Category Archives: History

“Since the days of remote past, the diversified art and cultural forms generated by the tribal and rural people of India, have continued to evince their creative magnificence. Apart from their outstanding brilliance from the perspective of aesthetics, the tribal/folk art and culture forms have played an instrumental role in reinforcing national integrity, crystallizing social solidarity, fortifying communal harmony, intensifying value-system and promoting the elements of humanism among the people of the country.” – Final Report “Evaluation Study of Tribal/Folk Arts and Culture in West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhatisgrah and Bihar” submitted to SER Division Planning Commission Govt. of India New Delhi by Gramin Vikas Seva Sanshtha West Bengal
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=29938

“While academic historians are involved in trying to meaningfully understand how the past differs from the present, for pseudo-historians, in sharp contrast, it is about realising the political ambition of trying to project their version of the present into the past.” – Rohan D’Souza (Professor of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University) in “The Risks of Looking at India’s History Through the Eyes of Pseudo-Historians” (The Wire, 20 October 2021)
https://thewire.in/history/india-history-pseudo-historians-risks
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=7022

“[E]ven after nearly seventy-three years since the tribes were de-notified, the members of the tribes are still subject to oppression and cruelty.” – Supreme Court Judge Justice D.Y. Chandrachud quoted in “Members of De-Notified Tribes Picked Up to Cover Up Shoddy Investigations” (The Wire, 7 December 2021)
https://thewire.in/rights/members-of-de-notified-tribes-picked-up-to-cover-up-shoddy-investigations-justice-chandrachud
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=20996

“In Anthropological Perspectives on Indian Tribes […] the anthropologist Subhadra Mitra Channa writes that people categorised as tribes are not merely remnants of a static past.” – Richard Kamei in “Uncivilising the Mind: How anthropology shaped the discourse on tribes in India” (Caravan Magazine, 1 March 2021)
https://caravanmagazine.in/books/anthropologists-tribes-india
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=12454

“There is undoubtedly ample evidence to lay claim upon the fact that the North East Indian region has never been an isolated backwater even during prehistoric times.” – Dhrijyoti Kalita reviewing Prehistory and Archaeology of Northeast India by Manjil Hazarika (Scroll.in, 3 March 2019)
https://scroll.in/article/915071/this-essential-book-on-the-prehistory-of-no
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=45657

“The injustice done to the tribal people of India is a shameful chapter in our country’s history. The tribals were called ‘rakshas’ (demons), ‘asuras’, and what not. They were slaughtered in large numbers, and the survivors and their descendants were degraded, humiliated, and all kinds of atrocities inflicted on them for centuries. They were deprived of their lands, and pushed into forests and hills where they eke out a miserable existence of poverty, illiteracy, disease, etc. And now efforts are being made by some people to deprive them even of their forest and hill land where they are living, and the forest produce on which they survive.” – Supreme Court judgment quoted in “India, largely a country of immigrants” (The Hindu, 12 January 2011)
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article1081343.ece
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=4315

“[W]hat is really happening, to put it in a nutshell, is the revival of the colonial history of India, by pretending that this is the indigenous history.” – Romila Thapar (Emeritus Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University) interviewed by Karan Thapar in “I Don’t Like Modi’s India, It Is Too Narrow and Limited” (The Wire, 12 August 2022)
https://thewire.in/history/full-text-karan-romila-thapar-modi-independence
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=20996

“The structure and ideologies of ancient monarchies and the modern Indian nation state are very different. A few fundamental issues remain the same, but they are addressed in different ways. All states have to mask, justify and legitimise their use of violence through some sort of ideology. The purpose of this ideology is to present the state’s violence as necessary force. In ancient times, the state presented this violence as necessary to uphold the kingdom. Today it is presented as necessary to uphold the nation.” – Upinder Singh (Department of history at Delhi University and author of Political Violence in Ancient India) interviewed by Monobina Gupta in “What Political Violence in Ancient India Tells Us About Our Past and Present” (The Wire, 9 November 2017)
https://thewire.in/history/upinder-singh-interview-political-violence-ancient-india
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=5859

“Imagine a 25-year-old who took on an empire, left an indelible mark on tribal rights across the country and was seen as a mystic and folk hero for hundreds of thousands. Few would have achieved so much in so short a time and it’s not surprising then that Birsa Munda’s portrait hangs proudly in India’s parliament.” – Aditi Shah in “Birsa Munda – The Tribal Hero” (livehistoryindia.com, 26 July 2018)
https://www.livehistoryindia.com
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=23975

“[I]t was by reading and speaking to Tagore that these founders of modern India, Gandhi and Nehru, developed a theory of nationalism that was inclusive rather than exclusive. Tagore’s [collected lectures on the subject of] Nationalism should be mandatory reading in today’s climate of xenophobia, sectarianism, violence and intolerance.” – Ramachandra Guha, Introduction to the 2017 Penguin ed. of Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore
https://www.worldcat.org/title/nationalism/oclc/1099200491
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=18808

“Every society had narratives about its past and some regarded them as history as time went on […] So your fantasy runs wild, you can concoct a utopia exactly as you want.” – Romila Thapar (Emeritus Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University), during an interactive workshop on 22 August 2013 responding to a participant’s question: “Is there also the risk of creating fake history through the invention of tradition?” [1h41m55s]
https://youtu.be/QZU0G0P3Elw?t=1h41m55s
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?page_id=22452

“A long, contentious debate on whether Vedic culture originated in what is now Indian territory or was the result of complex patterns of migration and settlements has, so far, thrown up little evidence of the former.” – Sowmiya Ashok in “The Dig” (Fiftytwo.in, 2 April 2021)
https://fiftytwo.in/story/the-dig/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=5454

“[R]ight now we are in the midst of a name-changing game, as if by changing a name, history can be erased. Battles lost have become battles won, words on plaques have been changed, the victor becoming the loser, the loser the victor.” – Novelist Shashi Deshpande in “Why have we lost the spirit of questioning handed down by the Vedas, the Upanishads, the epics?” (Scroll.in, 25 July 2021)
https://scroll.in/article/1001004/why-have-we-lost-the-spirit-of-questioning-handed-down-by-the-vedas-the-upanishads-the-epics
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=4720

“The Aryans describe their enemies as dark in complexion, noseless or flat-nosed, of harsh speech, not honouring the Aryan gods, not observing the Aryan religious ritual, but rich in material possessions and living in fortified cities. They are named Dāsas, Asuras, Panis and Kīkatas. The Aryan invaders finally triumphed over the non-Aryans, many of whom were killed, enslaved or driven further inland. In this land, which the Aryans conquered from their enemies, were founded the early Aryan settlements.” – B.G. Gokhale in Ancient India (Bombay, 1959 ed.), p. 22
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/602186629
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=5851

“How could peace be brought, with justice? Is there even a movement for peace? How does this war compare with other wars in India, and worldwide? Few have targeted civilian villagers as remorselessly, though Ashoka’s Kalinga war, over 2,000 years ago, that killed 100000 people directly, and many indirectly according to Ashoka’s own inscriptions, presents a model of genocidal invasion and takeover all too comparable to the present situation. This paper walks through this context of Bastar.” – Abstract by Felix Padel (Journal of People’s Studies, 2017)
https://www.academia.edu/34104980
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=21733