“While benefiting from affirmative action in some cases, Adivasis or indigenous people in India also feel the claustrophobic confines of their identity which has been imposed on them by others, be it the colonial administrator, the colonial anthropologist, the missionary or the neo-liberal, neo-imperialist forces that rule global economy today.” – Santali poet, scholar and translator Ivy Imogene Hansdak in “Is tribal identity relevant in today’s world?”, Inaugural Speech, National Conference “Tribes In Transition-II: Reaffirming Indigenous Identity Through Narrative” (2017)
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=23032
In the village of Nongtraw in Meghalaya, one of the world’s wettest region, honey is quite sought after by the Khasi indigenous community who go to the forest to collect it. When they reach a beehive, they introduce themselves to the bee, “informing the bees” that they will only take what is required. This legacy … Read more
“The smart boy or clever girl who is deprived of the opportunity of schooling, or who goes to a school with dismal facilities (not to mention the high incidence of absentee teachers), not only loses the opportunities he or she could have had, but also adds to the massive waste of talent that is a … Read more
“In fact, we still do not know to what extent global supply chains are maintained by slavery and child labor. Because of these and other factors, slavery today is more profitable than ever before, and also more woven into the global economy than ever before.” – Siddharth Kara on the persistence of modern slavery| Learn … Read more
Primitivism in modern Indian art drew on adibasis. […] At Santiniketan, art was to be an integral part of an all-rounded education; Tagore had long considered Abanindranath’s pupil Nandalal [Bose] the best person to give this shape. The triumph of modernism: India’s artists and the avant-garde, 1922-1947 by Partha Mitter (New Delhi, Oxford Unitversity Press, 2007), p. 79 … Read more
The immediate impression of Indian movies is that all are depicting an established formula, where the good woman is usually vulnerable and innocent, mostly good looking and also helpless or lacking in intelligence. The bad woman is either sensuous or scary and wicked even in appearance. But Assamese cinema, especially as seen through most of … Read more