In this article, I examine the ways in which ideas of martyrdom are employed by Gujjars in Rajasthan to describe their experiences of participating in the 2006 and 2007 Gujjar Andolan (protest), ...serving in the army, and in their telling of the Devnarayan epic. I take as a starting point the manner in which the bodies of Gujjars killed in police firing during the andolan were laid out for 17 days at the site of the andolan while Gujjar men and women recited the Devnarayan epic. The laying out of the martyred bodies then becomes a site for the production of caste belonging and caste love.
The Bhil and Girassia tribal regions of Udaipur district in the state of Rajasthan in Western India have been historically associated with ideas of wildness and primitivity that have relegated them ...to zones of exception. This article examines how everyday legal practices reflect and reproduce tribal exceptionalism. In particular, the article examines cases that are registered under sections 323 and 341 of the Indian Penal Code. The combination of 323 and 341 is locally known as petty violence. The manner in which high caste legal practitioners, including police officers, government doctors, lawyers, magistrates, and court clerks, inscribe documents in a legal file pertaining to crimes of 323 and 341, such as the First Information Report, injury report, map of crime, and list of witnesses, is mediated by a complex infrastructure of caste ideology that assumes that Bhils are wild, lack mental skills, and are only capable of petty violence. Legal practitioners believe that tribal life is incommensurable with the specific forms of selfhood, modes of interaction, and publicity that comprise legal personhood and that tribals are more effectively governed by their own customary laws. The article reveals how through these everyday police and court practices, legal practitioners legitimize and establish the state by creating spheres of tribal exceptionalism.
The ethics of des seva Bordia, Devika
Contributions to Indian Sociology,
02/2015, Letnik:
49, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Based on fieldwork in Udaipur district in Rajasthan, this article examines how Bhil tribal leaders of the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (VKP), a branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu ...nationalist organisation, profess an ethic of des seva, or work and care for the nation, while describing their work with the VKP. Focusing on the VKP and RSS campaigns to Ayodhya in 1990 and 1992 and to the Shabari Kumbh in 2006, I examine the shifts in the political and ethical repertoires that shape tribal VKP fieldworkers’ modalities of action and forms of self-making during travel at these different moments in time. During these campaigns, non-tribal leaders sought to discipline tribal leaders, referring to historically constructed ideas and practices about the civilisational inferiority of tribals, in order to show that they can never properly engage in des seva. The article draws on incidents from these two campaigns in order to show how tribal leaders fashion themselves in relation to how others believe they should behave, and reveals some of the ways in which tribals inhabit, resist and revise the ideas and practices of Hindu nationalism.
Abstract
In this article I trace the events around a murder case in the regions inhabited by the Bhils in Southern Rajasthan. The manner in which the case is addressed reveals the intersection ...between panchayat (village councils), police and court practices. The case also demonstrates how everyday legal practices make visible political affiliations, loyalties, and associations among tribal leaders, and reveals shifts that have taken place in the local formations of power and authority.
