Adivasi Life Stories : Context, Constraints, Choices

Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction. I. Context and constraints: 1. Colonial regulations and collective resistance. 2. Development policies and their impact in independent India. II. Choices: Doing life stories: some reflections: 3. Radkibai: "Where must this destiny come from"? 4. Babubhau: "Without the forest there is no beauty". 5. Ramabai: "They called me a Bhutali". 6. Dasma: "I am proud to be a Warli-Adivasi". 7. Suman: "I only know to work". 8. Subhash: If we had wings, we could fly". Conclusion. Glossary.

"This book is about the lives of the Adivasis, also known as tribals, and the circumstances in which they find themselves, in one district, Thane, in Maharashtra, Western India. Thane district has a large Adivasi population, the second largest Adivasi population of the thirty Districts of Maharashtra, 18 percent of the population of the district and about 13 percent of the total Adivasi population of the state.

The book is divided into two parts. The impact of the broad social-historical processes which basically transformed the economic and social organisation of the Adivasis and shaped the trajectory of their collective life, and their response and resistance to them, constitute the context which is discussed in the first part of the book. The second part of the book consists of six life stories of Adivasi men and women, belonging to different age groups, even generations, as narrated by them. These stories help to see how the macro historical processes impinge upon individual lives, and how each individual, in special circumstances, shapes his or her life. It is in the context of the extraordinarily difficult circumstances in which these marginalised people live and die, that individual life stories make sense. The book seeks to arrive at an understanding of the dialectical relation between the social and the personal, the collective and the individual, the macro and the micro, by using the life story method.

The stories of the Adivasis of Thane are the stories of suffering and deprived people all over the world who have been excluded and marginalised by the processes of development and modernization. The book will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, historians, political scientists and activists who are concerned with the marginalised groups." (jacket)