ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of re-articulating adivasi identities and land claims through particular modes of engagement with the state. The author's focus is on the adivasi land struggles, drawing on the articulation of their identities, the more recent struggles in which land claims were re-framed through a re-articulation and their attempts to project a new politics for an imagined future. Hall argues that collective identities can be forged to work towards a political end and then re-articulated in a different conjuncture. The chapter looks into the land struggles of adivasis in the changing political contexts in Wayanad and Kerala in the last three decades. It highlights the continuing resistance of the indigenous people to pauperisation and proletarianisation and their demand for land as the solution. The Wayanad landscape is being reinterpreted and re-created in the process of articulating adivasi identities in the ongoing land struggles.
