Suchergebnisse

This article investigates the growing marginality of pastoralism using the Gujar agitation of 2007–08 in India as a point of entry. Although the process began with colonialism, pastoralism is currently witnessing a crisis in postcolonial India as the consequence of a progressively sedentarising state, intensification of commercialised agriculture and urbanisation. The Gujars of Rajasthan have made claims for recognition demanding scheduled tribe (ST) status to counter inequality. Clearly, this inequality has been historically constituted. Hence, the play of inequality and resistance is addressed through an examination of two clusters of events around the years 2007 and 1857. Currently, the state defines tribes in terms of indices that have been subject to neither review nor public debate. It is not only the vision of the state that is compromised by colonial anthropology and history, but also that of civil society and community. Tragically, communities are forced to format their histories in terms of an archaic indigeneity. Further, claims to social justice and equality are reduced to demands for quotas rather than addressing critically and creatively the violence of development and knowledge. Thus, the politico-administrative category, ST, itself becomes a mode of violence, pointing to the need to debate afresh the grounds on which tribality is constituted.