TY - CHAP

T1 - Adivasis and Communists in post-reform Kerala

T2 - Neoliberalism, political disillusionment, and the indigenist challenge

AU - Steur, Luisa Johanna

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - In 1957, Kerala was the first state to democratically elect a Communist government. Ever since, Communism has set the agenda of the Left in the state and still receives the support of a majority of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe voters (Thachil 2009). Yet in the course of the 1990s, a serious alternative to Communist ideology has started to emerge in the form of a politics centered on indigenous belonging. In 2001 a movement that became known as the “Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha” (AGMS) grabbed headlines in Kerala for staging a successful demonstration in front of the Secretariat to protest against the deaths by starvation that had occurred earlier that year in adivasi colonies. Analysts argued that the AGMS “for the first time …created a forum outside the two political fronts [led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress party] through which legitimate social needs could be expressed” (Chathukulam and John 2006: 198). The AGMS was said to represent a “qualitatively different political practice” that clearly went beyond “the tribal question” per se (Sreekumar and Parayil 2006: 249). There was debate, consequently, on what had caused the rise of the AGMS. The common answer was that it had been the threat of neoliberalism intensifying an age-old anti-colonial struggle of adivasis. Yet closer examination upsets this idea of simple historical continuity. It remains to be explained exactly why adivasis confronted the threat of “globalisation” according to an ideology of adivasi belonging rather than Communist alternatives.

AB - In 1957, Kerala was the first state to democratically elect a Communist government. Ever since, Communism has set the agenda of the Left in the state and still receives the support of a majority of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe voters (Thachil 2009). Yet in the course of the 1990s, a serious alternative to Communist ideology has started to emerge in the form of a politics centered on indigenous belonging. In 2001 a movement that became known as the “Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha” (AGMS) grabbed headlines in Kerala for staging a successful demonstration in front of the Secretariat to protest against the deaths by starvation that had occurred earlier that year in adivasi colonies. Analysts argued that the AGMS “for the first time …created a forum outside the two political fronts [led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress party] through which legitimate social needs could be expressed” (Chathukulam and John 2006: 198). The AGMS was said to represent a “qualitatively different political practice” that clearly went beyond “the tribal question” per se (Sreekumar and Parayil 2006: 249). There was debate, consequently, on what had caused the rise of the AGMS. The common answer was that it had been the threat of neoliberalism intensifying an age-old anti-colonial struggle of adivasis. Yet closer examination upsets this idea of simple historical continuity. It remains to be explained exactly why adivasis confronted the threat of “globalisation” according to an ideology of adivasi belonging rather than Communist alternatives.

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9788187358695

SP - 228

EP - 249

BT - Savage Attack

A2 - Bates, Crispin

A2 - Shah, Alpa

PB - Orient BlackSwan

ER -