ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to trace adivasi mobilization across three sites: rights to place and natural resources, religious reform, and electoral representation, to examine how discourses of indigeneity are differently constructed and contested across the terrain of class, caste, and citizenship. The articulation between an urban, commercial culture dominated by upper-caste Hindus and the culture of political Hinduism needs to be situated within an older discourse of indigeneity in India. In claiming “indigeneity” exclusively for Hindus, the Sangh Parivar erases centuries of Muslim presence in the subcontinent, as well as the discomfiting historical fact that the Aryans who high-caste Hindus claim as their forebears were also of foreign origin. The colonial critique of Oriental religions sparked off soul searching among Hindus and Muslims struggling with the Enlightenment project, contributing to attempts at reformation. Unconverted adivasis face the social stigma of being considered “savage” and “backward” by dominant groups such as caste Hindus as well as by Muslims and Christians.
