Adivasis and the State
Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland
South Asia in the Social Sciences Series, Vol. 7

In Adivasis and the State, Alf Gunvald Nilsen presents a major study of how subalternity is both constituted and contested through state?society relations in the Bhil heartland of western India. The book unravels the historical processes that subordinated Bhil Adivasi communities to the everyday tyranny of the state and investigates how social movements have mobilised to reclaim citizenship. In doing so, the book also reveals how collective action from below transform the meanings of governmental categories, legal frameworks, and universalising vocabularies of democracy. 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.

List of figures and tables; Glossary of Hindi terms; Preface; 1. Introduction; Part I. Subalternity: 2. 'So much fear was inside us': everyday tyranny in the Bhil heartland; 3. 'Quiet and obedient cultivators': colonial state space and the origins of everyday tyranny; 4. 'You are now the masters of the country': negotiations and consolidations; Part II. Citizenship: 5. 'The fears have gone away': making oppositional local rationalities; 6. 'We are the ones who make the Sarkar': law, civil society and citizenship in subaltern politics; 7. 'They have weakened us': deciphering the politics of coercion; 8. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Associate Professor in the Department of Global Development and Planning at the Universitet i Agder, Norway.