Abstract
This essay explores the possibility of a new field of research called adivasi/tribal studies. It reflects on how adivasi history and adivasi subjectivity have evolved both in the domain of disciplinary knowledges and in India’s national and regional politics. Time and again referring to our experience of how dalit studies have come about in India, and with gender studies somewhere in the background, the essay argues that in order to carve out a field of adivasi studies, we must revisit histories of political and literary representation, political and cultural autonomy, vernacular languages and indeed religion and conversion. At the same time, we need to rethink land, territory and ecology together.
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