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Abstract

The global Indigenous population, comprising approximately 476 million people across 90 countries, continues to face systemic marginalization despite decades of institutional recognition and international policy interventions. In India, the Adivasi population—numbering over 104 million—embodies a distinct form of indigeneity shaped by a long history of colonial classification, caste-based exclusion, and developmental displacement. While Management and Organization Studies (MOS) has increasingly examined social inequalities, the unique experiences of Adivasis remain conspicuously absent from mainstream scholarship. This exclusion is not incidental but reflects entrenched epistemic hierarchies and spatial biases that render Indigenous people invisible within organizational research. Existing studies overlook how Adivasis, as Indigenous populations, are embedded within structures of precarity and modern slavery. In response, this paper foregrounds Adivasi perspectives to interrogate the colonial-caste-capitalist matrix of exclusion and calls for a more inclusive and reflexive MOS that engages seriously with Indigenous subjectivities and epistemologies.

Keywords

Adivasi caste colonialism indigenous modern slavery precarity

Introduction

The global Indigenous population, estimated at approximately 476 million individuals across 90 countries, has experienced persistent systemic challenges formally recognized since the inaugural convening of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Population in Geneva in 1982. International institutional responses include the establishment of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, which focuses on the protection of Indigenous rights and the preservation of cultural heritage. Additionally, the International Labor Organization has emphasized the imperative of prioritizing Indigenous communities within sustainable development frameworks (Candelaria, 2012). Despite these efforts, Indigenous communities continue to endure marginalization and social exclusion both within their immediate societies and broader contexts, as a result of historical injustices that remain unresolved.

The experiences of Adivasi communities in the Indian subcontinent parallel these global patterns. Adivasis number approximately 104 million, representing 8.6% of India’s population (Faizi and Nair, 2016). The term Adivasi loosely translates to “early/first inhabitants,” and many Adivasis self-identify as Indigenous to assert their distinct identity (Xaxa, 1999). The heterogeneous Adivasi population includes the settled and many Denotified Tribes and Nomadic Tribes¹ (DT & NT; Bijoy, 2003). They inhabit multiple worlds marked by differentiated terrains, speak different languages, pursue different occupations (Damodaran and Dasgupta, 2022), and yet they share a common relationship with land and cultural identities (Banerjee et al., 2023). However, similar to global Indigenous contexts, they do not have a unified identity; for example, tribes in Northeast India frequently emphasize distinct ethnic affiliations over a pan-Adivasi label (Prasad, 2022). Nevertheless, Indigenous scholars highlight three unifying dimensions among Adivasis: historical indigeneity, non-caste social structures, and political recognition through the Scheduled Tribe² status (Bodhi and Bipin, 2019).

Studies across social sciences have revealed that the collusion of colonial powers, postcolonial state, and corporations structured Adivasis’ marginalization and social exclusion (Lerche and Shah, 2018). Although we have a good understanding of the problems of Adivasis, such as economic disenfranchisement, social deprivation resulting from territorial displacement, development-induced dispossession, and systemic discrimination (Dulhunty, 2023; Jain and Sharma, 2019; Kujur, 2023), we have much less appreciation of what reproduces the structures that exclude and disadvantage Adivasis. Thus, MOS scholars, we believe, have been missing the opportunity to contribute new insights and extend the overall heterogeneity of the field.

MOS has increasingly engaged with themes of social inequality (Bapuji and Chrispal, 2020) and violence (Chowdhury, 2021). However, scholarship focusing on Indigenous peoples and their unique contexts remains notably dispersed and underrepresented (Salmon et al., 2023). Recent studies posited that the hegemony of Western-centric perspectives (Banerjee et al., 2023), managerialist/capitalist ideology (Pio and Waddock, 2021), and upper-caste academic impunity (Dixit, 2025) have constrained the Indigenous peoples’ voice and contributed to epistemic violence within MOS (Spivak, 1988). In an appeal to make MOS inclusive, Indigenous studies scholars have called on scholars across diverse geographical contexts to engage more substantively with Indigenous Peoples (Bastien et al., 2023; Salmon et al., 2023). They argue that “power from below” (Banerjee et al., 2023) and “geographies of inclusion” (Pio, 2021) in MOS research can enrich our understanding of non-Western contexts. In response, this paper seeks to underscore the importance of incorporating the under-researched Adivasi people to advance the field further.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. We begin by identifying three key reasons for the inattention toward the Adivasis. We then trace how the colonial construction of the “tribal” identity and caste-based marginalization continue to shape Adivasi exclusion in postcolonial India. Following which, we discuss how development-induced displacement and migration contribute to precarity and modern slavery among Adivasi laborers. We conclude by urging MOS scholars to confront entrenched epistemic hierarchies and integrate Adivasi voices into organizational research.

Why MOS inattention toward Adivasis?

We argue that the inattention toward Adivasis in MOS has been due to three reasons. First, the inattention to Adivasi communities can be understood as a manifestation of epistemic invisibility—a condition in which subaltern knowledges are rendered absent or illegible within dominant regimes of representation. State archives, shaped by colonial epistemes, constitute a particular knowledge infrastructure that privileges Eurocentric conceptual frameworks while systematically erasing Adivasi autonomous knowledge systems and modes of organizing (Banerjee, 2016).

Second, when scholars write about Adivasis, they tend to face an epistemic challenge of situating Adivasis beyond the tropes of forest dwellers and often overlook the alternative sites of investigation. Such tropes or stereotypes fail to recognize the fluidity and multiplicity of Adivasi social worlds, including their migration from rural to urban economies and their diverse roles as laborers, domestic workers, or contractual workers. Compounding this reductionism, scholars examining caste in a variety of social phenomena subsume Adivasis alongside Dalits (i.e. SC). This enveloping of identities effaces the specificity of Adivasi historical trajectories and the distinctive marginalization they endure.

Third, Adivasi scholars’ lack of representation is not merely a result of Western hegemony; it is also due to the predominance of Indian MOS scholarship that comes from upper-castes. They are yet to recognize the ethical imperative to study Adivasi people, leave alone acknowledging their own complicity in reproducing caste-based exclusion within academic spaces. For example, across the thirteen Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), faculty appointments are overwhelmingly from the General category (82.8%), with Scheduled Tribes comprising only 1% (Wire, 2024). Adivasi applicants are excluded from faculty positions due to entrenched casteist structures that grant upper-caste academics inherited epistemic authority and cultural capital. In addition, institutional gatekeeping is maintained through selection committees dominated by the upper caste academicians who prevent Adivasis’ entry into IIMs (Singh and Fathima, 2025).

Next, we discuss how colonialism and the caste system construct Adivasi as primitive, inferior, and epistemologically deficient, legitimizing their marginalization through racialized governance, criminalization, and enforced assimilation.

Colonial construct: The “tribal”

Colonialism was a project of division based on linguistic and ethnological divisions and categorization of communities into superior and inferior groups (Appadurai, 1993). It reclassified and renamed social groups for the purpose of governance. The British in India viewed their role not merely as one of conquest and appropriation of land and resources, but also as a civilizing mission aimed at transforming Adivasi communities to align with the norms and structures of British colonial governance (Damodaran and Dasgupta, 2022). They controlled and integrated the forest resources within the structures of colonial exploitation. The colonial ethnographer, steeped in racial ideology, produced and circulated stereotypes that depicted the tribes as savages and primitives (Das Gupta, 2020). This primordial identity formation sought to categorize and normalize the tribes. Indeed, the concept of the “tribe” was constructed to distinguish it from the institution of caste and the organized religions like Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. As noted by Tolen (1991:09), the concept of “tribe” “served a distinct representational function. It evoked both an evolutionary stage and specific values and images. ‘Tribe’ were situated on a lower rung than ‘caste’ on an evolutionary scale. The term ‘tribe’ evoked qualities of savagery, wildness, and otherness” (Tolen, 1991: 109).

These essentialist stereotypes—primitive, criminal, and savage created a sharp distinction between Adivasis and other communities. For example, the institutionalization of the category “criminal tribes” under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 rendered specific Adivasi groups as inherently deviant (Kamble et al., 2023). Another example is when WK Firminger’s Fifth Report of the House of Commons (1811) characterized the Adivasis of Chotanagpur as “savage race,” while a British magistrate from the Ramgarh district labeled the Ho Adivasis as “dreadful pests” (Das Gupta, 2020: 356).

Implications of the term “tribal”

The colonial construction of Adivasi peoples as primitive contributed to their dehumanization, marginalization, criminalization, and erosion of identity. It resulted in the process of “othering” that situated them as epistemologically disadvantaged subjects and relegated them to the periphery of knowledge production. Tuana (2004) posited that this represents a “deliberate endeavor to construct specific identities, indicating a lack of credibility” (Dotson, 2011: 243). The epistemic exclusion served to systematically exclude Adivasis from knowledge exchanges pertinent to understanding their ways of knowing and organizing (Goldstein, 2022).

In constructing Adivasi society as inherently rudimentary and backward, the colonial ethnographic narratives and orientalist discourse further reinforced their marginalization. This was achieved through the objectification—a process of racialization and criminalization that resonates deep-seated prejudices embedded within liberal imperial ideology. As Said (1978) asserts, “Orient is managed and dealt with by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, teaching it, setting it, and ruling it” (Said, 1978:3). Thus, epistemic exclusion, and identity misrecognition implied that Adivasi communities had to struggle for social justice and self-determination.

Identifying Adivasis as “tribal” leads to the epistemic exclusion of Adivasis within contemporary MOS. The Adivasi way of knowing is excluded due to the dominance of Western epistemologies, which reproduces the colonial hierarchies that historically deemed Adivasi perspectives inferior, thereby limiting their recognition as legitimate sources of knowledge. Such entrenched exclusion sustains structural inequities in knowledge production and constrains the development of pluralistic perspectives within MOS. As Love (2019: 9) observed, “Indigenous knowledges are blatantly omitted and concealed in the narratives of authors who continue to privilege Western forms of business knowledge. . . . indigenous knowledges don’t appear to be the foundation for modern-day forms of operating and organizing.” Due to the disregard for Adivasi epistemology, the challenges and struggles of Adivasis in contesting colonial legacies remain out of sight.

Caste system and the Adivasis

The caste system, deeply embedded within India’s societal and institutional structures, has historically stratified society into four principal varnas—Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras—with Dalits (stigmatized as “Untouchables”) positioned outside this framework and subjected to systemic discrimination (Ambedkar, 2014). In contrast, Adivasis have traditionally maintained autonomous economic, social, and political systems outside the typical village and its caste hierarchy, reflecting a distinct Indigenous identity (Das Gupta, 2020).

Over time, however, expanding economic and social interactions with the larger communities incorporated Adivasis into the caste order, while simultaneously positioning them as uncivilized and inferior. Nandini (2012) observes that their integration into the caste system reinforced their exclusion, frequently categorizing them as ‘backward Hindus” and Vanvasi (forest dwellers). The politics of the assimilation process not only transformed Adivasi identity, language, and culture to solidify the caste system but also subtly undermined their claims to indigenous knowledge and erased their cultural identity. This cultural erasure of Adivasis is evident at Parasnath Hill (Marang Buru) in Jharkhand, which is sacred to both the Jain community and the Santal Adivasis. While Jains view it as a site of non-violent sanctity, Santals regard it as the abode of their supreme deity and a center for ancestral rituals like the Sendra festival. State-imposed bans on sales and consumption of meat, favoring Jain beliefs, have undermined Adivasi worship traditions (Minj, 2025).

Implications of the term vanvasi

The reframing of Adivasis into Vanvasi identity seeks to subsume their identities within the Hindu caste system, which has two notable implications. First, caste and religious discrimination gained legitimacy against the Adivasis and constrained the realization of human potential because “caste greatly influences, if not determines, the social interactions between individuals, the economic activities they (are allowed to) conduct, and the economic transactions between them” (Bapuji and Chrispal, 2020: 9). Second, the caste system assigned Adivasis to the lowest hierarchical order, thus forced them to low-value activities. This systemic marginalization not only obscures their existence but also normalizes internal colonialism—a governance model characterized by extraction-oriented policies and exclusionary practices that render Adivasi lives inconsequential (Banerjee, 2011). Such internal colonialism thrives on the devaluation of Adivasi communities and perpetuates cycles of poverty and exclusion, while undermining their claims to autonomy and recognition.

Marginalization of Adivasis in postcolonial India

In this section, we discuss the continuities of colonialism and caste in postcolonial India and the changing relations between the state, corporations, and Adivasis. We specifically focus on two interrelated phenomena—“development-induced displacement” and “development-induced migration” from the conceptual lens of “extractive and racial capitalism” and “slow violence.”

The colonial construction of Adivasis as tribal and caste-based representation of Adivasis as low-caste is continued by the state and the corporations in postcolonial India. Indeed, the persistent effects of colonialism and caste on Adivasis are acutely visible in the development-induced displacement (Kujur, 2023), alienation of labor, and exclusion from high-value, productive, and commercial activities (Strümpell, 2022). The transition from state-led developmentalism (1947–1991), wherein the mining sector was tightly regulated, to the post-1991 regime of deregulation and privatization (Dungdung et al., 2022) reconfigured the access to resources in Adivasi territories, enabling corporate actors to pursue capital accumulation through systematic dispossession of Adivasi communities. In other words, the neoliberal state colluded with the corporate elites to ensure that national development and economic growth in the form of mining and industrial projects occurred at the cost of violence against Adivasis and their dispossession from their lands.

Studies suggest that since 1951, state-led development and industrialization initiatives have resulted in the appropriation of approximately 40% of Adivasi land, precipitating the forced displacement of Adivasi communities (Munshi, 2012). Using a few cases, we illustrate how development projects resemble continuity with the colonial era as it expands to gain control over cheap labor and resources for industries by displacing and dispossessing Indigenous people (Goldsmith, 1997).

The displacement and marginalization of Adivasi communities in India exemplify the complex entanglement of caste, capitalism, and postcolonial legacies within contemporary resource extraction and labor regimes, as exemplified by Tata Industries’ displacement of Adivasi populations in Odisha’s Kalinga Nagar for a planned steel plant (WRM Bulletin, 2006); the Adani Group’s removal of an entire Adivasi village in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Arand forest for coal mining (Paliwal, 2022); and the encroachment by Lloyd Steel and JSW Steel upon protected Adivasi lands in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district (Goyal, 2023).

This territorial expropriation is not a neutral or isolated process; instead, it is propelled by colonial-caste-capitalist ideologies that recast ancestral forests as unproductive wastelands and Adivasi communities as socially and economically inferior. Such narratives serve to legitimize the dispossession of Adivasi lands that resonate with the colonial patterns of resource exploitation. The violence inherent in these processes is profoundly place-based, resulting in the forced marginalization and displacement of Adivasis from their homelands.

The consequences of displacement extend beyond the loss of land, as Adivasi communities are frequently relegated to insecure, precarious forms of labor. Managerial discourses in sectors such as manufacturing, quarrying, and mining—as seen in companies like Rourkela Steel Plant—reproduce colonial tropes, branding Adivasi workers as “indolent coolies,” inebriated, and unreliable, thereby relegating them to hazardous and contractual forms of employment (Strümpell, 2022). These discourses reinforce existing social hierarchies and justify the ongoing exploitation of Adivasi labor within the broader framework of caste-capitalist extraction.

Dulhunty (2023) theorized this as “extractive and racial capitalism,” a process underpinned by caste-based discrimination. Racial capitalism, as articulated by Robinson (2020), parallels caste discrimination and represents an expansion of capitalist society along racialized—and in the Indian context, caste-based—lines. Extractive capitalism, in turn, is characterized by the aggressive removal of natural resources from Adivasi territories that reinforce cycles of dispossession and exploitation. Collectively, these processes result in displacement of Adivasis and their migration from their homelands.

Both “development-induced displacement” and “development-induced migration” indicate a discursive form of violence that deploys direct physical brute force as well as slow and less visible processes of cultural erasure, legal repression, and dehumanization. As Nixon (2011) argues, violence of a slow nature often develops progressively and remains invisible to the public and media. This slow violence manifests in dispossession from their land and forests, livelihood, and migration to urban areas where their identity markers disadvantage them, relegating them to precarious labor akin to modern slavery. Next, we discuss how precarious work and modern slavery endure social inequalities and deepen the marginalization of Adivasi people.

Precarity of Adivasis

In this section, we contend that caste and capitalist accumulation lie at the intersection of development and migration, which intensifies conditions of precarity. It generates multiple forms of unfreedom that constrain individuals’ agency and foreclose viable and dignified alternatives to participation in exploitative labor arrangements. Precarity is a condition of systemic vulnerability that permeates social and economic relations (Butler, 2004) and manifests with particular intensity among the Adivasi communities through the structural interplay of caste and capitalist accumulation (Lerche and Shah, 2018). The precarity of Adivasis is rooted in the neoliberal extraction of natural resources through large-scale infrastructure development that forcibly dispossesses Adivasis of their traditional livelihoods. At the same time, it enables caste elites and corporate entities to consolidate control over productive capital (Jain and Sharma, 2019). The caste-based subjugation and class exploitation interact dialectically to produce a matrix of oppression exclusively for Adivasis (Bourgois, 1988)

Viewed through the caste lens, Adivasis are constructed as primitive and backward, which legitimizes their relegation to precarious forms of labor characterized by low status, low pay, uncertainty, and insecurity (Kalleberg and Vallas, 2018). Their dependency on precarious wage labor reflects what Das Gupta (2020) identifies as differential incorporation into peripheralized labor markets, where intersectional stigma—stemming from racialized criminality and caste-based exclusion—constrains the occupational mobility of Adivasis. This duality of economic displacement and caste-based exclusion entrenches Adivasis within circuits of exploitation, revealing how neoliberal development reproduces historical inequalities through institutional mechanisms of erasure and containment (Butler, 2004). Consequently, Adivasis constitute a “mobile and mute” marginalized labor pool, ready for relocation at any moment and often subjugated to super-exploitation in sectors like coal mining, prepared to accept diminished wages under dire and exploitative circumstances (Breman, 2020).

The situation of Denotified Tribes and Nomadic Tribes is worse. The stigma of “criminal tribes” precludes their economic participation and forces them into precarious migrant labor roles. DNTs like the Shikaris—traditionally relied on hunting for their livelihood, and the Kolhatis—who traditionally engaged in performing arts—now often resort to illicit activities or cultural performances to survive, navigating landscapes marked by stigma, violence, and instability (Paik, 2022). In the absence of constitutional protections, DNTs and NTs work as hyperprecarious migrant laborers. They are incorporated into the labor market on adversarial terms. Such hyperprecarity exists at the intersection of caste-colonial and neoliberal regimes, often implying unfreedom, stigmatization, and the absence of social and political rights (Lewis et al., 2015). MOS scholars can play an essential role in generating newer insights into the broader notion of precarity and unfreedom when seen through the lens of hyperprecarity.

Modern slavery

Modern slavery is understood as a management practice (Crane, 2013) constituted by oppression, exploitation, and poverty (Varman, 2023). It is a complex phenomenon that warrants looking at the intersecting forces of economic deprivation, caste-based discrimination, and the loss of habitat, ecological resources, communitarian relationships, and social capital. The disruption of Adivasis’ traditional economy, hereditary occupations, and social networks rendered them vulnerable. They were compelled to participate in exploitative labor practices across domestic, informal, and organized sectors. Adivasi women are often employed in the harshest form of manual labor and subjected to sexual abuse at insecure work sites (Sharma, 2018). Thus, in the context of Adivasis, the persistence of modern slavery cannot be attributed solely to economic factors or the caste system.

Modern slavery in the context of Adivasis working in organizations has been more extensively studied in social sciences. Accounts of Adivasis laboring in hazardous and exploitative working conditions in sectors such as steel manufacturing, quarrying, and mining—including at sites like the Rourkela Steel Plant in Odisha and the Deocha Pachami coal mine in West Bengal have been documented (Dulhunty, 2023; Strümpell, 2022). However, the literature on modern slavery within MOS has largely overlooked the experiences of Adivasis. One notable exception within MOS is a study that examined Bhil Adivasi migrant children subjected to debt bondage and sexual violence as a result of loss of habitat and social relations (D’Cruz et al., 2022).

The racialized and casteist categorization of Adivasis as “inherent criminals” and “savages” legitimized coercive assimilation policies that codified their economic exploitation. By conflating Indigeneity with deviance, administrators weaponized reformist rhetoric to justify carceral interventions—including forced relocation to labor colonies and overseas plantations—under the pretext of occupational training (Ghosh, 1999). These sites of disciplinary violence normalized punitive surveillance, physical brutality, and debt bondage as tools for labor extraction, recasting slavery through the lexicon of rehabilitation. For instance, “Criminal Tribes” were compelled to undertake slave labor in reformatory settlements (Kamble et al., 2023). In some regions like central India, the colonial authorities would dispatch the Adivasis to Mauritius, British Guiana, and Australia as laborers, substituting them for African slaves (Ghosh, 1999).

Conclusion

In this paper, we underscored the urgent need for MOS to meaningfully engage with Adivasi experiences, both as Indigenous and as structurally marginalized populations in India. While existing scholarship in MOS has made strides in addressing caste-based inequalities and precarious labor, the epistemic absence of Adivasis from this discourse constitutes a critical blind spot. Our analysis reveals how colonial constructs, caste hierarchies, and capitalist accumulation intersect to produce enduring forms of dispossession, labor precarity, and modern slavery. These dynamics are not historical artifacts but persist through postcolonial development agendas, neoliberal governance, and managerial practices that normalize exploitation while obfuscating structural violence.

We illuminated the specific ways in which Adivasis are subjected to exclusion and labor extraction, both of which are rooted in their stigmatized identity and denied subjectivity. While contemporary discourses on modern slavery and precarious work have gained traction in MOS, they have yet to fully account for how intersecting structures of caste and Indigeneity intensify vulnerability. In particular, the experiences of DNTs and NTs further challenge the field to rethink dominant categories and engage with forms of labor that remain criminalized, invisible, and hyperexploited.

The dominant moral and epistemic frameworks in MOS, shaped by upper-caste academic hegemony and Western managerial rationality, continue to reproduce exclusions and uphold the colonial-caste-capitalist order. In response, we call for a critical reorientation in MOS that centers Indigenous knowledge systems, lived experiences, and political struggles. This involves decolonizing the research agenda and reflecting on the positionality of scholars and the institutional structures that produce epistemic violence. Studying Adivasi communities offers an opportunity to theorize from the margins, challenge the universalizing tendencies of Western organizational theory, and contribute to a pluralistic, reflexive, and justice-oriented MOS. As scholars, we must confront the ethical imperative to reckon with historical silences, question the complicity of our practices, and create space for Adivasi voices that reimagine the foundations of work, organization, and knowledge.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Professor Raza Mir, Professor Patrizia Zanoni, Associate Editor, Professor Ajnesh Prasad, Professor Srinath Jagannathan and the four anonymous reviewers for their generous comments which have greatly helped us in improving the article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Rahul Ashok Kamble

Notes

Author biographies

Rahul Ashok Kamble is an Assistant Professor at “Tribhuvan” Sahkari University, Anand, Gujarat, India. He works in the area of Diversity and Inclusion.

Ritesh Kumar is an Associate Professor in Fr. C. Rodrigues Institute of Management Studies, Vashi, Navi Mumbai, India. Currently, he’s a member of CMS InTouch, a digital platform that allows for real-time critical conversations on current issues in management and organization theory.

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Writing the Adivasis (indigenous) in MOS: A critique of colonial and postcolonial epistemology and reframing the multiple worlds of Adivasis

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Why MOS inattention toward Adivasis?

Colonial construct: The “tribal”

Implications of the term “tribal”

Caste system and the Adivasis

Implications of the term vanvasi

Marginalization of Adivasis in postcolonial India

Precarity of Adivasis

Modern slavery

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author biographies

References