and the State

If we organise and fight, then only can we address our problems. This I would
talk about wherever I went … ’ (interview, Bhagat, April 2010).
While both male and female activists would speak in terms of seva to
explain their motivation for participating in the KMCS and the AMS, it is
quite clear that the practice of activism was a highly gendered experience.16
Zoyabehen, a Muslim woman from one of the key AMS villages in Khargone
district, began explaining her participation in the Sangathan with reference to
her desire to be involved in achha kaam: ‘When I heard that the organisation
is doing good work I decided to join it. I too had the desire to serve my
community. I wanted to be associated with good people. I wanted to work to
improve the lives of poor people.’ However, participating in activism entailed
crossing the line between the private and the public sphere, and this was held
against Zoyabehen, who was accused by members of her extended family of
having illicit sexual relations with Adivasi men (interview, February 2010).
Munnibai, a Bhil woman from the same village, recounted similar attempts
to shame her into passivity by community members and local state personnel:
‘They spread rumours and raised doubts about my character. They would
say: “She is a woman, but still she goes out; she must be of loose character”’
(interview, February 2010).
The fact that women’s participation in activism set rumour mills to work
in different sites—the family, the community, the local state, and even within
progressive social movements—is of course an example of moral policing that
draws its sustenance from patriarchal codes of honour and dishonour (see Roy
2012: chapter 2; Gorringe 2016). Interestingly, however, several of the women

16 The KMCS in particular sought to promote women’s participation in the movement.

Female middle class activists organised Bhil women around specific issues that
were deemed to be particularly important to them, such as reproductive health.
Jayashree, one of the key middle class activists involved in this work, recounted this
experience as follows: ‘I remember that there were separate meetings for women,
because the meetings for men used to take place at night and women never attended
these meetings. We had separate meetings for women during daytime … And we
identified that health issue is a very potent issue for starting point for organising
women. Because there are many health problems concerning women and children.
So instead of directly giving speeches against the state or anything, I think it was
much more productive to just talk about their health issues and concerns, especially
regarding their children’s health. About diarrhoea, malnourishment, and so on. So
the health issue was handled by us’ (interview, Jayashree, May 2010). See Basu (1990,
1992) for studies of women’s activism in the Shramik Sangathana.
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 165

activists that we spoke to told us that their families and communities had
gradually come to terms with their choice to become full-time activists—in
no small part because of the status and mobility they gained through their
activism: ‘I tell my husband that I am working and roaming all across the world’,
Barlibai said as she narrated to us how she had fended off family pressure to stay
away from the AMS. ‘I get respect from everyone in the village … Whether
at home or outside, I get respect from everyone’ (interview, November 2009).
There is a clear parallel here to how, even though they stand to lose honour
through participation in politics, Dalit women in the BSP consistently report
that they also gain honour and respect through the same route. Ciotti (2012:
158) also notes that this key reward also translates into greater bargaining
power in the domestic sphere.
That such dynamics were at play among some of the female activists of
the KMCS and the AMS is quite evident from activist narratives.17 For
Zoyabehen, for example, activism had become a way to live what she thought
of as a free life: ‘Once I met a doctor in Badwani. He told me that I lead my
life in freedom. I told the doctor: “Doctor Sahib, I was born in a free country
that’s why I want to lead my life in freedom. It is not necessary that you men
make all the decisions for us. Every person, every woman wants to lead their
life as they wish. I want every woman to be free”’ (interview, February 2010).
In this sense, then, movement participation can be said to have functioned as

17 The ‘relative sexual egalitarianism’ (Basu 1992: 118) of Bhil communities may
possibly have played an enabling role here. In contrast to caste Hindu communities,
for example, Bhil women have far greater choice in terms of marriage arrangements,
and divorce is also far easier and less stigmatised. There are also fewer strictures on
pre-marital and extra-marital sexual relations and on women’s mobility. However,
women are excluded from decision-making by the village panch, cannot preside over
religious activities, and are also primarily responsible for housework and childcare.
Bhil women do, however, have some possibilities to exercise more informal influence
on family and village life, as Basu notes, due to the fact that they perform many of
the same economic functions as their husbands and control and manage the family
income (ibid: 118). Nevertheless, as Amita Baviskar (1995: 132) has noted, it is
imperative to recognise the constraining effects of patriarchal power on women
within Bhil communities: ‘… the freedom to resist [male authority] fades swiftly as
women age and bear children and develop ties through their offspring with the village
into which they have married. Resistance that undermines male honour is severely
circumscribed by the system of male domination under which it occurs. Women have
little autonomy to decide their lives; their only freedom lies in running away from
men to other men.’
166 Adivasis and the State

what Kenneth Bo Nielsen (2012) has referred to as ‘covert feminism’—that

is, as a driver of processes that, very often unintentionally, bring about forms
of agency that can enable a greater sense of gender equality (see also Nielsen
2014; Sinha Roy 2009).
Familial conflicts related to the turn to activism were not, however, only
experienced by female movement participants. Rather, they were a theme
throughout activist narratives, and it is clear that a substantial aspect of the
making of the reciprocal emotional bonds that underpinned activism took place
internally in households and between family members. Indeed, the building
of reciprocal emotional bonds between middle class activists and Bhil activists
contrasted, in many cases, with the conflicts that erupted internally in families
as Bhil Adivasis turned to activism (interviews and field notes, 2009–2010).
Most of the activists we spoke to recounted how their families had been
sceptical of their decision to join the KMCS and the AMS. Reasons varied—
from labour left undone in the household to apprehensions about the risks
entailed by activism:

First of all, my father stopped me, saying that you don’t join the Sangathan:
‘You are the eldest son.’ They wanted me to do a job. My uncle also tried to
talk me out of going to the Sangath but I was very determined. One time, they
set fire to my bed in order to dissuade me from going to the Sangath. When
this happened, I left home and went away. (Interview, Bhagat, April 2010)
The family began to oppose me and say that I don’t work. I don’t earn—I
just get up in the morning, bathe, eat, and then leave. ‘Who will raise the
children? This will not do.’ Like this, I faced opposition from home. And then
among the extended family too, the same questions would be raised—that I
didn’t earn anything; that I just slept and ate and roamed around the place.
(Interview, Sunil, February 2010)
My family said that these are people who have come from outside—they will
go back and you will be trapped. This even the people from the village would
say. The police would say the same thing and try to scare me by saying that
they would arrest me. (Interview, Shantilal, November 2009)

Such conf licts spawned difficult negotiations within households and

between family members, which in turn yielded a variety of outcomes.
Some movement participants were able to persuade their families to support
their choice to turn to activism—in no small part because their families saw
that activism could yield useful results (interviews and field notes, 2009–2010).
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 167

Another key and closely related factor in securing family support for activism
was the status that activists gained in the community as collective action began
to yield results:

I tried to reason with my family—that if I earn, only my family will eat. But
when our whole village and community is oppressed, then if I don’t raise a
voice against this, then will someone come from outside and do this? God won’t
come and do this. We are the ones who have to do this. So like this, slowly,
we had discussions in the family and I managed to convince my family that I
must do this work. Then they also began to see that there were good changes
happening in the village. People also began to respect me, saying that I was
doing good work and they supported me. (Interview, Sunil, February 2010)

Others reported more of a modus vivendi being reached: while their families
would not actively support their activism, they tolerated their absence for
substantial periods of time. Valsingh, for example, was initially criticised by
his family for not contributing anything to the household and told us how this
would sometimes cause him to have doubts about being in the AMS: ‘I too
have a family. Why should I take loans and chase the society?’ However, he
decided to remain with the Sangathan and told his children to live as they want
and to let him live as he wishes: ‘Now they do not say anything to me and have
accepted that if I am in house then I am a family member and if I go out then
I am an outsider. Now they do not try to stop me’ (interview, February 2010).
Finally, some activists seemed to have taken a conscious decision to distance
themselves from the family as defined by kinship and to think instead of the
wider community as their family. Suraj, for example, recounted how his family
had opposed his activism, but he rejected their claims that he was letting them
down: ‘I felt that why should we live merely for ourselves? To work for others,
is to live life.’ His statement, of course, echoes the ethic of seva that I discussed
above, and also clearly came to suffuse his way of thinking about the conflicts
that continued to run deep in his family: ‘In 110 villages, I would go and listen
to the people’s suffering and eat food with them. I have got so much respect
from these people … We are a family. My family isn’t small—it’s very big’
(interview, November 2009).

Concluding Remarks
In this chapter, I have begun the task of unravelling how Bhil Adivasis in
western Madhya Pradesh came to resist their subordination in local state–
168 Adivasis and the State

society relations. The durability of everyday tyranny, I argued in Chapter 2,

was ensured by an acquiescent and deferential local rationality grounded in an
emotional habitus of fear and resignation. Having witnessed first hand and
across generations the oppressive ways of forest guards, police, and patwaris,
ordinary Bhils negotiated the power of the state through submission and
compliance. Such were the compulsions of subalternity, and these compulsions
in turn undergirded the reproduction of everyday tyranny.
My analysis in this chapter has suggested that the beginning of Bhil
resistance—its constitution as something that it was possible to imagine and
practise—has to be understood in terms of the making of an oppositional
local rationality that reversed the emotional grammar of everyday tyranny.
This reversal was propelled by the experience of participating in collective
action—that is, by collectively confronting and challenging the corrupt and
coercive practices of local state personnel. As I have shown in the first part of
this chapter, such confrontations constituted catalytic events, which ruptured
the routine practices and received wisdoms of acquiescence and deference.
These experiential counterweights to everyday tyranny spawned a moral
courage that made open resistance to corrupt exactions possible. As subaltern
Bhils lost their fear, they also learned how to talk back to their oppressors and
direct rights-based claims at the local state. This is how the KMCS and the
AMS fostered resistance in communities that had been pushed to the margins
of the body politic by colonial and postcolonial processes of state formation.
The oppositional local rationality that was coming into being in Alirajpur
and Khargone is best understood as being shaped by the intersection of
shared emotions of moral courage in relation to oppressors—state personnel,
bazaariyas, and Bhil elites—and reciprocal emotions of trust, friendship, and
solidarity among activists. As I showed in the second part of the chapter, these
emotions were forged both between middle class activists and Bhil Adivasis
and internally in Bhil communities and families. Middle class activists gained
the trust and friendship of ordinary Bhils by taking a genuine interest in daily
problems, by being able to bring about positive changes and willing to put
themselves in harm’s way while doing so, and by articulating ideas of justice and
dignity that resonated with the subdued resentment that many Bhils harboured
in relation to everyday tyranny. Moreover, trust and friendship was also built
through conviviality and civility that contradicted dominant caste ideologies.
For the Bhils who turned to activism, their choice fused instrumental
motivations—bringing about tangible positive changes—with idealistic
aspirations to serve their community. Their choices often brought them into
 ‘The Fears Have Gone Away’ 169

conflict with village elites, with their own families, and in the case of women
activists with the strictures of patriarchal conventions. Their negotiation of
these conflicts—through persuasion and persistence—played an important
role in nourishing the oppositional local rationality that had been brought
into being by collective defiance against everyday tyranny. In the next chapter,
I interrogate how this local rationality was articulated through insurgent
appropriations of liberal political idioms and forms such as law, civil society,
and citizenship.
170 Adivasis and the State

‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’

Law, Civil Society, and Citizenship in
Subaltern Politics

‘We are the ones who make the sarkar’—KMCS and AMS activists would
commonly resort to this turn of phrase, or a variation of it, to convey their
understanding of the state. The phrase expresses a political imaginary that
had been fostered through many years of collective mobilisation. Centred on
notions of democratic representation and public accountability, this imaginary
goes against the grain of the meanings that Bhils tended to attribute to their
relationship to the state under everyday tyranny. As I showed in Chapter 2,
Bhil subordination to everyday tyranny had been inscribed in idioms that
effectively constituted the state as a despotic and all-powerful authority—the
sarkar was referred to as bhagwan, mai-baap, or simply as ‘big’—and Adivasis as
rightless subjects duty-bound to obey its biddings. The fact that this reversal of
meaning took place testifies to the fact that the KMCS and the AMS brought
about a significant democratisation of local state–society relations in western
Madhya Pradesh. Indeed, when Bhil activists reflected on the mobilisations
against everyday tyranny that they had participated in, they were clear that
they had been very effective in curbing the corruption and the violence that
were the hallmarks of everyday tyranny: ‘Lots of changes have happened. We
are not afraid of the forest-wallahs and the police anymore. We now plough
our fields and we don’t give liquor, chickens, or money to anyone.’ Their
ability to withstand and curb the predation of local state personnel tended
to be attributed to the emergence of an awareness of rights and entitlements:
‘We can’t be cheated by anyone now—we know about our rights’ (interview,
Bhuvan, April 2010).
It is the character of this democratisation of local state–society relations that
is the focus of this chapter. My investigation concentrates on new practices and
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 171

imaginaries, which were generated through the activism of the KMCS and the
AMS and which went a considerable way towards changing the terms upon
which Bhil Adivasis engaged with the local state. In the analysis that follows,
I am fundamentally concerned with developing a nuanced understanding
of how subaltern groups appropriate the legal and political idioms of India’s
postcolonial democracy—particularly in terms of how such appropriations
shape and reshape both the political subjectivities of subalterns and the workings
of India’s democracy on the ground.
I develop my analysis through a critical dialogue with Partha Chatterjee’s
recent work on popular politics in contemporary India. On the one hand,
of course, Bhil subalternity in western Madhya Pradesh seems to confirm
one of Chatterjee’s central propositions—namely that the universal rights of
citizenship conferred on them by the constitution remain a distant fiction for
many subaltern groups in India today. Indeed, under everyday tyranny, Bhil
Adivasis were clearly only formally rights-bearing citizens. For all substantive
intents and purposes, they had been reduced to the status of rightless subjects,
as a result of how colonial and postcolonial processes of state formation played
out across spatial scales to produce a regionally specific structure of caste and
class power. Yet, on the other hand, if we consider how Bhil communities
mobilised to contest their subalternity in relation to the local state during
the 1980s and the 1990s, a picture emerges that diverges in important ways
from Chatterjee’s account of contemporary subaltern politics. My analysis
is structured around a detailed exploration of these divergences along three
axes—law, civil society, and citizenship.
According to Chatterjee, the politics of the poor is not geared towards
securing the public enforcement of a universal legal order or towards gaining
legal recognition, but aims, rather, to win tacit acknowledgement for the
illegalities that are often inherent to subaltern livelihoods and habitation.
Bhil activism in western Madhya Pradesh does not fit this template. On the
contrary, collective action was predicated on an insistence that legality should
prevail in local state–society relations. Thus, in the first part of the chapter, I
show how the early activism of the KMCS and the AMS is best understood
as a form of ‘legalism from below’ (Eckert 2006) that effectively undermined
the everyday tyranny of the local state.
In Chatterjee’s (2010: 186) analysis of postcolonial politics, civil society is
posited as a narrow political domain inhabited by ‘a small section of culturally
equipped citizens’—indeed, this is fundamental to his argument that subaltern
groups operate on the terrain of political society. In contradiction to this view, I
172 Adivasis and the State

detail how—precisely by asserting legality in local state–society relations—the

KMCS and the AMS fostered a form of political literacy that enabled Bhil
Adivasis to engage assertively and competently with the local state as bearers
of rights. And this brought the rudiments of a civil society into substantive
existence in the tribal areas of western Madhya Pradesh.
The third and final axis of my argument is citizenship. For Chatterjee,
citizenship is a liberal idiom of equal and universal rights—civil and political—
that is of little relevance to subaltern groups who stake their claims on the
state as specific population groups. By contrast, I will propose through my
analysis of the politics of forest rights and local self-rule in the later activism
of the KMCS and the AMS that citizenship should be understood, first and
foremost, in terms of the making of subversive claims for the right to have
rights. Drawing in particular on James Holston’s (2008) work on ‘insurgent
citizenship’ in Brazil’s urban peripheries, I show that the making of such
claims can trigger processes through which the idiom of citizenship comes
to be inflected with meanings that exceed the confines of governmental and
liberal forms in fundamental ways.
Crucially, mine is not a normative argument for law, civil society, rights,
or citizenship. Rather, my focus derives from the fact that actually existing
subaltern politics encompasses demands for legality and rights-based claims-
making that carve out spaces in which democratic transactions can take place
between citizens and the state. Consequently, I am interested in excavating the
composite layering of enablement and constraint that derives from this fact, so
that it might be possible to critically map both the extent and the limits to which
these appropriations of the ‘universalising vocabularies’ (Corrigan and Sayer
1985: 7) of the modern Indian state can be said to further emancipatory change
for subaltern groups. It is such a mode of inquiry, I believe, that can ultimately
produce politically enabling knowledge that can be put to oppositional uses.

Law
When the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (KMCS) was first established
in Kakrana village, it was the depredations of constables and officers from a
nearby police outpost that were at the centre of their mobilisational efforts.
Speaking to us on a warm April evening in 2010, Bhavsingh, a leading Kakrana
activist, recalled how Khemla and Rahul—an urban middle class activist who
joined the KMCS in 1985—had called an initial meeting in the village to
discuss local issues and problems:
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 173

They asked us what help we got from the police. We told them that we did
not get any help from the police. Instead we suffer losses because of them as
they ask for chickens and money. They asked us if we didn’t get protection in
case of theft and dacoity. We told them that there were no incidents of theft in
our village, but we used to go to the police station when there were disputes in
the village or when at the time of marriages we needed their help. They asked
why we needed the police to help out with marriages. We told them that if
anybody started a fight they arrested the person and took them to the police
station. They would beat up the person and demand money from him. They
asked us why we didn’t reason with people not to fight. Why did we call the
police? We told them that even if we didn’t call them they would come the
next day and ask us who gave us permission for the marriage. They would
beat us all. They told us that this is totally illegal.

Bhavsingh continued: ‘Then they asked us what we thought. We told them

that we thought that we should not pay them. We rear goats and chickens
through our hard labour and earn some money by selling them. They take
this money from us which we do not like to part with.’ In the discussion that
followed, Khemla and Rahul encouraged the villagers to familiarise themselves
with the law and to challenge the corrupt demands of the police. Their proposal
met with scepticism: ‘We told them—“If you are government people then show
us your papers. You will go away but we have to live here. We do not want to
invite any trouble.”’ The two activists told the villagers how they were trying
to build an organisation in the region, and asked them to come for a meeting
in the village of Attha for further discussions about laws and what could be
done to counter the exactions of the police: ‘We agreed to their proposal.’
Villagers from Kakrana went to a couple of meetings in Attha, and KMCS
activists held meetings in Bhavsingh’s hamlet in Kakrana: ‘We used to hold
meetings in our faliya in the night. But we had to do so stealthily because we
feared the police … we had to do things at night without being seen by them.’
Khemla and Rahul persisted in arguing that it was necessary to challenge the
local police by going to higher authorities, and events in Kakrana soon provided
them with an opportunity to do just this:

Once a small dispute arose. We were trying to resolve it locally, but someone
informed the police that we had settled the dispute in the village. The
police came and arrested four or five people and took them to the thana. We
approached an elder person from the neighbouring village of Jhandana to
negotiate with the police. He settled the matter: in return for a promise of a
payment of 4,000 rupees, the people they had arrested were released.
174 Adivasis and the State

When Khemla and Rahul arrived in Kakrana, they were informed about
the episode and that the police had demanded 4,000 rupees for the release
of the arrested villagers:1 ‘We told them that we had promised to pay them
during the bazaar in Umrali and we were planning to sell our goats and ghee
to arrange the money.’ The activists called a meeting at their office in Attha
to discuss the situation: ‘They asked us to approach the head of police. If we
told him the whole story he would save us from paying 4,000 rupees. We asked
them whether he wouldn’t get angry with us. They assured us. In the morning
we took a bus to Alirajpur and reached the police headquarters.’
When the group reached Alirajpur, Khemla and Rahul first approached
the senior police officer in charge and explained that there had been a dispute
in Kakrana that the villagers had resolved among themselves, but that local
police had intervened with arrests and demands for money:

The police head summoned us inside his office and asked who among us were
arrested. I used to run a shop so I knew how to talk to officers. Therefore I
spoke to him: ‘Sir, there was a quarrel in the village which we settled among
ourselves without informing the police. For this the thanedar arrested five
of us.’ The officer asked us what happened next. I told him that when we
promised him to pay money we were released. He asked: ‘Do you know the
name of the thanedar?’ We replied that we don’t know. He asked: ‘Can you
recognise him if I call him here?’ I told him: ‘Yes, I can recognise him. He
comes daily to our place.’

The group was asked to wait outside while the officer summoned the
Sondwa thanedar. Bhavsingh remembers reacting with trepidation as the
thanedar arrived in Alirajpur: ‘We were trying to avoid him because we feared
that he would recognise us and know that we had made a complaint against
him.’ Their fear was well founded, of course, given the routinised violence that
police meted out in response to the slightest challenge. However, the meeting
that ensued would set off a chain of events that militated against the familiar
scripts of everyday tyranny:

The peon came to summon us to the office. The officer asked us whether he
was our thanedar: ‘Did he lock you up in the police station?’ I told him: ‘Yes,
he arrested us.’ The officer asked what he was demanding from us. I replied

1 See Banerjee (2008: chapter 21) for an account of this incident from his and Khemla’s
perspective.
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 175

that he was asking for 4,000 rupees. Then the officer asked the thanedar why
he was asking for money from us. The thanedar replied that he had never
seen us and did not recognise us. He claimed that he had never asked for
4,000 rupees. He was telling lies. I told him that he had demanded 4,000
rupees from us.

Eventually, the officer in charge took depositions from all five persons who
had been arrested, and advised them not to pay any money to the local police.
He ordered an inquiry into the incident, and told the group from Kakrana to
alert him if they were harassed in the future by the local police: ‘We asked
Khemla and Rahul who this official was. They told us that he was the Deputy
Superintendent of Police for Alirajpur. In this way we came to know who the
DSP was and that he was senior to the thanedar.’
The group returned to Kakrana and anxiously waited for the Saturday when
they were supposed to pay the police the 4,000 rupees that they had demanded.
However, no one turned up from the thana to claim the money:

On Sunday Khemla and Rahul came to our village. They asked us whether
the police came to collect 4,000 rupees from us. We told them that they did
not come. They told us that asking for money is against the law: ‘They are
cheating you by force. If it was legal they would have come and collected it.
And the DSP also told you not to pay them, because it is illegal. The police
have no right to ask for any payment for marriage or Indal. The government
pays them salary and travel allowance.’ We told them that we have to perform
veth [forced labour] for them and carry their luggage. They asked us not to
do anything.

In the weeks that followed, people from Kakrana visited neighbouring

villages to share the story of their successful confrontation with the local police.
They met with an enthusiastic response, and Khemla and Rahul were called
to several villages to hold meetings and discuss the problems that people were
facing at the hands of the police. ‘The police tried to stop us from holding
meetings by threatening us not to do our work’, Bhavsingh recounted. ‘But we
continued with our meetings. We travelled to various villages and in meetings
we explained our experience. We told people not to give anything to the patwari
and the police. We explained our rights in relation to the police and how to
deal with them’ (interview, April 2010).
Bhavsingh’s account of the beginnings of mobilisation in Kakrana resonates
strongly with the account of everyday tyranny that I presented in Chapter
176 Adivasis and the State

2—not least in terms of a local rationality in which fear and resignation

combined with a lack of politico-bureaucratic literacy to produce acquiescence
and deference. When the villagers finally decided to challenge the police,
this happened after a protracted period of negotiation and persuasion, which,
as I noted in Chapter 5, was typical of how the KMCS would approach
mobilisation. In Kakrana, the dialogues between activists and villagers resulted
in collective action which was in many ways similar to the acts of citizenship
that I investigated in Chapter 5—that is, a complaint against relatively low-
ranking state personnel was brought before a more senior official, who was
asked to adjudicate in the matter in accordance with the law. What was it about
this strategy that triggered the difficult process of undoing everyday tyranny
and democratising local state–society relations?
Most immediately, it is evident that the confrontation between the villagers
from Kakrana and the local police entailed a significant amount of collective
learning about the local state. As Bhavsingh pointed out, the villagers who took
the complaint forward came away realising that someone who had previously
appeared as all-powerful in their world was actually embedded in a hierarchical
structure in which he was accountable to a senior official, and that his powers
were circumscribed by legal regulations: ‘We became aware that complaining
to higher authorities can be fruitful. We had achieved victory in this battle’
(interview, April 2010). In other words, confrontations like these were crucial
in generating political and bureaucratic literacy centred on the law, which could
be used to bring oppressive state personnel to heel.
This collective learning flowed directly from the fact that protests were
structured around bureaucratic procedures and legal stipulations. In part, this
was a practical necessity: activists had to file complaints related to specific
incidents of malpractice or violence in order to create a record of grievances
that would make it possible to pursue claims through the local state apparatus
(interview, Rahul Banerjee, March 2010). However, there was also a deliberate,
didactic dimension to this strategy, which ‘insisted on going through all the
steps’ of the local administrative ladder (interview, Amit Bhatnagar, August
2009). The aim of this strategy was precisely to render an opaque state
apparatus familiar by setting in train a process of learning about the structure
and workings of the state, in order to be able to engage with it in an assertive
and competent manner:

You see, that whole thing is there—that you have a legal, codified system
that is extremely complicated and you have to understand how that system is
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 177

working, and then intervene in that. So that everybody understands—people

understand. Or even if they don’t understand, they know that this is what has
to be done. (Interview, Rahul Banerjee, March 2010)

The strategy, Amit explained to me, was intended to bring about a

realisation that state personnel ‘are not … gods’ (interview, August 2009). And
as Bhavsingh’s account testifies, this was also one of the key achievements of
this approach to mobilisation and claims-making.
However, the strategy’s impact cannot simply be understood in terms of
the emergence of an emancipatory ‘legal consciousness’ (Silbey 2005) in the
communities mobilised by the Sangath or in terms of the law being somehow
inherently transformative in and of itself. Although legal stipulations and
procedures were of great importance to these early mobilisations, the KMCS
never adopted a strictly judicial form of activism that sought to achieve its
political goals via the court system. Rather, the law provided the KMCS with
a highly effective language of contention which was consistently coupled to the
‘disruptive power’ (Piven and Cloward 1977) of subaltern collective action. The
exercise of this power could take many forms—for example, confrontations
such as that which occurred at the police headquarters in Alirajpur, meetings
such as those organised by the Sangath after the Sondwa police had been
warded off, or other forms of protest such as dharnas and gheraos—and what
was disrupted was of course the smooth running of everyday tyranny as a
state–society relation. By linking law and disruption in this way, Bhil Adivasis
proved themselves capable of responding to corrupt exactions with assertive
claims that effectively redrew the boundaries between themselves and the
local state, by demonstrating that they would no longer kow-tow to corruption
and violence and that they expected legality to prevail in local state–society
relations.
The link between ‘recourse to law’s language and institutions’ (Huneeus,
Couso, and Sieder 2010: 8) and disruptive collective action becomes even more
clear if we consider the early mobilisation of the AMS, which was characterised
by a similar insistence that legality should prevail in local state–society relations.
As I showed in Chapter 2, the patwaris would leverage the power they wielded
in connection with the registration of land ownership to extract bribes, and
this practice became a key target of the AMS’s initial activism. For instance,
when Tulsibhai, an activist from Khargone district, learned that one of his
fellow villagers had to pay 12,000 rupees to a patwari in order for a plot of land
that he had bought for 10,000 rupees to be registered in his name, he called
178 Adivasis and the State

the patwari to the Niwali Ashram for a meeting: ‘I asked him: “Why did you
demand 12,000 rupees from this poor man? According to the rules, 95 rupees
is charged per 1000 rupees that has been paid for the land.” The patwari asked
me for two hours time. He kept 950 rupees for himself and returned the rest
of the money he had taken.’ A key reason why activists were successful when
they engaged in such confrontations is most likely that state personnel were
familiar with the capacity of the Sangathan to mobilise collectively around
their demands for legality.
As Tulsibhai explained, the AMS would often combine legal claims and
collective mobilisation in a phased manner:

First we would ask them ‘Why is this work being done like this?’ Then slowly
we would start protesting. If it is written anywhere that it is the law to take
money and chickens from us, then tell us. In this way, we would warn them,
not protest against them … If the police does something bad to us, we wouldn’t
protest against the police. But we would ask them: what are your rules and
regulations? Then we would surround the thana … (Interview, February 2010)

In one instance, the AMS had submitted 250 forms to the tehsildar in order
for land to be registered in a proper way. Four or five forms went missing
and the process halted. A group of activists decided to confront the tehsildar
about the missing forms, but upon reaching his office they found that he had
gone for a field visit. When the groups finally got hold of him, he told them
that they would have to return to the tehsil office to look into the matter. He
informed the activists that he would be going back in his vehicle, while they
would have to walk. At this point a confrontation erupted: ‘We told him:
“You are our servant! Masters going on foot while servants go by car? This is
not done—everybody will go back in the vehicle.”’ The tehsildar arranged for
transport back to the office. A group of women who were the first to reach it sat
down at the door and blocked the entrance: ‘Then we asked him why our work
wasn’t being done, and where the forms were … We told them: “We handed
the forms to you. How have they disappeared? Did they walk away? Did they
fly?” … We put pressure on him.’ Eventually, the land registration was carried
out according to the letter of the law (interview, Munnibai, February 2010).
Here, an initial legal claim pursued according to bureaucratic procedure came
to be linked to a clash in which the working of the local administration was
disrupted by collective activist intervention. The demand was still essentially
for legality, but vernacular idioms of servitude, sarcasm, and the reversal of
established markers of hierarchical difference—above all, the demand that
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 179

everyone would travel by car to the tehsil office—had taken the place of legal
discourse as a way to hold the tehsildar accountable to the law.
Significantly, this form of protest goes against the grain of what Chatterjee
has argued is the hallmark of subaltern politics in India today. What emerges
from his account is first and foremost an argument that legality is relatively
insignificant in mobilisations that take place on the terrain he refers to as
political society. As the livelihoods and forms of habitation of the poor often
violate existing laws, it follows, Chatterjee argues, that subaltern claims-making
is not so much oriented towards the enforcement of law or demands for legal
recognition as it is geared towards gaining ‘tacit acknowledgement of various
illegal practices’ (Chatterjee 2008: 58) by compelling state agencies to declare
‘an exception from the norm laid down by the law’ (Chatterjee 2011: 16).
This was visibly not what the KMCS and the AMS did as they resorted to
the law to challenge the most outrageous manifestations of everyday tyranny.
Quite the contrary: through their activism, the KMCS and the AMS sought to
hold the state and its personnel accountable to the law and—in particular—to
ensure that state practices towards citizens were aligned with legal regulations.
In pointing this out, I am of course not suggesting that the negotiations of
illegality that Chatterjee describes in his account of political society do not
feature among the practices through which subaltern groups in contemporary
India construct their relationship to the state—they clearly do. However, it
does not follow from this that the law is only a pillar of private property and
a channel through which the elites that inhabit civil society relate to the
state, as Chatterjee seems to suggest. It is necessary to think in more complex
ways about the role of the law in relation to such negotiations than what his
proposed model allows for—especially in a context where, as Nandini Sundar
(2011) has pointed out, law and legality are becoming increasingly central to
the strategic repertoires of subaltern politics (see also Das 2011; Strümpell
2012; Ruparelia 2013).
The fact that mobilisations such as these revolved around challenging
specific illegal acts, rather than, for example, mobilising for changes in unjust
legislation, and that the response that was sought tended to come in the form of
a public reprimand, a transfer, or a dismissal of low-ranking state personnel in
all likelihood made it relatively easy to win these initial confrontations. In this
regard, the early claims-making of the KMCS and the AMS is arguably best
thought of in terms of what Julia Eckert (2006), in her research on the politics
of the urban poor in Mumbai, refers to as ‘legalism from below’—that is, the
use of ‘legal terms against the transgressions of law by state agents and other
180 Adivasis and the State

bodies of governmental authority’ (ibid: 45). As Eckert notes, it is particularly

when ‘structures of domination are upheld by extralegal rules and procedures’
(ibid: 46) that subaltern groups can turn to the law to oppose ‘illegal or extra-
legal ways of governing’ (ibid: 53) by the state and its personnel with good
effect.2 This, of course, was the very kernel of everyday tyranny: in the Bhil
heartland, the state governed through a persistent ‘misrule of law’ (Holston
2008) that enabled its personnel to prey on meagre Adivasi livelihoods. In this
context, then, the insistence that legality should prevail in local state–society
relations was fundamentally subversive of the power relations that sustained
everyday tyranny.
It is important to stress that this is not a manifestation of the liberal virtues
of law as a great equaliser. Quite the opposite: on a Gramscian reading, the
law is integral to the construction of hegemony, and it is precisely this that
makes it possible for subaltern groups to appropriate the law for oppositional
purposes. 3 ‘The essential precondition for the effectiveness of law, in its
function as ideology’, E. P. Thompson (1975: 263) wrote in his magisterial
study of the class politics of law in eighteenth century England, ‘is that it
shall display an independence from gross manipulation and shall seem to be
just.’ And the law cannot be seen to be just, he argues, ‘without upholding
its own logic and criteria of equity; indeed, on occasion, by actually being
just’. It was this hegemonic compulsion that gave the KMCS and the AMS
leverage when they anchored their grievances in legal stipulations and routed
their claims via the bureaucratic hierarchy of the local state: it would quite
simply not be tenable for officials—be it a Deputy Superintendent of Police,

2 Interestingly, Eckert (2006: 53) notes that slum dwellers in Mumbai resort to state law
to stake their claims against the state despite the illegality of their own livelihoods
and habitation. Needless to say, this raises questions about Chatterjee’s argument
that negotiations over exceptions from legal codes flow from the illegality of life
among the urban poor more generally. A similar argument can be made in relation
to the Bhil communities that were mobilised by the KMCS and the AMS: often,
their grievances were related to corrupt claims made by forest guards on the pretext
that their use of forest resources was illegal, yet their protests were crafted through
claims that ultimately sought to legalise the illegal. I return to these questions in my
discussion of the KMCS’s mobilisation for forest rights below.
3 Gramsci himself wrote relatively little about law and the relationship between law
and hegemony, but the work of legal scholars such as Cutler (2005), Hunt (1990), and
Litowitz (2000) elaborate compelling Gramscian perspectives on the legal dimensions
of hegemony.
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 181

a District Collector, or a Sub-Divisional Magistrate—to be seen by the public

eye to condone violations of a legal code that they are supposed to uphold and
enforce, and which ultimately underpins the legitimacy of the state that they
serve and represent. It is in this respect that ‘[t]he forms and rhetoric of law
acquire a distinct identity which may, on occasion, inhibit power and afford
some protection to the powerless’ (ibid: 266).
I want to emphasise that I am not making a normative or strategic case
that social movements should centre their campaigns on the law. As is well
known, judicial activism comes with a distinct set of risks and constraints:
above all, the specific form and procedural dynamics of the legal arena may
ultimately depoliticise oppositional claims and undermine the collective
process of mobilisation (see Rajagopal 2005; Randeria 2003, 2007; Nielsen
2015). Moreover, winning legal reforms is not in and of itself a guarantee of
emancipatory advances. For instance, during the 1970s and the 1980s, the
Indian women’s movement was intensely focussed on securing the passage of
progressive laws to promote gender justice, but critical assessments of these
efforts overwhelmingly concludes that the legislation that ensued has been
largely ineffectual and in many cases directly disempowering (see Sunder
Rajan 2003; Menon 2004; Desai 2016).
It bears reiterating here that legalism from below, as it was practised by the
KMCS and the AMS, seems to have steered clear of these risks in large part
because it was never a strictly a judicial strategy. Rather, for both movements,
the law provided activists with language of contention that could be leveraged,
in relation to the hegemonic political idioms of the state, through collective
action. What this dynamic suggests is that the importance of the law for
subaltern politics resides not so much in its instrumental capacity to regulate
social relations, but rather in what Veena Das (2011: 320) has referred to as its
‘constitutive power’—that is, the capacity of the law to shape social relations as
a consequence of the ways in which subalterns become legal subjects (see also
Sundar Rajan 2003: 32–33; McCann 1994; Samson 2016). One of the most
crucial aspects of subaltern appropriations of the law in this regard is the fact
that, regardless of results, it can foster an ability to articulate ‘visions of rights
and entitlements that run counter to everyday forms of domination’ (Eckert
2006: 69–70). In the case of the KMCS and the AMS, it was in this sense in
particular that legalism from below was significant: it drove the emergence of
new imaginaries and new practices, grounded in politico-bureaucratic literacy,
that enabled Bhil Adivasis to mobilise collectively to challenge their adverse
incorporation into local state–society relations.
182 Adivasis and the State

Civil Society
In Alirajpur and Badwani, the moral courage to resist generated through
confrontations with state authorities fused in a crucial synergy with the
politico-bureaucratic literacy that Adivasis developed through their collective
engagements with the law: ‘From the time I began to understand the law,
my fears disappeared’, Guliyabhai, an AMS activist, explained to us. ‘I got
to know a lot of rules and now I can talk … In many ways, pressure could
be put and a case could be lodged. So by being in the Sangathan, I was able
to learn many rules, and now I don’t feel so afraid’ (interview, November
2009). What was being forged through this synergy was an oppositional local
rationality around which claims for the right to have rights could be staked. In
this way, the ‘lawfare’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2007) of the KMCS and the
AMS began to bring about important reconfigurations of the practices and
imaginaries through which Bhil relations with the state were constituted and
reproduced. Activist narratives of these reconfigurations generally emphasised
how Bhil communities had gained leverage in relation to the local state as a
result of becoming politically and bureaucratically literate by participating in
mobilisation:

By going along with the Sangathan workers, we obtained a great deal of

information. By doing this, we learnt the process of registering complaints
and many other things. By sitting in the meetings of the Sangathan and by
listening to what the big authorities had to say, we learnt a lot about our rights
… Sometimes we would sit in meetings the whole day and the whole night.
We would participate in the rallies and dharnas and stay with them for ten
days at a stretch, and by doing this we obtained a lot of information … We
learnt about the sarkar by attending rallies and dharnas. (Interview, Bhukaliya,
September 2009)

And as a result of growing political and bureaucratic literacy, a state

apparatus that had previously been not just fearsome but also opaque started to
change its character: ‘Now we have information regarding everything—where
the tehsil office is, where the Block Development Office is, where the thana is.
Earlier we had no knowledge of these things, but now we know everything’
(interview, Bhukaliya, April 2010).
Practices of acquiescence and deference consequently started to give way to
assertion—first of all, against the corruption and the violence of the local state.
Activists were clear that it was their new-found ability to pursue grievances
through the medium of the law and the apparatus of the state that had enabled
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 183

them to take a stand against the exactions of forest guards, police constables,
and patwaris. Interestingly, this was often described in terms that reversed the
emotional equations that previously moulded interactions between Adivasis
and the state:

They realised that we have learnt the law now. Even today those people are
scared of us. It has been a long time since we saw a nakedar in our village,
and they have also stopped demanding things from us for free. (Interview,
Buriyabhai, April 2010)
Now they know us—that we know about our rights. So they are a bit afraid
now as we are able to lodge any kind of complaint or report. (Interview,
Kamalsingh, November 2009)

These practices of assertion were also used to curb abuses and high-
handedness by the traders and moneylenders who—as I showed in Chapter
2—ruled the roost in the market towns, as well as by local political netas
who mediated the workings of everyday tyranny. In one case, for example, a
villager who had brought soya beans and groundnuts to sell in the market in
Sendhwa decided to confront a trader who was trying to short-change him.
When the trader responded by slapping him, the AMS was quick to take
action in a manner that fused legality and disruptive protest: more than 10,000
people staged a gherao in front of the trader’s shop, at the same time as activists
submitted a complaint to the local police under the SC/ST (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act. To increase pressure on the local administration, the protesters
blocked the Agra–Bombay Highway, a main transport route from the western
coast to northern India. Eventually the trader was arrested on a non-bailable
offence (interview, Nikunj Bhutia, April 2010). Again, then, the combination
of an appeal to law and disruptive collective action had brought an important
concession from above.
Similarly, a conflict erupted over the construction of a public hall in the
small town of Balwadi, not far from Khargone: the sarpanch wanted to have
the hall constructed close to his home, but the majority of the inhabitants
demanded that it should be constructed in the middle of the town. During a
confrontation, the sarpanch slapped one of the protestors. The AMS learned
of this and brought the offended person to confront the sarpanch, but their
activists were beaten up by local strongmen. In response to this, the AMS
mobilised a dharna of some 2,000 people outside the house of the sarpanch, and
again their protest was met with violence: a large group of hired musclemen
184 Adivasis and the State

attacked the dharna, injured a number of people, and set fire to motorbikes
belonging to the protestors.
Initially, the AMS leadership responded by contacting the Superintendent
of Police in Khargone and requested him to intervene in the matter. After 10
days nothing had happened, so the activists decided to resort to direct action.
Realising that the town depended on Adivasis as agricultural labourers, as
customers in the teashops and convenience stores, and as domestic workers,
they took a collective pledge not to enter and instead encircled the town,
cutting off all the roads and refusing to let anyone enter. Bamniya recalled the
action as follows: ‘For twenty-one days, the business class of Balwadi and the
people who lived there could not leave the town. Nor were people from other
villages going in. For twenty-one days neither the police nor people from any
other government department went there. For twenty-one days we besieged
Balwadi’ (interview, November 2009). Ultimately, the Deputy Superintendent
of Police from Badwani and the Sub-Divisional Magistrate arrived in Balwadi
to negotiate. A large panchayat meeting was held and the conflict was resolved
as the authorities promised to punish those who had assaulted the AMS
activists (interview, Nikunj Bhutia, April 2010).
Activists would also put their claims-making skills to use to obtain small-
scale development interventions from the local state: ‘Earlier on, even the
chaprasi would kick us out, but here also things have changed—the man from
the village goes into the chamber and says the work should be done’ (interview,
Rameshbhai, February 2010). Crucially, such interventions were spoken of as
the rightful entitlements of citizens who contribute to the state through taxes:
‘We want this work to be done on time as these people are our servants. You
are sitting here due to us paying taxes. You are getting your salary—we are the
true masters’ (interview, Tulsibhai, April 2010). The state, activists claimed,
had become far more responsive to their demands than it had been in the past.
Consequently, activism was often connected to the achievement of development:
‘Vikas ho gaya hai—see, now there are dams and roads in the village. So
development has really taken place here’ (interview, Sunil, February 2010).
As practices of deference and acquiescence gave way to assertive resistance
and claims-making, those imaginaries that inscribed Bhil subordination
to everyday tyranny in idioms that portrayed the state as a despotic and
all-powerful authority—and Adivasis, conversely, as rightless subjects—
also started to lose their hold. In their place, what emerged were new sets
of meanings in which state–society relations were construed in terms of
democratic representation and public accountability:
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 185

They would say that the sarkar’s arm is big and long. Later on, we realised
that, in reality, the sarkar’s arm is long because we are the ones who have voted
and made the sarkar. Then we should also know what the law is! Later on we
realise that they are only making fools of us—so how is the sarkar’s arm long?
(Interview, Bhuvan, February 2010)
The sarkar doesn’t know how to plough and grow crops. It’s a bunch of
plunderers. They only know how to read and write. With awareness we came
to realise that we toil and some people survive on our toil. Now we tell them
directly: ‘You are like a parasite! We produce everything except salt and
kerosene, but you cheat us of the fruits of our labour.’ (Interview, Valsingh,
February 2010)

The first of these two excerpts signals that Bhil Adivasis no longer conceive
of the state as an absolute authority that can impose its power arbitrarily on
village communities, but rather as a representative institution that draws its
power from a citizenry that consigns legitimacy upon it through the act of
voting. In the second excerpt, Valsingh reverses the entrenched hierarchies
that ascribe superiority to the state functionary and inferiority to the Adivasi
peasant. The state, consequently, is dethroned from an exalted position of power
and prestige through the claim that its very existence is grounded in Adivasi
labour. This was a running theme in activist narratives of how perceptions of
the state and its personnel had changed and come to revolve around notions
of accountability to the public:

We told the authorities that they are here to serve us and that they get a salary
from the government—so demanding money from us is illegal. (Interview,
Bhavsingh, April 2010)
We are the ones who make the sarkar. Otherwise, where is the sarkar? These
people are all servants. The grains we grow—they buy that grain and eat it.
So where is the sarkar? (Interview, Bhimsingh, September 2009)

The idea that the state derives its legitimacy from citizens and is underpinned
by the labour of peasant cultivators, and that it is therefore also accountable
to the public, was closely related to the positing of Adivasis as bearers of
rights—invariably referred to as haq.4 Activists would typically talk about how
participating in mobilisation had brought about an awareness among ordinary

4 See Madhok (2013) for an instructive discussion of the uses and meanings of the
word haq in subaltern rights-talk.
186 Adivasis and the State

community members of their rights as citizens: ‘ … it was recognised that

Adivasi people also have certain rights, and that there are limits and restrictions
to what the authorities can do’ (interview, Lalsingh, September 2009). In
activist narratives, the idea of being a bearer of rights was normally associated
with protection from the arbitrary use of state power and having the right to
make democratic claims—that is, with basic civil and political rights—and
entitlement to a modicum of welfare from the state. One might call this a
minimal conception of rights, yet it stands in stark contrast to the subjection
that was at the heart of everyday tyranny and it was pivotal in bringing about
the dethroning of the state in Bhil imaginaries: ‘As people became more aware
of their rights, they didn’t think of the state as a god anymore’ (interview,
Sunil, February 2010).
In sum, the KMCS and the AMS articulated and organised defiance and
opposition by aggregating Adivasi grievances into rights-based claims and
demands. And in pursuing these claims and demands the two movements
brought about significant reconfigurations of the practices and meanings that
mediated relations between Bhil communities and the state. Crucially, these
reconfigurations enabled Adivasis to constitute themselves as bearers of rights
in relation to the state as a representative institution that is accountable to the
public. In doing so, they carved out a space in which democratic transactions
could take place.
This, I believe, gives cause for questioning the tenability of Chatterjee’s
(2004: 4, 46) claims that civil society exists in India only as ‘enclaves of civic
freedom and rational law’ for a privileged minority or as ‘a project that is located
in the historical desires of certain elite sections of Indians’. Others before me
have criticised Chatterjee’s distinction between civil and political society on
the grounds that subaltern groups in India mobilise in ways that cannot be
confined to negotiations over the demographic categories of governmentality
(see Sundar and Sundar 2012; Sundar 2010; Menon 2010, Nayak 2012; Sinha
2012, 2015).5 Rather, these mobilisations often appropriate the democratic
idioms and practices of the modern Indian state and turn them into ‘sites of
protracted struggles over what they mean and for whom’ (Corrigan and Sayer
1985: 6)—that is, they operate on the terrain of civil society. In the case of the
KMCS and the AMS, however, there is a further dimension to this dynamic.

5 Chatterjee (2011: 90–93) seems to partly concede this point in a recent rejoinder to
critics. However, he is also at pains to stress that subaltern mobilisation on the terrain
of the law and civil society results in differentiated citizenship rather than in equal
citizenship. I discuss this point at greater length in the final section of this chapter.
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 187

It is not just that these movements operated on the terrain of civil society.
Rather, through their mobilisations against everyday tyranny—mediated by
oppositional appropriations the legal and political idioms of India’s postcolonial
democracy—they actively created a rudimentary civil society in the Adivasi
areas of western Madhya Pradesh.
When Bhil communities mobilised through the KMCS and the AMS,
they insisted—to paraphrase Chatterjee (2004: 34)—on their right to
participate in the sovereignty of the state by laying claim to constitutional
rights and entitlements that they had been de facto deprived of, as a result of
their subordinate position in a regional political economy where Congress
hegemony was founded on the persistence of upper caste power; and in so doing
they democratised local state–society relations. This throws up questions that
problematise Chatterjee’s historiographical approach to the trajectory of civil
society in India. In his account, civil society is a circumscribed space due to its
origins in the political activity of nationalist elites in early twentieth century
India, and—crucially—it has remained ‘a narrow domain’ (Chatterjee 2011:
13) even after Independence. However, the fact that subaltern groups such as
the Bhil Adivasis of western Madhya Pradesh are able to mobilise as they did
through the KMCS and the AMS suggests the opposite—namely that although
it may have originated in elite politics, civil society cannot be thought of in static
terms, as remaining so in the postcolonial context. In short, the boundaries of
civil society are far more porous than what Chatterjee’s perspective allows for,
in no small part as a result of the fact that over the course of the past seven
decades subaltern groups have demanded and—to varying degrees—obtained
substantial entry to and inclusion in its ambit (see, for example, Michelutti
2008; Subramanian 2009; Witsoe 2013; Waghmore 2013).
I want to stress that in arguing this point, I am neither proposing that the
trajectory of the republic since 1947 has been one of unequivocal democratic
deepening—indeed, the limited success in achieving progressive social change
in India would belie any such claim (see Nilsen and Nielsen 2016; Nielsen
and Nilsen 2016)6 —nor am I suggesting that civil society is a sphere of free

6 For example, while I was writing this chapter, fresh reports confirmed India’s dismal
record on food security: despite being self-sufficient in food, India ranks 55 out of
the world’s 120 hungriest countries—that is, it ranks behind poorer South Asian
counterparts such as Nepal and Sri Lanka, and malnutrition levels are twice as high
in India as in sub-Saharan Africa (Lal 2016; Mohan 2016). Indeed, in rural India, 70
years after Independence, people are consuming fewer nutrients today than they did 40
188 Adivasis and the State

civic association in which subaltern movements can pursue oppositional

projects without constraints.7 Rather, as Neera Chandhoke (2001) reminds
us, the state—or rather, that part of the state that Gramsci labelled political
society—provides the legal and political frameworks within which civil society
is constituted. And at the same time that these frameworks enable the very
existence of civil society, they also circumscribe what subaltern groups can and
cannot achieve through mobilisations on this terrain—most crucially, perhaps,
by defining ‘the legal limits of political action’ (ibid: 10). As Gramsci pointed
out so frequently, civil society is a realm in which hegemony is forged, and
this has ramifications for how we understand the impacts of the activism of
the KMCS and the AMS on local state–society relations.8 As much as these
movements democratised state–society relations by bringing a civil society into
substantive being in western Madhya Pradesh, this cannot be construed as
contesting the hegemony of the state as such. Rather, the democratisation of
local state–society relations revolved around transforming the terms upon which
Bhil Adivasis were incorporated into a determinate hegemonic formation.
It is quite conceivable that, by accommodating oppositional demands, state
officials were attempting to contain subaltern claims-making within the
political boundaries of a particular hegemonic formation. And, through its
concessions to the demands of the KMCS and the AMS, the state may very
well have bolstered its legitimacy, by appearing to be dedicated to ensuring
the equal rule of law for all its citizens.
On the ground in western Madhya Pradesh, these constraints were most
acutely evident in the KMCS’s intervention in local electoral politics. The
KMCS made the decision to engage in panchayat politics in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, after the most egregious excesses of the local state had been
curbed. As Amit made clear to me, it was not a strategic turn that came easily
to the movement—rather, it only followed after ‘a big discussion; it was almost

years ago—a fact closely related to increasing landlessness in the Indian countryside
(Mohan 2016). These are just some of the multiple manifestations of the skewed
nature of India’s recent growth trajectory—see Drèze and Sen (2013)—and they
combine with persistent casteism and gender injustice to refute any simple narrative
of democratic deepening in the country.
7 See Cohen and Arato (1994), Kumar (1993), Wood (1990), and Khilnani (2001) for
useful discussions of different understandings of the concept of civil society.
8 See Buttigieg (2005: 41, 43–44) for an instructive discussion of hegemonic dynamics
in civil society.
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 189

like a referendum’ (interview, August 2009). Ravi Hemadri—a middle class

activist who favoured the move towards engagement with panchayat politics—
explained the different positions in the debate as follows:

There was debate in the Sangathan. There was no unanimity that we should
actually do this. One opposing view was that we should actually not get
into physical development. Our work was in social mobilisation, and not the
work which the government should do. So there was no unanimity on that
… So within the Sangathan some of us saw this as an opportunity to train
our KMCS cadres in actually doing development work, and being trained in
that process. The other opposition was that we should not get into actually
managing funds and getting people work, but we decided to experiment with
that. (Interview, September 2009)

The decision to engage in panchayat politics was primarily driven by

enthusiasm among Bhil activists. For many of them, this was an opportunity
to dislodge ruling sarpanches who more often than not were deeply embedded
in the workings of everyday tyranny. In this way, it was thought, they could
ensure that development funds would reach ordinary Adivasis:

We thought about the panchayat a lot, that the whole village should consult
and make projects. Not from above, but from below, and we send them up.
We villagers would make our own decisions … The sarpanches before this
used to do things by themselves, their own decisions … we saw how much
the panchayats are corrupt, they just make huge houses and don’t do our work.
So we thought our sarpanches should be Sangathan sarpanches. So we made a
few sketches of candidates on paper and passed those pamphlets around …
and so like this we won a few seats. (Interview, Ravi Hemadri, April 2010)

Indeed, in several cases, the KMCS won entirely unopposed (interview,

Rahul Banerjee, March 2010).
These aspirations, however, were largely frustrated. The local bureaucracy
would often stonewall proposals for local development initiatives from
sarpanches associated with the KMCS—primarily, as was pointed out to us
on many occasions, because Block Development Officers and other local
bureaucrats would demand a cut of the funds allotted to projects, which the
sarpanches would initially decline. The officials would then refuse to release
the funds for the proposed initiatives. This rendered the KMCS sarpanches
ineffective, which in turn eroded popular support:
190 Adivasis and the State

We used to go and come … to the block level, but they stopped us so much, the
officials, they didn’t let us get any work done at all in five years. So the word
spread that KMCS sarpanches could not get their hands on any government
money for projects. And so people saw this, and they didn’t want to vote for
KMCS candidates anymore. (Interview, Dediya, April 2010)

Ultimately, this prevented the KMCS from generating a collective

momentum around the panchayat initiative and drove the new sarpanches
towards corruption and co-optation. ‘The panchayat system’, Rahul argued,
‘wants its cuts. So you have to give it its cuts—the very thing that you were
fighting against … that came as a big problem, and many sarpanches became
corrupted’ (interview, May 2010). His claim was corroborated by many other
activists—both middle class activists and Bhil activists—in their accounts
of the KMCS intervention in panchayat politics (interviews and field notes,
2009–2010).
This is not to say that mobilising on the terrain of civil society—or, as in the
case of the KMCS and the AMS, mobilising in a way that brings civil society
into substantive being—is a mistaken strategy that only serves to perpetuate
hegemonic formations. As much as civil society is a domain where hegemony is
constructed—indeed, precisely because civil society is a domain where hegemony
is constructed—it is also a space in which subaltern movements must contest
hegemony and the terms upon which it is constituted (Gramsci 1971: 58; see
also Fontana 2008: 96; Davidson 2008: 66; Buttigieg 1995: 7; Thomas 2009a:
143–150, 220–228; Coutinho 2012: 77–86). In the context of everyday tyranny
in which the KMCS and the AMS emerged, the making of a rudimentary
civil society—effectively the reconfiguration of Adivasi incorporation into a
regional hegemonic formation—was a necessary starting point for subaltern
activism, as it nurtured the emergence of an oppositional local rationality in
Bhil communities. Ultimately, the tension between enablement and constraint
that subaltern groups confront as they mobilise on the terrain of civil society
is inherent and unavoidable—it cannot be wished away. Yet the containment
of subaltern resistance within a liberal field of politics is neither a foregone
conclusion nor an already-achieved state of affairs. As Ajantha Subramanian
(2009: 19) has pointed out, claims-making is in itself ‘generative of new
understandings and subjects of rights’. Often grounded in activist encounters
with the limits of existing rights-based claims, these new understandings
and subjects may well exceed the boundaries of what is politically permissible
within a given hegemonic formation. It is these kinds of dynamics that
constitute the focal point of the next section of this chapter, where I explore
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 191

how mobilisations around resource control and self-determination inflected

the idiom of citizenship with new and insurgent meanings.

Citizenship
The concept of citizenship is absolutely central to Chatterjee’s theorisation
of political modernity and popular politics in India. Tracing its provenance
to the French Revolution, he argues: ‘ … it was within the specific form
of the sovereign and homogenous nation-state that the universal ideals of
modern citizenship were expected to be realised’ (Chatterjee 2004: 30). The
emergence of mass democracies in the Western world during the first half
of the twentieth century subsequently gave rise to the distinction between
citizens and populations that is at the heart of Chatterjee’s framework—the
former carrying ethical connotations of participation in the sovereignty of
the state and the latter making sections of a country’s inhabitants available to
government as targets of policy:

In short, the classical idea of popular sovereignty, expressed in the legal-political

facts of equal citizenship, produced the homogenous construct of the nation,
whereas the activities of governmentality required multiple, cross-cutting and
shifting classifications of the populations as the targets of multiple policies,
producing a necessarily heterogeneous construct of the social. (Ibid: 36)

Ultimately, this distinction yields an antinomy between the political

imaginary of popular sovereignty and the administrative reality of
governmentality: ‘Unlike citizenship, which carries the moral connotation of
sharing in the sovereignty of the state and hence of claiming rights in relation
to the state, populations do not bear any inherent moral claim’ (ibid: 136).
Chatterjee’s understanding of citizenship is thus overwhelmingly oriented
towards a specific legal status that is embodied in a determinate bundle of
rights: ‘the legal-political facts of citizenship’ are anchored in the ‘conceptual
device of abstract liberty and equality’ (Chatterjee 2004: 36, 197). This, I
would argue, is a highly static understanding, as citizenship cannot then be
anything other than the liberal rights associated with ‘the insistence on the
homogenous national’ (ibid: 136) that is seen to have animated the emergence
of political modernity in the West.9 In the Indian context, the constitutional

9 This becomes particularly clear in Chatterjee’s critique of T. H. Marshall’s

conceptualisation of the development of citizenship in Europe from civil, to political,
192 Adivasis and the State

principle of ‘equal citizenship for all’ (Chatterjee 2011: 24) has existed in
constant tension with exceptional measures intended to provide professional
and educational reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The
result is a differentiated citizenship that permeates India’s body politic ‘all the
way down to local levels of administration’ (ibid: 92). And this differentiated
citizenship appears, in Chatterjee’s judgement, to be closer to governmentality
than to citizenship, as it departs from ‘the homogenous construct of the nation’
(Chatterjee 2004: 36).10
The problem with this view of citizenship is that it renders us incapable
of acknowledging and unravelling how the political idioms of democratic
modernity are appropriated by subaltern groups and how, as a result of such
appropriations, these idioms are in turn inflected with meanings that exceed
the confines of the liberal mould. This is a serious blind spot, because it
erases from analytical and political view the full spectrum of ways in which
collective action from below impacts on, and inscribes itself in, hegemonic
projects of state-making and the emancipatory possibilities that this holds out
(see Nilsen 2016a).11 These hegemonic projects of course include ‘citizenship

and ultimately to social rights. To argue, as Marshall does, that this amounts to an
expansion of popular sovereignty and citizenship constitutes for Chatterjee ‘a category
confusion’; what happened was ‘an unprecedented proliferation of governmentality
leading to the emergence of an intricately heterogeneous social’ (ibid: 36). This
argument also threatens to erase from view the fact that the emergence of political
modernity was fuelled in important ways by more expansive and radically democratic
views of citizenship—often articulated by popular movements—than those which
eventually came to define liberal democratic orders in the Western world. See, for
example, Hill (1991), Rees (2016), Gurney (2012), and Donoghue (2013).
10 Chatterjee (2011: 24) also notes that ‘differentiated citizenship has, in some form
or other, become normal practice in the empirical sense in most Western countries,
even though it is still described as exceptional in relation to the legal norm’.
11 This is particularly evident in the way that Chatterjee (2011: 91–92) doubts the
efficacy of using courts to extend the recognised domain of rights, and dismisses
the idea that subaltern politics can be something more than an attempt to carve
out ‘an exceptional place within the order of governmentality’ (ibid: 93). Moreover,
Chatterjee’s discussion of negotiation and transformation in popular politics revolves
around a problematic distinction between ‘everyday politics’ and ‘critical events’ that
change the course of history (ibid: 147–150). There is of course nothing wrong in
asserting that the political assertions of subaltern groups are mostly unheroic and
quotidian (see, for example, Scott 1985, 1990). However, what should not be ruled
out is the possibility that a processual link may develop between everyday negotiations
of power and counterhegemonic movement projects (see Cox and Nilsen 2014).
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 193

regimes’ (Yashar 1998), and these regimes develop and change as they become
enmeshed in contestations which ‘stand in relation and often in opposition
to the singularity represented by the dominant framework of the citizenship
regime’ (Jayal 2013: 20). Consequently, if we are to engage critically with the
capacity of subaltern politics to generate such changes, it is necessary—as
Subramanian (2009: 19–23) argues in her compelling engagement with
Chatterjee’s work—to think of citizenship in processual terms. In order to do
this, we will have to reorient our analytical focus to take into account how
claims are transformed into rights through mobilisation from below, in ways
that bring about ‘a reconstitution of both governmental categories and legal
frameworks, and by extension, the meaning of citizenship’ (ibid: 23). Such a
reorientation, I suggest, will have to be grounded first of all in a rethinking
of what citizenship actually is.
As a starting point for an alternative to Chatterjee’s restrictive understanding
of citizenship as a legal and political status, I propose the trenchant restatement
by Margaret Somers (2008) of the Arendtian dictum that citizenship—
ultimately and fundamentally—is ‘the right to have rights’ (see Arendt 1951).
As Somers (2008: 6) points out, this conception of citizenship is ‘thinner’
than many mainstream definitions, due to the fact that it does not require ‘a
foundation of any particular civil-juridical rights’—for example, the universal
civil–juridical rights of the individual that loom so large in Chatterjee’s
argument. What this understanding of citizenship does need—and this renders
it simultaneously ‘thicker’ than extant definitions—is the right to inclusion
and membership in a political community, for it is this that makes possible
the mutual acknowledgement of equal moral worth and thus also of social
and political recognition.
It was precisely this—an oppositional claim for the right to have rights—
that was at the heart of mobilisation in the Bhil heartland: in a context where
state–society relations were defined by subjecthood, the KMCS and the AMS
demanded, most fundamentally, the substantive recognition of Adivasis as
having rights in relation to the state as a political community. If we detach
citizenship from specific civil–juridical rights embodied in a formal legal
and political status, we need to locate the origins of the right to have rights
elsewhere, and this returns us to the centrality of acts of citizenship that I
discussed in Chapter 5. Adivasis in western Madhya Pradesh gained recognition
through claims-making from below, which reconfigured entrenched relations
of power in a specific locale rather than through confirmation from above of a
formal legal status. And however much the KMCS and the AMS appropriated
194 Adivasis and the State

constitutional rights and legal provisions in their claims-making, it was not

the existence of those rights and provisions in and of themselves that brought
about de facto citizenship in the Bhil heartland. Rather, it was the collective act
of mobilising to challenge everyday tyranny that enabled Adivasis to constitute
themselves as citizens.
Once we have located the origins of the right to have rights in the praxis
of subaltern claims-making, we are in a position to understand citizenship
in processual terms—that is, as ‘a dynamic cultural formation that encodes
understandings of justice and accountability’ (Subramanian 2009: 19). Recent
studies of subaltern politics in Latin America have arguably generated some
of the most promising approaches to understanding citizenship in these
terms.12 For example, Alejandro Velasco’s (2015) recent study of urban popular
politics in the making of modern Venezuela calls attention to how citizenship
is exercised through a complex interplay of formal democratic practices and
collective protest (see also Ciccariello-Maher 2013 and Fernandes 2010).
Similarly, Sian Lazar’s (2008) ethnography of indigenous political subjectivities
and solidarities in urban Bolivia reveals a complex form of citizenship that is
woven from and mediated through multiple collectivities, in ways that defy
liberal Western conceptions of the citizen centred on individual legal status
(see also Postero 2005 and Aguilar 2014).
Most relevant to the analytical concerns that animate this chapter, however,
is James Holston’s (2008) magisterial study of the emergence of what he refers to
as ‘insurgent citizenship’ among the working classes that inhabit Brazil’s urban
periphery. Illegality—and specifically residential illegality—is a hallmark of
subaltern existence on the urban periphery. However, the politics of the urban
poor that emerges from Holston’s analysis is not centred on negotiating tacit
acceptance of such illegality. Rather, mobilisation gravitates around claims for
legalising and developing housing, which in turn has generated ‘a new sense
of citizenship’ (ibid: 23) that is manifest in novel conceptions of rights, novel
ways of using the law, and novel ways of participating in the public sphere. This
sense of citizenship is rooted in ‘the working class experience of suffering the
city and building the city’ and draws its insurgent character from the fact that
it politicises the social needs of the urban poor in terms of rights-based claims
that entail ‘the invention of a new society rather than merely a perpetuation
of the old’ (ibid: 235). Crucially, insurgent citizenship remains conjoined

12 See Sabato (2001) for an instructive overview of the historical origins of political
citizenship in Latin America.
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 195

with ‘dominant historical formulations’ (ibid: 33) of citizenship. However,

this relation between the dominant and the insurgent is ‘an unbalanced and
corrosive entanglement that unsettles both state and society’ (ibid: 13).13
In the context of the Bhil heartland, this dynamic becomes evident if we
consider the significance of mobilisation for forest rights and local self-rule
by the KMCS and the AMS respectively. By the second half of the 1980s, as
a result of the activism discussed above, forest guards had more or less ceased
demanding bribes and chanda14 in villages organised by the KMCS. The
mobilisation then entered a new phase, as the Sangath began to concentrate
its activism on claims for the recognition of customary use rights as the basis
for a new regime of resource control in the forest. This shift was centred on
contesting the criminalisation of nevad cultivation (interviews and field notes,
2009–2010). The KMCS challenged the legitimacy of state ownership with
reference to the historical lineage of Adivasi uses of the forest as habitat and
for livelihood: ‘From the very beginning, this whole issue of encroachment …
They were saying … whose forest is it? So then, obviously, people have been
staying here before the government. So then why shouldn’t it be the people’s
and why should it be the government’s?’ (interview, Amit Bhatnagar, August
2009). On this logic, the contemporary fact of usufruct—that is, the very fact
that Adivasis relied on the forest for habitat and livelihood—trumped the legal
prerogatives of the state. The Sangath also questioned the state’s stewardship
of forest resources. Kamalsingh, a Bhil activist from Attha, explained this in
terms of laying bare the contradiction between state claims about conservation
and the reality of corruption and smuggling that was very real and very visible
to tribal communities in Alirajpur:

… we said that all this won’t go on … So we decided that we would show

how much greed and lies the forest-wallahs get up to. We thought that you
take money from the sarkar for plantation and then you eat up that money
and don’t do any plantation … You are the ones who cut all the trees in the

13 Holston’s approach has been usefully discussed and elaborated by Earle (2012). See
Von Holdt et al. (2011) and Runciman (2012) for two compelling studies of insurgent
citizenship is post-apartheid South Africa.
14 This is corroborated in Amita Baviskar’s (1995: 187) study of Adivasi mobilisation
in the Narmada Valley, where she notes the following about the village where she
conducted her ethnography: ‘In Anjanvara, the best evidence of the presence of the
Sangath is the absence of the state. During my stay, no government official came to
the village to harass the people.’
196 Adivasis and the State

forest, fell the wood and pile it into your cars and take them away—you have
sold away the forest. Then we decided that we won’t allow this to continue
anymore. (Interview, September 2009)

The KMCS therefore demanded that the state should give legal recognition
to nevad land. This claim was pursued through negotiations with the state
Forest Department, militant confrontations with Forest Department personnel
in the villages, and attempts to foster an ethic of conservation in Sangath
villages (interviews and field notes, 2009–2010). In these practices, it is possible
to discern the contours of an insurgent citizenship centred on a prefigurative
politics of rights.
Negotiations over legal recognition of nevad land started as early as the
mid-1980s, when the KMCS contested a survey the Forest Department had
carried out in the Mathvad area of Alirajpur in order to map households who
were eligible for regularisation of encroached land. The survey, the Sangath
claimed, grossly underestimated the number of eligible families, and through
a dialogue with the Forest Secretary it was decided that a new survey would be
carried out. This was the start of a protracted process that stretched throughout
the late 1980s, and received a substantial boost in the early 1990s as a result
of the fact that the BJP government announced that it would give legal rights
to land that had been encroached prior to 1980 (interviews and field notes,
2009–2010).15 Amita Baviskar’s (1994) vivid description of the scenario in the
spring of 1994, when the registration of land claims was drawing to a close,
brings out some of the enthusiasm that this generated among local Bhils. The
‘prospect of regularisation’, she writes, had propelled ‘adivasis in droves to the
tehsil headquarters at Alirajpur where almost everyone capable of filling up
a form is being besieged with requests to oblige’, and at sub-tehsil level the
administration ‘ran out of receipt books and had to extend its working to the
next day, a Sunday’ (ibid: 2493).
Throughout this process, the Sangath concentrated its efforts and energies
on obtaining documentation of possession of encroached land, compiling lists
of households that were eligible for regularisation, and submitting these to

15 The promise to regularise encroached land was made during the campaign for the
1989 state election in Madhya Pradesh, which saw the BJP capture an overwhelming
majority of Vidhan Sabha seats and brought Sunder Lal Patwa to power as the Chief
Minister of the state. As several KMCS activists pointed out, the promise to regularise
encroached lands ensured massive support for the BJP in tribal areas throughout
Madhya Pradesh.
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 197

the relevant authorities. As Ravi pointed out to me, it was a process in which
the KMCS had to ‘communicate with the state in the language that they
understood … So we did a lot of babugiri [paperwork] and presented that to the
Forest Department and the government in Bhopal’ (interview, March 2010).
However, very little ultimately came of these negotiations in terms of formal
legal recognition of nevad lands. In part, this was due to the strict conditions
that the state authorities imposed for granting recognition of encroachments.
As Baviskar (1994) has pointed out, the only officially accepted proof of
possession of nevad fields were the receipts that villagers were supposed to
receive when they paid fines for cultivating forest land. However, the vast
majority of people were never provided with such receipts, as the fines they
paid simply lined ‘the pockets of forest guards, nakedars, and deputy rangers’
and in those ‘exceptional cases’ where receipts had been given, ‘they were
small bits of paper that were easily lost or destroyed’ (ibid: 2493). The key
reason for the process reaching an impasse, however, was the absence of
national legislation that could clear the way for formal recognition of Adivasi
ownership of encroached forest land. As Rahul pointed out to me, the Forest
Conservation Act of 1980 prohibited the conversion of forest land for the
purposes of cultivation without specific permission from the Ministry of
Environment and Forests, and this remained firmly out of reach: ‘Basically,
they said that “we can’t give it to you”’ (interview, March 2010).
This, however, should not be read in simple terms as a strategic failure on
the part of the Sangath or, at a conceptual level, as confirmation of Chatterjee’s
contention that subaltern claims-making is restricted to negotiated exceptions
from prevailing legalities. Quite the reverse, the mobilisation can be understood
as an incipient struggle ‘over whose definition of property and whose definition
of law will prevail’ (Sundar and Sundar 2011: 271). Amit made this very clear
to me as he explained the rationale behind the campaign for legal recognition
of customary use rights: ‘So, in a way, you exercise your right without getting it
legally. This was our entire issue—that if you want your rights, then you need
to start exercising them in the way that you want’ (interview, August 2009).
In other words, the KMCS articulated a prefigurative politics that
challenged the very basis of existing forest laws—in particular the way in
which those laws posit the state as the owner and steward of the forest—and
reflected, through the practices that it claimed legitimacy for, an alternative
order of rights that would bring about proprietary restitution for Adivasis.
This alternative order would, most fundamentally, entail a restructuring of
sovereignty grounded in what Noel Castree (2004: 136) has called ‘differential
198 Adivasis and the State

geographies’—that is, the right of indigenous groups to command and to

make the places that are integral to their livelihood, their habitation, and
their identity. In this particular case, the place in question was the forest, and
the prefigurative claim for a differential geography was justified in terms of
a long history of place-making: it is Adivasis, the Sangath argued, who have
made the forest—both materially and symbolically—as a place to live and to
labour in over time, and therefore they also have a legitimate claim to be the
owners and the stewards of its resources in the present.16
The claim that the Bhils were the rightful owners and stewards of the
forest clearly infused the oppositional local rationality that animated the
everyday activism of the KMCS. This is most plainly evident in how the
claim for customary use was mobilised in a number of confrontations with
Forest Department staff in villages organised through the KMCS. These
confrontations would typically erupt during the monsoon months, when nevad
cultivation got underway: ‘Things got really hairy every monsoon’, Dediya told
us, ‘when people would get eviction notices throwing them off their land. So
we started refusing these eviction notices, or sticking them on walls instead
of opening them, and so on’ (interview, April 2010). In addition to eviction
notices, the Forest Department would often start plantation work during the
monsoon. In connection with this, cattle-proof trenches (CPTs) would be dug
to enclose tracts of land, which prevented people and livestock from accessing
forest resources, and therefore often became highly contentious. For example,
in the village of Kiti, a dispute over a CPT resulted in numerous arrests of
activists and a clash in which police opened fire to disperse the protesting
villagers. Ultimately, the Kiti plantation project was cancelled and funds were
allocated for participatory development initiatives instead (see Baviskar 1995:
184–187).17

16 The centrality of Adivasi efforts to make the forest as a place to live and labour in
the Sangath’s struggle for forest rights echoes, in important ways, the centrality of
auto-construction in insurgent claims for citizenship among the urban working class
in Sao Paulo. As Holston (2008) points out, the working classes constructed the
urban periphery of Sao Paulo during an intense period of migration from the 1940s
to the 1980s. Consequently, their claims to citizenship—claims that pivoted on the
legalisation of illegal land tenure and the positing of their social needs as rights—were
grounded precisely in this—their making of a place to live and labour through ‘the
appropriation of the very soil of the city itself ’ (ibid: 204).
17 Prior to the clash at Kiti, a delegation of villagers had approached the Divisional
Forest Officer (DFO) to discuss their concerns with him. In response, the DFO
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 199

Consider the case of Dasribai, a female KMCS activist from the village
of Kundar. As mankars—cowherds—Dasribai and her husband, Lailiya,
were particularly marginal and extremely dependent on nevad cultivation to
sustain a livelihood. When workers from the Forest Department were spotted
digging holes around her forest land, KMCS activists were called to Kundar
to advise on what to do. They suggested to Dasribai that she should collect
the women from her hamlet and confront the Forest Department staff and
the workers—some of whom were from the neighbouring village of Attha
(interview, Amit Bhatnagar, April 2010). Dasribai related her experience of
the confrontation to us as follows:

First, they dug holes on our land and put bamboo or rope fences around them.
It was us women who put a stop to this digging. They had come to our khet
also to dig holes. Then I went and took some women along with me—all of
us had hidden stones in our skirts. I said to them: ‘Have you all come to dig
holes in your father’s khet? Is this your land or sarkari land? What kind of
grains do you eat—those that are planted on this earth or those planted in
the air? Why do you beat us? Do whatever you like.’ In this way, I continued
to abuse him and also filled up the holes that they had dug. I told him: ‘Hit
us! You eat rotis because you get money from the sarkar. But we Adivasis, we
eat the leaves of plants and at times, we don’t even get salt with that. But you
all get chai-pani [tea–water, that is, pay] and roti from the sarkar.’

The forest guards and the workers fled the scene, but in the evening a
Deputy Ranger and a nakedar returned to Kundar to talk to Dasribai. Another
confrontation ensued when the Deputy Ranger asked where Dasribai had
‘learnt’ to be so aggressive. According to Dasribai, she responded fiercely:
‘Nobody taught me. I also eat salt and eat grains. Do you eat mud? We eat that
which is grown on the earth—where do you eat from? You also go and ask from

filed pre-emptive cases against some 40 villagers from Kiti, Keldi, and Vakner. The
KMCS then physically prevented the Forest Department from beginning work on
the CPTs, resulting in a police crackdown on Sangath activists in several villages and
multiple arrests. The Kiti shooting happened during the four days that the activists
were imprisoned (Baviskar 1995: 184–186). As Baviskar notes, in the aftermath of
the clash there were a number of discussions between the KMCS and the district
administration to resolve the conflict, and at one point a considerable amount of funds
was allocated for development interventions in Sondwa block (ibid: 187). However,
as several activists confirmed to me in interviews, the Sangath roundly rejected this
initiative.
200 Adivasis and the State

people for milk, ghee, atta, and corn … We will not leave our lands even if we
are cut up into small pieces and thrown away’ (interview, November 2009).
Significantly, the moral language that Dasribai mobilised to justify her
opposition to the Forest Department’s intervention and—conversely—her right
to cultivate encroached forest land is not one that first admits the legitimacy
of state law and then pleads for an exception from it. On the contrary, it is a
language that rejects the legitimacy of the existing law. Dasribai starts by calling
into question the right of the Forest Department to curtail her cultivation of
forest land, and then—using a rhetoric that contrasts the privileged position
of sarkari employees with Adivasi toil at the same time as it shames Forest
Department staff for their corruption and their violence—reverses the moral
equation: it is Adivasis who, due to the hard work they invest in sustaining
their marginal livelihoods, have a rightful claim on the forest.
Similar sentiments can also be perceived in the ethic of conservation that
the KMCS tried to foster in the communities it mobilised. The campaign
for recognition of customary use rights in the forest was crafted around the
position that while villagers would continue to cultivate nevad land already
in their possession, they would refrain from further expansion of their fields
and ensure that depleted forests were regenerated.18 This was a response to
the reality that further expansion of nevad cultivation was likely to exacerbate
soil erosion, already a serious problem in the hills of Alirajpur. Activists would
readily admit that this approach yielded mixed results. In some hamlets and
villages (typically the smaller hamlets and villages, where most people were
members of the Sangath) conservation was successful—a fact that is written
on the landscape today in the form of thick forest groves and rejuvenated
watersheds in former KMCS bastions like Attha. Elsewhere, however,
conservation efforts foundered as villagers cleared large new tracts of land
(interviews and field notes, 2009–2010).19

18 Restrictions on expansion of nevad lands were coupled with various efforts to improve
the quality of the nevad fields, afforestation, bunding and gully plugging to prevent
soil erosion, and cordoning off forests from grazing to ensure a sustainable yield of
fodder for livestock over time (see Baviskar 1994: 2500).
19 According to several activists that I interviewed, the prospect of land regularisation
actually led to something of a race to be arrested for forest offences in order to obtain
proof of the possession of encroached land, in the form of a Primary Offence Report
or a receipt for fines paid to the Forest Department (interviews and field notes,
2009–2010).
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 201

What is significant, however, is the way in which these efforts were

represented in the narratives of Bhil activists, namely as an achievement that
testified to their ability to act as custodians of the forest: ‘We decided that
instead of handing over the land to the sarkar, we will take care of it ourselves’,
a group of Attha activists explained to us. ‘The trees were getting finished
every day and had we not saved the forest, then the people around us also
wouldn’t have done so. In that case, it would have been the end of the forests
altogether’ (group interview, November 2009). Here again an alternative regime
of rights grounded in differential geographies is prefigured by the practices
of the KMCS, as state stewardship—a stewardship that is expressive of the
sovereignty of the state—is rejected in favour of conservation by those who
rely on the forest for livelihood and habitation.
The significance of differential geographies to insurgent claims for
citizenship by Bhil Adivasis is thrown into even sharper relief if we consider the
AMS’s campaign for local self-rule. In the politics of the AMS, local self-rule
came centre stage in the middle of the 1990s. The Sangathan moved on from
challenging specific forms of exploitation and oppression by the local state to
articulating a claim for Adivasi self-rule, expressed in the slogan hamare gaon
mein, hamara raj (our rule in our villages). ‘Earlier there was the rule of the
police, the patwari, the forest guards, and the traders in the village’, Munnibai
told us when we asked her to explain why the Sangathan mobilised around
this demand. ‘We wanted to abolish their rule and establish our rule in our
village. Whatever we say should be followed’ (interview, February 2010). In
order to pursue this objective, the AMS linked its activities to the Bharat
Jan Andolan (BJA) and its campaign for the implementation of the Bhuria
Committee Report.
The BJA—a nation-wide alliance of social movements under the leadership
of B. D. Sharma, former Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes—had initially started mobilising for Adivasi self-rule in the early
1990s. In 1994, the National Front for Adivasi Self-Rule (NFASR) was
founded to bring together local tribal organisations and movements from
across the country—including the AMS—to campaign specifically on the
issue of self-rule, and the Bhuria Committee was constituted later the same
year. The Committee submitted its report, recommending the implementation
of self-rule in Scheduled Areas, to the Government of India in 1995. After
sustained pressure from the NFSAR, the government enacted the Provisions
of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA)—a law
which, in a nutshell, devolves significant powers of governance to the level of
202 Adivasis and the State

the Gram Sabha in Scheduled Areas—in late December 1996 (see Bijoy 2012;
Choubey 2016; interviews and field notes, 2009–2010).
In itself, PESA is widely recognised as not having lived up to activist
expectations that the law would bring about significant emancipatory
transformations for Adivasi communities. Provisions for consultations with the
Gram Sabha on matters of land acquisition are often bypassed and undermined;
key stipulations of the law are often flouted in the context of military campaigns
against Maoist insurgents; and provisions that impinge on the powers of the
local administration are often side lined or neglected (Choubey 2015: 250–251;
see also Dash 2016).
However, as Choubey (2015) notes in his analysis of the ‘public life’ of PESA
in Rajasthan, the law has had a significant impact on state–society relations in
tribal areas despite failures of implementation. Above all, it has enabled Adivasi
communities to articulate political imaginaries centred on ideas of autonomy,
sovereignty, and rights over natural resources (see also Kudva 2006)—that is,
imaginaries that gravitate around a claim for differential geographies. This
also holds true in the case of the AMS. Activists readily admitted that the
Sangathan had not been able to use PESA to secure substantial advances in
terms of self-rule: ‘We are asking for the whole fish but they are only giving us
the tail, which isn’t worth eating’ (interview, Tulsibhai, March 2010). However,
the notion of hamare gaon, hamara raj has come to mould the way in which
activists conceive of citizenship and rights. Consider, for example, how Suraj
explained the meaning of the claim for self-rule:

We had made this law—that in our village, it is our command or power. Listen,
all you people of the world: nobody will rob the people of our village! The water,
jungle, land—whatever our rules and ways are, those will continue. If someone
comes from outside, they can’t plant anything here without our permission.
We spread this message throughout the villages—that in our village, it will be
our rule only. We had the support of the people. (Interview, November 2009)

The claim to self-rule was commonly justified according to a logic that

echoed the KMCS’s claim for forest rights—that is, in terms of the long history
of Adivasi place-making: ‘The villages were settled by us—not by the forest
officials or traders or leaders. They started coming to our villages much later.
So they shouldn’t be able to dictate how the village should be run. Rather, our
decisions should be followed’ (interview, Valsingh, February 2010).
Significantly, activists tend to conceive of themselves as rights-bearers
not so much in terms of the universal citizen, but rather in terms of being
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 203

Adivasis. This inflection is clearly conveyed in the way Bhimsingh—a key

AMS activist—reflected on how he interpreted the knowledge that he acquired
about the Indian state and its laws through participating in the movement:
‘We got to know about the rules and the law through our training and we
realised that our independence is yet to be completed—it has been left midway
only. The country may be independent but we are not … Our feeling is that
our independence is partial till now’ (interview, March 2010). Bhimsingh’s
claim that independence ‘is yet to be completed’ for Adivasis and that their
‘independence is partial till now’ suggests a perception in which the political
subordination of Adivasis sets them apart from other groups in Indian society,
alluding to the particular trajectory of disenfranchisement that has affected
Bhil Adivasis in the region. He went on to explain the meaning of the demand
for local self-rule as follows:

Anybody who asked for chicken and money, we would give. When this reduced
a bit, we became lighter. After that, slowly, by going to the meetings, we
learnt that this was a big illness. Then they said that our rule means that that
everything which is there in the village, in our village, our voice should be
listened to or heard. Whether it is the sarkar or some neta, everything should
belong to us—then only will our rule be established. This was the Sangathan.
After that, the land, jungle and water belong to us. Bhai, when you are living
there, then everything here including the river and well belong to us. Yes,
we do have the right to cut trees; you do not. We have the right to irrigate
our lands. You all live there, not here like us. On everything we should have
rights. (Interview, March 2010)

In other words, the rights-based claims that were articulated by the AMS
were neither simply claims to be recognised as citizens with civil and political
liberties in the liberal sense, nor were these claims bounded by ‘a logic of
equality’ in which subaltern groups simply ‘demand already existing rights’
(Dunford and Madhok 2015: 605). Rather, as the politics of the AMS evolved,
rights-based claims increasingly came to be articulated in terms of a collective
Adivasi identity, in which the central ‘loci of consciousness formation’ (Harvey
1985: 252) were the dispossession of natural resources—jal, jangal, zameen
(water, forest, land)—and the claim to have the rights to these resources restored
through the restitution of Bhil sovereignty within a determinate territory.
Instead of reading the campaigns for forest rights and local self-rule as
something other than citizenship—which is purportedly the direction in
which Chatterjee’s framework would take us—I would argue that both
mobilisations are expressive of how subaltern groups simultaneously ‘inhabit
204 Adivasis and the State

and substantially alter the contours of legal citizenship’ (Sharma 2011: 957).
Now, both campaigns were of course forged in relation to what Chatterjee
would call governmental categories—that is, the Scheduled Tribe as a specific
population group, and the Scheduled Area as a particular space within the
national territory. These categories in turn testify to the fact that the strategies
of inclusion adopted by the Indian state at the coming of independence ‘were
dependent upon the creation of new categories of exception, on the credible
assumption that such exceptions to equality … would be more effective in
tackling inequality’ (Jayal 2013: 18). However, the KMCS’s prefigurative
politics of forest rights and the AMS’s claim for local self-rule ruptured the
boundaries of the Scheduled Tribe and the Scheduled Area as governmental
categories of exception. This aspect of the mobilisation can only be properly
grasped if we understand the basis of the exceptions that were made for Adivasis
in the making of India’s constitution.
As Jayal (2013: 230) points out, group-differentiated citizenship in India is
constructed on the basis of the notion of backwardness, which is understood
as a disadvantage that afflicts a community and that can be remedied through
external intervention. While definitions change over time, Jayal notes,
backwardness ‘always and invariably appears as a deficiency’ (ibid: 232). In the
case of tribal groups, the constitutional definition of backwardness emphasises
the isolated nature of Adivasi habitats and the attendant lack of educational
institutions, health services, and communication—all of which have rendered
Adivasis vulnerable to the rapacious ways of non-tribal moneylenders and
traders. The remedy is to be found in a judicious combination of protection
and improvement effected by the paternalist state through local development
interventions and reservations in public employment and education (ibid: 234–
238). As Uday Chandra (2013d: 154–155) has noted, this approach essentially
reworked and renewed the imperial ideology of primitivism, which had first
introduced ‘tribal zones of exception’ (ibid: 140) into colonial governance
through the establishment, first, of Scheduled Districts, then Backward
Tracts, and finally Excluded Areas.20 The constitutional trope of backwardness

20 The Scheduled Districts Act of 1874 was the first piece of legislation to demarcate
tribal zones of exception as Scheduled Districts. It was, as Chandra (2013d: 144)
notes, an act that aimed ‘to sedentarise, protect, and civilise wild, unruly subjects of
empire’. The Government of India Act of 1919 rechristened the Scheduled Districts
as Backward Tracts, and introduced a distinction between ‘really backward tracts’
and ‘typically backward tracts’. In the former, it was strictly the Governor-General
who could make and administer laws. In the latter, local and provincial officials had
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 205

performs two crucial ideological operations in relation to Adivasi subalternity.

First, it erases from view the fact that this subalternity is a manifestation of the
way in which Adivasis are adversely incorporated into the political economies
engendered by colonial and postcolonial state formation. Second, its inherent
paternalism posits Adivasis as overwhelmingly passive and dependent on an
external agent—that is, the benevolent state—for succour and uplift.
It is precisely these ideological operations that are upended by the
mobilisations of the KMCS and the AMS. In the first place, both the claim
for the restitution of forest rights and the claim for local self-rule centred the
injustice of dispossession and disenfranchisement—not backwardness—as the
origin of Adivasi subalternity. What is more, the mobilisations rejected the
paternalist governance of the state and insisted on Adivasi self-activity as the
pivot of emancipatory transformation. In this way, the idiom of citizenship
came to be inflected with insurgent meanings which exceed both that which
is purely governmental and that which is purely liberal. This excess is located
in the claim for justice for Adivasis—a justice that requires for its fulfilment
something more than just welfare and protection, namely a particular form
of inclusion and membership in the political community that grants resource
control, a measure of territorial sovereignty, and the inscription of the Adivasi
into the juridical framework of the state as a legal subject capable of self-
governance. As Jayal (2013: 109) rightly argues, claims for rights ‘are implicitly
claims to citizenship, and often to an expanding conception of it’ and it is
this—the appropriation and expansion of hegemonic political idioms—that
enables subaltern groups to disrupt entrenched state–society relations. There
is a significant potential in these dynamics for what Marx (1992: 221) called
‘real, practical emancipation,’ that deserves to be taken seriously in the study
of subaltern politics (see Nilsen 2016b).

Concluding Remarks
In this chapter, I have presented an analysis of how the oppositional local
rationality which we saw in Chapter 5 being brought into being and moulded by

more say. Finally, the Government of India Act of 1935 introduced the language
of ‘partially excluded areas’ and ‘wholly excluded areas’ and coupled this with a
distinction between princely states and other areas under indirect rule on the one
hand and partially and wholly excluded areas under direct rule on the other hand
(ibid: 144–151). See Singh (1985) for an account of the discussion that gave rise to
the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of India’s Constitution.
206 Adivasis and the State

collective defiance against everyday tyranny was articulated, in the activism of

the KMCS and the AMS, through insurgent appropriations of liberal political
idioms and forms such as law, civil society, and citizenship.
In mobilising against everyday tyranny, these movements actively held
the state and its personnel accountable to the law and insisted that legality
should prevail in local state–society relations. When combined with disruptive
collective action, this strategy was often successful in reversing the grammar
of everyday tyranny and propelling an important process of collective learning
among Bhil Adivasis about the local state and its legal workings. Ultimately,
I argued, this legalism from below was effective due to the fact that the law
cannot serve its hegemonic function if it does not—sometimes, at the very
least—appear to be just. And one of the most important consequences of these
subaltern appropriations of the law was the fact that, regardless of their concrete
results, they fostered an ability to articulate visions of rights and entitlements
that ran counter to everyday forms of domination.
As a result of this mobilisation, practices of acquiescence and deference
started to give way to assertion—first and above all against the corruption and
the violence of the local state. As I showed in the second part of the chapter,
this change was clearly inscribed in the imaginaries that shaped Adivasi
relations with the local state: activists would posit the state as a representative
institution that draws its power from a citizenry that consigns legitimacy
upon it through the act of voting. Moreover, they would assert that the state is
underpinned by the labour of peasant cultivators and accountable to the public
and to Adivasis as bearers of rights. In carving out a space where democratic
transactions could take place, I argued, the KMCS and the AMS effectively
brought a rudimentary civil society into substantive existence in the tribal areas
of western Madhya Pradesh. On the one hand, this suggests the necessity of
thinking in fluid processual terms about how mobilisation on the terrain of
civil society shapes and reshapes both the political subjectivities of subalterns
and the workings of India’s democracy. On the other hand, I suggested, the
making of a civil society does not amount to a challenge to the power of the
state as such; rather, conceding to subaltern demands through democratic
transactions can also be read as a strategy to contain subaltern claims-making
within manageable political boundaries.
However, the containment of subaltern resistance within a liberal field
of politics is neither a foregone conclusion nor an already-achieved state of
affairs. In the third part of the chapter I showed how insurgent forms of
citizenship emerged out of the activism of the KMCS and the AMS, as the
 ‘We Are the Ones Who Make the Sarkar’ 207

movements began to mobilise around prefigurative claims for forest rights and
the politics of local self-rule. In terms of the former, the KMCS challenged
the foundation of existing forest laws—in particular the position of the state
as owner and steward of the forest—and, by claiming legitimacy for customary
uses of the forest, foreshadowed an alternative order of rights that would bring
about proprietary restitution for Adivasis. In terms of the latter, the claim for
local self-rule hinged on a demand for justice in the face of dispossession and
disenfranchisement, to be achieved through the restitution of Bhil sovereignty
within a determinate territory. In both cases, I argued, claims were being made
for differential geographies—in other words, the right of indigenous groups
to command and to make the places that are integral to their livelihood, their
habitation, and their identity. And this in turn inflected the idiom of citizenship
and the claim for justice for Adivasis with insurgent meanings which exceed
both that which is purely governmental and that which is purely liberal.
Through these achievements, the KMCS and the AMS brought about
significant democratisation of local state–society relations. Bhils who had
previously been positioned as subalterns within highly coercive state–
society relations could now level rights-based claims at the state. And this
transformation was brought about by collective action that appropriated the
universalising vocabularies and political forms of India’s postcolonial democracy
and inflected them with more radical meanings and practices. It is important to
emphasise, once again, that despite its significance, this transformation did not
entail a rupture of hegemony or state power as such. Rather, what the activism
of the KMCS and the AMS achieved was a change in the terms upon which
Bhil Adivasis were incorporated into the hegemonic formation that had been
crafted through colonial and postcolonial state formation in the region. These
dynamics clearly illustrate both how subaltern resistance is mediated by the
political condensations of hegemony and how the reproduction of hegemony,
in turn, requires dominant groups to respond to such resistance with various
degrees of accommodation. That being said, it is also crucial to inquire about
the role that coercion plays in maintaining hegemony—particularly in those
moments when subaltern resistance appears to be developing a capacity for more
fundamental destabilisation of its foundational pillars. It is to this question
that I turn in the next chapter.
208 Adivasis and the State

‘They Have Weakened Us’

Deciphering the Politics of Coercion

On an early February afternoon in 2010, a group of activists from Jhiri Jamli,

once a stronghold of the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan (AMS), gathered to talk
to us about how the movement had emerged and developed in their village.
When the conversation turned to the repression the Sangathan had been
subjected to, their frustration was evident: ‘The politicians made one brother
fight against the other, and then they went away. But we were the ones who
suffered eventually’, one of them said ruefully. ‘They have weakened us’ (group
interview, February 2010). They were talking about their experience during the
late 1990s, when dominant groups in the region set out to smash the AMS.
A campaign of coercion unfolded which saw the apex of the Madhya Pradesh
Congress party join hands with merchant elites, the bureaucracy and police
at district and tehsil levels, and village authorities. Over a six-month period,
forces at the top of the state Congress party ensured that different echelons
of the state apparatus worked in concert against the Sangathan and mobilised
violence against its activists by orchestrating a vigilante group—paradoxically
called the Shanti Sena (Peace Army)—through their patronage network in
Adivasi villages.
In this chapter, I set out to decipher the politics of coercion that the KMCS
and the AMS confronted as they mobilised to democratise state–society
relations in the Bhil heartland. In doing so, I return to a key conceptual
concern in this book, namely the need to develop a critical understanding of
how the patterned workings of state power over time sustain the reproduction
of hegemonic formations. As I argued in the introductory chapter, the
mobilisation of coercive power is particularly expressive of how the institutional
modalities of the state can be made to work in a way that maintains unequal
power relations. Crucially, these workings evade the conceptual scope of
Foucauldian perspectives centred on the notion of governmentality and
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 209

dispersed conceptions of power. What is needed instead is a perspective oriented

towards understanding how dominant groups act in and through the state to
construct specific configurations of consent and coercion, and uncovering how
their ability to do this originates in specific trajectories of state formation.
To this end, this chapter investigates not just the coercion that takes the form
of a coordinated and sustained campaign—what one might call extraordinary
coercion—predicated on the mobilisation of force to eliminate movements, but
also routine coercion. This refers to coercive practices that are not exclusively
based on force and that aim to discourage rather than eliminate oppositional
collective action. In making this distinction, I am operating close to the
boundaries of a specific field in the study of research on political repression,
which also emphasises the need to acknowledge and differentiate between
different forms of coercion. This warrants a comment on how my conceptual
approach differs from that prevailing in these studies.
Jennifer Earl (2003: 45) has argued that there is a need to conceptualise
repression ‘as a more variegated phenomenon’ than has been the case so far
in social movement studies. According to Earl, existing research has mainly
focussed on ‘the role of state authorities’, which in her view is problematic as
it neglects how ‘private agents’ can carry out repression against movements.
Moreover, she argues that it is necessary to ‘acknowledge and study a wider array
of activities that could impede mobilisation’ than existing research has done
to date (ibid: 45, 46). To achieve this, she proposes a typology distinguishing
between different kinds of repression according to the identity of the repressive
agent, the character of the repressive action, and whether the repressive action
is observable or not. Along similar lines, Myra Marx Ferree has criticised the
state-centric focus of research on repression in social movement studies:

Repression evokes an image of a central political authority using the formal

apparatus of the state to put down rebellions, whether overtly or covertly
holding the reins, and directing the actions being taken in its defense.
Repression is what states do, especially bad states that cannot manage dissent
in more democratic and discerning ways. (2004: 138)

Centring her argument on the experiences of women’s movements, Ferree

suggests that a distinction should be made between ‘hard repression’ and
‘soft repression’. The former involves ‘the mobilisation of force to control or
crush oppositional action through the use or threat of violence’ whereas ‘soft
repression’ is predicated on ‘the mobilisation of non-violent means to silence
or eradicate oppositional ideas’ (ibid: 141).
210 Adivasis and the State

The more refined understanding of repression that Earl and Ferree call
for is obviously entirely welcome—not least because it speaks in important
ways to activist experiences with multiple and composite forms of coercion.
However, both arguments are marred by problematic state–society dualisms
that are grounded in an essentially Weberian view of the state. For example,
in her discussion of repressive agents, Earl (2003: 46) makes a distinction
between state agents closely connected to national political elites, state agents
loosely connected to national political elites, and what she refers to as private
agents. And similarly, Ferree (2004: 141–142) argues that soft repression is
predominantly carried out in civil society, whereas hard repression remains the
prerogative of the state. Now, Earl (2003: 46) is of course right to argue that
private agents have ‘an immense capacity to repress movements’, and Ferree’s
(2004: 141) reminder that ‘the institutions of civil society do not have privileged
control over the means of violence’ is also entirely correct. Yet both claims are
clearly underpinned by the assumption that the state is ‘a discrete institutional
category, a reified thing, which exists in a relationship of exteriority to society’
(Morton 2013: 142). The state, consequently, is posited as ‘an originating subject
enjoyed with an essential unity’ (Jessop 1982: 222) and as an agent in its own
right—an agent that in both accounts is predominantly concerned with the
mobilisation of force and violence. Concurrently, in Earl’s argument, private
agents are construed as social forces that act outside the state, and, in Ferree’s
argument, civil society is understood in liberal terms, as a domain distinct and
separate from the state.
This, of course, goes against the grain of the theoretical perspective that
underpins the analytical efforts of this book, which understands state power,
first of all, not in terms of the agential power of an institutional ensemble that is
separate from society, but in terms of the ability of determinate social forces to
act in and through the formal apparatus of the state (see Jessop 2008). Second,
this perspective also does not posit civil society as a domain external to the
state, but rather as a constituent element of the integral state (see Coutinho
2012: chapter 5). On this reading, coercion is not studied as an activity that
is carried out either by the state or by private actors, but by dominant groups
acting in and through the state to maintain a given hegemonic formation.
Furthermore, the ascription of certain forms of (hard) coercion primarily to
the state and other forms of (soft) coercion mainly to civil society is rejected in
favour of an analytical emphasis on how dominant groups constantly traverse
the analytical divide between political society and civil society—and here I use
these terms in their Gramscian meaning—in their efforts to mobilise coercive
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 211

power. In contrast to Foucauldian perspectives, the ability of dominant groups

to mobilise different forms of coercive power to different degrees across political
and civil society is understood in terms of how state formation as a hegemonic
process has fostered regime types underpinned by distinctive configurations
of social power that endure over time (see Nilsen 2015a).
This adds a further dimension to my discussion of the complex equations of
coercion and consent in Gramscian understandings of hegemony. As I argued
in the introduction to this book, hegemony is not a form of rule grounded
exclusively in consent. Rather, a hegemonic formation rests upon particular
alignments of consent and coercion: while some subaltern groups gain
concessions and political accommodation—aimed, of course at defusing and
demobilising their oppositional projects—others will be subjected to various
forms and degrees of repression and erasure. However, most discussions of
Gramsci’s conception of hegemony agree that, as a constituent element of the
integral state, civil society is a site for the construction of consent, whereas
coercion is mobilised through political society. Contrary to this argument,
my analysis in this chapter suggests that civil society is also a key site for the
mobilisation of coercive power. In particular, the ‘voluntary social collective
organisms’ (Coutinho 2012: 82) that simultaneously constitute and inhabit civil
society—above all, political parties, but also other associational formations—are
instrumental as modalities through which dominant groups mobilise coercion.1

1 Gramsci of course touched on these dynamics in his writings on fascism. For

example, in his political writings from the early 1920s, he pointed out how democratic
regimes relied on ‘organised violence outside the legal framework of the state’ and
the petty bourgeoisie increasingly replaced ‘the “authority” of the law by private
violence’ (Gramsci 1994: 241, 1977: 374). In ‘State and Civil Society’, he commented
as follows: ‘A weakened state structure is like a flagging army; the commandos—
that is, the private armed organisations enter the field and they have two tasks: to
make use of illegal means, while the State appears to remain within legality, and
thus to reorganise the State itself ’ (Gramsci 1971: 232). Whereas Gramsci never
systematically conceptualised these dynamics in terms of his theory of the integral
state, his observations and arguments are borne out in the recent work of Dylan Riley
(2010), which shows that fascism in Italy was directly enabled by the existence of a
strong associational sphere. This is of course also the case with the political project
that Sumit Sarkar (2013) has rightly labelled ‘the fascism of the Sangh Parivar’—as
numerous studies have shown, Hindu nationalism derives much of its potency from
an extensive associational network that enables both mobilisational and electoral
potency (see, for example, Jaffrelot 1996; Hansen 1999; Berenschot 2011; Basu 2015).
I return to this case in the third section of this chapter.
212 Adivasis and the State

This is amply demonstrated in the two first sections of this chapter,

which focus on routine coercion and extraordinary coercion respectively.
Through detailed accounts of activist experiences of coercion—based in part
on interview data and in part on a wide array of reports from various human
rights organisations—I show how both routine coercion that intended to
discourage activism and extraordinary coercion that aimed to eliminate the
AMS as an oppositional movement were produced by dominant groups which
continuously criss-crossed the boundary between political and civil society. In
the third and final section, I extend the compass of my argument by discussing
how interactions between political society and civil society are integral to
the mobilisation of coercion more generally in India, looking in particular
at counterinsurgency operations in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh,
landlord or caste armies targeting agrarian radicalism in rural Bihar, and
anti-Muslim pogroms led by Hindu nationalists in the western Indian state of
Gujarat. In closing, I reflect on what the mobilisation of extraordinary coercion
against the AMS can tell us about state formation as a hegemonic process, in
the specific context of Madhya Pradesh.

Routine Coercion
One summer evening, as Amit and I were chatting in the school compound,
our conversation turned to the experience of coercion. ‘The thing is, you have
to get used to the fact that, at any time, the police might pick you up and
throw you in jail’, he said. ‘At any time, goondas might beat you up. That is
something you have to live with all the time when you’re an activist’ (field
notes, May 2010). What his statement brought home to me was the simple
but important insight that coercion does not materialise only in coordinated
campaigns intended to eliminate oppositional movements and that it is not
something out of the ordinary. On the contrary, coercion is an intrinsic and
constant dimension of the day-to-day experience of activism. Dominant groups
will attempt to raise the cost of collective action in other and less intensive
ways than sustained punitive or violent containment, ranging from rumour
mongering, defamation, and intimidation to violence and legal harassment.2
In the case of the KMCS, rumour mongering and defamation figured
centrally in the repertoire deployed by local state authorities and village elites

2 I am drawing here on Charles Tilly’s (1978: 100) classic definition of coercion as ‘any
action by another group which raises the contender’s cost of collective action’.
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 213

to prevent mobilisation from gaining momentum. A key strategy in this regard

was to create mistrust between middle class activists and Adivasis. Speaking of
how patels would try to counteract community mobilisation, Ravi referred to
‘whisper campaigns’ in which middle class activists like himself were portrayed
as malicious and devious. In doing so, the patels were making use of the prevalent
mistrust of outsiders in Bhil communities: ‘ … there was already a mistrust in
the Adivasi community for anybody who goes from outside. So anybody who is
wearing a pant and a shirt is suspect. So they used to feed on that … ’ (interview,
September 2009). Bhil activists commonly spoke about how patels and other
members of the village elite would try to deter them from joining the Sangath
by speaking of the evil intentions of the middle class activists:

They used many methods to stop us. We were asked not to go with these
people, as they were terrorists. ‘They will eat you’—they would speak to us
like this, and in this way they tried to stop us from going to the Sangathan.
(Interview, Gujaria, April 2010)
They would say that these people are terrorists and robbers. ‘Don’t join them’.
They spoke like this. (Interview, Tersingh, April 2010)
People said that these men eat other people. They enter the houses of people
to do this—this is what people would say about Amit and Khemraj in the
beginning. (Group interview, Attha, 2009)

Interestingly, attempts to obstruct mobilisation through rumour mongering

and defamation often—but not always3—fell on stony ground. Bhil activists
would reject attempts to discredit outsiders like Amit and Ravi with reference
to their lived experiences of everyday tyranny:

The police and forest-wallahs all told us to not go with those people. ‘These
people are totally useless—don’t listen to what they tell you.’ But we felt that,
after all, it was they who had harassed our people and our elders for so long,
so why should we listen to them? (Interview, Bhukaliya, September 2009)

Punia Baba, a veteran activist with both the Lal Topi Andolan and the
KMCS, spoke of a similar reaction to attempts to defame the middle class
activists:

3 Both middle class and Bhil activists would frequently recount anecdotes about
individuals who had opted out of mobilisation as a result of intimidation by state
personnel (field notes, 2009–2010).
214 Adivasis and the State

They would say: ‘Don’t follow these netas—they are liars.’ Then we told them:
‘If our netas are liars, why do you not let us work in the forest? We will not
go against our netas.’ Then they would say: ‘Leave your sangathan and join us
instead.’ We answered: ‘You people harass us. Why should we follow you?’
(Interview, April 2010)

Alongside rumour mongering and defamation, local authorities and village

elites would often resort to threats and intimidation to prevent ordinary
Bhils from joining the emergent movements. Often this would pivot on
patels asserting their authority against the activists: ‘They would scold me’,
Bhawarsingh of the AMS said. ‘“Why are you going with them? I’m the
patel—you ought to ask me first, before organising this meeting! Whose
permission did you get? You people are going on the sly and not even asking
us?”’ He continued: ‘There were fights in the village and they would try to stop
the people, saying “Don’t go with Bijoybhai.” They would ask all the people:
“Where are you going?” When they returned from the meeting, they would ask:
“Why did you go?” They would scold and abuse people’ (interview, February
2010). Dediya of the KMCS recounted the following experiences with patels
and dalals who tried to stop the spread of the movement:

The dalals and patels kept making trouble … Once when the sarpanch had
beaten up one of our people, all of us went to Alirajpur from Attha. He
threatened to burn our houses. The sarpanch from Sakarja, he said he would
kill us. When we defeated him, he still threatened us. We went to his village for
Indal, and he said he would kill us … The patel of Attha … also threatened us
openly—he threatened us with beatings, with jail, that we would lose our land,
and with death, but he didn’t succeed. The villagers didn’t pay any attention.

In other cases, goondas were hired to rough up activists: ‘Once a jeep full
of people came and they asked where the KMCS leaders were. People were
scared of what they might do so they gave them the wrong directions … They
must have taken money from the sarkar’ (interview, April 2010).4

4 Goondas are perhaps best described as ‘individuals who, sometimes unintentionally or

unexpectedly, acquire an image of heavy handedness in their neighbourhood, which
make people fear them’ (Berenschot 2011: 125). This image is in turn put to use by
politicians, particularly to influence voters during election time, but also to pressure
parties in disputes or to solve particularly thorny problems that challenge the status
of these politicians (ibid: 123–130)—for example, as in this case, by threatening
violence against belligerent activists.
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 215

Intimidation would often remain just that: verbal threats invoking or

alluding to the power of the state, which was obviously well known in the Bhil
communities: ‘The dalals threatened me. They told me that the sarkar has a
long arm, and that we shouldn’t get involved with the Sangathan’ (interview,
Buriyabhai, April 2010). However, threats could also escalate into actions with
serious consequences for the activists. In one case, for example, a KMCS activist
was set upon in a wedding by a group of men associated with the village patel:
‘They beat him. They cracked his skull and he lost his speech after that—his
life was ruined’ (interview, Dediya, April 2010). All of this, of course, was
intended to make collective action frightening and risky.5
Other forms of routine coercion aimed to make collective action difficult.
The KMCS, for example, experienced many attempts to block their access
to crucial services in Alirajpur town. In one case, the District Collector had
approached local transport entrepreneurs and instructed them not to let
Sangath activists hire trucks to bring people to rallies. Similarly, bus companies
were told not to let activists travel on their vehicles. Tea shop owners, who
were often instrumental in passing on messages between activists who travelled
through Alirajpur, had been instructed not to serve KMCS activists. When the
Sangath established an office in Alirajpur, the District Collector leveraged his
power over their landlord to have them evicted. Knowing that the landlord’s
son had obtained a job as a school teacher with the help of a false disability
certificate, he threatened to have him fired from his job unless he threw the
activists out of the building (interviews and field notes, 2009–2010).
Urban supporters of the Sangath also came under pressure. A journalist and
former student leader in Alirajpur who had sympathised with and helped the
KMCS in various ways found all of a sudden that a case had been lodged to
have land belonging to his family expropriated. In this case, the administration
was making use of a law that ordered the transfer of land that had been lying
unused for more than 20 years to Adivasis. The journalist finally had to buy the
land back from the tribal families to whom it had been transferred. To avoid

5 More recently, during the summer of 2009, Shamim Modi, a leading activist with
the Shramik Adivasi Sangathan—an organisation active in Harda and Betul districts
since the middle of the 1990s—was subjected to an attempted assassination in her
apartment in Mumbai. Powerful BJP politicians in Betul district were assumed to
be behind the attack (Mahaprashasta 2009). At the time of writing, more than six
years after the attack, which left Modi with a cracked skull, broken hands and a slit
throat, the police have made no progress in investigating the case.
216 Adivasis and the State

further harassment, he ultimately sold off all his property in Alirajpur and
moved to a nearby city (interview, Dediya, April 2010). Indirect pressure was
also applied, above all through the media, which regularly ran stories—written
and published, activists claimed, on the orders of the local authorities—that
cast the KMCS and the AMS as illegal Maoist organisations associated with
guerrilla warfare. The effect was palpable: ‘In the news reports they said that
Naxalites have come to Alirajpur. And when you went to Alirajpur town, you
would find that nobody wanted to look you in the eye or talk to you’ (interview,
Amit Bhatnagar, June 2010).
Routine coercion also encompasses the direct use of coercive force against
activist groups by state agencies. What sets this use of force apart from
extraordinary coercion is that it is not part of a coordinated and sustained
campaign to eliminate a movement. Rather, like the practices discussed above,
force is used to make activism frightening or risky or to make examples out
of specific activists in order to discourage others from participating in the
movement. Custodial violence is a primary example of this use of force. Almost
all the activists we interviewed spoke of how they had been beaten up while
in police custody. Kamalsingh’s story is typical in this respect:

One time, six of us were walking on the road when a police officer stopped
us and said: ‘Trying to act smart, are you? Trying to be netas, are you?’ So we
said that we were not trying to act smart and we were not trying to be leaders.
Whatever we were doing, we were doing it for our rights. Then they took us
to Bakhatgarh and during the night they beat us very badly and they didn’t
give us anything to eat … Some of them were hitting us with sticks and some
of them with their shoes. Then from there they took us to Sondwa and put us
in jail there. (Interview, September 2009)

Sometimes the use of force also served as performances intended to

humiliate, shame, and intimidate. In one instance, a large meeting had been
called in the village of Khod Amba to discuss whether or not to join the
KMCS. Immediately after the meeting wound up, forest guards descended
on the village, beat up many of the people who had attended the meeting, tied
them up, and marched them through several nearby villages, where they also
detained more villagers. The exercise was clearly intended to humiliate and
intimidate those who had participated in the meeting and send a warning to
others who were contemplating joining the Sangath. Extreme police violence
during protests served similar purposes. Amit, for example, recalled how,
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 217

when Sangath activists had blocked off a major road as part of their protest
against the Narmada dam projects, mounted police attacked them and many
protestors suffered serious injuries. Several activists left the Sangath after this
incident (interviews and field notes, 2009–2010).
However, violence was arguably not the most debilitating form of routine
coercion that relied directly on the use of state power. Rather, for movement
participants, the fact that they were constantly being implicated in trumped-up
court cases proved to be the most significant hindrance to effective activism.
Dediya recounted the following experience:

One time the forest guards caught my cattle and took them away. I went to
get them released, and after we reached an agreement, they handed the cattle
over to me. But later on, the Ranger tore the pant and shirt of one of the forest
guards and lodged a false charge of assault against me. Later on, cases were
filed against nine people and the police came to catch us. They called me aside
and said because there was a case against me that I had torn the forest guard’s
pant and shirt and thrown stones at him. (Interview, Dediya, April 2010).

Indeed, the falsity of the charges that activists faced was often quite
staggering. For example, the villagers who were arrested after the meeting in
Khod Amba were taken to the Forest Depot in Bakhatgarh. As soon as they
reached, the forest guards proceeded to smash up the department bungalow and
charged the villagers they had detained with assault and vandalism (interviews
and field notes, 2009–2010). The charges could often be very serious: ‘One easy
thing’, Rahul told me, ‘is … attempt to murder … you can just cut yourself …
with a razor blade and say that this fellow tried to kill you … so that becomes
attempt to murder’ (interview, June 2010). Attempted murder—along with
offences such as robbery, rape, treason, and acting to hurt religious sentiments
that are often used against protestors and dissidents—is a non-bailable offence
according to the Indian Penal Code. Imprisonment on such charges therefore
throws a considerable spanner in the works of any activist.
Why are false cases so incapacitating for activists? Rahul gave me the
following explanation:

… in fact, the false cases, are the most debilitating of the weapons that can be
used against you. Because it is OK, if you are just beaten up, put in jail under
some preventive section, and you come out, that is a different thing altogether.
You get beaten up, you go into jail, and you come out—that is the end of it. But
if they implicate you in a case, then after that, the problem starts. You have
218 Adivasis and the State

to go to the court all the time, you have to spend money on lawyers, spend
money on travel, and it can go on for years together.6

Bijoybhai of the AMS reflected along similar lines: ‘ … if they decide …

they can implicate cases against you. So you go on circling the courts and
approaching lawyers, arranging money. The court cases go on for so long that
people really get tired.’ He proceeded to elaborate: ‘The organisation was not
prepared to take care of this travelling and lawyers’ fees … every time you go to
the court. So that is the strategy they always employed’ (interview, November
2009). False cases would not necessarily result in convictions. Indeed, activists
would often speak of how they had eventually been exonerated due to the
arbitrary nature of the charges brought against them and how, at times, police
and forest guards had been disciplined as a result of implicating them in false
cases. However, as Rahul and Bijoybhai’s statements indicate, implicating
activists in false cases derived its efficiency from the fact that it deflected their
energies away from the local political arena and into the judicial sphere—at
times to such an extent that it left them exhausted and disillusioned. The fact
that the costs of such cases fall not only on the individual and the organisation
being prosecuted, but also on wider family and community support networks,
also enhances their effect in discouraging activism (interviews and field notes,
2009–2010).
Now, my use of the term ‘routine coercion’ is not intended in any way to
belittle the impacts of these practices on those who were subjected to it. The
physical and mental trauma that activists endure as a result of custodial violence
or protracted court battles is abundantly evident, and the fact that many persist
in mobilising and organising despite this is testimony to considerable personal
integrity. However, there is a significant difference between strategies of routine
and extraordinary coercion, in terms of the intentions that motivate their use
and their relation to the dynamics of hegemonic formations. Extraordinary
coercion mobilises force with the intent to permanently quell oppositional
collective action; that is, the intention is to raise the cost of collective action to
such a degree that oppositional movements are eliminated. By contrast, routine

6 This is not to say that experiences of violence could not be so traumatic as to cause
some activists to leave the movements. As in the case of intimidation, activists would
frequently share anecdotes about cases where this had happened. However, what is
more striking is the persistent reference to how debilitating false cases and criminal
prosecution were to them as activists (interviews and field notes, 2009–2010).
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 219

coercion does not aim to eliminate oppositional movements as such. Rather,

it is intended to demotivate and discourage activists and potential movement
participants. Moreover, routine coercion is intended to make activism less
effective by obstructing mobilisation and deflecting activist energies—in
particular, as my account above shows, by enmeshing movement participants
in protracted and arbitrary judicial processes. Movements do not collapse under
the weight of such coercion, but their progress is constrained and undermined.
Whereas extraordinary coercion takes place mainly in conjunctures where
the reproduction of hegemonic formations has been fundamentally destabilised,
routine coercion is a more constant presence—and often closely intertwined
with democratic transactions and accommodations—that seeks to prevent such
conjunctures from arising by limiting the impact of mobilisation from below. In
the context of western Madhya Pradesh, this dynamic is clearly evident in the
case of the KMCS, which never faced a campaign of extraordinary coercion as
a result of its mobilisation against everyday tyranny. Indeed, the Sangath came
in for the most brutal and sustained repression as a result of its participation of
the Narmada anti-dam campaign (see Nilsen 2010: chapters 4, 5, 6).
This peaked in early 1993, as the District Collector of Jhabua set off on
a padyatra (march on foot) to the Bhil villages in the submergence zone of
the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP)—supposedly to inform project-affected
communities about plans for resettlement and rehabilitation and to survey
the homes of those who were to be displaced (see Baviskar 1995: 246–258).
A number of violent episodes ensued in villages that had been mobilised by
the Sangath: the police and the survey teams were told that they were not
welcome, and in response they dealt out beatings and wrecked houses. This
spiral reached its climax during the last days of January, when police attacked
the village of Anjanvara, arrested several women, and opened fire on angry
villagers who were pelting them with stones. Baviskar notes in her eyewitness
account: ‘Anjanvara is a poor village; the police inflicted damage worth over
fifty thousand rupees’ (ibid: 254). In early February that year, nine activists
were arrested in the aftermath of a press conference that the KMCS had
organised in Indore: they were all severely beaten while in police custody, and
a woman activist was threatened with rape. In addition, as an act of public
humiliation, the arrested activists were handcuffed and then paraded around
the streets of Alirajpur town.7

7 This, as Baviskar (1995: 257) points out, contravened a Supreme Court Directive
which imposes stringent limitations on the circumstances in which it is allowed to
220 Adivasis and the State

Activists were clear that these events had to be understood in terms of the
nature of the conflict over the SSP and the particular conjuncture that had
crystallised in the early 1990s (interviews and field notes, 2009–2010). First of
all, the SSP was intended to further the consolidation of a built environment
of production that would further the development of agroindustrial capitalism
in southern and central Gujarat. As such, propertied classes who exercised
significant political power at both regional and national levels propelled the
project forward. Second, project authorities were under intense pressure from
the World Bank—a key source of international funding for the project—to fulfil
their legal obligations to the project-affected communities. If they failed to do
so, the Bank would withdraw the loan it had extended to enable the completion
of the project.8 As one activist put it, the ‘Sardar Sarovar was a larger stake
for the government’ and the anti-dam campaign effectively destabilised an
extra-local hegemonic formation (interview, Ravi Hemadri, September 2009).
This was in contrast to the issues that the KMCS had originally mobilised
around, such as corrupt exactions of forest rights, which were local in nature.
As Ravi pointed out, local authorities had realised that ‘they could afford to
be progressive on smaller issues … corruption was a small issue for them to
handle at the local level … at least a few cases, not as a systemic process …
they knew that they were capable of handling the corruption cases’ (interview,
September 2009).
As I argued in Chapter 6, making concessions to the kind of claims that
the KMCS articulated around legality in state–society relations can in many
ways be seen as an attempt to contain subaltern claims-making within the
political boundaries of a particular hegemonic formation.9 Such practices of
democratic accommodation are perhaps best understood as working in tandem

handcuff prisoners under trial. As a result, when the KMCS filed a writ petition
with the Supreme Court relating to these incidents, the Court found the Jhabua
administration to have acted in contempt of court. Criminal proceedings were initiated
against the Superintendent of Police in Jhabua and several police officers in Alirajpur.
8 World Bank funding for the Sardar Sarovar dam was withdrawn in 1993, following
an intense transnational campaign and an independent review of the project (see
Nilsen 2010: 131–134).
9 To reiterate a point made in Chapter 6, this argument does not entail that the
achievements of the KMCS were insignificant. On the contrary, the making of a
rudimentary civil society in a context where everyday tyranny had prevailed was a
remarkable accomplishment, and—most crucially—a conditio sine qua non for the
emergence of resistance among the Bhil Adivasis of western Madhya Pradesh.
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 221

with routine coercion to ensure that subaltern resistance is kept within limits
that are compatible with the compulsions of hegemonic reproduction.
This becomes very clear when we consider activist reflections over the
gradual decline of the KMCS. Most of the activists we interviewed agreed
that, when the movement entered into a phase of abeyance between 1996 and
2003, this was not a consequence of the impact of coercion, but rather due
to a combination of developments internal to the movement. Some of the
Bhil activists gradually came to hold the opinion that, as the most immediate
problems posed by the everyday tyranny of the state had been resolved, there
was no need any longer to sustain the Sangath. Other Bhil activists had got
closely involved with the cultural politics of the Adivasi Ekta Parishad—a front
of tribal movements based in Rajasthan—and were increasingly uncomfortable
with the continued presence of non-tribal activists in the organisation.
While this led to rifts and conflicts, several of the middle class activists
had already started drifting away from the KMCS as a result of life course
changes—it was quite common, for example, for middle class activists to leave
Alirajpur and the Sangath as they started a family. Ultimately, there were
quite simply not enough full-time activists left to keep the KMCS going: ‘It
was like this: Bhagat, you go to your house. Dediya, you go to yours; Khemla
to yours; Bhawarsingh, Amit, Rahul—everyone lives separately and have
your own lives. But it broke down after that’ (interview, Dediya, April 2010).
Conversely, it is precisely when such consent-oriented strategies—coupled
with the forms of routine coercion detailed above—fail to contain oppositional
collective action from below that dominant groups will resort to extraordinary
strategies centred on coordinated and sustained coercion. To better understand
how such strategies are put into action, the next section details the repression
of the AMS in the late 1990s.

Quelling the Sangathan

At that time, in 1997, the Sangathan was quite strong in Khargone, Khandwa,
Dewas, Burhanpur, Barwani. And because of this, the looters were having
trouble. The netas had to answer to the people. The people were asking: ‘You
have been our neta for so long, what have you done?’ The businessmen were
told: ‘Our goods will be sold and weighed according to our calculations.’ There
were dharnas at karamcharis’ [local officials] houses. The SDM’s house was
gheraoed. This was the pressure of the AMS on the looters. And they all came
together because of this.
222 Adivasis and the State

Bamniya was explaining to us how the rise of the AMS over a five-year
period had generated a backlash against the movement: ‘So these people, the
looters, started a Sangathan which was named Shanti Sena. All the looters came
together, and their main goal was to finish the AMS’ (interview, November
2009). The rise of the AMS had indeed been remarkable: by 1996, it was active
in more than 500 villages in three blocks of Khargone district, and linked its
activities to several other Adivasi organisations in the region, as well as to
wider networks of social movements in Madhya Pradesh and India: ‘There
was a very rapid mobilisation, the state was not able to cope with it. The state
didn’t understand it; they were not able to react. So the organisation grew very
fast’ (interview, Madhuri Krishnaswamy, April 2010).
Significantly, the AMS had developed sufficient organisational strength to
successfully challenge both timber smuggling and the illegal trade in liquor
that was rife in Adivasi villages. For example, in Bhagwanpura block, the AMS
pursued a campaign against the liquor trade that eventually led to the closure
of some 250 outlets (interviews and field notes, 2009–2010; see also Baviskar
2001: 12). In another case, AMS activists stopped a truck carrying a huge load
of illegally felled timber, and reported the matter to the police. Gyarsilal Rawat,
a Congress MLA from the area, was directly implicated in the smuggling and
the incident made news (interview, Bijoy Panda, November 2009; see also
Baviskar 2001: 12). These were direct blows to the revenue streams that lined
the pockets of locally powerful groups—merchants and businessmen involved
in the liquor and timber mafias, police and Forest Department personnel,
Adivasi dalals, and local politicians. Naturally, their resentment of the AMS
and its activities was growing: ‘We were fighting against the exploitation
done by these people’, Suraj mused, ‘so they felt that if the Adivasi sangathan
becomes powerful, then their influence in Badwani and Khargone districts
will come to an end’ (interview, November 2009).
Yet the local resentment generated by the Sangathan’s advance cannot in
and of itself explain why the AMS was subjected to a coordinated campaign
of coercion propelled by the intervention of the upper political echelons of
the state government. As I showed in Chapters 5 and 6, when challenged
by the mobilisations of the KMCS and the AMS, senior bureaucrats and
leading politicians were quite willing to impose sanctions on errant state
personnel. Crucially, doing so did not necessarily go against the grain of their
interests, and, as in the case of the KMCS above, such accommodation was
closely intertwined with low-intensity coercion of different kinds. Moreover,
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 223

coordinated campaigns of repression come with their own risks for dominant
groups and state authorities, in the sense that they might cause a loss of
legitimacy in the public sphere and give rise to martyr figures that boost the
prestige of oppositional movements. So why was the AMS targeted in the way
that it was in 1996 and 1997?
By 1996, the Sangathan was actively involved in mobilising for the
implementation of PESA—a law that, as I pointed out in Chapter 6, provided
social movements such as the AMS with a means of institutionalising Adivasi
empowerment sanctified by the power of the highest judicial authority in the
land. The fact that this campaign was gathering significant momentum was
brought home when the AMS managed to gather more than 100,000 people for
a rally championing Adivasi self-rule in the district headquarters of Khargone
(interview, Nikunj Bhutia, April 2010). At this point, then, the challenge
that the AMS had levelled at local state personnel, merchants, businessmen,
moneylenders, and political brokers was beginning to morph into a force that
could potentially destabilise the political structures of power that buttressed
Congress hegemony in the region. In concrete terms, Subhash Yadav—the
Deputy Chief Minister of Digvijay Singh’s Congress government and an MLA
from the constituency of Kasaravad in Khargone district—perceived the AMS
as constituting a real threat to his position. Consequently, a nexus of interests
emerged across different scales—from the state government in Bhopal to tribal
village elites in Khargone district. This nexus would underpin and animate an
extraordinary offensive that traversed civil and political society as it mobilised
coercion against the Sangathan.10
The first indications that such a nexus was emerging could be discerned
during the first half of 1996. In February of that year, AMS activists in the
village of Kabri declared that during the Indal festival—the most important
festival for Bhil Adivasis—no liquor would be sold in the village. This irked
Jhagdia Patel, the hereditary headman of Kabri village and president of
Bhagwanpura Congress Committee. Working in close league with Gauri

10 The following narrative is based on a wide variety of sources: reports and draft reports
by the National Commission for Women and the People’s Union for Civil Liberties,
notes and circulars prepared by the Adivasi Mukti Sangathan, media reports, and
interviews with AMS activists. I have also drawn on Amita Baviskar’s (2001) detailed
account of the repression of the AMS, which is based on her work as a civil liberties
activist. Only sources that are directly quoted will be referenced in the text.
224 Adivasis and the State

Shankar Jaiswal, a local Congress strongman and kingpin of the liquor mafia
in the area, he had profited handsomely from illegal trading in alcohol for a
long time; he was not going to sit idly by as the AMS undermined his position
and cut off his income.
He and his men abducted one of the anti-liquor activists. After they had
seized the activist, they proceeded to torture him: they broke one of his legs
and one of his arms; when he begged for a drink of water, they pissed in his
mouth. A few days later, Remsingh, sarpanch (elected head) of Kabri and the
leader of the AMS’s anti-liquor campaign in the village, was called to the local
police station to negotiate the dispute with Jhagdia Patel. When he was on his
way to the police station with two fellow activists, Jhagdia Patel’s men, who
were in the company of police, ambushed him. In making their escape, one of
Remsingh’s companions shot and killed one of the attackers with his bow and
arrow. When the police arrived in Kabri for investigations the next day, they
beat up several women and children who had stayed behind in the village after
the men had sought refuge in the forest. Following this, Jhagdia Patel’s men
went on a rampage: accompanied by the Station House Officer of the thana
in Bhagalpur, they vandalised, looted, and burned the houses of Remsingh
and other anti-liquor activists affiliated with the AMS. During these attacks,
drinking water and stores of food grain were poisoned. In an indication both of
what was to come and the extensive degree of state complicity in the vendetta
against the anti-liquor activists, the police took no action against Jhagdia and
his accomplices.
The next month, the AMS’s campaign against illegal felling and timber
smuggling intensified. The timber mafia promptly turned to Subhash Yadav
for support. In a public meeting, Yadav responded by calling on the police and
the Forest Department to crush the AMS. If they failed to do so, he said, he
would see to it himself. He proceeded to oversee the formation of the Shanti
Sena with the stated objective of destroying the Sangathan. Although the
Shanti Sena in this original incarnation never gathered momentum, Yadav
continued his public attacks on the AMS. In early May, he proclaimed that
he would bury the movement six feet underground and that he would like
to attend the funerals of Bijoybhai and Nikunj. In June, Jhagdia Patel and
his followers carried out new attacks on AMS strongholds, uprooting and
destroying standing crops in the process.
The following year witnessed an escalation of the conflict between the AMS
and its opponents. On 13 June 1997, the Shanti Sena was revived—this time
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 225

with the modified and more elaborate moniker Adivasi Samaj Sudhar Shanti
Sena—with Jhagdia Patel at its helm, and with strong support from the liquor
and timber mafias as well as Deputy Chief Minister Subhash Yadav. Five days
later, the Forest Department organised a meeting in the village of Pepaljhopa
to inaugurate an eco-development centre linked to the highly contentious
Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project—an initiative funded by the World Bank
from 1995 to 2000.11 The Deputy Chief Minister was present at the meeting in
his official capacity, and gave a speech in which he accused the AMS of being
a Naxalite organisation involved in sabotaging the government’s development
projects. If he were Home Minister, he declared, the AMS would have been
driven out not just from Madhya Pradesh, but also from India.
The next month witnessed a spate of attacks on AMS activists. On 7 July,
members of the Shanti Sena attacked AMS activists in Shahpura village.
The activists were driven out of the village and their houses were looted and
destroyed. Several of them were subsequently implicated in false criminal
cases and arrested. Five days later, Gulab Patel—a village headman and well-
known agent for the timber mafia—stabbed AMS activists in the village of
Bondarimal when they refused to accept his demands for bribes. The victims
of the attack also had their houses looted and destroyed. A few days after this
incident, men from the Shanti Sena opened fire on AMS activists in the same
village. When the activists turned up at a nearby thana to report the attack, the
Sub-Inspector of Police refused to accept their complaint. Instead, the activists
were charged with a variety of serious offences under the Indian Penal Code,
such as attempt to murder, house trespass, and rioting with a deadly weapon.
They were held in prison and denied bail until the end of August, when the
court dismissed the case against them for lack of evidence.
Several cases of arrests on trumped-up charges followed. In one case, four
AMS activists and two supporters were arrested on the charge of gang raping
two Adivasi women; one of the women later testified that the AMS activists
were not responsible for the rape. In another case, 36 AMS supporters had

11 As Baviskar (2001: 14n) notes, the eco-development centre was intended to provide
Adivasi villagers with training in forest conservation and improved forest management
techniques as part of an experiment in Joint Forest Management (JFM) in which
NGOs would collaborate with the government to induct villagers into participatory
forest conservation. See Bramhane and Panda (2000) for a critical review of the World
Bank funded project and Sundar (2000) for an incisive critique of the assumptions
underpinning JFM as an approach to forest management.
226 Adivasis and the State

cases lodged against them after they refused to bribe officials of the Forest
Department to overlook their nevad cultivation. In mid-August, AMS activists
and supporters from Bhagwanpura who had gathered to discuss the need to
protect their village forests were surrounded by an armed mob from the Shanti
Sena who ordered them to disperse. When they refused, the mob opened fire
on the villagers.
According to Bijoybhai, these attacks were part of a deliberate strategy: ‘So,
they started attacking and harassing our people … And their strategy was to
provoke these people, so that they will come to a fight kind of thing and they
will get into a trap’ (interview, November 2009). In other words, by deploying
the Shanti Sena to attack AMS activists and supporters, dominant groups
were hoping to provoke a violent response. As Nandini Sundar (2012: 250)
has pointed out, such a response would enable political authorities to ‘point to
the violence as evidence that the movement in question does not enjoy a mass
base’ and this would in turn justify a more direct coercive intervention by the
state.12 From the point of view of tribal AMS activists, the strategy was one
that sought to divide and rule. Tulsibhai reflected as follows:

The Congress felt that if the Adivasi people get united, then their share of
money would get reduced. The BJP also had this same thought. Then they
thought that somehow or the other, there has to be enmity between them. In
this way, these party-wallahs got the Adivasi people to fight each other while
they sat back and watched the show. (Interview, April 2009)

Crucially, orchestrating violence in this manner—by mobilising Adivasis

against Adivasis—also made it possible for political and bureaucratic authorities
‘to explain violence as a “normal” aspect of tribal culture and to disguise [their]
own culpability in violent encounters’ (Baviskar 2001: 12).
The mobilisation of tribal factions against each other was partly enabled
by the fact that the AMS had started to intervene in community disputes.
As Bijoybhai explained, its initial success in mobilising against the predatory
exactions of the state created a vacuum that Bhil activists filled by engaging
in dispute resolution in village communities. Going against his explicit advice,
leading activists—in part, according to Bijoybhai, buoyed by their previous

12 This also happened in the sense that the local vernacular media published stories
labelling the AMS a violent Naxalite outfit (field notes and interviews, 2009–2010;
see also Baviskar 2001).
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 227

success—started to intervene in a field that had previously been the domain

of village councils and hereditary headmen. This threw up two closely related
problems. On the one hand, it generated resentment among parties compelled
to accept decisions that ran counter to their interests; on the other hand, village
elites were antagonised as they lost prestige and income:

So now, when AMS with newfound strength and confidence enter into that
field, without having that traditional thing, it is a new group, and you decide
certain things and people accept. If people don’t accept, then you make them
accept forcefully. So there is resentment … The second thing—you know,
just because these traditional leaders were having this kind of function for a
long time and, they used to get some monetary benefits also, and that was
completely cut off … This situation created a base for the intervention of these
vested interests against the AMS. (Interview, Bijoy Panda, November 2009)

The events that ensued during the summer and autumn of 1997 lends
credence to Bijoybhai’s argument, as the Shanti Sena and their political patrons
took advantage of the tensions generated by AMS intervention in a property
dispute to launch a major offensive against the movement.
During the summer of 1997, Kaliabhai, an AMS activist, intervened in the
negotiation of a property dispute in the village of Julwania. Initially, a panchayat
consisting of the patels of several villages had been called to adjudicate on a case
where two brothers were locked in a conflict over land: one man, Bhimsingh,
was accused of having dispossessed his brother, Dongarsingh. The panchayat
fined Bhimsingh Rs. 35,000 for his offence. Bhimsingh then approached
Kaliabhai for help, and he negotiated a reduction of the fine to Rs. 13,000.
Bhimsingh, however, was not satisfied with this outcome and directed his anger
against Kaliabhai.13 Egged on by local police, he and his son approached the
Superintendent of Police (SP) in Khargone to file charges of extortion against
Kaliabhai, but the charges were refused due to lack of evidence. Following
political pressure, however, a case of extortion was registered not just against
Kaliabhai but 29 other AMS activists (none of whom had been involved in
the settlement of the dispute) at the thana in Barud village.
Meanwhile, Jhagdia Patel was mobilising to link the grievances caused by
Kaliabhai’s intervention in the dispute between Bhimsingh and Dongarsingh

13 According to the police, there were pre-existing tensions between Kaliabhai and
Bhimsingh, as Bhimsingh’s son had defeated Kalia in the 1994 sarpanch elections. It
has not been possible to verify this claim.
228 Adivasis and the State

to the Shanti Sena’s attempts to stamp out the AMS. On 21 August, the Shanti
Sena organised a meeting in Kabri in which Jhagdia implored the villagers to
teach Kaliabhai a lesson. Soon after, Jhagdia was granted police protection,
and he and his followers proceeded to launch a series of attacks in villages
known to be AMS strongholds with complete impunity.14
The first village to be attacked was Julwania: on 25 August, the day
after he had been granted protection, Jhagdia Patel spearheaded a group of
approximately 150 Shanti Sena members that entered the village and headed
for Kaliabhai’s house. When they found that he was not at home, they stripped
his wife and raped her. Speaking to reporters about the attack, Kaliabhai’s
wife Namlibai said: ‘More than 100 Shanti Sena men overpowered me, and
five or six of them raped me. I lost consciousness after that’ (IPS 1997). In
a statement to the PUCL (People’s Union for Civil Liberties), she described
what happened as follows: ‘Kalia and others had left four days before the rape.
Jhagdia and Ghatia Bhaila were after me. I ran to the woods and they caught
me, stoned me out of my hiding place and raped me’ (PUCL 1997: 26). Four
other women—two of whom were visiting from Kabri village—were subjected
to the same treatment, and two of them had their infants—one a couple of
days old, the other three months—snatched from them at gunpoint. One of
the children was thrown in a nearby stream by the Shanti Sena posse and
drowned; the fate of the other child remains unknown.
The gang rapes of the five women in Julwania follow a familiar and sinister
pattern of political conflict and collective violence in which men inscribe their
political programmes on the bodies of women through social performances
intended to shame and dishonour entire communities (see, for example,
MacKinnon 1994; Russell-Brown 2003; Sharlach 2000). In the Indian context,
sexual violence has been particularly pronounced during periods of religious
and communal conflict—from Partition in 1947 to the anti-Muslim pogroms
in Gujarat in 2002 (see for example Butalia 2000; Das 1995: chapter 3; Sarkar
2002; Anand 2007; Kumar 2016). However, as Manali Desai (2016: 67) notes,
such ‘embodied assertions of power’ are also intrinsic to caste and class conflicts
over land and labour in rural India and to state counterinsurgency operations,
for example, in Kashmir and Northeast India (see also Kunnath 2012; Kazi

14 Significantly—and symptomatic of the state’s complicity in the repression of the

AMS—Kaliabhai’s repeated requests for police protection during the same period
had all been rejected. Indeed, the refusal of the police to intervene to prevent violence
at the request of the AMS points towards the planned nature of these attacks and
again underscores state complicity.
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 229

2014; McDuie-Ra 2012).15 In Khargone, counterinsurgency was of course

carried out at a much smaller and highly localised scale, and—not unlike the
operations of the Salwa Judum, which came into being in Bastar a decade later
(see Sundar 2016b)—these operations relied in large measure on a civil society
proxy. Moreover, the sexual violence that was perpetrated in Julwania was not
embedded in hierarchies of difference based on caste, religion, or ethnicity in
a way that can be compared, for example, to events in Gujarat or Manipur.16
Rather—and again the comparison with the Salwa Judum is relevant17—it
was carried out by Adivasis against other Adivasis. Nevertheless, the meaning
of the attack on the five women was abundantly clear, as dominant groups
demonstrated their power and authority by meting out a form of collective
punishment that targeted the bodies and lives of women and children related
to or associated with the Sangathan and its activists.
The common Adivasi identity of the attackers and the victims was in
turn mobilised by the state as a means of deflecting an attempt by the five

15 As Srila Roy (2012) has noted, sexual violence was not only integral to
counterinsurgency operations against the Naxalite movement, but also to the
political spaces of the movement itself. ‘The spaces of violence, for these women’,
she writes, ‘were not confined to the “public” domain of political conf lict, but
included normatively safe spaces of shelter and refuge. The threat of sexual violence
can be located precisely at the interface of these spaces—the “private” space of the
underground/shelter and the “public” space of armed struggle’ (ibid: 121).
16 ‘Gang rape’, Manali Desai (2016: 69) writes, ‘has also been used as an intermittent
but powerful tactic of social control in a changing political landscape where lower
castes have mobilised against historic caste discrimination.’ In other words, in the
context of caste-based contention, sexual violence serves as a modality through
which dominant caste groups assert their superiority and authority over belligerent
or insurgent Dalits. In her analysis of the extreme sexual violence and the rampant
murder of children—both born and unborn—that suffused the 2002 anti-Muslim
pogroms in Gujarat, Tanika Sarkar (2002) argues that what was taking place was
an attempt by the Hindu majority community to assert themselves against what
was perceived to be the social and demographic advances of Muslims—even to the
point of symbolically destroying future Muslim generations (see also Anand 2007).
Similarly, McDuie-Ra (2012: 332) argues as follows about sexual violence against
indigenous women in Northeast India: ‘Race and gender intersect in harassment and
violence directed against tribal women, particularly by non-tribal members of the
armed forces. Thus, non-tribal women are not just “women of the enemy”, but also
perceived to be less bound by moral codes that apply to women elsewhere in India.’
17 I explore the implications of these parallels further below.
230 Adivasis and the State

women—two of whom were still teenagers—to file first information reports

(FIRs) about the gang rapes. The police refused to register their complaints.
According to the officers in charge, the rapes could not have taken place:
tribals, they claimed, do not commit gang rapes. The fact that both the
attackers and two of the victims were from Kabri village made it even more
unthinkable, the police claimed, that the rapes had actually happened. This
of course constitutes another variation on an all-too familiar dimension of
sexual violence in India, namely the fact that the identity markers of subaltern
women—caste, in the infamous case of Bhanwari Devi, for example, where
it was asserted that upper caste men would never rape a Dalit woman due to
fears of ritual pollution—are marshalled as reasons to disbelieve their claims
of rape (see Das 1996; Dutta and Sircar 2013; Baxi 2014). In this case, the
police added insult to injury by using the fact that time had lapsed between
the attack and the attempt to file FIRs as grounds for refusing to register the
women’s complaints.18
The following day, the police party that had come with Jhagdia Patel to
Julwania as a protective escort learned that Kaliabhai and his supporters—
approximately 150 in number—were bathing in a stream near Bhampura.
As they caught up with him, the two groups—the Shanti Sena and their
police escort and Kaliabhai and his followers—came face to face with each
other on opposite sides of the stream. Kaliabhai’s group attacked the Shanti
Sena outfit and chased them and the police to the village of Rangadi, where
Jhagdia escaped into a house and hid in the loft. His men and the police escort
rushed in after him and barricaded themselves in the house. Kaliabhai’s group
gathered outside and demanded that Jhagdia be handed over. Ultimately, the
police officers pushed Jhagdia out the door. He was killed with an arrow, and
the group of angry men then stoned his dead body.
In stark contrast to their response to the gang rape in Julwania, the police
registered cases against more than 80 people associated with the AMS for
the murder of Jhagdia Patel the very next day. A reward of 2,000 rupees was
announced for information leading to the arrest of Kaliabhai. Similarly, a
reward of 1,000 rupees was offered for information about the whereabouts

18 The delay in filing FIRs was due to the fact that the women escaped to the forest
where they hid for two weeks after the attack took place. FIRs were finally registered
on 18 September 1997. This was facilitated by the intervention of Kalpana Mehta,
who was on a fact-finding mission in the area on behalf of the National Commission
for Women.
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 231

of Remsingh, Jhagdia Patel’s old nemesis in Kabri. Two weeks later, the
Director Inspector General of Police increased the reward for information
about Kaliabhai to 10,000 rupees. Search parties were sent into villages and
forests to locate Kaliabhai and the others accused of the murder of Jhagdia
Patel. A high-level meeting of the state government took place in Bhopal
to discuss possible ways of having the AMS banned, but failed to reach
agreement on this step. On 31 August, Subhash Yadav and two other state
ministers—Tanvant Singh Keer, Minister of Local Administration, and
Harbans Singh, Minister of Panchayati Raj—arrived in Kabri and announced
that the state government would give 100,000 rupees to Jhagdia Patel’s family
as compensation for his death. The next day, Yadav gave a public speech in
which he urged the Shanti Sena to recruit more members, and instructed
the police to provide five people in each village with guns so as to enable
them to counter the AMS. Following this, the police set up camp in Kabri,
and started touring the area in the company of the Shanti Sena. ‘The police
does not recognise tribals’, the Khargone Superintendent of Police argued
when questioned about this practice, ‘we cannot even tell if we are in the
right village’ (PUCL 1997: 27).
As they entered villages, the Shanti Sena groups would force residents to pay
a membership fee of 25 rupees. On top of this, they demanded that villagers pay
an additional 11 rupees to get a receipt for the payment of the membership fee.
Attacks on AMS village strongholds and activists continued. In Mandav village
in Nepangar block of Khandwa district, some 400 forest guards, accompanied
by a team of 20 men from the Special Action Force, attacked a group of 15
to 20 villagers who were working on their jowar fields. The villagers, who
had cultivated these fields for a long time, had refused to pay bribes to the
Forest Department. The Forest Department personnel were obviously out for
revenge and uprooted the standing crop. The villagers responded by hurling
stones and the forest guards and Special Action Force men opened fire. Two
Adivasis were shot dead, and six were injured. Altogether nine farmers had
their entire crop—and, therefore, a crucial part of their food supply—razed
to the ground. The authorities tried to justify the attack by arguing that the
villagers were cutting down trees, but as the PUCL report notes, this claim
lacks credibility as there had been no trees on the fields in question for more
than two decades. Moreover, there were no records of injuries among the Forest
Department staff who were allegedly hurt during the incident. Indeed, as the
report concludes, the police force was in fact guilty of using excessive force as
it resorted to shooting without a prior order from a magistrate.
232 Adivasis and the State

A few days later, AMS activists who were attempting to defuse tensions
in the village of Sinkheda were attacked by a group of Shanti Sena followers
who accused them of killing Jhagdia Patel. The police arrived on the scene
and one of the activists, Motiram, was tied, beaten up, and then taken to the
nearest thana, where a number of false cases were registered against him and
other Sangathan activists as well. Six days later, Madhuri Krishnaswamy, who
had been a driving force in the AMS’ anti-liquor campaign in Bhagwanpura,
was arrested in Bhopal in connection with the charges of extortion made by
Bhimsingh Patel against several activists in the organisation. On 12 September,
Shivnath, an AMS supporter from Chacharia village in Sendwha block, was
assaulted by local police who demanded that he tell them where Jhagdia Patel’s
murderers could be found, and to corroborate the allegations of extortion that
had been brought against the activists of the Sangathan. When Shivnath
refused to comply with their orders, the police threatened to take his life before
they proceeded to the village of Sorani where, after nightfall, they assaulted
several AMS supporters.
As a result of attacks such as these, there was substantial displacement of
individuals, households, hamlets, and villages associated with the AMS across
Khargone and Khandwa districts. In Remsingh’s hamlet in Kabri village, for
example, between 700 and 800 people ran away and took refuge in the forest.
During field visits, representatives of the National Commission for Women
(NCW) encountered the following scenario in hamlets known to be AMS
strongholds:

… we found fresh cow dung, uncleaned, on the floor of the houses, no corn in
fallias that had been deserted and the crop standing in the field, fairly close to
damage on account of delay in harvesting … We also saw broken doors and
houses bereft of any possessions. The way grain was spilled in many places it
pointed to looting. Bins were lying upturned. Decaying food was additional
proof that the houses had been abandoned in a hurry, (NCW 1997a: 5)

In its full report, the NCW (1997b: 20) noted: ‘The few women who
were making a return were crying bitterly and made many complaints about
continuing harassment.’ In a note to the National Human Rights Commission,
the AMS (1998: 1) pointed out that the displacement continued for several
months, until the end of 1997 and well into the next year as a result of continued
attacks and harassment by the Shanti Sena: ‘On 30–31.12.97, the hopes of
villagers that they would be able to return to their villages were totally dashed
when the home of Mastaria, of Kabri village, was burnt down in the presence
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 233

of the police, when his family attempted to return to the village.’ Mastaria
was an AMS activist who had been kidnapped and beaten up by a Shanti
Sena group in late August 1997. Following his kidnapping, he was illegally
detained by the police for more than 10 days. When the police threatened to
kill him, he was compelled to make a series of false allegations against the
AMS. ‘Since he subsequently filed a complaint against the police and went to
the press on this matter’, the AMS noted, ‘he is now being persecuted in this
manner’ (ibid: 1). On 15 January 1998, his brother’s house in Kabri was razed
to the ground, and the Shanti Sena also carried out attacks on a number of
houses belonging to AMS activists and supporters in other villages. ‘Several
families, having lost both their Rabi (spring) and Kharif (monsoon) crops,
have been rendered destitute. Many have fled to Maharashtra in search of
employment as wage labour’ (ibid: 1).
The police and local authorities facilitated the attacks on AMS activists
and households and hamlets that were known to support or participate in
the movement by letting the Shanti Sena operate with complete impunity:
‘Threats of violence and intimidation are a continuing reality for the villagers’
(NCW 1997b: 19). The report went on to note: ‘ … the fact of the matter is
that the families who had sided with [Jhagdia Patel] do feel confident with
the police around, in fact so confident that they make open threats against
the accused in the murder case … ’ (ibid: 19). Shanti Sena confidence was
well-founded. Throughout the autumn months of 1997, the Khargone police
authorities demonstrated a blatant bias in the way they responded to the
ongoing conflict:

When a member of Shanti Sena makes a complaint, they start investigations

and when the other group makes a complaint, or for that matter, respectable
members of the society bring crimes against AMS members to the notice of
the police and the administration, they publicly make them out to be motivated
complaints … they are dismissive of complaints made by the AMS as an
organisation or for that matter by its members. (NCW 1997a: 3)

Speaking to a journalist at the time, Jagdishbhai, an AMS activist, said:

‘The Shanti Sena has gone all out in its attempt to subdue us. Since they have
the backing of the police, we cannot even register cases, leave alone expect the
administration to take action’ (IPS 1997).
As a result of this consistent bias, a large number of false cases accumulated
against AMS activists—more than 500 activists were charged in as many as
150 cases, for serious offenses such as extortion and murder. As the PUCL
234 Adivasis and the State

noted at the time, this provided the police with a useful tool in its attempt to
quell the Sangathan:

The murder cases against hundreds of people who are not named leave plenty
of scope for arbitrariness. The police can pick up anybody as an accused, and
are in fact proceeding to do so. Such misuse of the criminal justice system
is clearly aimed at intimidation and an attempt to crush the organisation.
(PUCL 1997b: 19)

Indeed, as they moved around the villages, the police would often arrest
activists who were identified by the Shanti Sena members who accompanied
them. The collusion between the Shanti Sena and the police throughout this
period was nothing short of all-pervasive: ‘There is a systematic involvement
of police at all levels’, the NCW (1997a: 7) concluded in one of its reports.
In a bid to stave off the pressure from above, leading activists of the AMS
convinced Kaliabhai and 16 other activists who had been on the run to surrender
to the Deputy Inspector General of Police in Indore on 14 September 1997.
The court remanded the group to police custody for two days on 15 September.
Two days later, in a fateful move, an armed escort of 15 policemen brought
Kaliabhai with them on an expedition to identify firearms that were supposed
to have been used in the killing of Jhagdia Patel. On their way back to the police
station, the team passed through Kabri—Jhagdia Patel’s village—and found
themselves surrounded by some 200 people who demanded that Kaliabhai be
handed over to them. Kaliabhai, who was handcuffed and whose legs were
chained, was released to the angry crowd. He was killed with an axe and his
body was hacked into small pieces.
The official police account portrays Kaliabhai’s murder as a retaliatory
killing carried out by Jhagdia Patel’s supporters from Kabri. On the morning
of 17 September, on returning through Kabri, the police team supposedly
found that the road had been blocked, and suddenly 200 to 300 Adivasis
emerged out of the nearby fields and attacked the car they were travelling in.
The driver tried to reverse, but hit a milestone, and the car came to a halt.
Kaliabhai then tried to escape, but was caught and killed by the attackers.
However, as the PUCL’s report points out, there are a number of things that
do not add up in this account.
First of all, there was no good reason to take Kaliabhai along to recover
firearms, as Jhagdia by all accounts was killed not with a gun but with an arrow.
Second, the account of the attack on the police car is dubious: an obstacle on
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 235

the road could have been seen from far away, and the standing crop in the fields
was not high enough to conceal a party of 200 to 300 people. To this should
be added the fact, as the NCW noted in its preliminary report, that there were
three possible routes that could have been used to reach Kaliabhai’s village.
Two of these would have allowed them to steer clear of Kabri, but these were
not chosen, which suggests that the police colluded with the Shanti Sena in
orchestrating the attack. The fact that people who were not residents of Kabri
participated in Kaliabhai’s murder in Kabri of course lends further credence
to this. Most revealing, however, is the PUCL’s account of their interviews
with Jhagdia Patel’s family after Kaliabhai’s murder:

They openly admitted that they had sworn to kill Kalia. They also revealed
that they had pre-decided the manner of his death; that is, that it would be
done in front of the police since Jhagdia Patel had also been murdered in front
of the police. They stated that they had publicly made this vow during Jhagdia
Patel’s funeral and that the police was well aware of it since they were present
during the funeral. (PUCL 1997b: 15)

According to Jhagdia’s family, when they surrounded the vehicle, the

police willingly opened the jeep door and pushed Kalia out. The PUCL was
unequivocal in its conclusion: ‘Taking all circumstances into consideration,
the team is of the prima facie view that there is complicity of the police in the
custodial death of Shri Kalia’ (ibid: 16).
Kaliabhai’s murder marked the climax of the campaign against the AMS.
As civil rights groups such as the PUCL and the NCW brought out their
findings, media narratives—which so far had tended to portray the AMS as
a Maoist organisation, as CIA agents, or as a foreign-funded NGO—started
to change. State authorities were suddenly on the defensive as they faced
allegations of misuse of power and complicity in Kaliabhai’s murder. Three
heads of the district civil and police administration who had played central
roles in mobilising coercion against the Sangathan—including Superintendent
of Police Pawan Jain—were removed. This of course testifies to the fact that
it is possible for the agents of extraordinary coercion to overreach themselves,
and that in so doing they stand to lose legitimacy. Nevertheless, as I showed
above, attacks against AMS activists and supporters by the Shanti Sena
continued into 1998, and the repression ultimately proved to be a dramatic
setback for the AMS. Bijoybhai summed it up as follows: ‘In the heydays, we
were having more than sixty full-timers; and after that repression, after two
236 Adivasis and the State

years of that repression we slid down to six’ (interview, November 2009). In

other words, over a six-month period dominant groups were able to raise the
costs of collective action to such a level that the AMS could no longer sustain
the organisational strength and mobilising capacities that it had built up since
its inception in 1992.
The impact of extraordinary coercion on movement strategies and activist
aspirations becomes even more clear if we consider Rahul’s reflections on
the trajectory of the Adivasi Morcha Sangathan, an organisation that he was
instrumental in founding in collaboration with his wife in Dewas district in
the middle of the 1990s.19 As with the KMCS and the AMS, the Adivasi
Morcha Sangathan was initially successful in challenging the everyday tyranny
of the local state. It managed to get liquor outlets closed and begun to win
elections to the district panchayat and several village panchayats. The Adivasi
Morcha Sangathan mobilised intensely around PESA and its provisions, and
developed the Gram Sabha as the principal decision-making body for Adivasi
communities in the area. The movement also challenged the World Bank-
funded Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project, which was eventually cancelled in
the face of strong local opposition and several critical reviews of the project.
In response, high-ranking bureaucrats—the Chief Secretary, along with
officials from the Forest, Revenue, and Police Departments—implemented
a campaign named Operation Clean to eliminate the Adivasi Morcha
Sangathan. MLAs from the region, along with senior bureaucrats started
holding meetings in which they called for the movement to be disbanded. Large
convoys of armed police, forest guards, and members of the Forest Protection
Committees established under the Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project started
touring the area and attacking villages known to be movement strongholds.
This process culminated in early April 2001, when the village of Mehendikheda
was attacked: several houses were demolished, four protesting Adivasis were
shot dead by police, and three were injured. According to Rahul, who was
imprisoned for several months in the aftermath of the shooting, the crackdown
permanently destroyed the local social base of the organisation. The experience
also had a significant impact on movement strategy. Speaking of how he and
other activists had approached the revival of the KMCS, he reflected as follows:

… after the experience of all these years … we are progressing very carefully.
Making sure that we don’t go to a point where we bring on repression. And so

19 This paragraph is based on Nilsen (2012a: 272–274).

 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 237

whatever little bit we can get without going to that kind of situation, we are
going through that … we are not going beyond that. Because that’s extremely
costly … That means that you are basically limiting your perspective. To try
and get whatever you can out of the system. (Interview, March 2010)

Activism is now consciously contained within the parameters of legality

laid down by the state; the counterhegemonic call for Adivasi self-rule has
receded to the background.20

State Power, Civil Society, and the Politics of Coercion

What stands out most clearly from the accounts presented in the two
sections above is the constant traffic between political and civil society, and,
concomitantly, private and public domains, in the mobilisation of coercion—
both routine and extraordinary. Routine coercion was enacted through links
between what Earl (2003) would refer to as ‘private agents’ and ‘state agents’—
local officials, Adivasi elites, and urban mercantile classes—and involved a
wide spectrum of what, in Ferree’s (2004) terms, could be referred to as ‘soft’
and ‘hard’ forms of repression, ranging from rumour mongering and media
slander to custodial violence and judicial harassment. This testifies, of course,
to the erroneousness of conceiving of the state—that is, what Gramsci would
refer to as political society—as a bounded entity separate and distinct from
the social forces that operate in civil society. This becomes even clearer in
the context of extraordinary coercion. The campaign against the AMS was
underpinned by a convergence of interests between dominant groups ‘inside’
and ‘outside’ political society across different scales. And, importantly, coercion
was enacted through a close nexus between political and bureaucratic elites,
the coercive apparatus of the state, and the Shanti Sena as a ‘non-state’ entity
mobilised through the patronage networks of the Congress.
This traffic between political and civil society is not unique to coercion as
it was mobilised in western Madhya Pradesh or in the Bhil heartland more
generally.21 On the contrary, an argument can be made that it is an intrinsic

20 Since its revival in 2003, the KMCS has established an NGO—the Dhas Gramin
Vikas Kendra—to facilitate funded work on rights-based issues parallel to the
organising and mobilising strategies of the Sangath.
21 As I have noted elsewhere, the Bhil movements that emerged in the Khandesh region
during the 1970s were similarly subjected to repression at the hands of both the police
and the dominant landed castes that they were mobilising against (see Nilsen 2012a).
238 Adivasis and the State

feature of how dominant groups in India act in and through the integral state
to ensure the restoration of hegemonic power against movements from below.
In order to reflect on what this entails in terms of how state power is structured
to reproduce hegemonic formations, it is worth considering in some detail how
this dynamic has worked out in other cases where coercive violence has been
mobilised against subaltern groups and oppositional movements.
The most immediate parallel in terms of how dominant groups traverse
political and civil society to mobilise coercive violence can be found in how
the Indian government has chosen to wage war against its own citizens in
Bastar district of Chhattisgarh state. In a region where an entrenched Maoist
uprising clashes with the drive of the Indian state to insert the country’s mineral
resources into the circuits of global accumulation, counterinsurgency has been
conducted since 2005 through the proxy of the Salwa Judum—a vigilante outfit
that draws its rank and file members from among local Adivasis and enjoys
political support from both Congress and BJP at state and national level.22 As
Nandini Sundar (2012, 2014, 2016b) has observed in her painstaking analysis
of the government’s counterinsurgency strategy in Bastar, the initiative to
form so-called local resistance groups to counter Maoism was articulated by
the Home Ministry as early as 2003.23
In Bastar, the district administration was quick to design a proposal for
what they portrayed as a local ‘people’s movement’ that would be put to work
for these purposes.24 ‘If we want to beat the Naxalites totally’, a note from the
administration read, ‘we will have to adopt their strategies, or else we will not
be successful’ (cited in Sundar 2014: 478). Some 4,000 local youth from tribal
communities were recruited into the Salwa Judum as Special Police Officers
(SPOs). A local Congress leader organised a series of public meetings with
support from the BJP. The police would always be present at these meetings,
often along with members of the district administration. Entire villages

22 The Gondi moniker Salwa Judum does not, as Sundar (2016b) points out, mean ‘peace
campaign’ as suggested by the government, but ‘purification/pacification hunt’.
23 In the Indian context, the strategy of creating village-based defence groups against
insurgents was pioneered in Kashmir and Nagaland (see Sundar 2016b: 20). Locally
based defence groups have of course figured prominently in many contexts around
the world, from Northern Ireland to Latin America.
24 In Chhattisgarh, the Salwa Judum had a precursor in the Jan Jagran Abhiyan initiative
of 1990 and 1991, a series of meetings that aimed to discourage Adivasis from joining
the Maoists and to encourage those who had already joined to surrender (Sundar
2016b: 92)
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 239

would be threatened into joining the Salwa Judum, and Maoist workers and
supporters would be made to surrender. ‘Villages which resisted were attacked,
and their inhabitants forcibly evacuated into “relief camps” controlled by the
Judum’ (ibid: 479). Thousands of homes were looted and burnt; hundreds of
people were killed; large numbers of women were raped (Sundar 2012, 2016b).
Adivasi villagers were relocated to camps where life was often precarious and
death frequently premature (Sundar 2016b: chapter 7).25
Now, the fact that counterinsurgency has been pursued this way in
Chhattisgarh—through a proxy constituted by what are apparently non-state
or private actors—should not be understood as a symptom of a state that
is lacking in institutional and operational capacities. On the contrary, the
counterinsurgency strategy in Bastar is propelled by a bloc of social forces that
are at the heart of neoliberal state formation in contemporary India—chief
among them corporate industrial capital, national political parties and the
security establishment in Delhi, and politicians, administrators and police
personnel at the state level (Sundar 2016b: 28–47). Central to this strategy
are ‘public–private partnerships in the industry of insecurity’—that is, nexuses
between state institutions and non-state formations that yield ‘an expansion
of options or greater market choice in the use of violence’ (Sundar 2014: 155).
Such nexuses are constituted across the analytical divide between political and
civil society. And according to Sundar, they are of fundamental importance,
both because the state apparatus cannot legitimately enact such violence against
citizens and because they effectively guarantee impunity to both state and non-
state actors. Consequently, vigilantism is not an aberration or an exception,
but a permanent feature of ‘the way that the relation between party and state
is organised, with the cadre and the ruling party dividing up the space of civil
society and the state between themselves’ (ibid: 156).
The caste militias of Bihar constitute another example of how political
society ‘rolls sideways into civil society’ (Sundar 2014: 169) when dominant

25 In all, 50,000 people were relocated to camps. Some 100,000 people f led to
neighbouring states to avoid internment. In 2011, the Supreme Court announced a
judgment declaring the Salwa Judum unconstitutional. However, the outfit was soon
revived by turning the SPOs into an auxiliary police force: ‘The SPOs, ultimately,
turned out to be the biggest beneficiaries of the judgment—with higher pay, better
guns and more job security’ (Sundar 2016b: 339). In 2009, the government resorted
to direct military intervention as it launched Operation Green Hunt—an offensive
against the Maoists which mobilised the Central Armed Police Forces along with
the Chhattisgarh police (Sundar 2012, 2016b: chapter 9).
240 Adivasis and the State

groups mobilise coercive violence against insurgent opposition. During the

initial decades after Independence, state politics in Bihar pivoted around
the Congress party and the social power of landowning upper caste groups:
‘Despite their opposing politics, these upper-caste factions had an interest in
maintaining upper-caste hegemony and generally represented the interests of
the upper-caste commercial landlords who emerged after the abolition of the
zamindari system’ (Witsoe 2013: 40). Upper caste hegemony and Congress
dominance persisted until the late 1960s, when the impact of the Green
Revolution, and land transfers to OBC tenants who gradually built up their
political clout, ‘weakened the patronage relations binding small cultivators and
bonded labourers to landlords’ (ibid: 41).
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Maoist mobilisation gained momentum
among landless labourers and marginal peasants—the majority of whom were
Dalits, and some of whom were from lower and intermediate caste groups.26
The Maoists mobilised around land rights and minimum wages, and rallied
Dalits around demands for dignity and against sexual abuse. They organised
wage strikes, economic blockades, and peoples’ courts. The Maoists also
carried out armed actions and targeted assassinations of oppressive landlords
(Louis 2002; Kunnath 2012). ‘To counter this grassroots challenge’, George
Kunnath (2012: 75) writes, ‘the landowning classes created their own caste
sena [militia].’ Between 1979 and 1994, 13 militia groups were formed,
representing Rajputs, Bhumihars, Yadavs, Kurmis, and Brahmins (ibid: 183;
see also Kumar 2008: chapter 4). The militias carried out murderous attacks
on villages known to be Maoist strongholds; gang rapes were an integral
part of their repertoire of terror. 27 With the emergence of caste militias, the
mobilisation of coercive violence by dominant groups in Bihar took on a

26 As Kunnath (2012: 137–144) notes, the Maoist movement in Bihar has witnessed an
influx of OBC caste groups, particularly Kurmis, which in turn has led to a certain
dissociation from the movement by Dalits, who have increasingly turned to more
identity-oriented political initiatives (ibid: 150–166).
27 Formed by Bhumihar landlords, the Ranvir Sena was the most violent and most
feared of the militias: it carried out 24 massacres between 1995 and 2000, which left
more than 200 Dalits dead. A comparable number of women and girls were raped
(Kumar 2008: chapter 5; Kunnath 2012: 184–188). Brameshwar Singh, the leader of
the Ranvir Sena, was assassinated in early June 2012. During his funeral ceremony,
an estimated 5,000 Bhumihar supporters of the Ranvir Sena went on the rampage,
beating up onlookers and causing large-scale damage to property (Mahaprashasta
2012).
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 241

qualitatively new dimension: ‘It was no longer an individual landlord exerting

his power over the landless and marginal peasants through his lathaith [hired
muscle] … but a well armed and organised militia representing the collective
interests of the dominant castes’ (Kunnath 2012: 181). The militias enjoyed
the patronage of a wide range of political parties, from Congress and the BJP
to the Samata Party and Janata Dal, and carried out actions in coordination
with sections of the state bureaucracy. The police were deeply complicit in
these attacks (ibid: 184–193).
But how do we understand caste militias in relation to the state? According
to one perspective, these outfits are a manifestation of ‘the slow but steady
erosion of the capacity of state power to mediate vicious cycles of social and
political conflicts’ (Kumar 2008: 59). This erosion is said to flow from the
changing balance of power that has resulted from the rise of landed middle
and lower caste groups and the unravelling of Congress dominance. In this
context, Kumar argues, the caste militias both protect the property of landed
classes, reinvent the moral norms that underpinned caste-based hierarchies
of power, and perform quasi-political functions. On this reading, a crisis of
governance made it necessary to forge a relationship between the state apparatus
and caste militias in order to ward off a challenge from below (ibid: 171–171;
cf. Kohli 1990: chapter 8).
The problem with this analysis lies in its Weberian assumptions, which lead
Kumar to conceptualise the relationship between the state and the caste militias
as an external relation between discrete entities. An argument that portrays
the caste militias as a symptom of state failure seems to take at face value the
discourse of governing authorities who claim that they are unable to carry out
their functions due to Maoist insurgency (Kunnath 2012: 177–180). As with
the Salwa Judum, the caste militias in rural Bihar are not symptomatic of a
failing state. On the contrary, they testify to how dominant groups can draw
on an ‘extensive inventory of practices’ (Sundar 2014: 153) when they mobilise
coercive violence against subaltern resistance, and the fact that this inventory
crosses the analytical divide between political society and civil society.
The foremost example, however, of how dominant groups traverse political
and civil society as they mobilise coercive violence can be found in the anti-
Muslim pogroms that are integral to the Hindutva project of transforming
‘Indian public culture into a sovereign, national culture rooted in what is
claimed to be a superior ancient Hindu past … ’ (Hansen 1999: 4). The political
project of Hindu nationalism has been pursued through an extensive network
of civil society organisations—the Sangh Parivar—with constituent elements
242 Adivasis and the State

ranging from political parties and trade unions to outfits dedicated to social
service and organisations that mobilise specific generational and ethnic groups
(Jaffrelot 1996; Hansen 1999). Pogroms targeting Muslim communities have
been a central part of the repertoire of practices through which this project
has been enacted—especially since the 1980s.
Hindutva has to be understood, first of all, in relation to changes in wider
structures of power and authority in state and society in India. As Thomas
Blom Hansen (1999: 4) has argued, contemporary Hindu nationalism emerged
as a conservative reaction to ‘a broader democratic transformation of both the
political field and the public culture in postcolonial India’. As a political project,
Hindutva initially had little traction among India’s poor and subaltern groups.
Indeed, Hindu nationalism took root among middle classes seeking to ward
off the challenge that had emerged in the form of what Christophe Jaffrelot
(2003) has referred to as India’s ‘silent revolution’—the rise of cultivating castes
and lower caste groups to political power in the 1970s and the 1980s (see also
Yadav 2000 and Frankel and Rao 1990a, 1990b). The crafting of what Ornit
Shani (2007) refers to as ethnoHinduism—a unitary Hindu identity that erases
religious difference—was driven by the tensions that this democratic revolution
created internally among Hindus, and transformed contradictions between
castes and classes into contradictions between religious communities (see also
Jaffrelot 1996: chapter 12). In this sense, then, the Hindutva project came to
function as ‘a more effective guarantee of stability and continued privilege
among dominant strata in Indian society’ (Hansen 1999: 153).
Collective violence is at the very heart of the Hindu nationalist project.
However, this collective violence does not directly target insurgent or assertive
subaltern groups. Rather, it targets a religious Other in order to constitute a
unitary Hindu identity that can buttress the reproduction of a hegemonic
formation perceived as being under siege (see Hansen 1999: 209–210). As
Amrita Basu (2015) notes, the mobilisation of collective violence in the form
of anti-Muslim pogroms is predicated on the existence of dense and strong
links between the BJP as a political party, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad as a
network of social movement organisations, and governments at state and federal
levels. A perfect storm, she argues, took place in Gujarat in 2002, when an
unparalleled conjunction of forces amplified Hindu nationalist militancy and
violence to a level exceptional in postcolonial times.
Whereas Basu’s argument is based on a sophisticated comparative analysis,
it is developed in a Weberian frame that is based on the assumption that
the state, political parties, and social movements are substantially distinct
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 243

formations. An alternative Gramscian view would posit these as different

institutional condensations of a hegemonic project pursued by dominant groups
that are analytically rather than substantially distinct from each other. Ward
Berenschot’s (2011) analysis of anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat goes a long
way in terms of enabling the articulation of such a view. At the core of his
analysis are ‘riot networks’—that is, networks of actors who perform different
roles and tasks in the enactment of communal violence and anti-Muslim
pogroms. Crucially, these networks traverse political and civil society, and
weave together politicians, political parties, social workers, local bureaucrats
and police, and criminal elements. Riot networks animate collective violence,
and collective violence in turn yields electoral dividends for political parties
in the Hindutva fold.28 Colonial and postcolonial state formation increased
the infrastructural power of the state, he argues, but not to such an extent
that citizens can easily access services from the state. Consequently, networks
of intermediaries emerged between citizens and the state that enabled people
to access services in exchange for political support. This process ‘engendered
local political networks that, in 2002, could be used to mobilise people for
violence’ (ibid: 43).
The nature of these networks has changed substantially over time, in no
small part due to the specific workings of the silent revolution in Gujarat.
From Independence until the early 1970s, caste- and class-based patronage
networks in Gujarat underpinned Congress hegemony. The party commanded
an unmatched capacity to exchange state services for electoral support as
it ‘controlled the main structures that mediated between state institutions’
(Berenschot 2011: 63). Brahmins and baniyas overwhelmingly controlled
state governments (Sud 2012: 25). This started to change from the late 1960s
onwards, in large part due to the way in which the internal rift in Congress
at the national level played out in Gujarat. As Indira Gandhi and her faction
gained the upper hand nationally, the old guard leadership of the Gujarat

28 The riot networks at the heart of Berenschot’s analysis are different from the
‘institutionalised riot systems’ identified by Paul Brass (2006) in his work on
communalism in north India, in the sense that they were not created for the specific
purpose of fomenting collective violence. Rather, they were constituted in response to
the difficulties that citizens face in interactions with state institutions, as patronage
networks facilitating state–citizen interactions. There are electoral benefits to be
had from being perceived as a politician who is able to ‘get things done’ for ordinary
citizens through these networks. Riot politics, in turn, are one of many practices
through which politicians achieve such an image.
244 Adivasis and the State

Congress was marginalised and the party’s grassroots network unravelled.

The party was further weakened by extensive protests in the early 1970s. In
Ahmedabad, these processes gained extra momentum as the Textile Labour
Association, which had been closely associated with Congress since 1919,
gradually lost its political clout when the city’s textile industry went into decline.
This development particularly deprived the poor and the working class of a
channel through which to access the state (see Breman 2004).
In the mid-1970s, the Congress tried to constitute itself as the dominant
party in the state through its KHAM strategy—an electoral project that
sought ‘to assemble a winning coalition of the most populous and backward
groups of the Gujarati population’ (Sud 2012: 27; see also Berenschot 2011:
67–71; Shani 2007: chapters 2 and 5).29 However, this strategy soon provoked
a conservative reaction: ‘The Gujarat middle class, feeling threatened, started
to join the BJP in large numbers, while the mostly upper-caste bureaucrats in
government offices became more supportive of Hindu-nationalist organisations’
(Berenschot 2011: 68). These developments gradually came to encompass social
groups outside the middle class ambit of the Hindutva project: ‘Gradually,
lower caste communities were included in the patronage networks of Hindu
nationalist organisations’ (ibid: 68). The BJP as an essentially upper caste and
middle class party came to attract support from lower class and lower caste
constituencies (see Desai 2015; Desai and Roy 2016).
The ascent of Hindu nationalism in Gujarat was coeval with a notable
increase in tension and violence between Hindus and Muslims in the
state. Indeed, anti-Muslim pogroms in particular have been integral to the
consolidation of upper caste and upper class hegemony in Gujarat. Electoral
success requires politicians to focus collective identities on one specific social
fault line: ‘Communal violence serves this purpose: violence between Hindus
and Muslims serves politicians to promote an awareness of one’s religious
identity while relegating other social divisions to the background’ (Berenschot
2011: 142). And in mobilising this violence, in turn, the riot networks that span
the analytical divide between political and civil society play an integral role.
Different actors in these networks shared an interest in maintaining control
over the distribution of state resources. They therefore also had an incentive to
contribute to mobilising violence, at the same time as their capacity to access

29 KHAM stands for Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, and Muslim. The strategy was
propounded by Madhav Singh Solanki, who served as Chief Minister of Gujarat for
Congress a total of four times.
 ‘They Have Weakened Us’ 245

state resources gave them ‘the necessary local status and authority to instigate
violence’ (ibid: 167).
These three cases of coercive violence obviously unfold on larger scales than
the repression of the AMS, but they are nevertheless instructive parallels to
what happened in Khargone in 1997 and 1998. Whether in Bastar, Bihar,
or Gujarat, the common denominator is the simple but important fact that
specific processes of state formation that have unfolded across time have given
rise to latticeworks of power that enable dominant groups to mobilise coercion
across political and civil society. In western Madhya Pradesh, the capacity to
mobilise coercive violence against the AMS was predicated on the hegemonic
power of an upper caste and upper class dominated Congress regime, which,
as I showed in Chapters 3 and 4, crystallised in and through colonial and
postcolonial processes of state formation.
As Chapter 3 explained in detail, colonial state formation strengthened
princely power in western Madhya Pradesh, in no small measure by ensuring
the political subordination of Adivasi communities. Postcolonial state formation
consolidated this process: as I showed in Chapter 4, the princely elites in the
region were incorporated into the machinery of Congress hegemony in the
state, and as a result of this the political power of upper caste and upper class
groups was firmly entrenched in the regime that emerged after Independence.
Congress warded off an early socialist challenge in the Bhil areas through
coercion and co-optation and succeeded in establishing a patronage network
there. This network was shallow in many respects—it incorporated only village
elites and effective electoral participation in the region has been minimal—but
as the Shanti Sena testifies, it nevertheless enabled the mobilisation of coercive
violence in a conjuncture when subaltern resistance was gathering substantial
momentum.
This in turn throws up a challenge that is simultaneously conceptual and
strategic. As I argued in the introduction to this book, those moments when
dominant groups mobilise coercion tend to contradict, in significant ways, a key
tenet of recent Foucauldian ethnographies of the political in India, namely the
claim that the state must be understood in terms of ‘multiple and contradictory
articulations of power that emanate from no fixed axis’ (Williams, Vira,
and Chopra 2011: 17). This is not an argument to the effect that the state
is an inherently sutured entity that always operates in synchronicity across
echelons and sites. As my analysis in Chapter 6 showed, both the KMCS and
the AMS were able to leverage divisions and contradictions internally in the
state apparatus. And this, I suggested, has to be understood in terms of how
246 Adivasis and the State

accommodation and concessions—combined, as this chapter has shown, with

routine coercion—work to circumscribe the impact of subaltern resistance.
However, what the mobilisation of coercion against the AMS demonstrates
is the fact that in certain conjunctures, typically those conjunctures when
subaltern resistance has gained enough momentum to destabilise a hegemonic
formation, state power can be exercised with a considerable degree of unity.
Indeed, the repression of the AMS brought together different axes of the
state across multiple scales from the state capital of Bhopal to the district
headquarters in Khargone and beyond; there are of course similar dynamics
at play in the other cases of coercive violence discussed above.
What these dynamics ultimately reveal are the ways in which ‘the political
power that is pre-eminently ascribed to the state’ (Poulantzas 1978: 147)
reinforces and reproduces hegemony. This is achieved both through patterned
workings over time and through the ability to mobilise extraordinary coercive
force in conflictual conjunctures. As I argued in the introductory chapter,
the analytical purchase of a conceptual lens that insists on conceiving of the
state in disaggregated terms has little to offer in terms of understanding these
workings. Above all, such a lens fails to explain how and why dominant groups
are able to act in and through the integral state in ways that bring a certain
unity across its various sites and scales (see also Nilsen 2015b). Yet, discerning
how the integral state mediates hegemonic processes across the longue durée
is of crucial strategic importance, for it is through such an analysis that it
becomes possible to uncover the latticeworks of power that have to be ruptured
in order for emancipatory transformation to be possible. The KMCS and the
AMS were clearly mobilising in relation to a state in which the social power
of regional dominant groups was remarkably well entrenched, which proved to
be a barrier that the movements could not advance beyond. This begs a vital
strategic question: what would it take for subaltern movements to sunder the
sedimented power of upper caste and upper class regimes such as that which
confronted the KMCS and the AMS? I reflect on this question in depth in
the concluding chapter of this book.
 Conclusion 247

Conclusion

In the late autumn of 2009, reports of a dire food crisis among the Adivasis
of western Madhya Pradesh started to appear in Indian national newspapers.
In just two villages in Jhabua district, Agasia and Madora, 25 children were
reported to have died in the course of only two weeks. These children died as
a result of malnutrition, which had caused a dramatic fall in their immunity
levels, rendering them vulnerable to dengue and anaemia (Singh 2009a). By
February 2010, the situation had deteriorated even further: 46 Adivasi children
were reported to have died of malnutrition in three villages in Jhabua (Singh
2010a; Jain 2011; Dutta 2010).
The malnutrition deaths in Jhabua in the autumn of 2009 were a stark
manifestation of the dramatic loss of food security in Madhya Pradesh,
where child mortality rates rank among the highest in the world, and levels
of malnutrition among children surpass the levels found in most countries
in sub-Saharan Africa (Singh 2009b; Chauhan 2009). Malnutrition takes a
particularly harsh toll on the state’s Adivasi population, with 71.4 per cent of
tribal children in the state being malnourished and 82.5 per cent suffering from
anaemia. Whereas the average infant mortality rate (IMR) in the state stands
at 70/1,000, the IMR for Scheduled Tribe areas stands at 95.6/1,000 (Singh
2010a, 2010b).1 In Jhabua and Badwani, the under-five mortality stands at
96 and 92 per 1,000 respectively, compared to 74 in a comparatively affluent
district like Indore (HUNGaMA 2011: 71). According to the India Human
Development Report for 2011, infant mortality rates and under-five mortality
rates are particularly high among Scheduled Tribes in Gujarat, Rajasthan,
Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh (Planning Commission 2011). Five years
later, very little had changed, with 50 per cent of children in Alirajpur, Dhar,
Jhabua, and Dindori—all districts where more than half the population are
Adivasis—reported to be suffering from malnutrition (Pandey 2016).

1 These figures compare to a national average of 57/1,000.

248 Adivasis and the State

Responding to the malnutrition deaths in Jhabua, human rights activists

in the region pointed to the failure of public service delivery to the poorest of
the poor as a key problem. Irregularities and shortcomings in the registration
of families living below the poverty line in the worst-affected districts, serious
flaws in the running of key welfare programmes such as the Public Distribution
System (PDS) and the Integrated Child Development Scheme, and a severely
underdeveloped and underfunded system of public healthcare were just some of
the problems they singled out for criticism (Singh 2010a, 2010b). However, the
alarming malnutrition rates in western Madhya Pradesh do not just result from
the state’s neglect of the welfare entitlements of its poorest citizens; they are also
a consequence of the erosion of agriculture in the region, which I discussed in
Chapter 2. Indeed, in August 2009, the leading national newspaper The Hindu
reported that Jhabua district was ‘on its way to becoming Vidarbha-II’ (Singh,
2009c).2 Over the past decade, agriculture in the district has witnessed a shift
in cropping patterns, away from the pulses, coarse grains, and oil seeds that
were the mainstay of subsistence cultivation and towards cash crops such as
BT cotton, tomatoes, and chillies. The turn towards high-input cash-cropping
has come at a high price for local Bhil peasants—primarily in the form of a
vicious debt cycle, as peasants have to buy the necessary inputs, such as seeds,
fertilisers, and pesticides (Singh 2009c; Jain 2011).
Local shopkeepers and moneylenders provide these inputs at prices 200 to
300 per cent higher than their original cost, and loans are given with compound
interest rates ranging between 24 and 48 per cent annually. As much as 60
per cent of all debt in the district is owed to non-institutional lenders, such
as shopkeepers and moneylenders, while banks, co-operative societies, and
self-help groups provide the least amount of credit to cultivators in the district
(Singh 2009c). Studies have uncovered a dramatic escalation of debt levels
among Adivasi peasants in Jhabua: in a sample of 10 villages, it was found
that the total annual income of all villages amounted to 1.10 crore rupees,
whereas total debt amounted to 4.18 crore rupees. In one village, it was found
that the annual income of all families amounted to 1,393,234 rupees, while
the combined annual debt stood at 6,329,558 rupees (Jain 2011; Singh 2009c).

2 Vidarbha is the eastern region of Maharashtra state, constituted by Nagpur division

and Amravati division. The region has been at the epicentre of India’s ongoing
agrarian crisis, witnessing a record number of suicides in response to the economic
distress of small and marginal farmers (see Mohanty 2005 and Walker 2008).
 Conclusion 249

The local administration, however, refused to even acknowledge the problem.

When confronted with the question of indebtedness among farmers, an official
in the district administration joked: ‘Arrey, they are poor farmers. Who will
give them credit? They are not even creditworthy’ (cited in Singh 2009c).
As I pointed out in Chapter 2, agrarian stagnation propels massive flows
of labour migration in western Madhya Pradesh. For the vast majority of
migrants, work in the cauldron of Gujarat’s informal economy is exploitative
and precarious. The vulnerability of Adivasi migrant workers has arguably
found its grimmest expression in the tragic fate of many of those who found
work in quartz-crushing units in the districts of Kheda and Godhra. A series
of official studies have shown air pollution levels in these factories are up to 660
times higher than the threshold value regarded as the international standard
limit; exposure for more than a few months is associated with high risks of
contracting silicosis. Due to this risk, local workers steer clear of the quartz-
crushing units, which in turn have turned to the border districts of western
Madhya Pradesh—and Alirajpur in particular—to recruit labour (Ba­­viskar
2008; Patel 2009). Bhil workers are hired to feed the stone crushers with
quartz rocks and fill bags with silica powder at a rate of 1.5 to 2 rupees per
bag. Filling between 600 and 700 bags of silica during a workday that can be
anything from eight to twelve hours long, the workers inhale large quantities
of silica dust. This has resulted in a considerable number of deaths due to
silicosis among labour migrants from Alirajpur (Singh 2011a).
A 2007 report by a local NGO documented 489 persons from 218 households
in the district as having been exposed to silica dust. Out of these, 158 people
had died, and 266 people were ill with silicosis. In other words, 86 per cent of
those exposed to silica dust in Gujarat were either dead or incurably ill, and
94 per cent of silicosis deaths had occurred within three years of exposure to
the deadly dust (Baviskar 2008). By 2010, Shilpi Kendra, the local NGO who
first documented the spread of silicosis in Alirajpur, reported that the death
toll had increased to 386 people across the three districts of Alirajpur, Jhabua,
and Dhar. Alirajpur district authorities put the number of dead as a result of
silicosis in Alirajpur at 277 people altogether (Singh 2011a, 2011b). In early
2017, 589 people were reported to have died of ‘Godhra ki factory wali bimari’
(illness from the Godhra factories) in Alirajpur, Jhabua, and Dhar (Chatterji
2017; Nidhi and Gupta 2016).
As the majority of those affected by silicosis are primary wage earners for
their families, their illness and deaths have a direct bearing on the livelihoods of
a great number of Bhil households in the region. Not only do these households
250 Adivasis and the State

lose an income, they also accumulate large debts through paying for health
care for family members afflicted with the illness (Nidhi and Gupta 2016).
Nevertheless, continuous petitioning at the level of local authorities in Madhya
Pradesh, petitions to relevant authorities in Gujarat, and appeals to the National
Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Supreme Court between 2003
and 2008 yielded neither factory closures nor compensation to the affected
families (Baviskar 2008). In November 2010, the NHRC finally issued a show
cause notice to the Gujarat government, asking why it should not be considered
responsible for compensating the families of silicosis victims in Madhya Pradesh.
The compensation failed to materialise, as authorities in Gujarat refused to
accept their responsibility for the migrant workers (Singh 2010a, 2010b). Finally,
in May 2016, the Indian Supreme Court issued an order directing the Gujarat
government to pay 300,000 rupees to each of the families of 238 workers from
Alirajpur and Jhabua who had died of silicosis between 2003 and 2005. The
Madhya Pradesh government was ordered to rehabilitate 304 people who were
no longer capable of working due to the illness (Sinha 2016).
Although the order is an important development, it fails to tackle the impact
of silicosis in Bhil Adivasi communities head-on. Barely 10 per cent of more
than 1,700 silicosis victims receive any kind of state pensions, and fewer than
6 per cent receive funding from state housing schemes. In addition, during the
five past years, only 7 per cent of the affected families obtained work under
the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (Nidhi
and Gupta 2016).

Dying from malnutrition. Dying from working. These are markers of Adivasi
subalternity, and they are also markers of the limits of subaltern resistance in
the Bhil heartland. Despite the considerable democratisation of local state–
society relations and in spite of the making of a political culture of insurgent
citizenship, the fundamental power relations that constitute Adivasis as a
surplus population who are disproportionately exposed to premature death
within the regional political economy still prevail.3 This begs a fundamentally
political question, which I will seek to address in these concluding remarks:
how might it be possible to organise and mobilise an oppositional project with

3 I draw my conception of surplus populations from Li (2010) and Tyner (2013). The
notion of premature death as a marker of subalternity is drawn from Ruth Wilson
Gilmore’s (2002, 2007) work on structural racism and the prison-industrial complex
(see also Tyner 2015).
 Conclusion 251

the capacity to rupture the structures of caste and class power that constitute
the kernel of the hegemonic formation in which the Bhil Adivasis of western
Madhya Pradesh are adversely incorporated?
Alpa Shah’s (2007b, 2010, 2014, 2017) work on Adivasi communities in
Jharkhand develops the proposition that revolutionary insurgency, as embodied
in the Naxalite movement in India’s Red Corridor, constitutes a viable path
towards emancipation.4 Drawing on dense ethnographic work among Munda
Adivasis, Shah (2007b, 2010) portrays state–society relations that strongly
recall the workings of everyday tyranny: the state is dominated mostly by upper
caste descendants of former landlord elites, and most Mundas know the state
through coercive encounters with police, excise officers, forest guards, and
duplicitous Block Development Officers: ‘They did not accept the idea that
sarkar served the public good, seeing it instead as related to an exploitative
kind of politics. Mundas associated all things sarkari with part of an “outside”
and “alien” world’ (Shah 2007b: 135).
In this context, Munda Adivasis ‘desire to keep the state away’ (ibid: 130)
and turn instead to the parha—a sacral polity and system of governance—as ‘an
alternative order to the secular state’ (Shah 2010: 190). Whereas Shah’s initial
work was characterised by scepticism about Maoist insurgency as a vehicle
of Adivasi emancipation, her more recent writings suggest a more positive
assessment.5 The persistence of Maoism, she argues, is sustained by Adivasi
marginalisation in India’s political economy, and its insurgent project resonates
with Adivasi experiences of the state as an alien and exploitative entity:

… the Maoist message against the Indian state addresses a long history of
Adivasi desire to keep the state away … Thus actions such as the Maoists

4 See Kennedy and King (2013) for an alternative analysis of the relationship between
Adivasis and the Naxalite movement, and Harriss (2011b) for an overview on scholarly
work on the ongoing Maoist insurgency in the Red Corridor. The origins and history
of the Naxalite movement are analysed in Kennedy and Purushotham (2012), Banerjee
(1984), Shah (2011), and Ray (2012). See also Banaji (2010b) for a critical analysis
of the trajectory of Indian Maoism.
5 In her first monograph, Shah (2010a: 184) expressed ‘reservations about the promises
of the revolutionary Naxalite movement’ due to its reliance on the recruitment of
rural elites, the blurred boundaries between the movement and the state, and the
similarities in the idioms used by Maoists and indigenous rights activists. ‘Above
all’, she writes, ‘I am concerned that such movements may be destroying the Munda
spaces from which a radical politics might one day emerge’ (ibid: 185).
252 Adivasis and the State

reclaiming the forests for the people by bombing the state forest rest houses,
burning forest jeeps, and chasing out the officers, coupled with Maoist
replacement of outside contractors with locals and raising the wages of forest
product collection, have been extremely influential in gaining Adivasi support.
(Shah 2014: 346)

Shah is not uncritical of the Naxalite movement; indeed, she notes a series
of contradictions in their project, such as the inadequacy of their analysis of
the Indian economy as semi-feudal and semi-colonial, their relative disregard
of the egalitarian norms in Adivasi communities, and the clear and present
danger that state repression might narrow the focus of the insurgency to
military strategy (Shah 2017). Nevertheless, she asserts, the Maoist struggle
has had a major impact by ‘producing those who want to fight for a more equal
world, who have been mobilised by the spirit of their revolutionary struggle,
even if they have been, at the same time, disappointed and disillusioned by
its practice’ (ibid: 56).
Whereas Shah’s work presents many compelling and rare insights into
India’s contemporary Maoist movement, it is nevertheless highly questionable
whether the ongoing insurgency—essentially what Gramsci (1971) referred
to as a ‘war of manoeuvre’—does in fact constitute a sustainable path out of
subalternity and towards emancipation for Adivasis in India today. By Shah’s
(2017: 55) own admission, the Maoists are confronting ‘one of the world’s
most powerful states’ and a formidable military apparatus, and this arguably
imposes limitations on the prospects for a successful armed struggle against the
institutionalised form of class and caste power. The trajectory of the Maoist
movement in Andhra Pradesh testifies to this.
Although the Maoists initially gained significant traction in Telangana by
organising and mobilising lower caste landless tenants during the late 1970s
and early 1980s, increased state repression and an increasing emphasis on
armed struggle alienated local support for the movement, which was ultimately
defeated by the combined effect of violent counterinsurgency operations and
the extension of state-based welfare programmes (see Balagopal 2006; Jakobsen
2016).6 Nandini Sundar’s (2014, 2016b) devastating account of insurgency and
counterinsurgency in Bastar district in Chhattisgarh—undoubtedly ‘the most

6 As several commentators note, the defeat in Andhra Pradesh was instrumental in

driving the Naxalites into the central Indian forest belt and compelling them to
establish a base among its Adivasi inhabitants (Shah 2013; Sundar 2016b; Jakobsen
2016).
 Conclusion 253

important Maoist stronghold’ (Sundar 2014: 472) in the country today—also

points in this direction. The movement here has gone from making existing
state institutions work as they should to controlling a territory which is run as
a Janathana Sarkar—a people’s state (Sundar 2016: chapter 4). Consequently,
the Maoist insurgency has come to constitute ‘a major challenge to primitive
accumulation in the forest belts’ (Sundar 2014: 478). Nevertheless, the scenario
is one of stalemate rather than progress, as the Maoist project of ‘a new
democracy for the whole of India is shrinking to the space of the forest where
the Indian government has hemmed them in’ (ibid: 486).
If revolutionary insurgency is unlikely to advance subaltern counterhegemony,
what alternatives are there in contemporary India? And, more specifically,
what could possibly be a viable counterhegemonic strategy in the context of
a political regime that is fundamentally sustained by the persistence of upper
class and upper caste power? In the remainder of this conclusion, I want to
propose that there is significant potential in thinking strategy in terms of a war
of position—that is, a political strategy that seeks to disaggregate the ruling
bloc and build the capacity of subaltern groups to give form and direction to
oppositional collective action across civil and political society (see Coutinho
2012: 93–100).
A strategy developed on these terms can be further concretised as an
oppositional project centred on what André Gorz (1967) has referred to
as ‘non-reformist reform’. Gorz coined this term to distinguish between a
strategy that advances reforms that can be absorbed by and subordinated
to the reproduction of a hegemonic formation—as Chapter 1 noted, this is
what concessions to and accommodations of subaltern claims and demands
tend to aim at achieving—and an agenda of reforms that seek to stimulate
‘the development of structures of popular power’ (Gorz 1975: 144) that can
enable emancipatory transformation. The question, of course, is what a war
of position crafted around non-reformist reform might look like, both in and
beyond the Bhil heartland.
Currently, the most promising starting point for such a project might
arguably be located in the emergence of what Sanjay Ruparelia (2013) has
called India’s new rights agenda. This agenda has crystallised in the form
of ‘a series of national legislative acts that enshrine new civil liberties and
socioeconomic entitlements through legally enforceable rights’ (ibid: 569) and
includes the Right to Information Act of 2005, the National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act and the Forest Rights Act of 2006, the Right to Education Act
of 2009, and, most recently, the Right to Food Act and the Land Acquisition,
254 Adivasis and the State

Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013. These laws were put in place
during the 10-year term of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance
regime (2004–2014) and bear the imprint of the fact that the Congress
constructed its governmental project around a multi-party coalition and a
Common Minimum Programme with external parliamentary support from
the communist Left Front. Viewed in a longer-term perspective, the Supreme
Court’s turn to judicial activism in the 1980s, and what Ruparelia refers to as
‘the expanding popular foundations of its federal parliamentary democracy’
(ibid: 572), have been crucial in situating law and the legal arena as key terrains
of collective action in an increasingly neoliberal India (see also Das 2013).
These new laws, as Ruparelia correctly notes, are in many ways unprecedented.
They can be understood as constituting the potential foundation of a new
welfare contract based on justiciable rights, as opposed to non-justiciable
and targeted social policies. Moreover, these emergent welfare rights are
coupled with significant attempts ‘to promote greater political transparency,
responsiveness, and accountability’ (ibid: 571). That said, it is not immediately
evident that the new rights agenda should constitute the starting point for a
counterhegemonic politics of non-reformist reform. As John Harriss (2011a:
138) has noted, rights-based legislation resulted not so much from the activism
of ‘popular mass movements’ as from the efforts of ‘local NGOs and advocacy
groups, drawing on transnational networks, led by middle class intellectuals’.7
Indeed, it can be argued that law gained in salience as many of the new social
movements that had emerged in the 1970s and 1980s entered into phases of
abeyance or professionalisation (Nilsen and Nielsen 2016). Moreover, rights-
based legislation does not necessarily rupture the logic of neoliberalisation. As
Kenneth Bo Nielsen and I (2015) have argued in relation to the 2013 Land
Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, rights-based laws served as
a modality through which the UPA regime attempted to build a ‘compromise
equilibrium’ (Gramsci 1971: 161) between dominant and subaltern interests
that would allow the long-term advance of neoliberal restructuring (see also
Nielsen and Nilsen 2017). And, as Aradhana Sharma (2013: 308) has noted
in her work on mobilisation around the Right to Information Act, laws can
also channel oppositional work into bureaucratic forms that hem in ‘activist

7 This emerges particularly clearly from Prashant Sharma’s (2014, 2016) work on the
making of the Right to Information Act. See also Chopra (2011a, 2011b) on the
making of the NREGA, Kundan and Kerr (2012) and Vadiya (2014) on the making
of the Forest Rights Act, and Hertel (2014) on the Right to Food Act.
 Conclusion 255

aspirations for fundamental changes in democratic governance … ’ (see also

Bornstein and Sharma 2016; Webb 2013).
Nevertheless, these are not expressions of an inherent limit to the
oppositional potential of rights-based legislation. Laws, as critical legal scholars
such as Duncan Kennedy (1991) and Michael McCann (1994) have pointed
out, are fundamentally indeterminate and can be given ‘radical new meanings’
(McCann 1994: 284) through mobilisation (see Chapter 6). In other words,
whether rights-based legislation can be made to serve counterhegemonic
trends or not depends, most fundamentally, on how this new legal regime is
appropriated by social movements from below in determinate locales. Indeed,
insights from recent research suggest that specific laws have the potential for
both (a) addressing urgent livelihood needs and (b) shifting the balance of
regnant power relations.
The NREGA is a case in point in this regard. As Matthew McCartney
and Indrajit Roy (2015) point out, in the Indian context the NREGA is a rare
and in many ways unlikely example of a rules-based welfare regime—that is,
a welfare policy that targets people on the basis of objective criteria. In 2013,
it provided 2.3 billion person days of employment to more than 80 million
people. While there is ample evidence of corruption and inefficiency in the
implementation of the scheme, its benefits—100 days of employment in a
financial year—still reach the rural poor, Dalits, and Adivasis in a substantial
way (ibid: 7). Moreover, the NREGA is marked by ‘the evident intent in its
design to challenge rather than accommodate local power structures’ (ibid: 9).
The scheme allows projects to be implemented during the harvesting season,
and as a result it offers the rural poor an alternative to working for landed
elites. As Indrajit Roy (2014: 539) shows in the case of landless labourers in
Bihar and Bengal, this has enabled the rural proletariat to stay in their villages
rather than migrating, as they can take up work on NREGA projects: ‘Their
decision to stay in the village and take up employment under the NREGA
represents an encroachment on the assumption that landless labourers have
only two choices: either to work the fields of agriculturists or to exit the
village altogether. Rural workers encroach upon socially authorised relations
of subordination’ (ibid: 540).
As subsistence cultivators, Adivasis do not face exactly the same predicaments
as the landless labourers at the centre of Roy’s analysis, but this does not mean
that the NREGA is irrelevant to Adivasi communities. Nandini Nayak’s (2012)
study of the Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan (JADS) and its activism around the
NREGA in Badwani district shows how the NREGA enabled Bhil Adivasis
256 Adivasis and the State

to develop new forms of claimsmaking in relation to the local state apparatus.

The making of ‘a language of justiciable rights in relation to employment works’
(ibid: 135) enables the movement to politicise the public work programmes that
have been a part of the developmental project of the postcolonial Indian state
since its inception, by engaging in a strategy combining bureaucratic and legal
proceduralism with disruptive collective action. In a context of entrenched and
chronic poverty, this strategy has had a considerable and very tangible impact
on local livelihoods: ‘As a result of the NREGA works, people could for the
most part earn a liveable wage within their village. Village natural resources
were conserved by NREGA work, which then fed into supporting their own
livelihoods too’ (ibid: 165). Beyond the obvious point that NREGA provides
much-needed incomes to bolster Bhil livelihoods, the fact that the law posits
employment as a right means that public work can no longer be doled out by
local state actors at will to reinforce relations of patronage.
The implementation of the NREGA in Badwani district also brought
about a substantial reduction in the need to migrate for work (Nayak 2012:
180). Given that Bhil Adivasis find themselves at a clear and debilitating
disadvantage as they enter into regional circuits of labour migration—in no
small part due to their abject dependency on employers and contractors and
their dismal lack of representation and voice (Baviskar 2008: 9)8—this is of
course an important dimension of how the NREGA can serve politically
enabling purposes. Speaking to me about the challenges that sangathans in
the Bhil heartland face in contemporary India, Madhuri Krishnaswamy of
JADS argued that the established agenda of jal, jangal, and zameen is no longer
sufficient: ‘ … almost everywhere, Adivasis are becoming part of the working
class, at very unfavourable terms. They are at the bottom of the pile—the
most vulnerable, the most exploited, and the least organised as workers.’ She
continued: ‘I think we are a little behind the times … this jal, jangal thing was
fine 30 years ago. Now it’s just not enough’ (interview, May 2010). NREGA

8 As Baviskar (2008: 9) notes, Bhil labour migrants ‘lack political representation; they
fail to become a constituency for labour departments, unions, municipal authorities, or
political parties’. According to a recent report, the vast majority of Adivasi construction
labourers do not know the names of their contractors and principal employers,
and furthermore do not have any contact with the police, administration, labour
department officials or politicians in the areas they migrate to. Only a very small
number of migrants have contact with the Member of the Legislative Assembly from
their area of origin, and knowledge of laws, policies and institutions that safeguard
migrant workers’ rights is extremely scant (2010).
 Conclusion 257

activism—as the trajectory of JADS suggests—can potentially be conducted in

a way that both erodes patronage in local state–society relations and mobilises
Adivasis as workers in relation to predatory labour markets. It is in and through
such appropriations that the contours of the counterhegemonic potential of
this law emerge into view.
If the NREGA can serve as a vehicle for attenuating persistent power
relations in the local state apparatus and transforming the terms upon which
Bhil Adivasis are incorporated into regional labour markets, the Forest Rights
Act could potentially address the long-standing Adivasi demand for land
rights. As Kundan Kumar and Jim Kerr (2012) point out, the Forest Rights
Act contains a number of radical provisions—both for Adivasis and other
forest-dwellers who can prove that they inhabited forest land prior to the 2005
cut-off date—including rights for both cultivation and homestead, rights over
non-timber forest products, and community land tenures (see also Kashwan
2017: chapter 5). And, significantly, its preamble casts the Forest Rights Act
as an antidote to the historical injustice of Adivasi dispossession and non-
recognition of Adivasi land rights. The new law, in other words, was framed in
terms of ‘a historical narrative that contained its own moralised rules through
which the law could be interpreted’ (Vaidya 2014: 138).
As with the NREGA, various shortcomings can be identified in the
implementation of the Forest Rights Act. Kumar, Singh, and Kerr (2015) have
noted that its implementation—and in particular recognition of community
land rights—has only happened in a substantial way in Maharashtra, Odisha,
and Gujarat. Elsewhere, effective implementation of the law and its ‘more
radical community rights provisions’ (ibid: 7) is being constrained by the
opposition of powerful vested interests in the forest bureaucracy (see also
Springate-Basinski, Sarin, and Reddy 2013). However, as Anand Vaidya’s
study of struggles over forest rights in Uttar Pradesh points out, the Forest
Rights Act clearly has the potential to animate radical struggles over land
rights. In rural Uttar Pradesh, a community of landless Adivasi and Dalit
labourers organised by left-wing activists decided to occupy forest land and
establish their own village—Ramnagar—on this land. The objective of this
action was to end their dependence on Yadav landowners for work and ‘the
circulation of the Forest Rights Act opened up a new awareness of rights and
new political possibilities that had not existed before in the area’ (ibid: 48).
The Mahila Mazdoor Kisan Sangathan (MMKA) marshalled the provisions
of the Forest Rights Act to justify the occupation of forestl and: they claimed
to have occupied the land prior to the 2005 cut-off date, and in vernacular
258 Adivasis and the State

activist inflections the Forest Rights Act came to represent the recovery of a
lost constitutional promise of social justice embodied in land rights for Dalits
and Adivasis (ibid: chapter 4).
The land occupation faced a substantial backlash from local elites; Ramnagar
was ultimately razed to the ground in an attack by a mob led by landed Yadavs
from the village of Govindnagar, which many of the occupants originally
hailed from. However, the significant point here is that Ramnagar was made
possible in large part as a result of a radical reinterpretation of the provisions
of the Forest Rights Act. What this points to is the fact that the Forest Rights
Act ‘presents the possibility of a reorganisation of property and labour relations
… across the twenty-three per cent of India’s land area that is owned by the
Forest Department’ (Vaidya 2014: chapter 6).
This in turn illuminates how a non-reformist appropriation of rights-based
legislation can aim not only at gaining immediate material concessions that
can alleviate suffering—although this is certainly a pressing concern in the
context of the Bhil heartland—but also at developing radical interpretations of
legally recognised rights, in order to advance radical mobilisations which can
rupture the balance of power underpinning existing hegemonic formations.
It is crucial to note, of course, that this is a possibility and not a certainty, and
to a large extent a possibility that ultimately depends on the outcome of the
ongoing tug of war between activists and state actors at the national level over
whose interpretations of the Forest Rights Act should prevail (ibid: chapter 6).
In his work on non-reformist reform as a political strategy, Gorz (1967) made
a distinction between subordinate and autonomous forms of power. The former
revolves around the ability to participate in the implementation of a policy,
but not to be involved in its formulation, and the latter around the ability of a
subaltern group to challenge the very premises upon which dominant groups
develop and impose policy regimes. Non-reformist reform, he argued, should
aim to augment autonomous power in order to achieve fundamental political
and economic changes. In relation to Adivasi subalternity as it is constituted
in the Bhil heartland, a strategy that fuses radical claims for collective land
rights with radical claims around employment as a right could very possibly
play a crucial role in advancing autonomous power.
However, in order for such organising and mobilising to have a genuinely
emancipatory impact, radical claims for socioeconomic rights would have to
be closely linked to efforts to further democratise local state–society relations
and to constitute a differential geography that allows Adivasi communities
to govern the places that are integral to their livelihood and habitation (see
 Conclusion 259

chapter 6). While the Right to Information Act goes some way in terms of
making it possible for social movements to hold state actors accountable for
the delivery of legally recognised entitlements, democratisation has to move
far beyond liberal notions of transparency and accountability if it is to advance
counterhegemony. A possible way of doing this would be to revive activism
around PESA and its unfulfilled promises of self-rule for Adivasi communities.
There is of course nothing inherently emancipatory about self-rule as such.
Rather, self-rule can potentially become the kernel of an oppositional way of
organising sovereignty if subaltern movements act in and through it in order to
drive ‘the line of development towards integral autonomy’ (Gramsci 1971: 52).
However, organising and mobilising around rights-based legislation is
unlikely to decisively advance autonomous power unless it is coupled to a
wider effort to transform the political regime within which subalternity is
constituted and embedded. As John Harriss (1999: 3367) has shown, political
regimes in different Indian states can be analysed and distinguished from each
other ‘on the basis of the balance of caste/class power and the nature of party
organisations within these states’. The nature of those power relations and
party formations in turn has significant consequences for ‘regional distributive
outcomes’ (Kohli 1987: 10). This is so because, as Harriss (1999: 3376) puts
it, a political regime in which parties have to compete actively for the votes of
subaltern groups ‘is likely to be more responsive to the needs and interests of
poorer people’, and the degree to which votes are gained through competition
is in turn determined by the extent to which upper caste and upper class
power has been weakened or ruptured. What Harriss is effectively arguing
here is that subaltern groups can wield subordinate power more effectively in
the context of political regimes where upper caste and upper class power has
been weakened by compelling political parties to accommodate their claims.
However, his analysis and arguments are by no means irrelevant to a debate
about non-reformist reform—especially not in the context of Madhya Pradesh,
which, as I showed in Chapter 3, is a state where the political power of upper
castes and upper classes persists and plays a significant role in shaping the
adverse incorporation of Bhil Adivasis in the regional political economy.
To challenge this scenario, it would be necessary to intervene in electoral
politics, but this raises questions about the extent to which such an intervention
can be sustained by an Adivasi constituency. Ramachandra Guha (2007b) has
pointed out that Adivasis are at a distinct disadvantage in India’s electoral
democracy. In contrast to Dalits, who are spread out quite evenly across Indian
states and districts and can exercise political power more effectively, Adivasis
260 Adivasis and the State

‘can influence election results only in the few, isolated districts where they are
concentrated’ (ibid: 3308). This is also true of Madhya Pradesh: despite the
fact that 21.2 per cent of the population are ST, Adivasis only constitute more
than 50 per cent of the population in a small handful of districts (Alirajpur,
Jhabua, Badwani, Dhar, Dindori, Mandla, and Seoni). Hence, as I have argued
elsewhere, organising and mobilising to intervene in electoral politics and to
transform the political regime would, by necessity, entail moving beyond the
confines of the tribal slot (Nilsen 2016a).
Would a broad alliance with Dalits and lower caste groups be a possible
alternative in this context? In purely demographic terms, such an project appears
to be a viable idea. Dalits constitute 15.5 per cent of the population of Madhya
Pradesh, and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) number more than 51 per cent;
an alliance of Adivasis, Dalits, and OBCs could therefore potentially draw on
a formidable 87 per cent majority of the state’s population to dislodge upper
caste and upper class hegemony in the arena of electoral politics. However, in
light of the general trajectory of Dalit and lower caste politics in north India
in recent decades, there is ample reason to doubt the transformative potential
of such an alliance.
It is of course true, as Christophe Jaffrelot (2003: 494) has argued, that India
has witnessed a transfer of political power ‘from the upper caste elites to various
subaltern groups’ (see also Yadav 2000; Hasan 1997; Chandra 2004; Michelutti
2007; Jaffrelot and Kumar 2009). However, as I noted in the introduction
with reference to Uttar Pradesh, the rise to political power has done little to
bring about progressive redistribution. Dalits are still overwhelmingly and
disproportionately poor, and this is directly related to the persistent dominance
of landowning classes in the local state apparatus. Jeffrey Witsoe (2013) makes
a similar argument in his pathbreaking study of lower-caste politics in Bihar.
Lalu Yadav pursued a strategy of ‘systematically weakening state institutions
and development activities controlled by upper castes and, when possible, by
openly and unapologetically using corrupt practices to turn the tables on upper
castes that had long done the same more discreetly’ (ibid: 10). The strategy was
successful in dislodging upper caste hegemony, but as Witsoe notes, its benefits
were largely restricted to ‘the larger, more populous and better organised among
the lower castes … ’ (ibid: 189).
Representation, in other words, does not inevitably entail redistribution
(see Hasan 2014: chapter 23). Ultimately, the transformative potential of
an ethnic politics based on caste comes up against the constraint of ‘basic
class antagonisms’ (Ruparelia 2013: 581). There is no reason to believe that
 Conclusion 261

an alliance of Adivasis, Dalits, and OBCs in Madhya Pradesh would fare

any better. OBC cultivators in the state are increasingly disaffected with the
BJP regime as a result of the impacts of demonetisation—a fact that became
manifest in an open revolt in the northwestern parts of the state in the early
summer of 2017.9 Jaffrelot (2009: 1) has noted that OBCs in Madhya Pradesh
are highly fragmented, which constrains their potential as a political force:
‘ … in Madhya Pradesh the intermediate (and locally dominant) castes who
could have acted as the spearhead of anti-establishment movements are neither
prosperous nor large or assertive enough.’ However, even if the OBCs had been
a force to be reckoned with, it is not necessarily a given that this would have
contributed to the building of subaltern counterhegemony. As I have argued
elsewhere with reference to the trajectory of the Narmada Bachao Andolan
in Madhya Pradesh, the power dynamics of such alliances tend to erase the
concerns of Adivasis and Dalits—many of whom are ruthlessly exploited as
workers and subjected to caste-based discrimination by OBC cultivators—and
consign these groups to the margins of movement processes (Nilsen 2010). This
does not rule out alliance-building as a strategy per se, but it does mean that
class relations and class politics have to play a decisive role in the construction
of counterhegemonic coalitions and projects.
If class relations and class politics cannot be ignored in a discussion about
subaltern counterhegemonic projects, it becomes imperative to consider what
strategic insights can be gleaned from the routes that Left regimes have
pursued to move beyond upper caste and upper class hegemony in postcolonial
India. The achievements of the Kerala communists are well known and need
not be reiterated here.10 Rather, what should be noted is the fact that these

9 Agitations by distressed farmers demanding debt forgiveness and better prices for
their produce broke out in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh in the first week of
June 2017. On 6 June, at least five farmers were shot dead at a protest in the city of
Mandsaur in northwestern Madhya Pradesh. Following the shooting, state authorities
imposed a curfew in the city. According to press coverage, farmers cited the Modi
government’s move to implement demonetisation as the key source of their distress
(Kant 2017).
10 Whereas West Bengal is often cited as an example of how progressive reforms can
bring about relatively successful poverty reduction, Manali Desai (2007: 119) points
out that the state has failed to achieve the kind of transformation witnessed in
postcolonial Kerala: ‘In Kerala, beginning from a position of greater strength, and
a hegemonic claim to represent the interests of agricultural labourers, poor tenants,
lower castes and some sections of the middle classes, the left initiated a social policy
262 Adivasis and the State

achievements testify to what Heller (2000: 511) calls ‘the affinities of class
and democracy’—that is, the fact that Kerala has witnessed the rupturing of
those relations of power that have tended to constrain the remit of Indian
democracy to the upper castes and the upper classes stems directly from class-
based organising and mobilising for land reform, workers’ rights, and welfare.
Such mobilisations, Heller argues, have not only expanded and entrenched
public legality and democratic authority. They have also substantively deepened
democracy by enabling subaltern groups to drive reform agendas by articulating
radical claims and demands on the state (ibid: 513). It is of course necessary
to bear in mind that Kerala’s trajectory is not simply the outcome of the
implementation of a policy regime that can be transposed to other contexts;
as Manali Desai (2007) reminds us, the deepening of democracy in Kerala
was shaped in crucial ways by the welfare policies of progressive princely
states and the fact that left-wing groups gained a hegemonic position in the
freedom movement in the state. However, the state’s trajectory nevertheless
indicates that substantial advances towards non-reformist reform can be made
by bringing together subaltern groups around transformative claims for land
rights, workers’ rights, and welfare rights.
Needless to say, caveats apply. The communist left in India is in the throes
of a long-term process of decline and this poses a major challenge for any effort
to build a subaltern counterhegemonic project—whether in the Bhil heartland
or elsewhere (Bag 2011; Bidwai 2015). ‘No existing force can be the nucleus
around which a left alternative will be built’, writes Achin Vanaik (2011: 113).
Rather, it is necessary to proceed via ‘a recomposition and realignment of
existing forces’ (ibid: 113). From the standpoint of the left, such a remaking
would have to address the schisms and contradictions that have prevented a
broader third force from crystallising at the national level in India—on the
one hand, the failure of caste-based socialist projects to develop a politics of
redistribution capable of addressing ‘the deeper structural inequalities suffered
by their most disadvantaged constituents’ and, on the other hand, the failure
of the communist left to respond to the fact that caste-based discrimination
and political underrepresentation constitute ‘distinct manifestations of social
injustice’ (Ruparelia 2013: 581).
However, from an Adivasi standpoint, a left recomposition and realignment
does not necessarily offer a route out of subalternity. This is nowhere more clear

regime that surpassed the regime initiated by the communists in Bengal over several
decades of dominance.’
 Conclusion 263

than in the case of Kerala. As the work of scholars such as Darley Kjosavik
(2010) and Luisa Steur (2010, 2014) has shown, Adivasis are among the
poorest and most marginalised groups in the state. Over the past two decades,
this has caused a significant political rift between Adivasi organisations and
the communist left in Kerala (see also Kjosavik and Shanmugaratnan 2015).
Hence, a counterhegemonic alliance in the field of electoral politics would have
to define its strategies for structural reforms linked to land rights, workers’
rights, and welfare rights in ways that both address the specific nature of
Adivasi subalternity and expand the oppositional practices and imaginaries
that movements like the KMCS and the AMS have spawned, if it is to be
relevant to the realities of the Bhil heartland.
Whether or not it is likely that such a counterhegemonic project will in fact
come about and, if it does, what specific form it will take are questions that
lie beyond the scope of this book. What is clear, however, is that much hangs
in the balance in the Adivasi communities of western Madhya Pradesh. As
this book has shown, resistance has, in the very recent past, made it possible
for Bhil Adivasis—nourished by moral courage and certain in the knowledge
that they are the ones who make the state—to emerge as oppositional political
subjects against the most unfavourable odds. If new generations are to pick up
the gauntlet thrown down by these struggles, they will have to reflect critically
on how people before them have fought and lost their battles. They will have
to think rigorously about how the things that others have fought for may come
about in spite of past defeats. And they will have to fight for what those who
came before them sought to achieve—quite possibly under other names.
264 Adivasis and the State
 Bibliography 265

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 Index 295

Index

abkari system, 107 subalternity of, 29, 90, 128, 205, 250,
abuses, 35, 44–45, 101–102, 113, 183, 199. 258, 263
See also tyranny; violence subordination of, 21, 56
activism, 10, 23–24, 135–136, 151–152, Adivasi Morcha Sangathan, 236
161–168, 171–172, 195, 206–207, Adivasi Mukti Sangathan (AMS), 23–24,
212, 218–219, 254–255 144–148, 164–168, 177–179, 181–
activists, 1–4, 138–141, 144, 151–155, 161– 183, 186–188, 201–203, 205–208,
163, 165–168, 176–178, 181–185, 221–227, 230–237, 245–246 (see also
215–218, 224–226, 231–234 Sangathan)
allegations against, 217–218, 232 activists of, 36, 40, 49, 54, 56, 149, 155,
arrest of, 199, 219 182, 222–223, 225–227, 233
intimidation and, 214 attacks on, 225–226, 232
of middle class, 23, 135, 152, 155–160, anti-liquor campaign, 224
166, 168, 189–190, 213, 221 campaign against timber smuggling,
in police custody, 216 224
silencing of, 3 campaign for self rule, 201
and state actors, 258 false case against, 227
urban middle class activists, 2n4, 22 kidnap of, 233
violence against, 198, 208, 212, 214– Shanti Sena attacks on, 225–226, 228
215, 219 Subhash Yadav attack on, 224
acts of citizenship, 133–134, 151, 176, 193 Adivasi Samaj Sudhar Shanti Sena, 225
Isin and Nielsen on, 22 Agarwala, Rina, 10
Adivasis agricultural
against Adivasis, 226, 229 cultivation, 39, 69
Chatterjee on, 11 labour as semi-bondage, 67
identity of, 229 agroindustrial capitalism, 220
incorporation of, 190 Ajnaharia, Khemla, 137
livelihoods clash of, 34 Alirajpur, 6n11, 31, 37–38, 47, 49, 63, 72,
mobilisation of, 11 80, 82–85, 89, 102–110, 118, 125,
movement of Badwani, 1 127, 139–141, 143, 151–152, 174,
poverty among, 29 182, 195–196, 214–216, 249–250
(see also poverty as separate entry) Lok Parishad in, 127
self-assertion of, 4 Madras system in, 83
296 Index

rebellion (1883), 82, 108 Baviskar, A., 43, 159, 196, 199
Anglo-Maratha wars in 1818, 22, 59, 87, bazaariya-log, 50
91, 102 bazaariyas, 47, 152, 154, 168
Anglo-Sisodia regime, 79–80 begar (forced labour), 36, 114–115
anti-liquor activists, 224 Bharat Jan Andolan (BJA), 201
anti-Muslim pogroms, 241–242 Bhatnagar, Amit, 47, 138–140, 142, 148,
in Gujarat (2002), 212, 228, 242–244 176, 195, 199
anti-poverty policies, 14 bhauband, 61, 71, 76, 95
assertion, practices of, 183 Bhawarsingh, 214, 221
atrocities, 48, 155, 161. See also violence Bheel Naicks, 81
attacks, 95–96, 99, 105, 111–13, 117, 224– Bhil Agent/Agency, 65, 72, 75, 93, 103
225, 228, 230–232, 234, 241 Bhilala landowners, 127
on AMS activists, 224–225, 233, 235 Bhilalas, 83
on Bhabra, 107 Bhil(s), 21–23, 33–41, 43–50, 53–57, 61–
on police outpost, 102 68, 73–81, 93–95, 97–104, 106–111,
by Shanti Sena, 233, 235 113–119, 123–125, 129–130, 145–
as strategy, 226 148, 166–168, 171–172, 255–257
on villages, 104, 228 activists of, 23, 38, 51–52, 54–55, 125,
on wayfarers, 102 135, 148–149, 158–160, 189–
on women, 229 190, 213, 221
by Yadavs, 258 Adivasis, 22–23, 49–50, 56–57
Aurora, G.S., 125, 127 ashram, 124
Baba, Punia, 213 debtors, 66–67
babugiri, 197 in Dangs, 70
Backward and Minority Communities elites, 76, 127–128, 168
Employees Federation (BAMCEF), forest polities, 60, 62–63, 76, 86–87
163 gameti, 115
Backward Castes, 14 heartland, 5–6, 22–23, 53, 58–60,
Backward Tracts, 204 63–64, 67–69, 91, 109–110,
Badwani, 1, 3–4, 49, 54, 63, 73, 80–82, 128–129, 193–195, 258
89, 102–109, 118, 151, 222, 247, insurgents, 105
255–256 integration, 61, 64
British administration in, 84 in Khandesh, 59, 66, 93, 95
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), 14, 163, 165 labourer, 67–68
Baleshwar, Mama, 123–124 of Malwa and Nimad, 106
bamboo, 72, 199 and Marathas, 62
Banaji, J., 68, 251 migrant workers, 31
baniyas, 46, 128, 136, 145, 156–157, 243 movements, 24, 113, 123
Barlibai, 40, 56, 133–134, 148, 150, 162, peasantry of Jhabua state, 68
165 raiding, 76, 78
Bastar, 69, 87, 229, 238–239, 245 resistance, 58, 93, 95–100, 102–109,
Basu, Amrita, 242 113, 133, 151–168
 Index 297

of Sorwa, 107 Caddell, Thomas, 72, 82

sovereignty, 203, 207 campaign, 3–4, 15, 114, 124, 181, 196–97,
subalternity, 21, 33, 59, 64, 134, 136, 200–201, 203–204, 208, 222–223,
171 235–237
subordination, 41, 43, 47, 49, 58, 129– against the payment of rents to feudal
130, 170, 184 estates in, 124
taxes by, 78 cash crops, 248
in western Madhya Pradesh, 63 caste
Bhil Naiks, 85 Hindu merchants, 148
Bhil patels, 68, 107, 110 Hindus, 44, 47
Bhil Raj, 109–117 ideology, 33, 43–44, 129, 158
Bhil–Rajput relations, 61, 63, 77–78 militias, 239–241
Bhima peasantries of lower, 5
raid by, 106 Castree, Noel, 197
rebellion/revolt of, 81, 106 catalytic events, 22, 134, 136, 139, 142–
trial of, 106 143, 147, 150–151
Bhimsingh, 36, 50, 185, 203, 227 cattle, 100, 102, 107, 153–154, 217
Bhoomi Sena, 6, 145 theft of, 96
bhuinhars, 10 cattle-proof trenches (CPTs), 198–199
Bhukaliya, 37, 42, 45, 48, 144, 182, 213 chanda. See bribe (chanda)
Bhukya, Bhangya, 88 Chandhoke, Neera, 188
Bijolia movement, 113 Chandra, Uday, 9, 11, 89–90, 163, 204, 260
Bijoybhai, 145–147, 157, 160, 214, 218, Chatterjee, Partha, 7–11, 23, 91, 95, 171–172,
224, 226, 235 179, 186–187, 191–193, 203–204
Birsa Munda revolt, 9 theorization of, 191
BJP, 126, 128, 161, 196, 226, 238, 241–242, Chattopadhyaya, B., 61
244 Choubey, K.N., 202
Block Development Officers, 189, 251 Choudhury, Khemraj, 136, 138–141
bolai tax, 77–80, 99, 101 Ciotti, Manuela, 163, 165
Bombay Forest Department, 70 citizenship, 1, 11–12, 23, 131, 134, 151,
Bombay Presidency, 70, 115 169, 171–172, 191–207
bonded labour, 66–67 Chatterjee and, 191, 193
Bosco, Fernando, 151 Jayal on, 204
Breman, Jan, 31 civic association, 188
bribes (chanda), 21, 33, 35–36, 38–40, civil liberties, 15
42–43, 49, 53, 73, 129, 142–143, civil rights, 24
195, 225–226 civil society, 10–11, 18, 23–24, 169–172,
during death, 38–39 182–191, 206, 210–212, 237–246
during festival, 39 coercion, 6, 15–16, 18, 20–21, 23–24, 49,
Briggs, John, 95–98 56–58, 64, 129, 151, 157, 207–223,
British rule, 59, 63–64 235–237, 245–246
Burwanee Rajah, 81 politics of 237–246
298 Index

collective action dalalgiri, 42

high-risk of 144 dalals (brokers), 41–42, 56, 214–215
partitcipation in, 135 Dalits, 4–5, 14, 18, 128, 163, 240, 255,
of subaltern groups, 15–16, 19–20 258–261
collective in Badwani, 1
Adivasi identity, 203 mobilisation, 14, 32
anger, 150 Dangi chiefs, 71, 77
discussions, 144 raid by, 76
identities, 244 Dangs, 62, 70–72, 76–77, 109
mobilisation, 32, 56, 145, 170, 178 timber extraction from, 71
response, 155 forest polities, 71
rights-based claims, 33 Das, Veena, 181
colonial state-making, 22, 58–60, 63–64, Dasnami Panth, 110
76–77, 88, 91, 94, 98,100, 108, 118, Dave, Naisargi, 136, 150–151, 161
129 debt/ indebtedness, 68, 87, 248–249.
colonialism, 91, 94 See also money lending
mercantile, 63 Dediya, 46–47, 49, 51, 148, 198, 214, 217,
territorial, 64 221
communist mobilisation, 145 democratic representation, 170, 184
Communist Party of India, 136, 145 democratisation of local state-society
Company Raj, 66 relations, 170, 188, 207, 250
compensation, 82, 231, 250 Deputy Ranger, 35, 141–142, 197, 199
conflicts, 20, 61, 80, 99, 105, 166–167, 169, suspension of, 143
183–184, 220–221, 224, 227 Deputy Superintendent of Police, 180, 184
Baviskar on, 199 development of modern capitalism, 13
confrontations, 134, 139, 142–143, 147, development schemes, 55
168, 175–178, 182–183, 198–199 Devi, Jamuna, 126
conservation, 70, 195–196, 200–201 dharnas, 142, 155, 177, 182–184, 221
ethic of, 196, 200 Dhar, 102–109
of forest 71 direct action, 140, 142, 184. See also
corruption, 34, 48, 51, 140, 145, 152, 170, activism
173, 177, 182, 190, 195, 200, 206, disenfranchisement, 6, 203, 205, 207
220 dispossession, 24, 31, 61, 67–69, 203, 205,
criminal 207
cases, filing of, 33 District Forests, 70
charges, 39, 139, 141 Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), 140
justice system, misuse of, 234 dominant groups, 4, 17, 19–20, 24, 53,
cultivation, 35, 59, 65–66, 70, 72, 79, 107, 115, 207–208, 210–212, 236–238,
197, 200, 257 240–241, 245–246
customary use rights, 35, 88, 195, 197, 207 caste Hindu groups, 46
campaign for, 200 Doshi, Sapana, 13
customs duties, 96 Drèze, Jean, 3
 Index 299

Du Toit, A., 32 authorities and, 3, 32, 51, 77

Dungarpur, 110–117 Barlibai on, 134
of being subject to violence, 38, 52
Earl, Jennifer, 209–210
and Bhils, 54, 57
East India Company, 63, 65
as cementing emotions, 51
Eckert, Julia, 179–180
and collective mobilisation, 56
eco-development centre, 225 and emotions, 52, 135–136
Eki (Unity) League, 115 erosion of, 144
Eki movement, 115–117 as every day tyranny, 54
electoral politics, 25, 94–95, 124, 259–260, (see also tyranny)
263 Govindbhai on, 55
tribal participation in, 128 of patels and sarpanch, 43
electricity, 42, 155, 162 as tradition, 47
Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 65, 75, 95 tribals and, 44
emancipation, 205, 251–252 as way of life, 54
Emergency, 1975-1977, 15 Female middle class activists, 164
emotional Ferree, Myra Marx, 209–210, 237
habitus, 21, 55, 147–149, 151 festivals, 39, 158
emotional transformations, 144, 151 fine levying, 22, 38, 42–43, 58, 100, 115,
entitlements, 2, 4, 12, 170, 181, 184, 186– 134, 197, 227, 256
187, 206, 259 first information reports (FIRs), 230
unawareness of, 55 forced labour, 36, 123–124, 175
equal citizenship for all, 192 Forest Act of 1865, 72
ethnoHinduism, 242 Forest Act of 1878, 70, 72
eviction notices, 198 Forest Conservator, 142
exactions, 33, 37–38, 41–42, 48–49, 51–52, Forest Department, 34–38, 42, 69, 72–73,
56, 101, 108, 111, 149–150, 156 137, 140–142, 155, 196–200, 224–
excise system, 83–84 226, 231, 258
duties, 82–83 transgressions of, 143
revenue, 83, 85 forest guards, 32–34, 36–37, 40, 42, 48–49,
excluded areas, 204–205 51–52, 139–143, 152–155, 161,
exclusion, 32, 151 216–218, 231
exploitation, 32, 48, 111, 114, 116, 137, removal of, 152
148, 155–156, 160, 201, 222 forest laws, KMCS challenging, 207
extortion, 47, 227, 232–233 Forest Protection Committees, 236
Forest Rights Act (FRA), 24, 253–254,
faliyas, 41, 148, 173 257–258
false criminal cases, implication of, 4, 225. forests, 6, 34–36, 64–65, 69–73, 85–88,
See also under Adivasi Mukti 153–154, 195–198, 200–201, 207,
Sangathan (AMS) 231–232, 252–253
fauj barar tax, 100 of Bhil Adivasis, 73
fears, 21, 33, 101, 129, 133, 142, 144–145, boundaries, 73
147–150, 155–156, 159, 168–169 chanda, 88 (See also bribes [chanda])
300 Index

colonial, 69 Great Uprising (1857), 59, 63, 94

conservation, 71 Green, Linda, 54
Dangis using, 71 Green, Marcus, 20
enclosures, sedentarisation and 64–74 Guha, Ramachandra, 9, 32
government-owned, 69–70 Guha, Ranajit, 7–8, 70, 91
policy, 69, 72, 84 Guha, Sumit, 62, 86
protected, 70, 72 Gujarati merchants, 71
protecting, 72 Gujars, 66–67
reserved, 70, 72–73 Bhils as indebters to, 66
resources, 34, 52, 69–70, 195 Gupta, Akhil, 13–14
taxes, 73 Gupta, Sanjukta Das, 89
forest-wallahs, 34–37, 133, 161, 170, 195, haks, 76, 81, 96–97, 99–100, 104, 107
213 giras, 62, 77, 79
Foucault, 13 non-payment of, 103
conception of governmentality, 11 Haldon, J. F., 60
Gandhi, Indira, 122, 243 hamare gaon, hamara raj, 202
Gandhian ashram, 160 Hansen, Thomas Blom, 242
Gandhi Raj, 115–116 Hardiman, David, 68, 70–72, 110–113, 117
Gangadev, British deposing, 72 Harriss, J., 15
gaonliya, 47 hegemonic
Ghaut, Sindwa, 95 formations, 18, 20, 23–24, 57, 127,
gherao, 177, 183, 221 188, 190, 207–208, 210–211,
Ghosh, Kaushik, 10 218–220, 238
Giri, Govind, 110–117 processes, 5, 17, 19, 24, 57–58, 64,
attack on Rajputs, Hardiman on, 112 129–30, 211–212
movement, 113, 116 rule, Gramsci’s notion of, 17
prosecution of, 113 hegemony, 8, 17–18, 20, 53, 57, 64, 90, 188,
Gond rajas, 88 190, 207, 211
goondas, 212, 214 Gramsci’s theory of, 53
Gorz, André, 24, 253 Hickey, S., 32
Goswami, Manu, 63 Hindu Mahasabha, 120–121
Gould, Deborah, 21, 50, 55, 142–143, 149, Hindu nationalism, 212, 241–242, 244
151 Hindutva, 241–244
governmentality, 9, 11–13, 186, 191–192, Holkar, 63, 96, 104–105
208. See also under Foucault Holston, James, 23, 172, 194
Hos, 88
administrative reality of, 191
of Singhbhum, 89
Graham, D. C., 59, 65, 76
Gram Sabha in Scheduled Areas, 202 Illegality/ illegal practices, 142, 171, 179,
Gramsci, A. 194
framework of, 17–20, 24, 33, 53, 57, 64, illicit claims, 34, 38, 53, 56
180, 188, 190, 210, 237 impoverishment, 31. See also povertyIndia
understandings of hegemony and, 211 Forest Act of 1865, 69
 Index 301

Indian Forest Act of 1878, 70 Kaviraj, Sudipta, 91

Indian National Congress, 14, 22, 37, 64, Keer, Tanvant Singh, 231
94, 116, 120–123, 125–128, 130, Kela, Shashank, 68, 72, 76, 80–82, 102–107
160–161, 226, 237–238, 240–241, khalsa (state land), 100
243–245 Khandesh, 59, 62, 64–67, 74, 76–78, 81, 93,
hegemony by, 58, 94, 118, 123, 127, 95, 98, 100, 109
187, 245 bonded labour in, 66
KHAM strategy of, 244 raid and revolts in, 75. See also raids;
organisations of, 94 rebellion/revolts
Indian Penal Code, 217, 225 Khandesh Bhil Corps (KBC), 74–76, 80
inequalities, 5, 262 Khandesh Bhils, 59, 65, 76, 95
gender, 12 (see also women) Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath
infant mortality rate (IMR), 247 (KMCS), 23–24, 151–152, 157–162,
informal sector workers, 5 164–166, 170–172, 179–182, 186–
infrastructural power, 74–87, 129, 243 190, 195–201, 205–208, 212–216,
insurgent citizenship, 6, 130, 172, 194, 196, 219–222
250 activists of, 37–38, 143, 155–157, 173,
Integrated Child Development Scheme, 196, 199, 215
248 everyday activism of, 198
intimidation, 212–215, 233–234 Khemla, 137–140, 152, 154, 221
intra-communal disputes, 41 Khemraj, 136–138, 140–142, 152–154,
Isin, F., 22, 133–134 156–157
Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan ( JADS), Kiti plantation project, 198
1–6, 255, 257 Kohli, Atul, 14
Jaffrelot, Christophe, 122, 128, 242 Krishnaswamy, Madhuri, 2
Jain, Pawan, 235 arrest of, 232
Jaiswal, Gauri Shankar, 224 Kunnath, George, 240
jal, jangal, zameen, 203 Lalsingh, 144, 186
Janata Dal, 241 Lal Topi Andolan, 123–125, 137, 213
Janata Party, 14 land
Jasper, James, 143 alienation, 66–67, 88–89
Jat farmers, 14 dispossession of, 31 (see also Narmada
Jeffrey, C., 14–15 dam projects)
Jhabua, 82, 84–85, 107, 118–119, 123–126,
ownership of, 39, 177
136–137, 140, 247–250, 260
patta (title deed) for, 39
Kaliabhai, 227, 230–231, 234 registration of, 178
murder of, 234–235 transfer of, 215
Kamalsingh, 143–144, 156, 183, 195 land-owning upper caste, 16
Kanshiram, 163 land revenue, 82–83, 85, 99, 107
Kapur, N. S., 61 and Alirajpur rulers, 83
Kashtakari Sangathana, 6, 145 law, 90, 172–181
302 Index

and enforcement for exactions, 38 Maoists, 240, 251–252

legalism from below, 23, 171, 179 uprising/insurgency, 238, 241, 251, 253
Lerche, J., 14 Marathas, 62–63, 74, 77
levies and fines, 38, 101, 106, 115 marginalisation, 8–9, 24
liquor (daru), 67 marriage/wedding engagement and police
brewing of mahua, 39, 72, 83 permission, 39
demanding, 154, 170 McAdam, Doug, 136
illegal trade in, 222 mediation, 56
and Indal festival, 223 Menon, V. P., 127
mafias, 222, 225 merchants, 68, 71, 77, 79, 99, 105, 125, 148,
regulations on, 82 151, 222–223
loans, 45–46, 66, 167, 220, 248. See also taxes from, 77
money lending merchant travellers, 78
Mewar, 99–109, 110–117
Madhya Pradesh (MP), 1, 31, 95, 119–120,
Mewar Bhil Corps (MBC), 75, 78, 101,
122–123, 128, 130, 196, 247, 250,
117
259–261
Mewar Darbar, 79
formation of, 120
migrants, 87, 249–250, 256
poverty in, 30
minimum wages, 1, 10, 240
Madhya Pradesh Congress, 120, 122
Mitchell, Timothy, 53
Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project, 225, 236
mobilising, 2, 7, 10, 22, 133, 136, 138,
Madhya Pradesh Scheduled Tribes
146–149, 157, 160, 179, 181–182,
Sahukar Act of 1972, 45
185–188, 193–195, 203–206, 209–
mafias, 222
210, 212–213, 219–220, 226–227,
liquor and timber, 225
254–255, 258–260
timber, 222, 224–225
Adivasis against Adivasis, 226
Maharana, 78–79, 99–102, 114–115, 117
Amit on, 154
in Udaipur, 78
moneylenders, 45, 68, 112, 125, 148, 151,
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
183, 204, 223, 248
Employment Guarantee Act, 250
Gujars as, 66
Mahila Mazdoor Kisan Sangathan
money lending, and interest rates, 45–46,
(MMKA), 257
66, 148, 248
Mahila Samakhya (MS), 12, 15–16
Moore, B., 150
mahua. See liquor (daru)
Mundas, 33, 89, 251
makranis, 107
Munnibai, 146–147, 160, 164, 178, 201
Malcolm, John, 74, 80
Muslim communities, pogroms targeting,
malnutrition, 247–248, 250
242
deaths by, 247–248 (see also infant
mortality rate [IMR]) Naik, Bhima, 81, 103–106
Malwa Bhil Corps, 75, 81 Naik, Cheel, 97–98
Malwa–Nimad region, 63, 86, 95 Naik, Gumani, 95–96, 98
mamlatdar (village official), 96 Naik, Kaniya, 97–98
mankars, 199 Naiks, 61–62, 75, 97, 105
 Index 303

nakedars (forest guards), 33, 35, 37, 42, 47– Pai, Sudha, 120, 122, 128
48, 142, 156–157, 162, 183, 197, 199 panchayat(s), 184, 189–190, 201, 227, 236
Narayan, Jayaprakash, 124 politics of, 188–190
Narmada dam projects, 31 corruption and, 189
protest against, 217, 219 Rahul on system of, 190
National Commission for Women pant-wallah, 47
(NCW), 232–235 participatory development initiatives, 198
National Front for Adivasi Self-Rule Patel, Bhimsingh, 232
(NFASR), 201 Patel, Chitu, 107
National Human Rights Commission Patel, Gulab, 225
(NHRC), 232, 250 Patel, Jhagdia, 223–225, 227–228, 230–235
National Rural Employment Guarantee Patel, Punja Dirga, 111
Act (NREGA), 1–2, 5, 24, 253–257 Patel, Sardar, 118
natural resources, 22, 69, 86, 202–203, 256 patels, 32, 38, 41–43, 50, 56, 68, 76, 106–
mineral, 87 (see also under forest[s]) 107, 147–148, 151–152, 213–214
Naxalite movement, 225–226, 251–252 role in mediating, 42
Naxalite revolt, 136 of Richwi village, 106
neoliberalisation, 24, 254 patwaris (revenue officials), 33, 39–42, 46,
netas, 37, 140–141, 183, 203, 214, 216, 221 49–50, 82–83, 85–86, 89, 107–109,
nevad lands, 34–35, 140, 154, 196–197, 200 138–140, 161–162, 177–178
cultivation, 198–200, 226 abolition of, 82
criminalisation of, 195 and tax collection, 40
and legal recognition, 196 Pawar, 63
Nielsen, G. M., 22 peasants, 5, 7, 18, 59, 65–68, 114, 116,
Nielsen, Kenneth Bo, 166, 254 240–241
Nikunj, 145–146, 155, 160, 224 Bhil, 82–83
Niwali ashram, 178 debt cycle among, 248 (see also debt/
non-Adivasis, 30, 43–45, 89, 158–159 indebtedness)
Non-Cooperation Movement, 114, Gond, 88
116–117 in Jhabua, 248
non-reformist reform, 24, 253–254, 258– People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL),
259, 262 228, 233, 235
non-state actors, 15–16, 239 petitions, 99–102
Operation Clean campaign, 236 police, 32–33, 38–40, 42–43, 48–50, 85–86,
opium trade, 79–80 148–149, 173–176, 184, 217–220,
oppositional 224–225, 230–236
appropriations, 9, 19, 91, 129, 187 arrests and bribes, 173–174
collective action, 19–20, 24, 94, 209, custody by, 216, 219, 234
218, 221, 253 political
Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 14, 25, liberties, 15, 203
30, 128, 240, 260–261 society, 8–11, 18, 24, 57, 171, 179, 186,
Outram, James, 74–75, 78 188, 210–212, 223, 237
304 Index

subordination, 22, 32–33, 50, 55–58, 60, of 1881, 80, 102, 108, 110
74, 81, 87, 94, 118, 129–130, 203 of 1883, 82–83, 110
politician–trader–bureaucracy nexus, 4 Bhil, 99, 116
politico-bureaucratic literacy, 33, 55–57, of Bhimas, 81, 106
129, 159, 176, 181–182 reciprocal emotions, 23, 135, 151, 168
poverty, 5–6, 9, 13–14, 29–32, 56, 74, 90, Red Corridor, 251
128–129, 137, 248, 256 repression, 2, 4, 15, 53, 151, 208–211, 221,
chronic, 6, 30, 32, 256 223, 235–237, 245–246
Guha on, 32 resignation, 22, 33, 51–53, 55–57, 129,
mitigating, 14 135–136, 142, 144, 147–148, 156,
in Rajasthan, 30 168. See also fear
poverty line, 9, 29–30, 248 resistance, 4, 6, 9, 13, 17, 53–54, 90–91,
power relations, 5, 19, 22, 32–33, 59, 90, 99–100, 109–110, 136–151
118, 139, 142, 180, 259 revenue, 61, 65, 70, 82–83, 85–86, 106–
caste-based hierarchies of, 241 107, 115, 124
princely states, 58–59, 77–78, 81, 86–87, department of, 39
93–94, 99, 102, 111, 115–116, 118, of forest, 73, 83, 86 (see also land
129 revenue)
protests, 3–4, 9, 38, 78, 96, 117, 123, 151, rights-based
163, 176–179, 183, 217 claims-making, 4, 22, 55, 57, 129, 150,
Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to 172, 186, 190, 194, 203
the Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), mobilisation, 24
201–202, 223, 236, 259 Right to Information Act, 253–254, 259
public accountability, 170, 184 riot networks, 243–244
Public Distribution System (PDS), 248 Rose, Captain J., 65
Public–private partnerships, 239 Roseberry, William, 53
Quit India movement, 127 Roy, Aruna, 3

raids, 62–63, 65, 74–75, 78, 80–1, 89, saaldar, 67

95–102, 106–107, 110 saalkhat, 67
and looting, 32, 148, 155–156, 160, 232 sahukars, 45–46, 68, 110, 136, 145 (see also
Raja of Barwani, 104–105 money lending)
Rajputana Agency, 78, 93, 115 and Adivasi borrowers, 46
Rajputana–Malwa railway, 79 borrowing money from, 45
rakhwaldari tax, 79, 104 Kela on, 68
rakhwali tax, 77–80, 99, 101 Salwa Judum, 229, 238–239, 241
Ranger, 141 Samata Party, 241
Ranjit Singh, Rana Sahib, 73 Sangathan, 133, 143–144, 146–149,
rasad, 115 156–157, 160–164, 166–167, 182,
Rawat, Gyarsilal, 222 189, 201–203, 208, 221–224 (see also
rebellion/revolt, 75, 80–81, 83, 89, 93, 95, Adivasi Mukti Sangathan [AMS])
97–108, 118, 129, 209 quelling of, 221–237
 Index 305

Sangathan-wallahs, 148, 156 Singh, Maharana Fateh, 114

Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), 52, 219–220. Sisodia Darbar in Udaipur, 79
See also Narmada dam projects Skaria, Ajay, 61–62, 76–77, 109
sarkar, 32, 48, 50, 54–55, 112–113, 133, social
147, 156–157, 185, 199, 214–215 boycotts, 148
sarpanch, 38, 41–43, 183, 189–190, 214, condensations of hegemony,19
224 entitlements, 24
Satmala Bhils, 65 movements, 5–6, 24, 134, 136, 160, 181,
Satpuras, 82 201, 222–223, 242, 254–255, 259
Scheduled Castes (SCs), 29–30, 128, 192, reform, 110, 113
201 Socialist Party, 124–126
Scheduled Districts, 204 Social Work and Research Centre
Scheduled Tribes (STs), 29–30, 32, 45, 125, (SWRC), 136–138, 142
128, 143, 192, 201, 204, 247 Somers, Margaret, 193
Scindia, Vijaya Raje, 121 southeastern Gujarat, 5
Scindias, 63, 96 southern Rajasthan, 5, 61, 124, 136
Scott, James, 53–54 Bhagat movements in, 110
SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 183 campaign against forced labour in, 124
self-rule, 11, 23, 116, 172, 195, 201–205, Special Action Force, 231
207, 223, 237, 259 Special Police Officers (SPOs), 238
Sendhwa ghat, 96 state, as Bhagwan, 50
settlement, 43, 67, 74–75, 77, 80–81, 84, state-making, 10, 22, 58–60, 63–64, 77, 88,
86, 88, 95–97, 103, 109 90–91, 94, 98, 109, 117–118
Sewell, William, 134 state personnel, 33, 37, 41–42, 46–49, 52–
Shah, Alpa, 33, 159 54, 56, 129, 134, 141, 144, 177–178
Shah, Jemad-ud-deen, 98 state power, 15, 23, 64, 74–86, 88, 94, 186,
Shani, Ornit, 242 207–208, 210, 237–246
Shanti Sena (Peace Army), 208, 222, state-society relations, 6–7, 9–10, 21–23,
224–228, 230–235, 237, 245 32–33, 47, 56–57, 129–130, 170–
police collusion with, 234–235 172, 176–177, 187–188, 205–208,
shared sovereignty, 61–63, 71, 77, 87, 107, 257–258
129 democratisation of, 188
Sharma, Aradhana, 12, 16, 201, 204, stigmas, 21, 41, 43–44
254–255 subalterns, 4–5, 7, 10–11, 16, 18, 21–24,
Shramik Sangathana, 6, 164 30–31, 91, 127, 150–151, 171–172,
Shri Kalia, custodial death of, 235 177, 179, 181, 194, 206–207
sibandis, 97 claims-making, 4, 24, 179, 188, 194,
silicosis, 249–250 197, 206, 220
death by, 249–250 consciousness, 53–54
Singh, Arjun, 142 groups, 4–5, 7–9, 11–12, 15–20, 32–33,
Singh, Digvijay, 128, 223 53, 57–58, 171–172, 179–180,
Singh, Harbans, 231 186–188, 258–260
306 Index

movements, 21, 188, 190, 246 sales of, 73

resistance, 9, 17, 190, 206–207, 221, for shipbuilding, 69
241, 245–246, 250 trade in 71
women, 12, 16, 230 timber merchants, 71
subaltern politics, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 18–19, Bhil chieftains as, 71
23, 170–172, of Gujarat sought, 71
Chatterjee and, 9 trade, 64, 71, 78–80, 95
Subramanian on, 193 regulation of, 87
Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM), 139, travellers, 59, 77, 79–80, 96, 99
149, 162, 181, 184 and taxes, 96
subordination, 6, 37, 44, 49, 58, 81, 86, 90, taxes from, 77 (see also merchant
96, 129–130, 167 travellers)
of Adivasi land and labour, 68 tree, 69–71, 162, 195, 201, 203, 231
Subramanian, A, 193 permits to fell, 73
Sundar, Nandini, 69, 87–88, 179, 226, 238, tribal zones of exception, 204
252 tyranny, 33–49, 55–57, 94–95, 129–130,
Tadvis, 85 134–138, 142–144, 149–152, 156–
tankha, 80 158, 168–171, 206
taxes/taxation, 35, 40, 42, 66, 71–73, 77–78, anatomy of, 34, 41, 49
82–83, 99–101, 106–108, 114–116, in Bhil heartland, 29
184 durability of, 33, 49, 56, 138, 142, 168
bolai and rakhwali, 77 Forest Department and, 38
in cash, 68 local rationality of, 33, 49–56
for ploughing, 83, 100 patels mediating, 42
from travellers, 96 patwaris in, 39
unfair, 100, 114 as state–society relation, 21, 23, 43, 47
teak, 52, 72–73, 86 subaltern groups under, 22
prohibition of cutting, 73
Udaipur–Kherwara road, 80
tehsildar, 46, 85, 137, 146–147, 149,
unemployment, 2, 31
178–179
unity of Adivasis, 4, 15, 115, 144, 163,
Tejawat, Motilal, 110–117
210, 246. See also collective action:
Textile Labour Association, 244
mobilising
thakurs (landlords), 111, 113–114, 115,
117, 122 upper castes, 14, 16, 24, 95, 110, 120, 122,
thanedar, 49, 101, 174–175 127–128, 130, 244–246, 259–262
thikanedars, 114, 116 upper classes, 95, 120, 128, 130, 245, 253,
Thomas, Peter, 57 259
Thompson, E.P., 180 uprising. See rebellion/revolt; resistance
threats, 2, 16, 33, 35, 51, 67, 141, 209, Valsingh, 3, 148–149, 160, 167, 185, 202
214–215. See also violence Vijaybhai, 155, 157
timber, 34, 52, 65, 69–73 village council, informal, 41
extraction, 71 headman of village, 85
 Index 307

village Bhils of, 21, 23, 31, 33–34, 41, 49, 54,
activists, 34, 36, 39, 46–47, 49, 51 56–57, 63, 87, 130
elites, 41, 43, 49, 129, 169, 212–214, Bhil subalternity in, 171
227, 245 forest enclosure in, 72
violence, 16, 34–35, 38, 51–52, 139–140, malnutrition rates in, 248
156–157, 176–177, 208–210, 216– Scheduled Areas of, 125–127
218, 226, 237–246 state formation of, 90
collective, 228, 242–243 politics and power in, 117–128
communal, 243–244 subordination of the Bhils of, 130
Custodial, 216 tribal areas of, 23, 172, 187, 206
fear of being subjected to, 38, 52 Williams, Raymond, 136
sexual, 228–230 women
threats of, 2, 21, 233 attacks on, 229
empowerment, 12, 55
welfarers, 9, 12–13, 55, 144, 186, 205, 262 gang rapes/rape on, 217, 219, 225, 228,
plundering, 106 230, 240
western Madhya Pradesh, 1, 5–6, 23, 30, 61, participation by, 164
67, 94–95, 123–124, 188, 245, 249 sexual harassment of, 45
Adivasi social conditions in, 48 as subulterns, 12, 16, 230
Baviskar on, 43
Yadav, Subhash, 223–225, 231
Bhil activism in, 171
Bhil resistance in, 133 zamindars, 88