THE POLITICS OF TRIBAL IDENTITY IN KOTRA
'You're studying adivasis! I'll tell you the only three things you need to know about adivasis. One; they drink too much. Two; they eat beef. Three; they rob and steal. They can't be trusted.' [Shantilal Jain, shopkeeper, Jura].
'The Government has spent too much on adivasis over the past few years with no result. If they spent as much on the upper castes, they would at least develop.'
'Gametis are evil.' [Sirajuddin Sheikh, shopkeeper & LAMPS agent, Jura]
Q. Why is Kotra notorious for criminal incidents, violence and drinking?
A. These problems are related to ignorance. The tribal is unaware of the formal system. If a farmer has a cow and that cow wanders into another's field to eat grass and destroys a crop, under the system, that cow's owner will be fined. The cow doesn't understand.
'Tribals follow the rules of nature. If a tiger can kill, why can't a man?'
[Interview with Dr. Trivedi. Director, Tribal Research Institute,
Introduction and Summary
The trend of much recent scholarship on the tribal populations of
The concepts of the adivasi and the tribal present a dilemma to those activists and scholars who would seek to articulate an emancipatory/ empowering politics for the selfsame subject. The use of these ahistorical and homogenous terms presents problems both in terms of the subjectivity of the actors as well as the limitations inherent in the action of essentialisation.
The historical figure of the tribal thus emerges indistinctly, shrouded in no small amount of uncertainty. Meanwhile State policy, developmental interventions by Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), not to mention anthropological research, continues apace uninflected by such doubt and generally with a definite, if never clearly stated idea of what constitutes the adivasi and his/her problems.
Drawing on field research from a district in southern Rajasthan, my aim in this paper is to suggest that although the distinction between tribe and caste has been and remains fluid to a hitherto unappreciated degree, our ideas about adivasis are not similarly adaptable. Identity emerges as unfixed, difficult to define, complex and above all plural. The hegemonic claims (of the State, NGOs, and dominant groups) which would seek to domesticate and singularise identity, promoting some of its aspects rather than others, must be scrutinised for the politics of their intentions. I will attempt to discern how traditionally tribal communities have been defined by a set of essential attributes and assumed contrasts with Hindu society. These notions have been used to facilitate certain relations of power, production and control. Common-sense assumptions relating to stereotypes of adivasi criminality, drunkenness and licentiousness have been and continue to be re-evaluated by the adivasis themselves in the telling of the past, in everyday practice, the ceremonial and ritual life of the region and in agitation sponsored by NGOs. I will attempt to examine those domains and cultural forms, both covert and public, through which groups would seek to maintain a distinct identity and express resistance. My approach entails a profound but not uncritical faith in the existence of the 'hidden transcript'; a term coined by James Scott to characterise the various ‘forms that political struggle takes when frontal assaults are precluded by the realities of power.’[3] I will also try to show how resistance might in fact be built into the particular configurations of power and domination that obtain in the area.
Rethinking Hegemony and Domination
This study is focused on the villages of Jura Panchayat, Kotra tehsil,
In examining the ways in which the hegemony of dominant groups in Jura Panchayat is produced, maintained and contested, my approach proceeds from the understanding that hegemony denotes a form of domination. This follows from Gramsci's original separation of 'Rule' and 'Hegemony' as two types of such. 'Rule' is extraordinary and involves direct or effective coercion. 'Hegemony', operating in the 'public sphere' is more the norm and describes that complex of social, cultural and political forms which comprise the ideological apparatus of domination.[5] According to its crudest definition, hegemony is manipulation, indoctrination - false consciousness. It is the means by which, the condition in which subordinate classes internalise and reproduce the values of their superiors, to the extent of consenting to the logic of the very ideological system that oppresses them.[6]
Such a totalising scheme affords little opportunity of conceiving a space for resistance in the cast-iron complex of domination. If however we view hegemony as a molecular condition comprising a dialectical albeit asymmetrical interaction between elite and subaltern, then such spaces emerge. Just as it influentially shapes just what is and what is not possible in the mind of the dominated, so the hegemony of the elite is itself constructed and bounded by those very same limits. As Williams writes of hegemony, 'It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not all its own. We have then to add to the concept of hegemony the concepts of counter hegemony and alternative hegemony, which are real and persistent elements of practice.'[7] Hegemony as a search for consent, for legitimacy now becomes more fluid, more open to change and thus more fragile.
Guha's clarification of Gramsci is helpful in this respect.[8] Guha avoids the juxtaposition of Domination and Hegemony as antinomies and instead defines power as a series of unequal relationships. These inequalities derive from a general relation of the two elements, Domination and Subordination in which each element is composed of a dyad. Domination comprises Coercion and Persuasion, Subordination is made up of Collaboration and Resistance. Each of these dyads is never static but rather in perpetual motion. Hegemony stands for a condition of Dominance such that, Persuasion outweighs Coercion. For Guha, hegemony is therefore a dynamic concept, where even the most persuasive state of domination is open to resistance. Moreover there can be no hegemonic system in which Persuasion outweighs Coercion to the extent of nullifying it. Then there would be no Domination and therefore no Hegemony.
Hegemony is also an effort to inculcate in the private life the kind of behaviour that subordinates have no choice but to offer the outward manifestations of in public. One might argue that outward conformity indicates a deeper acquiescence, especially where apparently little effort on behalf of the dominant is required to produce this show. One might just as easily argue that it does not and merely points to the workings of a powerful sense of what is realistic and permissible. This process of calculation itself is symptomatic of an autonomous consciousness, functioning less covertly 'backstage' in a different realm, that of Scott's 'hidden transcript.'
In this paper I will attempt to identify certain modes of domination exercised in the area. The elites clearly volunteer themselves for identification and definition. They are Muslim Rajput, Jain and caste Hindu (Kumhar and Lohar). Among and between the first two groups a good deal of jostling for status and hegemonic precedence occurs. The subordinate groups comprise in totality the adivasis of the area, although again they are not a homogenous grouping. Great differences exist between Garasia and Gameti, as well as within subcastes themselves. How is it that these dominant groups, a minority (albeit a sizable one) in an 'adivasi belt'[9] as I kept being told, have been able to maintain their economic and political preponderance for so long? Of course a major part of the answer can be found in the history of the region - in the relationships and perquisites of feudalism; their inequalities and exactions. In the conquest and settlement of adivasis as peasant-cultivators, in the monopolisation of the most productive agricultural land by the most powerful, in the extraction of the peasant surplus through bhog, begar and nazrana, in the intimidation of these groups by superior force of arms. In the reification of these institutions by the Bri
Yet according to older adivasis their lot was better under thikanedari. Land was more plentiful, food and water presented no problems, life was peaceful and they were by and large left alone.
How do we account for the persistence of asymmetrical hierarchies of power, for pervasive and systematic inequality in such conditions? The dominant wisdom, its ‘public transcript’, runs that adivasis are responsible for their own predicament. They drink too much and are sexually licentious. Both are social customs which they are unwilling to change because they are illiterate and uneducated. Even if educated though, they will be unable to change because of their natural predilection for behaviour of this kind. Similarly they are habitually incapable of saving money and will always be spendthrift with what they have. Their natural aggression also means they can never unite even for their own collective benefit. Without the paternalistic concern of their superiors, their situation would be even worse.
In the presence of their patrons I noticed adivasis ruefully concurred with these judgements. The backstage performance runs according to a different script though. In private and in their more lucid moments, Muslims and Rajputs in Jura are willing to be more candid about their own agency in the generation and perpetuation of debilitating patterns of behaviour. They admit that it is in their interests that feuding occurs and that they derive an especially lucrative source of income from the arbitration fees they charge. They acknowledge that adivasis can hardly ever individually afford the large sums mediators decide should be paid by one feuding party to another. Adivasis are therefore forced to borrow money from dominant groups at extortionate rates of interest, the cycle of debt often culminating in the alienation of tribal land. They admit that most adivasis in the area do not drink the mahua they make themselves, but rather purchase it at inflated prices from Rajput households in Jura. In private, adivasis also identify the same factors but are more willing to talk of poor land quality, soil erosion and lack of water for irrigation and drinking as root causes of their plight.
Having so clearly identified the symptoms of their poverty, I was surprised therefore when they refused to be drawn on how they might openly challenge the terms of their exploitation and actively change their condition. Although evidence for open defiance is there, most notably under the aegis of the NGOs Astha, the VKP (Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad) and the Jangal Jamin Andolan, such instances are neither sustained, consistent nor I believe do they carry the active support (I mean something beyond acquiescence here) of most of the people in my area of study. I was looking for notions that were not inculcated, which people carry around with them, that are part of their everyday existence; as ordinary and normal for them as their experiential reality of exploitation.
Paradoxically the dissent I was seeking, although perhaps mundane, would not be obvious; it would exist in those locations beyond the control and surveillance of elites, where some comparative freedom and license could be garnered. To this extent I was reminded of Scott's insistence that 'it is more accurate to consider subordinate classes less constrained at the level of political action and struggle, where the daily exercise of power sharply limits the options available to them.'[10] The character of this dissent would not be as clearly libertarian or 'progressive' as I would have hoped. Indeed it might be couched in the most apparently retrogressive idioms. This is the case with some of the myths and oral histories presented here. On first reading they appear to endorse, to the extent of reproducing, the logics and idioms of dominant discourse which sanction hierarchy in the area. But as I hope to suggest, many of these narratives have a profoundly bivalent quality. When divinely constituted authority is invoked and revered, it is not always with the expectation that injustice will be remedied. As such it constitutes a critique of power. The concern of these stories with historicity is an invitation and contribution to a debate about what actually did happen concomitant with a questioning of the sanctity of other versions. Elsewhere identity claims to parity with elites imperil the very exclusivity of their power by deconstructing and undermining the logic of primordial power.
Rumour and calumny serve a similar purpose by taking these groups at their own valuation and critiquing them in the very same terms they employ to assert their supremacy. Scott observes that 'most gossip is a discourse about social rules that have been violated…Without an accepted normative standard from which degrees of deviation may be estimated, the notion of gossip would make no sense whatever.'[11] He goes on to state that gossip reinforces these social standards, implying the impermeability of the cultural perameters within which subversion occurs. There is no compelling evidence for such an argument though, less so when these norms are patently not applicable to the gossips themselves.
Again the religiousity observable among many adivasis, much of it of relatively recent origin, might be read as evidence for a conservative consensus with caste Hindu communities. The abstemiousness of Garasia bhakts and their various panths could be treated as 'Sanskritisation', an emulation of the customs and habits of pure 'twice born' castes in the hope of being incorporated at the lowest levels of the Hindu hierarchy.[12] The concern with criteria of purity in the programmes of these panths and the unwillingness of many Garasias and Gametis to use 'adivasi' as the primary signifier of identity seems to bear out this thesis. Alternatively we could divine behind these movements the efforts of their followers to overturn hegemonic stereotypes of adivasi culture. As far as I could ascertain, these movements are not accompanied by any claim to specific caste status. Bhakts and most Garasias might claim they are Rajput but this assertion is distinct from their religiousity and is embodied in their history.[13] This facet of identity is secure enough to be allowed to stand alone.
It must also be noted that these movements are occurring in a context in which in Jura, as in the whole of this part of Kotra, the identity and origins of Rajputs are covertly questioned and maligned. Waves of reform among the Garasias of Tandala have earned them the mockery and reproof of Rajputs in Jura and I take this as powerful evidence of the threat they pose to Rajput hegemony. If 'adivasi' is not the primary category of self-definition for tribals, then this is hardly surprising. Adivasi is used by outsiders as an abusive and derogatory term of reference. Their desire to be dissociated from it is eminently understandable. It recognises the relationship between values and power. This does not entail a complete acceptance of the logic of caste.[14] A similar motivation is discernible in the involvement of villages with the activities of Astha and the VKP in Jura Panchayat. The impact of these organisations must be assessed in their lack of deep and widespread ideological penetration.
Competing Histories & Contested Hegemony
Introduction
A high incidence of conflict would appear to best characterise the multiple relationships which obtain between the several groups in the area under study. A historical frame of reference directly forms the background against which recent instances of antagonism have been enacted and so a diachronic perspective is vital to any consideration of the state of social relations and operation of power in the Kotra today. The following brief historical outline sets out various status claims, some of which are visibly tied to contemporary political struggles (which will be described in the second part of the paper).
The following narratives might well be described as belonging to oral traditions. Due to the limitations of my research method in the field, not least my ignorance of Hindi and the local dialects of the Kotra region, I was unable to apprehend in any meaningful way, other than through an interpreter, the conceptual perameters, the outlines of these traditions. My ignorance was therefore twofold and constitutes a major deficiency of this paper, although my desire in time to explore this absence has become a keen ambition.
However from what little I was able to apprehend of the various accounts of ancestors, genealogy, migration and village settlement related to me during the course of my fieldwork, a distinctive way of understanding the past emerged. My intention in transcribing some of these narratives and attempting to describe this sense of the past is not 'to extract historical grain from mythical chaff' as Skaria acerbically describes the 'older academic tradition of doing oral history'[15], which sought to make non-western, pre-modern, pre-literate narratives conform to the empirical and ‘fact’-based styles of western historiography. Nor do I wish to valorise or privilege these particular ways of conceiving the past; that is to militantly affirm their difference from 'history' and thereby argue their authenticity. There is no need for that.
These narratives are frequently non-linear. Events which I perhaps interpret as consecutive, or perhaps even consequent, may well, according to the narrator be coeval with those they succeed in my narrative. Chronology in any conventional historical sense frequently does not exist. Stories span centuries and the events privileged for narratorial comment may have occurred very close in time to one and other. On the other hand separate events may also be divided by decades or even centuries. Time, except where otherwise stated, is unimportant. Action is the thing. (When I occasionally asked an interviewee to give me an idea of when a story happened, they either could not or the response was often, 'What does it matter when it happened? It happened.') Narratives often remained 'incomplete' to my understanding. Narrators were asked to tie up these loose ends, to fill in the gaps. In doing so, they may have been forced to provide connections that were not present originally and to which I have attributed too much significance. On the other hand symbolic action has great perhaps disproportionate, to my mind, importance in these narratives and their significance may well have been lost on me or in my transcription which does not preserve their potency or misplaces the emphasis. On occasion the same story from the same narrator varied. The narrator was then asked to tell the story again. It was repeated to him and he was asked to check and validate it.
In common with conventional histories though, present concerns reflect continually on the way past experiences are figured in Kotra. The telling of the past therefore offers clues to the present. I have tried to follow and read these.
Local Histories
It is generally, although not universally acknowledged that the whole of present day Kotra was under the rule of tribal kings, about 800 years ago.[16] The advent of Rajputs, their origin, and the manner in which they assumed power in the region and subordinated the tribal populations is subject to much dispute. Both the Rao of Jura and the Rajputs of lower Jura claim to belong to the Chauhan clan of Chittor – an illustrious lineage, whose progenitor Prathvira Chauhan fought the Muslim ruler Mohammed Gauri on several occasions. According to this version their ancestors defeated the tribal king Jora in battle and, through superior force of arms, assumed control of the area.
The Muslims of Jura and a number of the Gameti adivasis of the area however have a different version in which a clear distinction is made between the ancestors of the Rao of Jura and those of the Rajputs of lower Jura. They contend that the Rao's ancestors were actually adventurers from Jalore who ingloriously fled battle and as deserters, and therefore unable to return to their own state owing to the martial code of the time, were forced into exile in the forests of Kotra. Here they intermarried with the local Garasia adivasis until their blood became 'diluted.' Whether by marriage or usurpation, one of these Rajputs was able to accede to the Bhil Raja's throne and establish his rule in the area. The Rajputs of lower Jura are clearly separated from the Rawala and derogatively secretly termed 'Daroga' – the progeny of various illicit unions between members of the Rao's family and the retinue of tribal maidservants which waited on it.[17] Their claim to rawala status is discreetly mocked. Significantly the present Rao of Jura is held to be a 'real' Rajput despite his semi - tribal ancestry. The ostensible justification for this is that his ancestors were able to marry into the royal family of neighbouring Idar state, thereby purifying the strain. A further more significant rationalisation (given by non-Rajputs) is that the Rao's 'noble' behaviour is essential proof of his royal blood whereas no similar evidence presents itself with the Rajputs of lower Jura.[18] It seems apparent though that various contemporary political considerations and motives lie behind such calumny.
Garasias: Rajput and Adivasi
Similarly the provenance of tribals in the area is subject to some debate, both among non-tribal and tribal as well as between various groups of tribals themselves. Certain Garasia families from Junepadar and Tandala villages claim to be the descendants of two Rajput clans, the Sisodias and Chauhans respectively, which intermarried with local tribal women. Their use of these Rajput patronymics is surrounded by a great deal of uncertainty though. This is not only created by the objections of Rajputs but also by the Garasias’ own equivocations. These families refer to themselves as both Rajput and Garasia but refuse to recognise their official State classification and status on the Government of India Census as Scheduled Tribe (although they avail themselves of those government schemes and benefits aimed at tribals). The Rajputs of lower Jura are quite dismissive of the Garasia use of the Rajput designation but more or less accept the explanation for their origin.
A story of the Chauhan Garasias of Tandala is notable for several features. The story was prefaced by a long and elaborate description of the creation of the earth and with it the different vanches (generations) to populate it on
These Chauhans moved from
The clan then moved on to the
The brother therefore remained with his sister. One day, the brother came to graze his cattle on some land belonging to his sister in the
Presumably the Rao, on hearing the story of the brother's travails and realising his common kinship, however distant, as a fellow Rajput (and Chauhan), offered him land. The detail of riding the Rao's horse with the Rao signifies this commonality and also indicates common status. Implicit in this is the Rao's recognition of the Chauhans' fellow Rajput nature, despite their misfortune at the hands of other Rajputs.
However there is considerable ambiguity surrounding the Rajput status of these Chauhans throughout the story. This is situated within a wider discussion of Rajput identity. The preface to the story firmly establishes the Chauhan claim of the Garasias by indicating their antiquity of origin; but the subsequent migrations, the reasons for which are not given, suggest a troubled and marginal existence of shifting cultivation the constant search for land. Similarly their use as menials by the Solankis perhaps indicates that the Chauhans' Rajput status is comparatively degraded.
And yet the Chauhans themselves remain blameless throughout. They demonstrate their loyalty, bravery and martial prowess, for which they are rewarded but ultimately deceived. It should be noted though that it is a Chauhan Attatiya who betrays and murders one of his own people - weakness is also present within Chauhan ranks. This device of the treacherous insider whose actions have calamitous consequences is a recurrent feature of such myths. It serves to remind the listeners that their misfortune is essentially of their own making while also moralising that outsiders alone are not strong enough to defeat the community.
In fact it is the Chauhans themselves who provide the exemplar of 'correct' and archetypal Rajput conduct rather than the other Rajputs of the story. Chauhan behaviour serves as a counterpoint to the conduct of the Solankis. The questions and responses during the cattle theft in part indicate as much. Yet they also reveal an insecurity about status which is a feature of everyday life; the constant need to state and affirm identity. Rajputs of lower Jura deride the Garasias' insistence on their Rajput identity. They mockingly complain that when they summon the Garasias by the name 'Chauhan', the Garasias become agitated and ask 'Why do you not call us Rajput?'
According to the narrator of the story it is only in his generation, the third to live in Tandala, that the Chauhans have become Garasia through their intermarriage with local tribal women. This would appear to be contradicted in the myth by the detail of the brother who marries Dungria's daughter. In fact if contact with tribals is the determinant of lowered status, then the Chauhans became Garasia with the fission of the clan after Ogna.
The repeated motif of riding on the Rao's horse is a trope which deliberately foregrounds the oaths and promises made by those figures of authority and guarantors of their safety. The gravity of the breach of trust by the Rao of Ogna is thus emphasised. The almost ritualised cast of the motif - the two instances are identical in detail and we should remember that ritual is after all consecrated behaviour - is pregnant with the question of whether the sad fate of the Chauhans in Ogna is destined to be repeated in Jura. Whether history will repeat itself. The subversive possibilities attendant on this suggestion are clearly visible. The Rao of Jura is being held to the promise of his ancestors and only time will tell if it is fulfilled. The Rao of Ogna created an unfavourable precedent. The good faith of the Jura rawala is therefore provisional. Even loyalism can be subversive. In fact after the narrator had finished telling the story to us, he added a kind of postscript. He said that Tandala was not a good place, that there was too much fighting there, land quality was bad and water scarce. The Chauhans are once gain thinking of migrating, this time for Chittor to rejoin their mythic ancestors and perhaps regain their lost status.
A myth of origin current among the Raidra Garasias of Junepadar is significant for the way in which it explains the origins of current Rajput dominance. This myth constitutes a more substantive claim to common Rajput status and asserts a superiority of sorts. It is apparently contained in the genealogical records of the Raidra Garasia subcastes of the area held by the hereditary genealoger of that subcaste. It was told to me by the son of this man.
Jorji, a descendant of Bappa Rawal[20] and an 'original' Rajput from Chittorgarh, while hunting in the Bhomat, lost his way near present-day Junepadar. He met an adivasi woman, married her, settled in the area and ultimately assumed control of it, having conquered its indigenous rulers, the Pargi Gametis. Jorji had two sons, Man Singh and Rai Singh. The descendants of Man Singh are the Garasia subcaste, Vaiya, most of whom now live in Devla, about 30 kilometres from Jura. The subcaste Raidra, which still inhabits Junepadar, issues from Rai Singh.
Somehow Jorji's nephew (and the current Rao's ancestor) - his sister's son in fact, whose arrival in the area is unexplained – was able peacefully to usurp the throne. This event generated some tension though, for the descendants of Man Singh and Rai Singh realised the deception. The Rao was therefore forced to placate them with a number of concessions and privileges. He agreed that henceforth he and his family would visit the families of Junepadar at the time of every festival – rather then vice-versa, the standard practise of the time. As a mark of respect, or perhaps an acknowledgement of equal status, he also promised not to ride on horseback in front of them and further exempted Junepadar from bhog.
All these concessions display elements of symbolic inversion, as indeed does the whole story.[21] The current status of the Garasias is attributed to the Rao's trickery, and perhaps their gullibility. Nevertheless their claim to parity (if not superiority by dint of their direct descent from Jorji's line) with the Rao is unequivocally asserted as is their elevation above the Rajputs of lower Jura.
A radically different story of the Raidra and Vaiya subcastes was narrated to me by a Raidra Garasia from Kundal village. This story does not feature in any genealogical records.
An unnamed widowed Rajput Sisodia from Chittorgarh, owing to his corrupt and dissipated lifestyle was forced to leave his palace by his son and daughter. After much wandering, he came to Ogna where he sought shelter in a Bhil house, whose inhabitants did not appear to be Bhil due to their rich attire and jewellery. It was the winter season and the Sisodia fell seriously ill. It became apparent to the Bhil that there was no way to save his guest's life other than by offering him the warmth of another body, that of his own daughter. This was done without the knowledge of the unconscious Rajput but all was revealed to him after his recovery. He then decided to marry the girl who had saved his life and returned with her to his palace in Chittor, telling his children to accept the Bhil girl as their own mother. The children however refused and instead offering him an area of land near present-day Junepadar, insisted that he live there and never see them again.
Over time the Rajput had two sons by the Bhil girl, Man Singh and Rai Singh. Rai Singh had a son and a daughter, but owing to the absence of further Bhil women, Man Singh remained unwed. Then Amba Mata appeared to him in a dream and told him to marry his brother's daughter (others have it that Rai Singh's son and daughter married each other).
During this period, the Sisodias became Garasia on account of their intermarriage with Bhils. The kingdom was known as that of the Pargi Patels. An ancestor of the Jura Rawala, a lone Chauhan from Jalore came to the area to seek a marriage partner. The Garasias tried to marry one of their own women to him. The Chauhan was cunning and asked her how he might capture the kingdom. She advised that he should hold a feast for the Garasias and serve alcohol as well as all kinds of meat, including beef . 'If you do this, they will lose their religion and be forced to flee.' The Pargis had never done any of these things before and after the feast they lost their Garasia status and became Gameti. Those who didn't attend the feast remained Garasia.
Striking discrepancies exist between this and the 'official' genealoger’s version. Here the Vaiya and Raidra subcastes, although having a Rajput ancestor are clearly prior to and separate from the Jura rawala, until the appearance of the Chauhan and his marriage to one of their women. Also the Pargi Gameti kingdom may now be that of the Garasias who themselves are or are associated with the Pargi Patels[22], but do not become Gameti until their lapse.
Again through a combination of the Rao's cunning and their own naivety, or more correctly their innocence, the Garasias lose their kingdom. This time however it is one of their own number who is the author of a conspiracy and their loss, so their own role in their misfortune is again, although more prominently, highlighted. Their systematic 'dereliction' from Rajput to Garasia (via Pargi Patel?) to Gameti is remarkable. There is a clear and inflexible hierarchy of identity here, determined by various criteria of ritual purity but also other factors. For it should be noted that the Sisodia ancestor is already a miscreant and outside the Rajput fold when the story begins and he is rejected by his own family. Furthermore the breaking of the incest taboo by Man Singh, despite its divine sanction, must surely also be another source of disgrace.
Formal loss of Rajput status though is an ambivalent event to say the least. It is stressed that the Sisodia was unaware he was staying in a Bhil house and a good reason is supplied for his mistake. The Bhil girl is initially given to him without his knowledge; he is unconscious. Traces of trickery similar to the later Rao's are implied. And yet it is also apparent that the Bhil had no option but to employ such a device and indeed the man's life was saved by the Bhil girl.
Among the Gametis themselves, such ascriptions of their present status to past ritual impurity also occur. In Bhiyata there are several Gameti subcastes; Peachla, Bhumriya, Gamar and Kasotiya. All claim a Solanki origin from the family of the Panarva thikana and all append Solanki to their name. Their 'decline' to Gameti occurred with their arrival in Bhiyata, when one of their number took water from the house of a Bhil unaware of his true identity. After this he and his descendants were known as 'Gameti Bhil.'
The Traditional Historiography of Adivasi and Rajput in the Bhomat:
Although conventional historians of Mewar have paid little attention to its 'periphery' the history of the Bhomat region[23] is inextricable from the 'high politics' of
Before the advent of the Bri
The difficulties the Bri
The arrival of the Bri
This new colonial avatar of thikanedari was a key motivation behind the Bhil revolts of the 1920s led by Motilal Tejawat in Mewar and Sirohi states. Insurgents refused to pay all taxes, perform begar and defied colonial forest laws.
The establishment of villages according to their current boundaries came after
Undermining Symbolic Hegemony - Identity and the Rajputs of Jura
I have already suggested that the opportunities for subaltern groups openly to contest the terms of their subordination are few. Such a direct, naked confrontation with authority would be undesirable. Dissent occurs in different spaces under various guises. I encountered the most striking and effective of these forms when after a short period of visiting Jura, I became aware of the circulation of a number of ‘stories’ (for want of a better word). Most of these stories, in one way or another were concerned with the identity of the dominant Rajput community of lower Jura. Over the course of the next few weeks I deduced that a large portion of the material power of this group was sustained and to a large extent derived from the self legitimating ideology of caste status. I was able to substantiate this commonsense assumption not by the extent to which I found adivasis to be in consensus with Hindu criteria of ritual purity and pollution but rather because I interpreted a number of these stories as attempts to undermine caste claims. The rulers' ideology holds that their right to predominate derives from their caste. If their caste credentials are undermined, then so is their right to power. Such questioning diminishes their hegemony, since an unequivocally subversive discourse is at work among their ‘subjects.’
Scott writes that gossip ‘presupposes not only a face-to-face community, but also one in which a reputation is still of some importance and value.’[27] He further elaborates that gossip never reduces a powerful individual’s status beyond a point of no return, for otherwise open rebellion would follow. He concludes that gossip even as character assassination ‘is a relatively mild sanction against the powerful.’[28] Scott’s judgement here is puzzling, for it runs against his main intention, as I perceive it, which is to erase the dichotomy between overt resistance and hidden dissent and instead argue for the equality of the latter to the former. This hierarchy of resistance also endows those status-supporting ideologies with too great an instrumentality. In the Indian instance, it might be inferred from this that caste poses too great an obstacle to covert resistance. Here I would like to argue that the circulation of rumour about an individual increases in direct proportion (perhaps hyperbolically) to his/her prominence. The greater and the more mulitifaceted the power of an individual, the more numerous the potential forms and sources of disorder attendant on that complex.
In Jura it became clear to me that these stories had been around for almost as long as their objects. I was surprised by their homogeneity and consistency of content, despite the variety of sources. I also noticed that they echoed and replicated more public, well-known controversies of identity in
In all these stories, a clear distinction was stated or implied between the Rajputs of lower Jura and the family of the Rao of Jura. As explained earlier, the former are held not to be Rajputs at all but offspring of liaisons between members of the Rao’s family and their maidservants. Alternately they are migrants of indeterminate caste or adivasi origin from ‘here and there.’ They are said to have clustered around one Girwar Singh (‘hereafter GS’). Much rumour centres around the parentage and family of GS. He is a large landowner in Jura, an influential patron of adivasis and a power broker in the area. He is also a worker for the VKP and sponsors one large ritual event in Jura during Dasara.
The talk was that GS’ grandfather was Rao Shiv Singh and his grandmother an adivasi servant at the rawala. GS’ father was too old to marry and therefore took his Gameti housemaid as his wife. GS is the product of their union. It is said that GS was forced to marry his sister to a Gameti of Bhiyata village, after she had an affair with the adivasi and became pregnant with his son. This Gameti named Babu already had a wife and two children in his own village. It is also maintained that various other of GS’ relatives have married tribals, including his nephew Gopal Singh and his uncle Ror Singh and that his other brother-in-law, Narayan Singh, is Garasia. Despite these poor Rajput credentials, GS was able to marry his two daughters off into ‘real’ Rajput families from Marwar by falsifying his family history. The story runs though that one of these families, from Sumerpur, discovered the deception too late and threatened to annul the marriage. The groom though, being a reasonable man and also having much affection for his new wife, preferred not to create a stir and let things remain as they were.
It is clearly exceptional that one man’s lineage and family history should be subject to so much scrutiny and discussion. This of course though has a great deal to do with GS’ prominence in Jura. The Muslim descriptions of him are accompanied by claims that there is a great deal of Rajput-adivasi intermarriage in Jura. Rajputs are denigrated for sharing the same culture as the adivasis, for selling and consuming large quantities of alcohol and for being sexually licentious. In fact one source claimed that Garasias are ‘better’ Rajputs because at least they descend from one line, rather than several. Other informants told stories of a Rajput forest ranger who worked in nearby Junepadar and refused to accept water from Rajput houses, whereas he had no such problems with Muslims. GS’ prominence among these Rajputs, his pretensions to be a leader are dismissed in the belittling reference to his house as the ‘chhota rawala’ in comparison to the ‘burra rawala’ of the Rao.[29] Certain Muslims also claim they are closer to the Rao than GS or any of the lower Jura Rajputs. The Rao apparently addresses them respectfully whereas he refers to GS only as ‘Girwar’ and not by his full name, thus refusing to accept him as a fellow Rajput and family member. The exclusivity of their close proximity to the Rao is a matter of great prestige for these Muslims who told me ‘The Rao Sahib will accept any request ours and we will accept any request of his.’ This perverse loyalism is borne out by what I learnt of the politics of staging Durga Puja in Jura (see below). Subsequently I was also informed by several sources that there is a great deal of tension between GS and the Rao’s sons, especially his older son Vijendra Singh, owing to their struggle for leadership in Jura. I was also informed that the Rao is embarrassed by GS’ claims to belong to his family and his overenthusiastic professions of loyalty. He has consequently sought to distance himself from GS.
Such calumny as character assassination draws its very effectiveness from the fact that it disputes and subverts those stories GS likes to tell about himself. In fact a great deal of the stridency of GS’ claims might be seen as a derivative response to these attacks. In his early meetings with us GS was would proudly state he was of the Rao’s family although the details of his ancestry were left unspoken. His claim to embody all kinds of supposedly Rajput traits of hospitality also became apparent in his behaviour toward us. Surprisingly he denigrated his fellow Rajputs of lower Jura claiming they were all Daroga, and that he himself was the only true Rajput among them. These encounters occurred during the first few weeks of our visits to Jura when GS seemed to be anxious to meet and be seen with us. Afterwards though, as our cordial relations with adivasis and Muslims became more conspicuous, his interest in us declined to the point where he began actively to avoid us. It seemed that he was aware that we too had been inducted into the ‘knowledge’ about him. I should add that the perceived identity of my associate Vishal may have had much to do with GS’ coolness. Vishal is a Rajput, a Chundawat from Chittor. A comment from one Rajput in Jura, Nathulal Kothari, father in law of GS and former kamdar ("manager") of the thikana sums up his community’s attitude towards Vishal, ‘We both know that I am not the kind of Rajput your family could marry with.’ Non- Rajputs also perceived this inequality of status which impelled them to divulge more and more of this kind of information to us. Presumably they hoped that this would augment Vishal’s indignation toward these imposters who claimed some kind of equivalence with him.
I noticed though that our informers sometimes excepted themselves from the logic at work in their stories. For example one Muslim from Jura, Sirajuddin Sheikh, a shopkeeper and owner of a flour-mill in Sulao and rival of GS would often speak slightingly of GS and the Rajputs whenever this topic of conversation arose. In one interview though he revealed that Dosh Mohammed, one of the first Muslims in Jura had two wives, one a Muslim and the other adivasi. A fair number of the present descendants of Dosh Mohammed., including a number of our acquaintances derive from his marriage with this woman. Sirajuddin maintained that such intermixing was acceptable since it had been an exception and the purity of the line had been ‘re-established’ soon after. We were also told of several liaisons between Muslim men and adivasi woman and one recent incident in which a Muslim woman had eloped with a Rajput man. GS and other Rajputs claimed that such adivasi women were forced to convert to Islam and were disowned by their communities. Tribals declined to confirm these stories but did add that Muslim abuse of adivasi women, had been a common phenomenon until recent times when the VKP had stepped up agitation against such mistreatment. Another source alleged that quarrels over adivasi women - ‘love stories’- as he called them, were a central cause of larger disputes between Muslim and Rajput youth.
It is clear then that impermeable barriers do not exist between communities and that although endogamy is the norm, a kind of ambivalence toward intermarriage prevails. These findings have profound implications for the ways in which we view the discreteness of tribal identity. It is also significant that the right to decide and define identity, be it adivasi or otherwise, is at one level quite democratically exercised. Anyone can do it and everyone does. However when identity becomes crystallised and relatively formalised in institutional practise, opportunity becomes circumscribed until only a few definitions are visible. The right to define is now guarded and reserved by a select few. These discourses of identity are now enshrined and perpetuated in practise since their ‘owners’ have the material means at their disposal to achieve this. This combination of knowledge and power is then woven into a coercive structure that ‘forces the individual back on himself and ties him to his identity in a constraining way.’[30]
In the next section I will attempt to show how such a process functions in the case of the adivasi ‘tradition’ of ver (feud) and in the institution of the panch, a group of influential men who regulate ver. For now suffice it to say that at the level of practise, only certain discourses are apparent – generally those that have the most material backing, those of dominant groups which can ‘shout the loudest.’ Other discourses of course exist but can only emerge behind the scenes in calculated rumour and gossip.
I choose to interpret Muslim imputations about Rajputs and Girwar Singh as a reactive discourse of insecurity. This insecurity is engendered by the fear that the symbiosis of Rajput and adivasi that the VKP threatens to effect will work to undermine the Muslim hegemony over adivasis. It is no surprise therefore that many tribals complain that Muslims use ‘adivasi’ as a term of abuse to denote backwardness nor that they seek to wed Rajputs to this definition. GS is an important functionary of the VKP in the area and is therefore a prime target for such treatment.
Sirajuddin in fact alleged that he had to be ‘more careful these days’ because the VKP was seeking a pretext to turn adivasis against their Muslim patrons. One evening, when were sitting with Sirajuddin in his house, he pointed to an adivasi, Buta, who was installing some shelving in a corner of the room. He told us that Buta was a typical adivasi who drank too much and regularly got into fights. He knew no better and was just behaving in what he thought was a normal manner. Sirajuddin told us that he felt some responsibility for Buta though because they had grown up together. He tried to help Buta out by giving him odd jobs to do and repeatedly advising him not to drink; Buta of course was unreformable though & Siraj’s efforts were always in vain. Siraj also mentioned that his wife was also fond of ‘his’ adivasis and similarly lectured them about their behaviour, but with identical results. They feared her censure though (in the manner, it seemed to me, recalcitrant schoolchildren might fear their mother). While telling us all this, Siraj kept affectionately swearing at Buta who smiled shyly and just shook his head in answer to Siraj’s rhetorical questions ‘Mother###### why do you always drink? Because you don’t know any better.’
Siraj then went on to narrate a story of how Buta’s elder brother had injured himself while using his tractor and had tried to fabricate a false charge against him under the influence of GS and the VKP.[31] Luckily Buta had intervened and had told GS to leave Siraj and his brother alone. It was clear that Siraj wanted to impress on us the sentimental and disinterested aspects of his hold over adivasis which distinguished his dominance as paternalism. Adivasis appreciated this concern and were willing to repay it. These benefits of Muslim paternalism were imperilled by the machinations of GS and the VKP, who were threatening to encroach on his client-base. This kind of incident had never occurred in the past when GS had ‘his’ adivasis and Siraj his own clients. It is in a way ironic that these fissures in the nexus of Muslim-Rajput hegemony are essentially caused by adivasis.
Rana Punja and the Bhumias: Rajput or Adivasi?
One Muslim told me that the original ruler of Jura had been Joria Bhil, from whom the so-called Rajputs of Jura (including the Rao) traced their ancestry. He claimed that if the government decided to build a statue of Joria Bhil in the village, then the Rajputs would oppose this and claim that Joria Bhil was really a Rajput and that his real name was Jor Singh. This was an obvious reference to the controversy of recent years surrounding the mooted erection of a statue to Rana Punja in nearby Panarava. Briefly, Rana Punja is held by many to be an adivasi who was a general in Rana Pratap’s army. He led a detachment of Bhil archers against Akbar at the battle of Haldighati. In 1997 Chief Minister Beru Singh Shekhawat’s State government decided to build a statue of Rana Punja in Panarva, his supposed birthplace. The statue would carry the inscription that Punja was a Bhil. Supporters of the idea comprise an unlikely and by no means homogenous coalition. Tribal MLAs Mahavir Bagora, Gulabchand Kataria and Berulal Meena backed it, as did Astha and the VKP. The most determined opposition came from the Rao of Panarva, Manohar Singh, who claims to be a Solanki Rajput and is related to Rana Punja, whom he holds was also a Rajput. Manohar Singh managed to obtain a court stay of construction on the statue and this still holds today. Meanwhile Rana Punja’s identity remains a much debated matter around
Everyone I spoke to seemed to have a definite opinion of whether Punja was tribal or Rajput. Manohar Singh complained to me that the statue is not about celebrating adivasi history as its supporters claim, but rather about securing adivasi vote banks. He asks why Punja’s adivasi identity became a matter for celebration only 3 years ago when it had remained a dormant fact for so many years. Indeed the ideological heterogeneity of those who describe Punja as a Bhil is quite striking. There are adivasi rights activists who see the statue as an opportunity to acknowledge a forgotten historical figure and celebrate a positive tribal role model for once. For the Sangh Parivar and conservative Rajput opinion, Rana Punja is a perfect example of the good and faithful Bhil who helped his Rajput ruler against Muslim invaders. Punja is a resonant symbol of the Hindu cultural and political consensus these forces are seeking to ‘resurrect’ in tribal areas today. The opposition, other than Manohar Singh includes members of the progressive left in
Then of course there are the descendants of the Bhumia chiefs themselves. The controversy has intensified the public focus on the identity of these present-day Bhumias which bears unerring similarities to the everyday scrutiny I have described in Jura. Manohar Singh has even hired one of
The VKP: Breaking Muslim hegemony through Hindu consensus
The historical experience of the groups of Jura Panchayat is a highly charged issue. This fact has only been intensified by the recent politicisation of identity as a result of which, various vying contemporary reformulations of the past have been brought into sharper and bolder relief.
The Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (VKP) and Astha are two NGOs currently working among adivasis in Kotra tehsil. Although ideologically disparate, certain ironic parallels exist between the two. The reformulation of the past and the utilisation of history have been central strategies for both organisations in their attempts to inculcate consciousness among adivasis of their different constructs of tribal identity. Both have also attempted to incorporate these versions of tribal identity within larger regional, national (and in the case of Astha, international) identities. In both cases the relationship between local and supra-local identity has been mutually constitutive.
The VKP is an RSS[33] funded NGO which has been operational in 8 districts of Rajasthan since 1978. It provides basic health, educational and recreational facilities for adivasis. It also has close links with the BJP and has therefore benefited from the patronage of the
The clear popularity of the VKP among adivasis can ostensibly be attributed to those same factors advanced by the organisation itself. These include its sponsorship by the state administration, its well-established and extensive village-level organisation, as well as its engagement with matters of most immediate everyday concern to villagers. Also cited are its reputation for the relative absence of corruption within its ranks, and its employment of schoolteachers who can speak local dialects – most government schoolteachers in Kotra are Jats from Bharatpur or Alwar.
An assessment of the VKP in terms other than those publicly proffered by the organisation itself though suggest that the organisation derives much of its support from its appeal to anti- Muslim sentiment. The VKP has focused on the exploitative role of Muslim traders and usurers who historically comprised an extractive nexus along with the Bri
Muslims from Kotra and Jura complain that over the past 5 years, under cover of its various philanthropic activities, the VKP has actively manufactured and fomented distrust and conflict between adivasis and Muslims. It has encouraged adivasis to approach the police over small grievances and incidents involving Muslims that would have been informally settled in the past. The VKP has paid particular attention to the sensitive issue of Muslim sexual exploitation of adivasi women. It has combined valid complaints against such injustice arising out of semi-feudal relations/ absence of effective law and order, with certain racist assumptions about sexually predatory Muslims.[34] In several such cases the VKP has assisted adivasis to register First Incident Reports (FIRs) with the police. Muslims claim their community has been unfairly targeted and that similar instances of caste Hindu mistreatment of adivasis are ignored. They also point to the influence of the VKP and RSS behind recent communal riots in Kotra town. The organisation admits no Muslim members and will even refuse treatment to those adivasis who seek registration to its TB clinic accompanied by Muslims.
This local Kotra-specific anti-Muslim rhetoric is interlarded with several other familiar elements typical of the Hindutva ideology of the RSS and its affiliates. The VKP is a Rajasthan member unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram.[35] A brief glance at 'Van Bandhu' - the National Journal of Janjati Affairs, its monthly newsletter states its ideological purpose as being to 'Strengthen emotional and National integrity and protect the Vanvasi society from anti-National activities and religious cultural exploitation of Vanvasis (sic).'
Articles and letters in Van Bandh give a clearer outline of this ideology. Indian culture and society is exclusively and essentially Hindu. Hinduism is itself unitary and uniformly Brahmanic. Tribals were originally Hindu but were separated from their ancestral religion first by the Bri
The efforts of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram to 'recall' adivasis to the Hindu fold is facilitated by 'the intrinsic faith of the vanvasis in their ancestral dharma. Once this fire is kindled in them, the artificially imposed foreign ideas and theories are automatically thrown out.'
Conversion is therefore reconversion or homecoming. Other synonyms include shuddi (purification) and paravartan (turning back). Reconversion has always been a Sangh Parivar activity but its most recent uses and linkage with anti Christian activity have more to do with political contingency which has made such action politically expedient.[36]
In Kotra the Hindu missionary effort has not been as obviously intense as in parts of Banswara and Dungarpur districts, yet there has been great deal of activity over past few years. Over the past four years the VKP has organised a Ganesh Mohatsa in about 25 villages in Kotra, including Dadmiya and Jura. Statues and images of Ganesh and other Hindu deities have also been distributed as well as literature. Since tribals have no shrines to Ganesh, they have been told to worship the God at the shrine of Beruji. Major Hindu festivals in Kotra are nearly always preceded by a few days of programmes, in the villages and Kotra town, during which proselytisation occurs. Speakers and demonstrators at these meetings come from other states. During the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the VKP mobilised large numbers of people in Kotra to travel to Ayodhya , laying on free transport and food. It is claimed that adivasis from Kotra were present at the actual demolition of the Babri Masjid.
The identification of tribal society within the Hindu society has also always been a major presumption of these organisations.(footnote: cf debate going back to the 1950s). Fundamental to this is a refusal to accept tribals as adivasi, or rather prior to caste Hindus and therefore distinct from Hinduism (vanvaasi = forest dweller & assumption of permanent wildness.)
An interview with Dr. Trivedi, Director of the Tribal Research Institute (TRI) leads me to speculate that this compound of attitudes (amounting to an ideology) might be shared at senior levels of the Rajasthan State Administration Service by those responsible for implementing State policy in the Tribal Sub-Plan Area. Dr. Trivedi stated that the VKP is an NGO concerned with the 'cultural values and traditions of Indian society.' It is engaged in a search for 'roots' and has undertaken development work among the tribals 'to maintain
The Myth of Rao Fateh Singh and the Rituals of Dasara in Jura
Ritual and Myth as Hegemony
The most common version of the myth on which a key ritual of Durga Puja in Jura rests runs as follows:
Rao Fateh Singh, ruler of Jura was invited by the ruler of the
The couple meanwhile came near a banyan tree where to test Fateh Singh's bravery, the Rani secretly left her janjar (gold anklet) under the tree. After moving on a little way, they came to an imli tree she pretended to remember its loss and watched the Rao to see what he would do. Fateh Singh asked her to wait while he returned to the banyan tree, retrieved the janjar and brought it back to her. Thereafter the place where the Rani left the janjar was known as Janjar Worli and the place where she alerted the Rao to its loss, Bula ki Amli.
When the Rao returned to Jura, he found that his soldiers had gone to the Kherwara chawani and that he was defenceless against the oncoming army. He took refuge in the forest. After wandering about, he found some adivasis from Thona village who offered to help him. It was still the day of the Durga puja and the Rao explained that according to tradition he must offer puja at the shrine of his kuldevi in his home. The Thona adivasis proposed that they would worship Ashapura Mataji there in his name. Their Patel would impersonate Fateh Singh himself. Having no time to find a male buffalo or a male goat they substituted a pumpkin and kakeri respectively and took them to offer as puja. While worshipping they beat on the stone walls of the temple with sticks to simulate the sound of the drumbeats which usually accompanied worship . The besieging army of Idar believed Fateh Singh was worshipping and fearing the superior strength of arms of Jura, returned to Idar.
This myth is believed to account for the traditional ritual precedence of the adivasis of Thona during Durga Puja at the shrine of the Chauhan kuldevi, Ashapura Mata.[37] On this occasion it is customary for a number of adivasi men, representing Thona, to first worship at the shrine of Ashapura Mata before the Rao himself and then again sacrifice a male goat to the goddess before the Rao follows suit. Their actions are held to simulate those of their ancestors and commemorate their loyalty and help to Rao Fateh Singh.
The mythic-ritual compound of Rao Fateh Singh and the adivasis of Thona is therefore a vital element in the paternalistic cultural and historical construction of the adivasi in Kotra. Political and ritual unity coalesce every year to affirm the traditional link between raja and praja. The phenomenon is thus a vital component of the hegemony of dominant groups in Kotra over subordinate.
Adivasi Versions: Ashapura Mata or Vagravalli? Ritual Integration or Resistance?
Yet the existence of other versions and readings of parts of the myth, the different understandings of Mataji as well as the events of Durga Puja, as I witnessed and perceived them, strongly indicate the dialectical nature of this hegemony and its fragility. This situation would appear to have existed for at least as long as the above version of the myth itself.
In Bhiyata, the story of Fateh Singh is prefaced by an explanation of Idar's antipathy to him. The story runs that a man from Idar travelling through Jura, stopped in a field belonging to the Rao of Jura and asked a servant cultivating that field for some fodder for his horse. The fodder was duly given but the amount proved insufficient. The Idar man threatened the cultivator and asked for more. The servant refused and in the face of further abuse went to complain to the Jura Rao, Fateh Singh. The Rao was angered that an outsider was issuing threats in his own territory and ended up killing the man with a knife. The brother of the Idar man learned of Fateh Singh's act and informed the ruler of Idar. A conspiracy was then devised in Idar to kill Fateh Rawal. A letter of invitation was sent to the Rao of Jura requesting his presence in Idar for a contest and issuing the challenge to sacrifice the buffalo with one hit. The letter concluded that if the Rao lost the challenge, he would forfeit his life. No mention is made of Durga Puja in this version.
The remainder of the story continues as in the above version with the exception of several additional startling differences. It is a different deity, Vagravalli, who appears in the dream of Fateh Singh and ultimately protects him. Moreover this story runs that when the Rao returned to Jura from Idar, he fled to the forest in search of help but was refused by several adivasi villages [only Koliari is named as an example of such a village]. Finally the villagers of Thona agreed to help. They told the Rao to hide in the forest. No mention is made of Ashapura Mataji or the Rao's need to perform puja to his kuldevi. The adivasis instead devise a plan to come to Jura in the guise of fodder-sellers and so enter unsuspected. They proposed that they would take an image of their own mother goddess, Vagravalli, to the Rao's shrine and worship her there. After this event Vagravalli became the kuldevi of the Jura thikana and became known to the rawala as Ashapura Mata.
In Dadmiya it is believed that the original inhabitants of the entire site of the present-day revenue village were the Gameti subcaste, Damor who when they migrated to
In the aspect of a tiger Vagravalli became Sheravalli (Sher means tiger). Sheravalli is still worshipped exclusively by certain Gameti subcastes as a separate mother goddess. Elsewhere other Gameti subcastes, Gamar, Bhumriya and Kasotiya, worship other goddesses known as Gamsa and Kuarsa. All these deities are now held (by their worshippers) to be synonymous with each other and with Ashapura Mata and Vagravalli. However one suspects that these were originally individual and distinct deities, specific to the village or subcaste locality with their own shrines and places of worship. Over time and with the attempts to integrate these areas into the 'little kingdom' of the thikana, these goddesses were appropriated by the ruling Chauhans and subsumed by their cult of Ashapura Mata.
This thesis would appear to conform somewhat to Kulke's famous and influential model of state formation in medieval
We might further conjecture that this process can only have been intensified by the VKP's attempts to create and promote a uniform Hindu identity in the region. An inhabitant of Jogiwada village informed me that a few years ago, all the villages of Kotra tehsil contributed to the forging of a gold image of Ashapura Mata. The image is currently in the safekeeping of the bhopa of Jogiwada.Given the scale of organisation and motivation that must have been required for this, the influence of the VKP can perhaps be detected.
And yet vitally despite the above, striking anomalies exist. The same source in Jogiwada contradicted the implications of his first statement (concerning the gold image of the goddess) and added that Ashapura Mata is the kuldevi of only the Gameti subcaste Damor and the Chauhans, other subcastes having their own different patron goddesses. This is flatly denied by the present Rao of Jura and his sons who claim that all groups, Gameti, Garasia and Rajput alike, worship the same mother-goddess. Add to this the fact that the shrine to Ashapura Mata at the rawala has not superceded the original place of worship of Vagravalli. It still remains, according to the Gametis and even the Rajputs of Kotra the main pilgrimage site in the region. Indeed in April during the period of Vesak a festival is organised at this shrine. It is inaugurated by the Rao of Jura who makes a pilgrimage to Vagravalli's shrine in the interior to worship the deity.
Burkhard Schnepel looking at ritual legitimation in the Orissan jungle kingdom of Jeypore claims that 'at a point where popular Hinduism is transformed into a more orthodox and codified form of Brahmanism' a 'certain tension' between incorporative state impulses and indigenous worshippers becomes apparent.[40] In Schnepel's region of study this is revealed by legends surrounding Markama, a royally patronised goddess. These legends record friction as to the location of the goddess' place of worship and the identity - tribal or Brahman - of her priests. Schnepel suggests that they indicate indigenous resistance to the further absorption of their goddesses and themselves. It is prescient for us to note here that a number of anecdotes relating to the movements of a mother goddess exist in Kotra among the Gametis of Dadmiya as well as the Chauhan Garasias of Tandala. I should also add that in Bhiyata village, I was told that the shrine of Vagravalli used to be situated much further away beyond Jogiwada. One day a Rebari woman travelled to this distant shrine to offer milk to the goddess. As she came near the place she slipped and spilled all her milk. She then swore at Vagravalli saying ‘Why aren’t you nearer?’ After this the deity moved to her present location. In Kundal village I was told that Mataji used to reside here but that her position was ‘incorrect’ and she therefore moved to Jogiwada.
Schnepel interprets this 'intermediary state' of the deity as a crucial and necessary element of royal ritual policy for the early conquest of tribals. Perhaps an alternative interpretation of the same material might place more emphasis on the role of resistance to encompassment in the preservation of a distinct tribal identity.
Review
We have seen therefore that parallel renderings and understandings of the myth of Fateh Singh exist. We have also noted that these narratives may be roughly divided into two versions which I will term 'adivasi' and 'Rajput.' These two versions differ on a number of points: the identity of the goddess involved (Ashapura Mata or Vagravalli), whether or not the events occurred at Dasara and the relative roles (dominant or subordinate) of the Rao and the tribals of Thona. Despite the shared structures and institutions of religious belief and practice evident today between tribal and caste Hindu, subaltern and dominant, certain key differences also exist in these areas.[41] We have also posited the liminality of the tutelary deity of the thikana (Ashapura Mata as Vagravalli). We have theorised that we can extrapolate from this ambiguity some past resistance to the integration of adivasi villages in to the larger political entity of Jura thikana.
The above being so, there is already good reason further to speculate that these divergences could be exhibited in the ritual of Durga Puja itself, as the different understandings of its various participants are actualised. I hope to suggest as much through my reading of the ritual as I witnessed it. The purpose though of the above recapitulatory paragraph is to foreground my argument in this section on which my reading of the ritual rests. That the way we approach ritual and the preconceptions we have of its relationship to culture, and indeed our ideas about culture itself, invariably determine the attitude in which we observe and interpret the event.
Anthropological Approaches to Ritual and Culture
We might begin by restating Geertz's useful definition of culture; 'it denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions, expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.'[42] Culture is therefore about shared symbols and meanings which bind society and guide action. Following Durkheim, the prevailing anthropological approach assumed the harmonious integration of society and focused on the way in which cultural phenomena achieved this by strengthening the bonds between people. In the wake of the structural functionalism of Malinowski and Turner, the interpretation of culture now concerned the way in which it was constructed to contain inherent social contradiction and conflict.[43] Either way, the emphasis was on the functional rather than the dysfunctional, on social equilibrium rather than change. Ritual, as a unit of cultural discourse, was charged with strengthening social structure by dramatising the basic myths and values on which society rested.
As Dirks pointedly comments 'In anthropology, as in social science, more generally, “order” has typically been the chief ordering principle of discourse.'[44] For anthropologists, according to Dirks, ritual is merely sacralised order. Even those involved in the exploration of subaltern consciousness have privileged 'actual' rebellion rather than 'traditional' ritual. Rituals of role-reversal, inversion and appropriation were deciphered in terms of Gluckman's celebrated 'safety-valve' theory.[45] Guha’s discussion of ritual exemplifies this view; 'It is precisely in order to prevent such inversions from occurring in real life that the dominant culture in all traditional societies allows these to be simulated at regular calendric intervals, and in so far as such a culture is almost invariably mediated by religion, the reversals condoned, in fact enjoined by it, are acted out as sacred rituals.'[46] For Guha ritual serves to sanctify elite authority. Although recurrent, it is predictable, well organised in advance, purely temporary and therefore divested of subversive implications. A ritual of inversion is a periodic aberration and the temporary elevation of a ritually impure caste serves only to underline the dependence between castes.[47] Religion is 'prepolitical' and has a profoundly conservative cultural role.
Ironically those scholars who preferred to examine everyday practice for what it might reveal of quotidian resistance rather than outright rebellion which they felt to be extraordinary, ignored ritual for the same reason.[48] Scott in fact argues against the 'safety valve' explanation, attacking the notions of catharsis and displacement it proposes but offers no satisfying alternative explanation for the purpose of ritual.[49] To Dirks this silence shows Scott's complicity with other writers who 'accept with little modification the Durkheimian foundations of social scientific conceptions of rituals.[50] Since the operation of authority and the display of power is so central to ritual, for these writers the site itself holds little other space for subversion. This is because their idea of power is synonymous with order and resistance is the counterpart of power. Dirks argues that we should 'denaturalize' power and consider order as one of its effects rather than its condition. He is concerned that we should not use order as a first principle to read power/resistance or even ritual, but that we should utilise struggle instead as 'a trope for a critical vision of the world.'[51] Disorder then appears pervasive and systematic since struggle is everywhere. Power becomes more dynamic when seen as a set of relations characterised by struggle. Dirks, discussing village rituals in south India can then go on to claim 'precisely because of the centrality of authority to the ritual process, ritual has always been a crucial site of struggle, involving both claims about authority and struggles against (and within) it.[52] Ritual as such marks a time when all relations of power are 'up for grabs.'
We should also note that in a ritual of inversion such as I am about to describe, where the role of subordinates is so critical to the performance, the stakes are if anything even higher.
The Ritual Action of Dasara
I have already described the mythic referents of the ritual worship and puja to Ashapura Mata which traditionally takes place at the Jura rawala on the ninth and final day of Navratri (nine days) which coincides with Dasara. The worship and sacrifice to the deity is in fact preceded by another ritual event in lower Jura which also involves worship of the goddess. The two events therefore occur in different locations, are of a very different character and by and large do not involve exactly the same sets of people. Certainly the prominent ritual actors in each event are different. However they are not mutually exclusive and indeed the timing is such that they do not coincide, allowing those who are so inclined the opportunity to be present at both pujas. More significantly they are complementary, both in terms of the claims and representations each encodes as well as the fact they both used to occur at the same place, the Jura rawala, until two years ago when the local politics of Rajput identity deemed their clear separation. These changes indicate that the rituals of Navratri are not merely moribund gatherings for the traditional calendric creation of consensus but dynamic sites of political significance (and thus conflict) offering prime opportunities for kinds of expression not so easily afforded by everyday life. Ritual politics in Jura (and here I wish to include all the practical matters of staging and funding an event) are imbricated in the wider politics of identity we have seen in other spheres. Ironically the very fact that authority appears arrayed in all its lineaments during ritual makes that site a prime one for conflict, both among the custodians of authority themselves as well as their adivasi subordinates.
I witnessed the events of Navratri as a guest of Girwar Singh (hereafter GS), a patriarch of the Rajput community in lower Jura, a large landowner and worker for the VKP. GS was a key participant in at least one of the rituals I witnessed. During an interview a few days previously he had told us the story of Fateh Singh and mentioned the ritual at the rawala. When I mentioned that I was anxious to attend this gathering, GS offered to show us everything and offered to be our host for that night. On the afternoon of the appointed evening we arrived at GS's house only to be told that the day of the celebrations had been changed to the next day (Vijay Dashami). This was because of a clash of dates in the Hindu calendar. Declining his offer to stay the night, we returned to Kotra town for the evening. When we came back to Jura the next day we were told events would go ahead as forecast. A shrine to Ashapura Mata had been erected in lower Jura at the side of the main bazaar. Worship had been taking place here irregularly daily as apparently garbah dancing had also happened on every evening of Navratri thus far. I also noticed that further down, by the side of the road that passes through Jura, a banner advertising a VKP Eye Camp in Kotra town hung over a tea stall usually frequented by the Rajputs of the locality.
We arrived at GS's house in the late afternoon. GS took us to a nearby building normally used to house livestock but in which the arriving male guests and relatives were now to be placed. We were generously plied with mahua, our host throughout proclaiming the importance of hospitality to Rajputs and continually soliciting the concurrence of Vishal, himself a Rajput. During the course of the early evening other guests of GS arrived in the room and were served alcohol. Dinner of a male goat which had been personally sacrificed by GS was then taken. During dinner GS was busy receiving and sending messages to the bazaar concerning the organisation of the evening's events.
At length GS announced it was time and escorted us to the Jura bazaar to witness the first of the evening's rituals and what I took to be the prelude to the main occasion of the night at the rawala. A float had been placed in the middle of the bazaar, next to the garbah pole and opposite the temporary shrine to Ashapura Mata. A loudspeaker and music system had been placed on this float. Next to the shrine itself was a booth over which was now placed the VKP banner I had seen earlier. The entire area had been decked out in pennants and electric lighting. Crowds of adivasis were gathered around. The ritual commenced with the arrival of GS. An announcement was made from the loudspeaker that dancing would begin. A call was also made to the members of the Jura Navyuk Mandal (literally Youth Committee) to gather in the bazaar. Loud Hindi film music started up and GS initiated matters by making a personal puja at the shrine in front of all onlookers. After this the local police arrived and they were ushered to GS' house where they remained for the remainder of the night. GS then started to dance around the float in ever wider circles, clearly drunk, clapping his hands and exhorting those spectators he recognised in the by now large crowd to join him. After half an hour or so, the number of dancers amounted to about 10 or 15 - mostly GS' relations and members of the Navyuk Mandal, all male. By now GS was throwing colour at people in the crowd and manhandling them into the circle of dancers. A number of children in fancy dress joined the dancers. The dancing went on for an hour in total after which GS called a halt. Gifts were now presented to the children who worshipped at the shrine. The prasadi was then transferred from the shrine to the float which was wheeled down to a nullah about 1 kilometre from Jura 'Mataji ki tanda karna.' Most of the crowd remained where they were but perhaps 50 or so followed the float, supervised by GS' relatives.
GS asked us how we had found the performance and then guided us up to the rawala. In all perhaps 50 - 60 people, mainly Rajputs made their way to the rawala from lower Jura. When we arrived there we waited for Rao Digpal Singh at the shrine to Ashapura Mata adjoining the rawala. After a short time the Rao's second son, Bhupendra Singh arrived, accompanied by his younger brother and a visiting cousin of theirs (I later learned that for the past few years the Rao has not attended the event due to his incapacitation). They were followed by servants carrying the offering (3 plates of lapsi, and leaves of the khakra plant) and leading the sacrificial goat. Bhupendra Singh, dressed in a khaki uniform and carried a sword, walked in stately and ceremonial fashion to his kuldevi's shrine. Here he waited, presumably for the villagers of Thona who were to worship before him. After about 10 minutes he stepped into the shrine to worship the deity. Others then stepped into the shrine to follow suit in what seemed like some order of precedence. GS who had been standing with us at the side all this time was one of the last to enter and I noticed he used the side entrance of the shrine rather than its main opening.
After this, the worshippers led by Bhupendra Singh made their way to the goli (sacrificial grid, denoting a threshold) which had been chalked out at the side of the rawala. A crowd of about 100 people was already seated around the goli. The prasadi was now placed on the goli with a sword and a loud monotonous drumbeat was struck up as Bhupendra Singh performed a puja guided by a pandit. Then everyone sat and waited for the Thona adivasis and their goat which they would sacrifice first before the Rao's. From the vantage point of the hill we could hear and see the shifting throngs of adivasis below who now completely filled the main bazaar of Jura.
We waited for some 30 minutes, all the while the crowd growing more restive, discussing the possible whereabouts of the absent adivasis and abusing them for their lack of propriety. Some maintained that they had been delayed by the crowds below, others that they had been seen drinking and partaking in those festivities. Others still, claimed that they had not left their village. The drumbeat had long since ceased by now but at some point a decision was made to carry on with the ritual regardless of its missing actors. The Rao's goat was brought forward and a sword produced. There was some uncertainty and doubt as to who would perform the sacrifice. This continued for a period of time as a number of men were asked and a number declined. Eventually GS was asked but he too refused, citing the rustiness of the sword as his excuse; he would be unable to dispatch the goat with one blow. Eventually GS' brother in law, Narayan Singh stepped forward, plainly the worse for wear due to excessive consumption of mahua. The drumbeat struck up again and the goat was held down, ready to receive the blow. After 2 unsuccessful attempts to cut the goat's neck, Narayan Singh produced a knife and proceeded to saw off its head. His actions had a manic urgency about them. He knew he should have killed it with one blow and must have been aware that by his failure he had lost prestige and invited ridicule.
After the goat had been sacrificed there was a great amount of banter and dissatisfaction in the crowd. An old adivasi seated behind us started to swear at Narayan Singh and bemoan the fact that he had made such a mess of the job. My colleague shook his head in disgust. According to his interpretation of Rajput ritual mores, the goat had to be sacrificed with one hit. If this did not happen then the animal had to be released since Mataji would accept no other method of sacrifice. This to him merely confirmed what we had been told by so many people in Jura - that these were not 'real' Rajputs but Daroga. The event was concluded as it had been started, with worship of the kuldevi in more or less the same order. GS made no mention of the evening's surprises as he led us down to his house. The whole of Jura was now filled with adivasi men and women, dancing and singing in high spirits. We had great difficulty fighting our way through the crowds to GS' house.
Ritual Resistance and the Politics of Jura
Over the following week I made numerous enquiries about why the Thona adivasis had not turned up at the rawala. The most common explanation was that an ox had been stolen from their village around 2-3 months ago, so the men were reluctant to leave their houses unattended. I asked why this had not been established before the ritual and put it to the villagers of Jura that surely the rest of Thona could compensate for the absence of a few of its men. I received no satisfactory answer to these questions. Several sources also confirmed that GS had funded and organised the entire festivities in lower Jura for the past 2 years. He had hired lights, the music system and the loudspeaker and managed the event through the Navyuk Mandal. It also became apparent that that before GS took over this event, it was staged at the rawala and funded by the Rao's family. There it also preceded the Rao's puja and the sacrifice to Ashapura Mata. One explanation for its displacement to lower Jura offered by Rajputs themselves, was that the lighting and music was difficult to arrange at the rawala, which is situated at the top of a bare hill overlooking Jura. This story of logistical difficulties did not convince me. After all why had this only posed problems 2 years ago and not in the past? Again no response. Another more plausible explanation for the ritual's displacement was that the Rao was trying to distance himself from the Rajputs of lower Jura, particularly GS, who claim to be related to him. Apparently these Rajputs had also been responsible for much of the organisation of the event in the past. Their proximity to the rawala was a source of some prestige to them. Since it had been moved, GS had assumed sole responsibility for the event. All these details were congruent with what I had already learnt of politics in Jura.
GS' power was clearly stamped all over the celebration in lower Jura. He funds it, determines its form and duration and decides who should and who should not participate in it. His motivations appear to be several. To prove his Rajput credentials, his relatedness to the rawala through the fervour and intensity of his devotion to Mataji. To display the comparability of his power to that of the Rao and to proselytise to adivasis on behalf of the VKP. Despite their varying potency, these are all aspects of GS' power, the source of his position as a powerful patron of adivasis in Jura. As a large landowner he has a great deal of economic leverage. As a worker of the VKP, he has influence among adivasis, is feared by Muslims and has some contact with the wider political world of MLAs and vote banks.[53] As a Rajput of Jura he is a member of a large and reasonably cohesive community which to a large extent has its own way in the local politics of the Panchayat. The ritual of Durga Puja is intended to display and sacralise all these aspects of power. His private puja is public. And yet the success of GS' ritual seemed curiously unrealised and insubstantial in certain key respects. To the extent that it was parallel and competitive to that of the Rao, it succeeded but GS is still aware of the persistent aspersions cast on his parentage, on his Rajput identity. He knows the Rao will never accept him and also feels the thikana’s displeasure and embarrassment as his use of the side entrance of the kuldevi’s shrine suggests. GS is only too aware of all Jura's knowledge of this.
The adivasis themselves, although vitally excluded from ritual participation with GS and his associates remain relatively unaffected by the whole performance, as later interviews with them revealed. As we learnt, battling our way through the revelry to GS' house sometime after midnight, they have their own idiosyncratic methods of marking Dasara, which have nothing to do with either ritual.
At the rawala itself, the non-appearance of the Thona adivasis and the strange lack of surprise about this suggested a great deal. This seemed to have occurred before. Indeed it seemed to have happened quite a few times before. The wait for the villagers seemed just to be for appearance's sake (I dread to think that it might have been put on for my benefit). I am intrigued by the suggestion that the aberrant villagers preferred to participate in the mayhem of lower Jura and had perhaps been there all along, joyfully disregarding the Rao's hegemonic efforts. Without their presence, with the withdrawal of their consent, the entire ritual was devalued, emptied of all the symbolic significance and meaning that the ruling clan had authored. The event fell flat and one felt the participants sensed this. Instead it took on several unintended different meanings. This action of the Thona adivasis and all it signified, their refusal to play along, would have been unimaginable, practically unrealisable in any sphere other than the ritual. It would have incurred crushing punitive sanctions. And they withdrew consent from the apex power - the Rao.
The confusion surrounding the sacrifice of the goat may have stemmed from the collective deflation but I prefer to attribute it to the lack of certainty and order of the ritualised action itself, which was astonishing given all the planning, 'management' and what was at stake. For events, meant to be so traditional and time-honoured, these rituals were very unpredictable. This brings me back to Dirks and his observation that 'Each ritual event is a patterned activity, to be sure, but it is also invented anew as it happens.’[54]
My experience in Jura to some extent parallels that of Dirks. He realised through attending one such non-event that festivals of Aiyanar, a village deity of Tamil Nadu, due to communal and developing class differences, ‘did not happen almost as often as they did.’[55] Ritual as non-event is just one of the many possibilities for resistance when power becomes manifest. For me, the non-appearance of the Thona villagers and the resultant redundancy of the Rao’s ritual was of course striking. More imposing though was the way in which the adivasis overwhelmed Jura that evening. Such was their number and the apparent ‘disorder’ that they represented, that the rawala, being at the top of a hillock and relatively aloof from the proceedings below, seemed a haven, a refuge for Rajputs from the masses who had swept in from the surrounding countryside. It was if they had lost control for the evening.
That this disorder, this loss of control might be more pervasive and typical of the state of group interaction in Jura Panchayat became apparent to me when I recalled the reasons for the changes in the recent history of the ritual, the disorder of ritual enactment, and the impression of a predictable and consensual event that I had formed from interviews with various Rajputs (not least GS) in the days preceding it. I became aware that hegemony in Jura is still in the making, perhaps always has been, especially if we remind ourselves how vital the ritual must have been to integration in the early days of the thikana when identities were perhaps even more undecided than they are now. If we note the dominance of consent in any definition of hegemony, them the refusal of consent by Thona amounts to a rejection of this kind of dominance. Perhaps we might go further and suggest that the search for consent itself, the search for hegemony, is always a perilous exercise for dominant groups, fraught as it is with dangers of resistance. This resistance, due to the consensual underpinnings of that cultural formation, cannot be adequately countered with coercion but must be swallowed.
[1] Literally 'inhabitant from the earliest times.' According to David Hardiman this term originated in the Chotanagpur region of
[2] See Crispin Bates, ‘Lost Innocents and the Loss of Innocence: Interpreting adivasi Movements in South Asia’, in R.H.Barnes, A.Gray and B.Kingsbury (eds), Indigenous Peoples of Asia,
[3] See James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts,
[4] Rao is the term for the hereditary ruler of the area who presided over a thikana (estate).
[5] Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks,
[6] See Michael Moffatt, An Untouchable Community in South India: Structure and Consensus, Princeton:
[7] Raymond Williams, ‘Selections from Marxism and Literature’, in Nicholas B.Dirks, Geoff Eley and Sherry B. Ortner (eds), Culture/Power/History. A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, Princeton:
[8] For the whole of this discussion, see Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony. History and Power in Colonial
[9] According to the 1991 Census, in 276 of the 304 villages of Kotra tehsil 51% and above of the population is Scheduled Tribe.
[10] Scott, Domination and the Arts
[11] Ibid., pp.142-143.
[12] ‘Sanskritisation’ as a term was first used by M.N. Srinivas to describe this process. See his Caste in Modern
[13] There was little evidence either that this claim had been intensified with the increase in bhakt activity.
[14] For a critique of the theory of Sanskritisation along such lines, see Hardiman, The Coming of the Devi, pp. 157-160.
[15] Skaria, Hybrid Histories, pp. 1-18.
[16] According to Rajput versions, these kings were Jora and Mera, from whom the village names of Jura and Merpur respectively derive.
[17] These Rajputs are alternately termed 'Goli' or slave and are also described as outsiders of dubious Rajput origin from 'here and there' who came to the area quite recently.
[18] This is partly manifested in a kind of loyalism to the Rao and Rawala. For example some Gametis of Dadmiya and several Garasias of Tandala related stories of their advent in the region in which the Rao requested their settlement and generously allotted them land. Indeed according to a Garasia story from Tandala, one of their descendants was shown around the village on the Rao’s horse. For fuller details see below.
[19] The date of the coming of the Chauhan Garasias to Tandala is uncertain but can be estimated. Rao Shiv Singh might be either the grandfather or great-grandfather of Digpal Singh, the current Rao of Jura (both men were named Shiv Singh). It is more likely that he was the grandfather, since this would correlate with the fact that the third generation of Chauhans to inhabit Tandala has reached maturity. We might therefore guess that the Chauhans arrived in Tandala about 150 to 200 years ago.
[20] Eighth century founder of the Guhilot dynasty in Mewar.
[21] The detail of the horse, as in the last narrative, is again especially significant here. I understand that the village elite's sole right to the use of horses was a jealously guarded prerogative. On the significance of the horse in such a context as an image of 'pure force' and a symbol of authority, see Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983, pp.66-68. Guha writes about acts of inversion and negation during peasant insurrection. As such he discusses the public appropriation of such devices during periods of violent social upheaval.
[22] It is worth noting here that the three main Garasia subcastes which intermarry, interdine and share relations of commensality are Vaiya, Raidra and Chauhan. Other Garasia subcastes are composed of
Pargi, Bhumriya and Dangi. These latter are also names of separate Gameti subcastes. According to several accounts, these two sets of Garasia subcastes are quite distinct; for example the Raidra Garasias of Kundal village treat fellow Garasia Pargi, Bhumriya and Dangi villagers as if they were Gameti since 'They eat anything' - a key criterion of Gameti identity both for Gametis themselves and others. As stated above, we might speculate that the second part of this myth, dealing with the ancestor of the Jura Rao, offers some explanation for the low status of the Pargi subcaste within the Garasia tribe. Whether the descendants of Rai Singh and Man Singh were the Pargi patels, were related to them or ruled part of their kingdom is unclear. An intriguing alternative is that the story accounts for the creation of the Gametis and explains the difference between Garasia and Gameti.
[23] There is a great deal of uncertainty as to the meaning and signification of the terms Bhomat, Bhumiya and Bhum in recent histories of Mewar. I am inclined to believe this may be a reflection of the variations found in primary sources (in Bri
The hilly areas of southwestern Rajasthan were known as the Bhomat, perhaps a derivation from a local word for forest. The Chauhan thikanas of Jura and Merpur along with the Solanki held Panarva, Ogna, and Mamer comprised the Kotra Bhomat. The Kherwara Bhomat comprised the Chauhan estates of Jawas and
[24] See below for a description of the central role of the adivasis of Thona village in the Jura thikana’s ritual of Durga Puja..
[25] Palliwal here probably reproduces the concern of his colonial primary sources with legal propriety and the rule of law.
[26] The brothers were given large endowments of tax-free land in the nearby villages of Kantharia, Kalapada and Dingavalli. This land was retained after
[27] Scott, Domination and the Arts, p.143.
[28] Ibid., p.143.
[29] In fact the location of GS’ house invites such a comparison. It rests high on a slope of the main hillock in Jura at the top of which is situated the rawala. GS commands a panoramic view of Jura, similar to that of the Rao.
[30] Foucault
[31] Similar stories from Aziz Faujdar
[32] Takat Singh & original situation of Merpur thikana.
[33] The RSS (Rashtriya Swaayamsevak Sangh) is a Hindu communal organisation founded in 1925. Since the 1950s it has spawned a series of formally and informally affiliated organisations manned at crucial levels by its cadres. This 'family' of organisations is known as the 'Sangh Parivar.' It includes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM).
[34] Gametis from Dadmiya claim that since the advocacy of the VKP, Muslims have stopped using violence and the threat of abusing adivasi women on the collection of debts. They add that the VKP has emboldened them to such an extent that they will now meet Muslim violence with violence. Raisa Ram of Bhiyata and ironically an Astha worker, claims to have attacked Muslims under such influence.
[35] The ABKVKA was established in 1952 in Chattisgarh by an ex official of the tribal welfare department with RSS affiliations.
[36] The alleged involvement of Christian missionaries in an international conspiracy to subvert and colonise
For the political context of Prime Minister Vajpayee's call for an 'open-minded debate' on conversions and the close correspondence between Sangh Parivar anti-Christian discourse, strategy and violence, see 'Then They came for the Christians – a report to the nation,' All India Federation of Organisations for Democratic Rights (AIFOFDR), April 1999. This report is especially useful for the evidence it supplies of the high degree of collusion of State and Central Government Machinery with the Sangh Parivar's activities in Gujarat,
For a brief history of the conversion component in RSS ideology, please see Sumit Sarkar 'Conversions and Politics of Hindu Right.' [EPW]
[37] Intriguingly I was given a different reason by the hereditary genealoger of Junepadar, Tej Singh Rao, who claimed that the rulers of Jura have always feared the adivasis of the surrounding areas. The right was (and continues to be) granted to the Thona adivasis because Rao Digpal Singh fears their powers of sorcery. Tej Singh's information must be read in the context of an incident from his childhood which he related to me. While visiting Junepadar village, the young Tej Singh was entrusted to the care of an old adivasi man. One day the old man motioned to fruit tree and asked Tej Singh if he wanted to eat some fruit. Tej Singh replied that he did, after which the man mumbled some words and beckoned to a branch of the tree which bent on its own and delivered its fruit into the man’s hand.
[38] See Kulke, Kings and Cults. State Formation and Legitimation in
[39] Kulke sets out this model in ‘The Early and the
[40] Burckhard Schnepel, ‘Durga and the King: Ethnohistorical Aspects of Politico-Ritual life in a
[41] The antiquity of this 'syncretism/ symbiosis' is difficult to ascertain, but it can only have been reinforced by the work of the VKP.
[42] Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures,
[43] See for example Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, Chicago: Aldine Press, 1969.
[44] Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘Ritual as Resistance: Subversion as Social Fact’, in Dirks, Eley and Ortner (eds), Culture/Power/History, p483.
[45] See Max Gluckman, Custom and Conflict in Africa,
[46] Guha, Elementary Aspects, p.62.
[47] Cf Bhil -Rajput symbiosis & application of tilak might be interpreted as such.
[48] For practice theory see especially Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (trans.Richard Nice),
[49] Scott, Domination and the Arts, p.184-188.
[50] Dirks, ‘Ritual’ p.486.
[51] Ibid., p.501.
[52] Ibid., pp.487-488.
[53] Mahavir Bagora
[54] Dirks, ‘Ritual’, p.499.
[55] Ibid., p.490.
I should make two qualifications, or rather admissions at the outset. The first is that I was unable to communicate directly with the villagers. Vishal Singh Chundawat was my translator and constant companion in Kotra. Vishal was an active collaborator on this project and I owe him a great deal. This work is as much his as mine, although my conclusions are not necessarily his. Second, owing to the constraints of our research method, we were unable to speak to many women. More accurately therefore the subject of this study is male tribal identity although I would hope that the work has a more general gender resonance.
I would like to thank Seva Mandir for inviting me to
I decided to focus on Jura after visiting the area with Sanjiv Shukla in June 1999. That I have been able to get anything done at all is therefore due in great measure to Sanjiv’s initiative. I know he has plans to return to work in Jura at some future stage and I would like to accompany him there again.
Thanks are also due to: Bhim Singhji, Jhalla Sb. and all the members of the Seva Mandir Kotra Block Office for the warmth of their hospitality and companionship. Mr. Kishore Saint, who took an interest in me at an early stage and has helped clarify many issues. His conscientiousness and profound humanist involvement with the lives of adivasis in this district are a source of great inspiration to me and others. Manish Jain and everyone at Shikshantar for providing a rare and welcome space for constructive engagement. Amita Baviskar and Nandini Sundar for their reading suggestions. Norbert Peabody for his long distance advice and comments on the issues in this paper. My comrades D.S Palliwal and Sameer Banerjee for reading materials and a very personal political education, not least in the example of their commitment to the people and the cause. Gagan, Jojo, Prakash, Rafe, Rahul, Rajivji,
My time in Kotra was an unforgettable and unprecedented experience. My debts of gratitude to the inhabitants of Jura Panchayat and its environs are too numerous and great for me to satisfactorily acknowledge here. Work however would have been impossible without the following individuals:
Arjun Lal, Masuru Lal, Baburam, Babulal, Jovana, Ravta, Hukla, Rama (Dadmiya).
Girwar Singh, Sirajuddin Sheikh, Firoz Khan, Mohan Singh, Rafiq Bhai, Rehana, Rao Digpal Singh and Bhupendra Singh, Nathulal Kothari, Hira Chauhan, Rehana, Lal Mohammed, Sampatlal Meghwal, Ashok Jain (Jura).
Deeta Ram and Lakharam (Tandala).
Fateh Singh, Kaluji Patel, Libaram Parmarji (Junepadar).
Raisa Ram (Bhiyata).
Thanks also to
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