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Indigenous agency: customary rights and tribal protection in Eastern India,1830–1930

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 09:37 authored by Vinita DamodaranVinita Damodaran

This paper argues for a reassessment of colonial discourses relating to the tribes of Eastern India. In the context of the serious tribal rebellions of the nineteenth century, colonial administrators put into place forms of governance that took into account indigenous land use practices and forms of authority, thus creating legal protection for the tribes. Whilst these reforms were not sweeping or far reaching enough they did put a brake on the wholesale exploitation of these marginalized communities under colonialism. The measures were carried on into the post-colonial period under the powers conferred in 1950 by Schedule 5 of the Indian constitution, whose origins can be traced to the colonial discourses of tribal protection which I delineate here. Since independence and more recently, Eastern India has become subject to new kinds of both internal and external economic colonization, far more traumatic in impact than colonization before 1947. It may well be that current trends in globalization are creating a new post-colonial imperialism even less accountable than its predecessor: one characterized by ecological inequity, growing environmental injustice, human-rights abuses and a consequent rising tide surge of state violence and counter-violence.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

History Workshop Journal

ISSN

1363-3554

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Issue

The State Virtual Issue

Volume

76

Page range

85-110

Department affiliated with

  • History Publications

Notes

This paper has been re-published in OUP's 'The State Virtual Issue'. This virtual issue tells the histories of states in their interlocking national, international, local, and archival dimensions, and as political and legal contestations of sovereign power. Arranged in to seven sections, discover how topics in one section are in dialogue with others elsewhere. https://academic.oup.com/hwj/pages/the-state-virtual-issue

Institution

University of Sussex

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2013-03-14

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