In the Shadows of the State

In the Shadows of the State suggests that well-meaning indigenous rights and development claims and interventions may misrepresent and hurt the very people they intend to help. It is a powerful critique based on extensive ethnographic research in Jharkhand, a state in eastern India officially created in 2000. While the realization of an independent Jharkhand was the culmination of many years of local, regional, and transnational activism for the rights of the region’s culturally autonomous indigenous people, Alpa Shah argues that the activism unintentionally further marginalized the region’s poorest people. Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research in Jharkhand, she follows the everyday lives of some of the poorest villagers as they chase away protected wild elephants, try to cut down the forests they allegedly live in harmony with, maintain a healthy skepticism about the revival of the indigenous governance system, and seek to avoid the initial spread of an armed revolution of Maoist guerrillas who claim to represent them. Juxtaposing these experiences with the accounts of the village elites and the rhetoric of the urban indigenous-rights activists, Shah reveals a class dimension to the indigenous-rights movement, one easily lost in the cultural-based identity politics that the movement produces. In the Shadows of the State brings together ethnographic and theoretical analyses to show that the local use of global discourses of indigeneity often reinforces a class system that harms the poorest people.

“In the Shadows of the State is a fine and unusual study of indigenous politics, culture, and activism, which will be of interest to students of India as well as of the cultural politics of indigeneity elsewhere in the world. Alpa Shah provides a robust and non-sentimental ethnography of the realities and contradictions of tribal life, and a powerful critique of the practices of the state, NGOs, and the highly vocal middle-class activists who promote preservation of both natural resources and pristine tribal life.”—Thomas Blom Hansen, co-editor of States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, “In the Shadows of the State is an important, original, thoughtful, and beautifully written book. I have no doubt that it will be considered the single most important account we have of state-society relations in Jharkhand. It is also a remarkably erudite and properly critical account of the production and use of ‘indigeneity’ and ‘development’ as social constructions that can contribute to the domination of poor rural Jharkhandis. Its significance ranges far beyond India.”—Stuart Corbridge, co-author of Jharkhand: Environment, Development, Ethnicity, “Alpa Shah’s book is an engaged and exceptionally lively account of the intersection between the ‘everyday state’ and the people of one of India’s most marginalized ‘Tribal’ areas. A major contribution to the regional literature, her sometimes counterintuitive, often sobering, but always compelling analysis richly deserves the attention of anyone interested in the politics of indigeneity and its uneasy relationship with class politics and with left-wing activism.”—Jonathan Parry, London School of Economics, “Alpa Shah’s In the shadows of the state is both… thought provoking and… highly accessible…. Shah’s work presents a valuable contribution to discussions surrounding the relationship between rural adivasi communities and the deep sources of inequality and misrepresentation which continue to affect their lives…. [A]n important work.”, “This work is a powerful critique of those who speak in the name of the poor Adivasis in Jharkhand but use them only as a means for advancing their own interests; whether it is the ‘developmental state’ or the indigenous rights activists or political parties. In its meticulous research, the book explores the dangers of ’culture-making’ in the name of the indigenous population. The study provides much insight for those who are interested in questions regarding the nature and functioning of the Indian state, caste system and indigenous rights activism as well for the Left movement in India.”

Alpa Shah is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.