ABSTRACT
A critical engagement with everyday life ethnography in contested spaces needs analysis not only of localized politics but also of internalized feelings. This chapter presents how a nation state functions in a contested space of development, strategies the police state adopts to keep the people in control, and, of course, the tribal anarchists’ strategies of resistance and coping mechanism. The tribals expressed their dissent through regular non-violent protests and demonstrations such as meetings, rallies, sit-ins, police station gherao and road blockades. The resistance of the tribals is neither to save their land and livelihood, nor only to challenge the hegemony and domination of the state, elite and other authoritative forces. In any case of structural violence, the first thing which is affected is the human physical body. ‘Violence generates violence,’ argues Saroj Mohanty, an activist from Kucheipadar, saying that ‘the only alternative available for the tribals is the movement’.
