Tracing the residues of colonial, economic, and gendered violence in the narratives of Adivasi men in India.

Abstract

The present article attempts to “under” stand (Bulhan, 2015) the economic and gendered violence that subtend contemporary enactments of Adivasi (scheduled tribes) masculinities in India. Breaking away from the epistemological violence (Smith, 1999; Teo, 2010) of Western Eurocentric academic traditions, this article draws on critical discursive decolonial feminist frameworks (Lugones, 2008; Segalo & Fine, 2020) to understand how Adivasi men narrate their lives, identities, and their dreams, and what they fail to speak. Two interviews and one focus-group discussion conducted with Gond Adivasi men in Central India, alongside my own ethnographic accounts of working in the region with feminist organizing, are analyzed. I argue that Adivasi men’s subjectivities in India are shaped by the violence of “double colonization” (Xaxa, 2021). First, colonial categories created by the British such as “scheduled tribes” and associated ascriptions of “primitiveness” bear significantly on contemporary Adivasi subjectivities and gender relations. Second, colonization of men’s labor and bodies by the (unfulfillable) gendered demands as “breadwinners” for the family within a neoliberal context disenfranchise and push them to the bottom of the economic order. Enmeshed with colonialism and the neoliberal restructuring of the political economy, domestic abuse permeates homelife. Adivasi men themselves bear witness, dehumanize, silence or at worst harm women through their verbal and bodily enactments. Implications of these results are discussed in light of globalization, the rise of right-wing ideologies blanketed in patriarchy, and increased state oppression toward tribal communities.

Decolonization unnamed: Echoes of healing and refusal in the face of dehumanization and alienation.

“…They use perfumes and sprays, not to “deodorize” (since they are not malodorous to begin with) but, as Das claims, to “reodorize,” that is to adopt different esthetics where smell is concerned (e.g., from the traditional fragrance of attar or coconut oil to store-bought sprays). The critical readings offered by both Das (2023) and Arora (2023) move away from overused narratives of internalized oppression to provide a glimpse into the ways in which colonized peoples hold onto dignity and refuse normalized frameworks in the face of entrenched, and often epidermalized, dehumanization, and alienation where the visceral violence of coloniality remains unseen across the abyssal divide.…”

“…For many in our special issue, decoloniality is about humble endeavors to locate, see, read, express, reclaim, and infuse protagonism in the face of everyday struggles against the onslaught of colonial–imperialist systems; what Arora (2023) calls hearing “small openings of critique and reframing of selves and others.” In her article, Varnica Arora attempts to explore “the differential and yet sutured framings of violence” that shape Adivasi men’s lives in Bastar, Chattisgarh, in India (Arora, 2023). We witness how alienation operates through intertwined and intersecting forces of the colonizing nation-state, Hindu supremacist ideologies, neoliberal capitalism, and heteropatriarchy.…”

Examining meaning-making and decolonial resistance in Pakistani women's stories of navigating coloniality and gender

“…The differences in how colonized communities construe and resist coloniality also mirror people's varying levels of agency, choice, and efforts towards decoloniality (Dutta & Atallah, 2023). Thus, decoloniality entails their agentic efforts to name, critique, and/or resist the coloniality-driven systems of injustices (Arora, 2023).…”