Understanding Representation: The Politics of Adivasi Representation

• In Event: Reimagining Political Participation in South and Southeast Asia

Abstract

The terms ‘Adivasi’ (Indiginious People), ‘Image’, with several implications connote different meanings. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972) describes an image as “a sight which has been created or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved –for a few moments or a few cultures” (9-10). A study of the ‘Adivasi’ in Indian writing seems less absolute but a reified presentation, and not just as it appears in the obvious manifestations in Indian writing in English and in Indian writing in regional languages.
The image of the ‘Adivasi’ is perhaps clearly defined in association with nature and oral culture. Oral narratives transmit cultural values and knowledge which strengthen Adivasi identity explicitly and implicitly. Claude Levi-Strauss dismisses the idea of the natural primitive quite easily. The current paper looks at how such conceptions of the tribal subject are rather dismissive while failing to accommodate the diverse and tenacious relationships tribes, as demographic units as well as communities, maintain with society at large. The paper shall dwelve into the representations of Adivasis within Indian literature and demonstrate how such representations are riven with politics and prejudices. Using the theories of representations developed by Stuart Hall and Edward Said, the paper shall attempt to locate the Adivasi subject and illustrate the need for self-representations of Adivasis in the corpus of Indian literature.

Author

• Mohan Dharavath, Independent Scholar