Anthropological study: Dr Begrich discusses his work on the Adivasi of India

‘Adivasis are not just considered to be different but inferior’.

LAHORE:

The indigenous people of the state of Jharkand in India, commonly known as Adivasi, are generally perceived to be inferior, Dr Roger Begrich said at a seminar on Marginality and the State: A case study of Jharkand, India, at Forman Christian College on Wednesday.

He was sharing his research on the consumption of alcohol and indigeneity with a focus on Jharkand. The seminar was organised by the Centre for Public Policy and Governance. Dr Begrich teaches at the John Hopkins University and the University of Zurich.

The state of Jharkand was created in November 2000 through what Dr Begrich says was a people’s movement. But the state was not formed just to establish the identities of indigenous peoples. It was formed during a wave in which the states of Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand were also created. He said he had tried to study the state as it was experienced locally.  “As anthropologists we don’t take states for granted,” he said. Citing anthropologists and sociologists, he argued that theories over time had suggested that the state legitimised itself through development schemes and practices. Within Jharkand, Dr Begrich focused on Ranchi, the state capital, and Khunti.

He said the state of Jharkand, a densely forested area, was home to 40 per cent mineral resources of the entire country, most of which had remained unutilised in undivided Bihar. The state, he said, had also experienced a Maoist insurgency. About the Adivasi culture, he said, it was largely viewed as inferior, even by non-Adivasis living in Jharkand. “This is a clearly racist perception that looks upon Adivasis as not just different but inferior,” he said. Alcohol was very much part of the Adivasi culture. “The practices of drinking by the tribal population are very different from the non-tribal populace,” he said. Alcohol was an integral part of all cultural practices and ceremonies, he said.

In contemporary India, the dominant view has been that the Adivasi consumed alcohol while Hindus abstained from it.

Explaining the practice, he said it was customary to serve alcohol to visitors, particularly in rural areas of the state. But the rural populace, he had interacted with were mostly rice cultivators, whose livelihood was earned through cultivation and not brewing.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20^th, 2014.