In Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Vol. 133 (2): 157-82.

(Please note: pagination is different here from the

journal article)

Contested Modernities in the “Tribal Zone”: The Post-

Colonial State, Adivasi Politics∗ and the Making of Lo-
cal Modernity in the Northern Nilgiris (South India)

Ulrich Demmer
Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikanistik, Oettingenstr. 67, Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität, D – 80538 München

Abstract. In the northern Nilgiris of South India the post-colonial state, local Adivasi
communities and imaginations of modernity constitute a dynamic field of often tense
but also creative relationships. Rather than an arid dichotomy of tradition and moder-
nity we are dealing here with a specific form of an alternative or local modernity.
This paper analyses how this particular modernity is constructed through a broad
spectrum of activities ranging from dominance and cultural hegemony to cohabitation
down to everyday and cultural resistance. Moreover, this field is constituted through
cultural processes of imagination, everyday practices and performances – in secular
as well as in religious/shamanic contexts. Seen together these practices present the
domain of public culture as a zone of debate and as a contested terrain. In particular
this essay explores how actors use these everyday practices and political/religious
performances to imagine or/and contest particular notions of modernity, statehood
and sociality and how these relate to one another – in short, how complex agencies
constitute local modernity in a field of what Ortner (1995:176) has called political
and cultural “authenticity”.

[postcolonial anthropology, statehood, indigenous politics, performance and social

imagination, South Asia.]

∗
The term “Adivasi” denotes social groups being classified by governmental institutions (e.g.
in census data) as “tribal” groups. In recent debates on the representation of culture(s) in India
(cf. Dirks 2001; Heidemann 2004), the latter term can easily provoke notions of anthropologi-
cal primitivism, exotism, or even orientalist imagination. The term “Adivasi” (“ancient peo-
ple”), being today often used by the people themselves, points in contrast to the political and
cultural participation and empowerment of those groups in contemporary India. In this article
therefore I prefer the term “Adivasi” but keeping the above comments in mind I also speak of
indigenous and tribal people.
 258

Introduction: Local Modernities and Political Authenticity

The study of local forms of modernity has gained a firm place in recent political and
cultural anthropology. While earlier work was primarily based on a paradigm that
conceived the relationship between tradition and modernity per se in antagonistic
terms, with modernity understood in the European-Western sense (cf. Taylor 1999) as
a singular phenomenon and basically as a process of overcoming traditional societies
and cultures, today we conceive of modernity in the plural: we explore “alternative
modernities” (Appadurai 1996:192), “other modernities” (Rofel 1999), “global mod-
ernities” (Featherstone, Lash and Robertson 1995), “Melanesian modernities”
(Friedman and Carrier 1996) and others still. Despite the apparent diversity of these
approaches they all share the insight that in the wake of modernity indigenous socio-
cultural formations were not simply washed away by a “tide of modernization” (Tay-
lor 1999). Instead, indigenous people often play an active role in shaping and trans-
forming the process with the result that specific local forms of modernity arise.
The growing awareness of this process is informed by a number of trajectories in
anthropology, sociology and political science. The rapid increase of globalization and
of transnational phenomena (see Appadurai 1996; Hauser-Schäublin/Braukämper
2002) question the dominance and persuasive power of a modernity solely under-
stood in Western terms: post-colonial and subaltern studies (Chatterjee 1986) reclaim,
in accordance with a reflexive and globally-oriented political anthropology (Ortner
1995, Friedman 1994), the acknowledgment of the many forms of agency employed
by local communities or cultures. And last but not least continental social philosophy
too, in the wake of its critical engagement with modernity (Gaonkar 1999), made its
impact felt. Taken altogether, such scholarship led to a “provincializing of Europe”
(Chakrabarty 2000) and of its vision of modernity strengthening the insight that
“Modernity always unfolds within a specific cultural and civilizational context, and
different starting points for the transition to modernity lead to different outcomes”
(Gaonkar 1999:15).

At the same time tradition and modernity are no longer located (and evaluated) on a
time axis or on a ladder of development but understood in spatial and dynamic terms
operating in sites where various communities, institutions and actors are entangled in
interactions and political engagements. Thus a spatial paradigm displaced an
evolutionary one and brings into view the manifold cultural and political processes
which are at work in the interfaces of local, national and global impacts (see
Heidemann 2006; King 1991). Finally, locality is no longer conceived as the
stronghold of “tradition” in the sense of an enclosed and timeless culture but realized
as an active force in the dynamic processes of global, national and local engagements.
Beyond these shared assumptions, however, substantial differences exist with re-
spect to the relevance and power of the multiple agencies involved. Some authors
tend implicitly to see the global flows of meanings, media, events and other “migra-
 259

tional” movements as the most powerful forces. To be sure, this position does regard
local or vernacular actors as actively taking part in the processes of shaping alterna-
tive modernities. Appadurai insists, for example, “that the consumption of the mass
media throughout the world often provokes resistance, irony, selectivity, and, in gen-
eral, agency” (1996:7). At the same time, however, local social life is conceptualized
in a rather reductionist way. It is best conceived of as “a habitus (a tacit realm of re-
producible practices and dispositions)” rather than “an arena for conscious choice,
justification and representation” (1996:44). Moreover, without the impact of external
media and their visions it is simply powered by “the givenness of things” (1996:55)
while “practices of imagination were residual” (ibid.: 53).
Indeed, as Sahlins (1999) has pointed out, the concept of local cultural forms pro-
posed in that type of theory does suggest that without their experiencing “colonial
others” and their cultural formations (e.g. cricket), modernization and, most of all,
globalization, indigenous communities are unable (and also feel no need) to create
cultural images empowering them to shape their social life in terms of a conscious
project.1 In other words, people in that domain are implicitly seen as lacking the ca-
pability jointly to generate ideas of their own about what makes for a valuable and
proper life – how they want to live in a good way and what they regard as wrong or
bad. This tendency theoretically to underestimate the projective and imaginative
agencies of local cultural communities makes it very difficult for the ethnographer to
fully take them into account. The power of vernacular or local actors and groups ac-
tively to co-construct emerging modernities is thus (paradoxically against the theo-
ries’ initial insistence on local agencies) not given appropriate weight.2
Another perspective stresses the coexistence of global/national and vernacu-
lar/local imaginations and concepts. Thus Gupta (1998) analyzes traditional and mod-
ern ideas of farmers in Punjab (India). Both, however, provide valuable resources
which exist side-by-side. In everyday practice they are employed according to cir-
cumstances, thus constituting a kind of hybrid modernity. Mankekar (2000), too, de-
1
Public culture is explicitly conceptualized as a domain where a number of collective and
individual agents are engaged in the contested construction of modernity - except local ones.
Thus the producers of global and national media are “the central élites of these societies - the
artists, bureaucrats, ideologues, media experts - who are central to this culture-making” (Ap-
padurai/Breckenridge 1988:7-8). The middle-class is also seen as “the social basis of public
culture formations“ (Appadurai/Breckenridge 1996:7) while “private entrepreneurs and com-
mercial institutions” (ibid.: 7) are as much involved as is “the state” (ibid.:8). Friedman (1995)
offers a detailed theoretical discussion of that stance. There is no space here to consider in
further detail the many aspects relevant to a socio-cultural theory that can take appropriate
account of the complex agencies (local, national and global ones) at work.
2
To quote just one passage suggesting this: “Few students of global modernities would deny
that the media (in particular the electronic media) have transformed the meaning of locality by
creating complex images of distance, self, other, and social transformation that extend (my
own italics) to the remotest societies of the world the capability to construct imagined worlds”
(Appadurai /Breckenridge 1996:15). Note that what are extended here are not only the new
images but the very “capability to construct imagined worlds”.
 260

scribes the consumption of televisual media in Delhi as a kind of hybrid reality,

where modern and traditional interpretations and schemes of understanding are simul-
taneously available, though without being merged into a new cultural formation.
Finally, a third position conceptualizes local modernities as a dynamic process
where both sides – indigenous and modern agencies/actors - are actively involved in
giving shape to new cultural configurations. Chakrabarty (1999), for example, shows
that the formation of a cultural and literary public sphere in Calcutta that began in the
colonial period was significantly shaped by a Bengali tradition of public conversa-
tional discourse (adda) that existed long before colonialism. Likewise the modernity
of witchcraft and the “politics of the belly”, which according to Geschiere (1997),
Bayart (1993) and Mbembe (2001) characterize the political culture in Cameroon, are
another example where indigenous concepts play a fundamental role in the formation
of local modernities. Indeed, as Friedman (1995) rightly points out, the force of in-
digenous cultural attributions and imaginations can be so strong that modern or global
meanings and artifacts are either merely integrated into existing practices or they may
even provoke criticism and/or resistance of national/global projects of modernity; the
studies of Scott (1985), Ortner (1997), T. Turner (1992) or Werbner/Ranger (1996)
provide ample testimony to those processes.
Against this later background, then, local modernities appear less as a harmonious
coexistence or a hybrid combination of cultural imaginations and concepts than as a
process of negotiations and confrontations or, to take Appadurai and Breckenridge’s
(1988:6 - 7) terms, as a “contested terrain” and “a zone of debate” (cf. also Spittler
2002). Moreover, local modernities are constructed through various culturally-
specific understandings “of person, nature, culture, reason and the good” to such an
extent that, as Gaonkar (1999:15) points out, it is indispensable to study in detail
how actors dynamically employ these cultural concepts in specific sites and localities.
At the same time it is necessary to include in our analysis in more subtle ways the
political usages people make of indigenous concepts both in everyday life and in
performative contexts, in order to offer, as Sherry Ortner (1995:176) expresses it, a
“thick” description of the political and cultural “authenticity”3 of post-colonial and
global sites of cultural interaction; Political authenticity implies taking into account
the “internal complexity of subaltern politics and culture“ (ibid.:183) and since they
have “an authentic, not merely reactive, politics, so they must be seen as having an
authentic, and not merely reactive, culture [...] a certain prior and ongoing [...] own
sense of order, justice, meaning, and the like” (ibid.:180). Last but not least, I will
also fully agree with her that all this is to be seen as an outcome of human agency,
3
Of course, authenticity is, as Ortner makes clear, a “highly problematized term, insofar as it
seems to presume a naive belief in cultural purity, in untouched cultures whose histories are
uncontaminated by those of their neighbors or of the west. I make no such presumptions;
nonetheless, there must be a way to talk about what the Comaroffs call ‘the endogenous his-
toricity of local worlds’ (1992:27), in which the pieces of reality, however much borrowed
from or imposed by others, are woven together through the logic of a group’s own locally and
historically evolved bricolage. It is this that I will mean by authenticity” (1995:176).
 261

understood as “the capacity of social beings to interpret and morally evaluate their
situation and to formulate projects and try to enact them” (ibid.:185).
The present article takes up these ideas and examines the formation of local mod-
ernity in the northern Nilgiri hills of South India. On the one hand it analyses how
modernity is represented in public performances and in locally-specific ways - by the
Indian nation-state as well as by the then ruling party of Tamil Nadu, one of the sev-
eral regional states constituting India today. On the other hand, it explores how Adi-
vasi communities, in particular Sholega and Jēnu Kurumba, acting in a complex po-
litical field respond to, engage with and also transform these representations and prac-
tices.

The Region

The northern Nilgiri region is still a richly-forested plateau at the northern edge of the
Nilgiri hills in south India, where a number of different indigenous cultural communi-
ties, or “Adivasi", like Irula, Sholega, Betta Kurumba and Jēnu Kurumba (cf.
Demmer 1996) live. Until the 1940s this was a densely-forested area with a mainly
tribal population.
Though there were a few farming and cattle-breeding families,4 some merchants
and also a few families of plantation labourers, it was primarily the state and its insti-
tutions that played a central role here. Already in colonial times, for example, the
British administration had parts of the forests declared as state-protected “reserved
forest areas” and also promoted tea and coffee plantations. After India’s independ-
ence in the 1950s state interventions increased: the Indian nation-state as well as the
regional state of Tamil Nadu converted more and more of the forest into reserved ar-
eas and, most important for local Adivasi people, into protected wildlife territories
where settlements of tribal people became illegal. They also built a hydro-electric
power plant and today they promote wildlife tourism as well as a new generation of
ecological and environmentally-friendly hydro-electric power projects. In addition,
various steps were undertaken to modernize the tribal population in the sectors of
economy, education and health. Among those measures was the construction of
“tribal colonies” for the Adivasi communities at the periphery of the forest areas
meant to bring them out of the forest and settle the tribal people who, like the Jēnu
Kurumba, lived until the 1970s mainly inside the forest areas (Demmer 1996). Other
measures were the installation of mobile health services, tribal schools and coopera-
tive societies (LAMP - Societies) that were to guarantee fixed and just prices for the
forest products gathered by the tribal people and then sold to the LAMP. Last but not
least, in recent years Adivasi groups have become the subject of various NGOs seek-
ing to promote and to implement their own visions of modernity, humanity and eco-
logical development.

4
Hockings (1989) provides key data on the demographic history of the region.
 262

The State, Imagination of Modernity and “Gouvernementality”

After independence India advanced, as a nation, as a state and through its post-
colonial elites, a primarily a-cultural (Taylor 1999) vision of modernity. In principle
this is conceived as a non-negotiable but universally inescapable movement simply
awaiting its unfolding in the so-called backward areas and backward minds of people,
both of which were seen as being blocked and imprisoned by “traditional values”.
Other aspects motivating this political stance were a concern with an allegedly value-
neutral and procedural model of society, a western concept of the person, foreground-
ing virtues like autonomy and individuality, notions of rationality rooted in the Euro-
pean tradition of enlightenment, the primacy of a secular state and the compartmen-
talization of spirituality in the private sphere of citizens. This idea went hand in hand
with the impersonal authority of the state and the function of its institutions as the
only sites where justice and rights, education, health, security, etc. are to be secured
and which, at the same time, implemented this vision of modernity through the vari-
ous practices of “gouvernementality" (Foucault 1991).
In practice “gouvernementality” implies a spectrum of strategies encompassing
disciplinization, ruling and habitualization (Bourdieu 1999) which aim, mediated by
the state, to root modernity as an idea and as a way of life in the mind, the body and
in the very interactions of “the population”. As anthropological and social historical
studies show, in India too this epistemic idea of state and modernity began and con-
tinues to be “written” into the bodies, the social hygiene and into the mind and habi-
tus of the people (Arnold 1993; Gupta 2001). This is particularly the case in the
northern Nilgiri region with its many Adivasi groups conceived and classified by the
state per se as a “backward” segment of the population and in need of encompassing
development: with respect to their cognitive-intellectual abilities, to indigenous health
and hygiene concepts, to economic practices and with respect to political conscious-
ness as citizens of the nation as well. Accordingly, the presence of national institu-
tions in the region is extensive and covers all fields of modernization referred to
above.
Accordingly, the strategies of “gouvernementality” and habitualization used by the
various institutions of state and nation to inscribe their meanings in the bodies and the
minds of people permeate many domains of everyday life. The goals of modern edu-
cation such as discipline and hygiene, for example, are mediated in tribal schools and
inscribed into the pupils’ bodies through habitual drill and command. In government
hospitals, too, tribals “have to learn”, it is said, rigorous discipline and training in hy-
giene. The idea of India as a nation-state encompassing all cultural and local diversi-
ties is likewise explicitly learned but also performed in the wake of routines and thus
embodied in public schools: the public rapport being exercised every morning in the
schoolyard, for example, consists of the singing of the national anthem, and on Inde-
pendence Day the yard itself becomes an “India in miniature”, as the federal regional
 263

states (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, etc.) are symbolically represented by pupils
dressed in what is perceived as the typical regional dress.
Other forms of habitualization refer directly to the idea of the powerful state and
serve to embody the proper behaviour that is expected vis-à-vis the bureaucracy or the
police. Of great importance in this respect are the proper and subtle ways of conduct
to be employed in the interaction with agents of the state: appropriate ways of “greet-
ing”, of “standing/sitting”, of “speaking with a quiet voice and lowered head”, of
“having a cup of tea”, and so forth. Accordingly, the manifold strategies of “stately”
habitualization concern a substantial part of the everyday life of tribal people in the
region.

Performing the Modernity of the State

Apart from the micro-practices of “gouvernementality” and habitualization which

mediate the culture of modernity in a rather implicit way there are also explicit proce-
dures employed by the state. They too are meant to lend its ideas of modernity and a
good life a hegemonic force that makes them extend into and root in the population as
far as possible. Political performances are a privileged way to accomplish that
(Breckenridge/Appadurai 1996; Brow 1988; Schein 1999).5
These performative frameworks constitute fields of collective action where mean-
ings are represented and/or performed in an expressive and explicit way. On the other
hand, they also have a pragmatic dimension and in particular their rhetorical function
is of great importance in the struggle to strive for a hegemony of “gouvernemental”
ideas. Thus performances often aim to persuade the participants to accept or to con-
sent to the meanings expressed and thus to expand their hegemonic reach as far as
possible into the population and/or the Adivasi. This is of utmost importance for the
state whose institutions often like to represent themselves in public ceremonies and
events (cf. Tenekoon 1988; Kertzer 1988).
In the northern Nilgiris there are numerous performances with this intention, and
annual ceremonies - like the annual meetings of national cooperative societies and
fair-price stores – particularly seek to draw public attention. Celebrating the estab-
lishment of institutions that are meant to “develop the people”, politicians, civil ser-
vants and a few members of tribal communities appear on the stage, speeches are
given and symbolic actions (greetings, distribution of grants or loans, flag hosting,
etc.) are carried out. At the same time specific aspects of the power and value of the
federal state, of modernity and of progress are made explicit that way but locally-
rooted meanings, for example Tamilian notions of a “protective and promoting state”
(see below), are articulated as well.
Occasionally, those performances are also arranged in such a way that they attrib-
ute a special position to the tribal population within the state and the nation. This

5
Forms of public culture like theatre, film, sport etc. can serve that purpose too (cf. Appadurai
/Breckenridge 1988, 1996).
 264

staging of ethnic participation is often meant to represent the cultural diversity of

Tamil Nadu as a positive factor (with the participating tribal representatives usually
being exoticized and traditionalized) or it simply serves to display the assumed grati-
tude of tribal people for the benefits that came with state interventions. In this respect
the performances thus aim to legitimize state strategies of modernization and devel-
opment. Beyond that, as in other parts of India too, there are numerous smaller oppor-
tunities to stage celebrations of the state and modernity such as openings of Govern-
ment institutions (e.g. hospitals, ration-shops), Independence Day, Gandhi’s birthday
and other national events. Since, however, the Nilgiris are a rather thinly-populated
hill area with only a small number of voters, and thus not constituting a central field
for party politics, performances on a larger scale, for example, those with top-level
politicians and other “famous” public figures (film actors, for example) as perform-
ers, are rather rare.
Yet in November 2005 the local population experienced an extraordinary spectacle
of political performance. In that month and after more than 10 years of construction a
technically very ambitious hydro-electric power plant, situated in the middle of the
protected state forest areas and supposed to deliver electric power to the highly en-
ergy-intensive industrial region of Coimbatore, was completed. For the inauguration
and start-up of this state-run prestigious development project the then Prime Minister
Jayalalitha and a number of other high-ranking cabinet members had announced their
participation and, in addition, the Prime Minister had arranged for a sophisticated si-
multaneous multimedia presentation of the event.
Employing a range of performative means this multi-media performance displayed
the government’s specific understandings of modernity and the role of the state. One
of the important aspects was the display of the power of the state and of the governing
party to the population. Already in the run-up to the opening substantial and normally
unattainable resources of the state (construction machines, bitumen, workers, etc.)
were mobilized in a very short time and within days a helicopter landing-pad and, to
the surprise of the audience, an ultramodern media-landscape were erected at the pe-
riphery of the village constituting an impressive political arena. Of course the ruling
party did not fail to arrange the transport (including free bus rides and free lunches) of
a mass of spectators from the whole region. When the large audience had finally been
security-checked and assembled in the stadium-like media arena, and after some
hours of tense expectancy, the Prime Minister flew in with a helicopter. Yet to the
disappointment of the audience she was immediately separated from the excited
population in an even more dramatic and impressive enactment of state power.
Surrounded by her security troops, the so-called “black cats” (dressed in black and
heavily-armoured), and by security forces who were seen continuously talking on
walkie-talkies and mobile phones, she left the helicopter, performed an offering to a
Hindu goddess (Laksmi) in the company of Brahman priests (brought in from faraway
Kerala), then quickly entered a luxurious jeep with blackened windows and speedily
disappeared, accompanied by an armada of other VIPs being rushed away in a convoy
of cars and jeeps. This somehow unreal striking appearance and disappearance of
 265

powerful people certainly enhanced the demonstration of the state’s power, under-
lined its unpredictability and inaccessibility and left the crowd impressed - but also
silenced. In fact it was very quiet for a while after she left, a silence, it seemed, that
echoed the audience’s experience of being sidelined and reduced to the role of a silent
and at best applauding population. Moreover, many of the people I talked to later on
compared the event with political performances staged by G. W. Bush or the Prime
Minister of India, Rajiv Ghandi, both of whom they saw in television news being
broadcast by satellite into their village and tribal homes: “G. W. Bush and R.
Ghandi”, people remarked, “only they have ‘black cats’ no?” “They don’t come close
to people, you know, never shake hands, remember?” Those were ambivalent state-
ments, however, combining a sense of respect with feelings of fear and disem-
powerment. Most people were explicit, though, about their dislike of the distance and
separation that this event established between the people and those in power. Others
drew parallels with the performances of the military in contemporary Iraq which they
had come to know– as most other people in the world today – through watching the
daily television news.
A second aspect of modernity displayed by means of performance was the visual
medium itself. A huge mobile TV screen, such as the ones used in European large-
scale sport or political events, was brought to the village site from faraway Chennai
(as the advertisement spots shown before and after the broadcast made clear). Along
with a number of large-size TV (LCD) screens that were set up at the outer circle of
the arena it was used to broadcast live the inauguration and the opening that Prime
Minister Jayalalitha and other important politicians performed in the main building of
the hydro-electric power plant. This plant, however, was situated only a few kilome-
ters away from the arena in the forest and jungle area but at that time it was com-
pletely cordoned-off from onlookers and the public. Instead, and as if to underline the
hypermodern vision of the present government, this broadcast was transmitted via
satellite from the power plant to the nearby media arena where the assembled vil-
lage/tribal population could watch this “performance of modernity” simultaneously
on the big mobile screen and on the large size TV-sets. Indeed it is hard to imagine a
more suitable arrangement for the accomplishment of the rhetorical function of this
act, namely to convince the audience of the state-of-the-art modernity of this govern-
ment. Moreover, and as if to underline that intention, this media-landscape also
served as an arena where the national imagination of that modernity, as seen by the
ruling party at that time (Jaya ADMK), was explicitly displayed and represented on
the screens. In a central sequence of the whole political performance, when the trans-
mission of the inauguration ceremony was finished, all screens began to show a film
of about 10 minutes length that was produced, as it turned out, by the ruling party.
That clip narrated vital aspects of the life history of a modern suburban Tamil family
and evaluated its way of life.
The main plots of this movie foregrounded the conjugal modern family (father,
mother and children), a suburban modern way of life and modern education as posi-
tive values in contrast with the probably attractive but unfortunately no longer appro-
 266

priate way of traditional village life. In a final sequence, moreover, the film dramati-
cally showed the outstanding value of the “Tamil mother” (cf. Rösel 1997) as key
protector of the modern family and ended with a scene where this mother was cine-
technically doubled and shown to be identical with the female prime minister Jay-
alalitha herself: in this representation two figures, the Tamil mother and the display of
the Prime Minister as the political warrant of modernity, were merged into one and
the same person, the Prime Minister Jayalalitha herself.
Last but not least, the political performance also served to represent the social po-
sition of the tribal population, namely as a marginal sector of society. Members of
various Adivasi communities were indeed present but only as spectators of the per-
formance and nowhere did tribal groups play an active part, contrary to the an-
nouncements of the programs that were circulated early on in the villages and among
the audience. The message of their visible absence was clear: Adivasi are valuable
members of modern society but only as consumers and as the subject of political
modernity and not as constitutive actors of that modernity. In sum, then, the entire
political event employs a variety of performative means that articulate and put into
perspective the ruling party’s as well as the government’s specific understanding of
modernity and the power of the modern state.

Adivasi - Infrapolitics

The culture of modernity outlined above constitutes a substantial part of Adivasi eve-
ryday experience in the region. It is not only displayed for an audience in political
performances of various scale but mediated by institutions of the state and embodied
in the practices of “gouvernementality”. Accordingly, tribal people are faced with it
in almost all of their practices as well: when they turn to the local government hospi-
tal for help, when their children visit the tribal school, when they are arrested by the
local police and so forth. Adivasi are, however, no passive recipients of modernity:
both its concepts and its practices are actively interpreted, taken up and put under
scrutiny in Adivasi discourses and praxis. In fact, here as elsewhere (cf. Ortner 1995,
Geschiere 1997) tribal people respond in many ways to the claims of modernity and
to the hegemonic efforts of the state.
One set of strategies consists of making active use of its institutions and of cohabi-
tation. This becomes particularly evident when Adivasi respond affirmatively to the
policy of modernization. Government jobs, for example, a certain percentage of
which are reserved for educated members of communities classified as “scheduled
tribes”, are welcomed by those Adivasi who fulfill the requirements (e.g. a school
degree). Under certain conditions medical services offered by the government hospi-
tal are called on as well. Thus the Sholega and Jēnu Kurumba people make use of it
to treat minor cases (headache, mild fever and so on), though always with a substan-
tial measure of watchfulness regarding corruption and medical output. Whenever se-
rious cases are on the agenda, however, one trusts to the Adivasi healing rituals
(Demmer 2007) or even private physicians. Though the latter have to be paid for their
 267

service they can at least be held responsible for what they do. Some Adivasi even turn
to Ayurvedic hospitals in the Federal State of Kerala which, though they require a
very strenuous and long bus ride, are renowned not only for their orthopedic expertise
but also for their fair treatment of Adivasi patients. Last but not least, outright
cohabitative practices are frequent as well. Sholega and Jēnu Kurumba, for example,
must carry a license issued by the local forest department to collect and sell forest
products. Yet they often manage to do without it and practice a kind of silent
cohabitation with forest rangers who likewise draw financial benefits from this
While these instances show that Adivasi in the region are not totally victimized but
strategy.
actively engaged in making use of the state many other practices disclose a salient
attitude of resistance. They consist of two forms, namely everyday resistance or “in-
frapolitics”, as James Scott (1985) has termed it, and what Barry Morris (1989) has
called “cultural resistance”.
The infrapolitical everyday resistance of Jēnu Kurumba (cf. also Demmer 1996)
and Sholega consists particularly of such strategies as labour-boycott, stealing of
food, sabotage, cunning and displays of ignorance. Gossip and slander too are signifi-
cant methods. The Tamil Nadu government, for example, established a number of
tribal settlements in the region but the huts, built by local constructors in a corrupt
setting, seldom correspond with public standards or with the needs of the tribal popu-
lation. During monsoon, for instance, many of them leak because they are built with
bad quality materials and in the hot season they are extremely hot inside, owing to the
metal or asbestos roofs on top. One of the consequences is that some Jēnu Kurumba
simply do not use them in the way expected of them. Rather than living in the huts
they rent them out to other tribal or caste people. In tribal schools, too, the state im-
plements ideas which simply contradict Adivasi practices and concepts. According to
the implicit principles of those schools education still rests upon the unquestioned
authority of teachers and the subordination of pupils, including the latter’s acceptance
of bodily punishment and violence. This, however, is a habit that is totally foreign to
Adivasi practices and concepts and is resisted outright. As a result and with the un-
spoken support of their parents most Jēnu Kurumba children simply don’t go to
school at all or they are absent for longer periods of time because, as they say, they
are treated badly, beaten and scolded (cf. Demmer 1996). When I asked their parents
why they didn’t intervene and make the children go they simply said the same,
namely that their children are beaten and shouted at in school. How, they asked me,
can they make their children go there?
Similar “weapons of the weak” are employed to respond to efforts of the state to
keep the Jēnu Kurumba out of the forest. Thus farm land was distributed by the
government in order to settle them but soon many families leased their land out to
other castes. Sometimes, to give another example, the forest department also restricts
the gathering of forest products and “locks the forest”, as the Jēnu Kurumba say. This
idea is based on the policy of wildlife conservation and of protecting the ecological
environment but cuts across the very economic base of the Adivasi who depend on
the gathering and sale of forest products (cf. Demmer ibid.). Accordingly, the Jēnu
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Kurumba respond with a range of practices that allow them at least a certain amount
of access to the forest regions and thus to some monetary income. Though the details
can’t be disclosed here suffice to say that the ideas implicit in this forest and envi-
ronment policy are formulated in a totally one-sided manner in favour of the interests
of the state, and even the whole world, since at present the region is declared as the
Nilgiri ecosphere and a “world-heritage” (cf. Keystone Foundation 2007).
Labour-boycott is employed as well. The Jēnu Kurumba, for example, use it to es-
cape the often excessive demands of the LAMP-cooperative society’s management to
increase the production of minor forest products and accordingly the amount of work.
Instead of increasing their workload they simply remain in the forest, thus staying out
of the managers’ reach and control. Avoidance thus appears as a major strategy of
dealing with outside pressures. This technique is also used to resist the state’s “gou-
vernementality”.
Thus, medical inoculation teams often fail owing to the fact that the Jēnu Kurumba
withdraw into the forest when they notice medical teams arrive in jeeps. Officers
from the census departments suffer the same fate when they swarm out to collect cen-
sus data about the population but often find themselves in empty settlements because
the Adivasi have disappeared. In other cases the cunning of disguise is used. Many
Jēnu Kurumba, for example, say they don’t speak or understand the official language
(Tamil) when it comes to their being questioned or interrogated by state officers and
employees. Pretending not to understand the questions they simply act in a way that
helps them to avoid entering the state’s records. As a result officers often find them-
selves in the midst of eloquent silence and leave with empty hands.6
Robbery, too, is a frequent expression of infrapolitics and the Jēnu Kurumba prac-
tice it in striking ways. I have mentioned already that the Adivasi people are fre-
quently forbidden to enter the forest areas and to collect forest products. Since those
periods can extend over several months their income is severely reduced and many
can’t afford to buy sufficient food items in the market. One of the solutions of the
young people then is to help themselves and raid, for example, the state-run chicken
farm that was established in the 1970s to improve local nutrition levels through the
production and sale of eggs and chickens. The Jēnu Kurumba youth have expert
knowledge of climbing as well as of the behaviour of animals and, in times of severe

6
It should be mentioned that my own fieldwork (in total more than seven years between 1987
and 2007) as well as the ethnographic field-studies conducted by Indian colleagues, was ini-
tially seriously undermined by these strategies of avoidance and silence as well. Since I have
described my own encounters in detail elsewhere (Demmer 1996) it suffices to recall here the
really frustrated group of anthropology students complaining about the “stubborn silence and
the seemingly complete ignorance” of the Jēnu Kurumba and about what they interpreted as
the “typical shyness of those simple tribal people” when they tried to interview some of the
Jēnu Kurumba during a few weeks of fieldwork for their thesis. Without long-term field re-
search my work would not have been possible. I wish to thank the German Research Founda-
tion (DFG) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as well as the Indian Gov-
ernment for the generous funding of my research.
 269

shortages, they use these skills to provide their kin people with chicken and eggs for
free. During the night, as I recall, they used to climb on the rooftop of the farm,
sprinkle water over the chickens in the cages below and thus make the chickens keep
quiet - because they take the water for rain, fold their wings close to their body and sit
down quietly. As excellent climbers the youths then entered the cages from above,
took some chickens and disappeared into the dark. Even the watchmen posted there at
night didn’t notice anything. The following morning they were surprised, of course,
and unable to explain it they constructed rumors about the magic of tribal people and
how they are able to transform themselves, enter locked cages in the guise of “spirits”
(gāli) and steal chickens without being noticed.
Those rumors spread into the village and lend a frightening or at least an ambiva-
lent image of the Adivasi as being not only backward but also powerful in their own
way. The young Adivasi members of the raiding gangs are very well aware of this
effect and they are proud of their reputation as mysterious, dangerous and powerful
forest-people. I remember well when we sat together after a successful raid and the
young guys narrated their adventures and heroic deeds during the night: how they are
able to fool the watchmen, how they use their forest knowledge and how they manage
to secure good food for their people whenever they need to. They thus underlined
their autonomy as well as their power to take care of themselves, despite suppression
and injustice.
Moreover, these raids become modest hero-stories when they are told later on at
the cooking-fires at night and where they are accompanied by laughter and scornful
comments about the stupidity of watchmen or other state employees. At the same
time the youngsters are proud of their skills and of the sophisticated use of their forest
knowledge – a knowledge that village people are unable to attain. This experience
certainly contributes to the increase of self-respect of the Adivasi in a significant
manner.
Strategies of sabotage are also used. Thus, for example, forest officers need Jenu
Kurumba trackers to find their way whenever they move in the thick forest areas – yet
sometimes it happens that they are left alone on various pretexts or even without any
prior notice at all. Since the forest officers are usually not acquainted well enough
with the local forest environment, however, they are literally at the mercy of the jun-
gle and in particular of its numerous wild and dangerous animals like elephants, bears
or gaurs. This experience contributes substantially to enhancing their respect for the
Adivasi.
Cunning and disguise belong, as already suggested above with respect to the
state’s census inquiries, to the spectrum of Adivasi infrapolitics too. During elections
on the state level, for example, it is not uncommon for Adivasi to take money not
only from supporters of one candidate but from several campaigning parties. In return
they promise to vote for the respective candidate. On election day, however, they
simply fill in the sheet in such a way that they produce an invalid ballot. When asked
later on why they didn’t vote as expected they pretend that they didn’t know “how to
do that correctly”. Moreover, they also take care that this message is circulated in the
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village and thus it happens that a kind of fake public knowledge is constructed ac-
cording to which the Jēnu Kurumba “don’t even know how to vote”. Other strategies
of Adivasi infrapolitics consist of the dispersion of rumors, gossip and the production
of bad reputations. Thus stories and rumors about the dangers of the forest (wild ani-
mals, demons) are propagated in the offices and tea-stalls of the region. On the one
hand, these narratives underscore the courage and expertise of the Jēnu Kurumba and
thus preserve and enlarge the “symbolic capital” of the Adivasi. On the other hand,
they serve a practical purpose and contribute to keeping non-tribal people away from
the forest, from the forest products and thus from the primary sources of Adivasi
monetary income (cf. Demmer 1996). In addition, the narratives exaggerate and
dramatize the dangers of the forest or of actual incidents and this serves to underline
the competence of Adivasi with respect to forest matters. Moreover, anecdotes and
stories are passed on and spread, suggesting the cowardice of forest officers when
they move in the forest or their corruptive and unfair conduct. The goal of this “poli-
tics of reputation”, as Bailey (1963) has called it, is, of course, to weaken the “public
face” of the people concerned, since reputation is still a substantial source of status
within the politics of the local village community.

Adivasi - Politics and “the Tribal View "

As Scott (1985) has shown, everyday politics of subaltern groups vis-à-vis dominant
institutions like the state and its agencies is not confined to infrapolitical strategies
but also draws on resources of shared social meanings and a cultural background. In
the Malaysian region where he worked, for example, everyday politics rested on a
particular horizon, on what he called the “village view". In Scott’s reading this is a
corpus of value orientations, meanings and codes for conduct represented in folklore
as well as in rituals and providing a resource actors can draw upon in order to act po-
litically. Moreover, it also constitutes the cultural basis for criticism and interven-
tions. Likewise with respect to the Adivasi here we can speak of what one might call
a “Tribal View”. As a specific configuration of moral and socio-cultural knowledge
it is articulated in narratives, songs (cf. Demmer 1996) and ritual performances. In the
same way as “gouvernementality” is a political practice based on the imagined culture
of modernity so the everyday infrapolitics of the Adivasi people too is based on moral
and cultural conceptualizations. And as we saw in the case of the state so among the
Adivasi socio-cultural ideas and concepts are most effectively expressed in performa-
tive contexts.
In fact, for many local cultures performances provide a forum for the negotiation
of modernity and nationhood. As the studies of Jean and John Comaroff (1993, 1994)
and others (cf. Roseman 1996; Kwang-Ok 1994; Demmer 2006: xi-xii;
Demmer/Gaenszle 2007) make clear, performative contexts such as rituals and sha-
manic practices are often used as platforms where statehood and modernity are chal-
lenged, opened up for discussion or overtly criticized. Accordingly, modern and so-
called traditional concepts are interwoven in a rich framework of political articula-
 271

tions. In the northern Nilgiris it is primarily the religious discourse and in particular
the dead and healing rituals of the Sholega, Irula and Jēnu Kurumba where the “Tribal
View” is most explicitly articulated.
The healing and the death rituals of the Jēnu Kurumba provide us with deep in-
sights into the various indigenous concepts of community, of the person, of justice, of
a good life, etc. jointly constructed in that discourse (cf. Demmer 2001, 2006, 2007).
In the centre of these performances stands an elaborate concept of the moral commu-
nity. This is unfolded in the poetics and rhetoric of the rituals, particularly in what the
Jēnu Kurumba call “the debates about the good and the bad”. On the one hand, im-
ages of what is understood to be a bad community are developed in the ritual dis-
course. Thus human beings are seen as fallible and forgetful, they are like “human-
worms”, “they easily miss the correct way”, they are depicted as “blind”, as not “see-
ing their way” “they fight, become hot”, they don’t know to whom they are obliged or
from whom they can expect to be supported, etc. Instead, people are depicted as “go-
ing this way and that way“, not knowing the way of proper behaviour and so on. Ac-
cordingly, good social relations are thereby threatened and fragile: they “become
bad”, they “rot like wet leaves”, or like “old food”, and they are imagined to be en-
dangered by “fire” or “burning”. All of these images are metaphors for harmful be-
haviour, for bad deeds or for the employment of black magic. The bad community as
a whole is also imagined, namely as an “endangered camp in the forest”, as a deserted
place, “dried up” or “hot”. In other parts of the discourse it is depicted as a unstable
location without a “stable ground” for people to stay. This metaphor underscores the
importance of social and moral knowledge as a solid ground for the good community.
Moreover, other images articulate the bad community also as a silent and quiet place,
where “people don’t talk with one another” and as a site without sociality “where
people don’t share with one another”. The community therefore needs to be protected
from the “fire” of the bad acts, it “needs a thorn-hedge” or, to say it in my own words,
a kind of protection that rests on the availability of moral knowledge, of what a good
community and what good conduct are. Indeed, the Jēnu Kurumba not only articulate
images of the bad but also of the good community. In sharp contrast with the images
outlined above the good community appears as a “cool” forest camp, as shady and
fresh, with a firm ground of knowledge and as a site where people can draw and rest
upon justice.
Shamans play a vital role here. They are imagined as tree-roots, as pillars for the
community to rest upon, or they are likened to trees offering shade to people who are
in need of rest after a long march through rough and dangerous terrain. Ancestors are
depicted as mothers holding the human beings “like small children” in their lap, pro-
tecting them and rocking them to sleep when they are afraid or disturbed. In addition,
the good community is also a location where people share food and – last but not least
– also their knowledge of what it means to live in a good way. According to that dis-
course it means that people talk with one another and, most important of all, that they
are engaged in debates and arguments with their ancestors and the deceased in order
to reach a consensus about the most substantial and important values and cultural
 272

ideas.
Listening to these discourses one can hear that the social community is based on
moral values like solidarity, cooperation and the “good and the bad”, that people need
to understand the differences between good and bad orientations and that they must
choose the correct way of living their life. Moreover, since the Jēnu Kurumba are a
hunter/gatherer and forest-trader community, egalitarian values and virtues like shar-
ing and caring as well as a rather individualistic concept of the social person are fore-
grounded. Accordingly, human beings are not seen as atomistic individuals vis-à-vis
society nor are they understood as beings submerged in a collective mind or con-
sciousness. Instead, people are conceptualized as “social individuals” (cf. Shotter
1993). This also implies that their “agency” is explicitly recognized in various and
complex ways. According to this concept humans are not acting mechanistically or
like automatons but need to use moral resources in a responsible way if they don’t
want to suffer. This in turn requires that they actively reach out to the moral resources
of their culture and commit themselves to the values and virtues they talked about and
agreed upon in ritual discourse.
Incorrect and wrong activities are seen as being based on a lack of moral self-
obligation and they are punished either through magic employed by the victims them-
selves or through interventions of the ancestors.7 Thus, wrong conduct really makes a
person sick, at least if seen from this indigenous point of view. This, however, means
that a person must draw on positive ideas of what constitutes a good/correct life. In
other words, negative liberty and an atomistic self (cf. Taylor 1989) are not the basis
of sociality here. Instead it rests upon positive liberty and a concept of the social per-
son as a responsible and accountable subject and actor. This moral person, finally, is
embedded in an expanded understanding of the community, including not only hu-
mans but also ancestor-deities and the deceased. All these beings are regarded as ac-
tive participants able to speak and to argue with one another in the ritual contexts
mentioned above. Mediated by the shaman those extra-humans and ordinary people
negotiate in a public arena the conceptual bases of a good community and of what
counts as a good way of life. In fact, a detailed exploration of Jēnu Kurumba culture
shows (Demmer 2001, 2006, 2007) that the rituals constitute elaborate discourses
conducted with words and deeds, where central issues of social life are constantly
negotiated and argued upon. In other words, the moral community and the well-being
of its members directly depend on continuous moral debate and argument.
Once we take this cultural background into account we are able to recognize the
extent to which the Adivasi communities in the region develop their own point of
view and position vis-à-vis conceptions and practices of the nationalist versions of
modernity outlined above. Almost all Adivasi concepts of what a good life is or
should be like stand in tense relationship with the culture of modernity as it is imag-
ined by the state and by the ruling party. In this Adivasi region then, as in other areas
7
They have many options to punish. They can withdraw or withhold support in times of ill-
ness and other existential difficulties, they can also refuse to combat the black magic that is
working against oneself, they can refuse to ask other ancestor-deities for help and so forth.
 273

of India,8 a latent conflict exists between the ideas and practices of the Adivasi com-
munities and, on the other hand, the requirements of modern state institutions.

At Sanesvara’s Shrine: Social Critique and the Modernity of the State

The discourses analyzed above primarily relate to moral imaginations developed

within the tribal communities themselves. In those contexts a creative and explicit
engagement with or a critique of the somehow external culture of modernity as it is
mediated by the state and political parties is not articulated in public but remains
rather implicit. Other performances, however, do provide an arena for explicit en-
gagements. In the northern Nilgiris a number of indigenous discourses and rituals
have two features that enable actors to relate explicitly to the external discourse of
statehood qualifying them as forms of local modernity.
Their basic pattern corresponds closely with the internal ritual discourse and con-
sists of the thematization of responsibility for sufferings, in the articulation of ideas
about what counts as a “good and a bad life”, about the person as a social individual,
about the need to debate those issues in the public arena and, finally, in the active in-
volvement of deities or ancestors in those discourses. This framework, however, only
provides the ground for a more explicit engagement with the values and politics of the
state and modernity. To accomplish that, the “traditional“ meanings and ritual activi-
ties are modified and enriched in such a way as to allow for critical as well as affirma-
tive or otherwise creative and positioned voices with respect to modernity and the
state. Moreover, increasingly we come across pan-cultural performances (cf. Heide-
mann 2006) where participation is not confined to Adivasi but where other social
groups like merchants or civil servants of the Tamil Nadu government and the na-
tional central government are engaged as well.
Sometimes rather “traditional” rituals like the healing séances of the Adivasi are
performed that way. Among the Irula or Sholega, for example, the ritual clientele may
occasionally include employees of state institutions, engineers of the hydroelectric
power project or people working for the Tamil Nadu telecommunication services.
They attend healing rituals side by side with Irula and Sholega people. Being forced
to live in this rather remote region far away from home they acknowledge the compe-
tence of indigenous shamans and despite their explicit modern world-views and habi-
tus they seek help through Adivasi healing séances.
Unfortunately we don’t have detailed studies of the content and scope of those dis-
courses among shamans (resp. the deities) and their modern clientele and we don’t
know whether the latter, too, are confronted with moral issues regarding their respon-
sibilities, their social conduct and justice in the same way as the Adivasi participants
are when they participate in healing and death rituals. So we can only wonder whether

8
Cf. Pfeffer (1998) for Central India or Hardiman (1987) for Western India.
 274

their role as servants of the state is made a theme and discussed. In other trans-
cultural performances, however, this is clearly the case and the shrine of Sanesvara
provides a vivid example of how that works.
Sanesvara is a deity who was brought out of the forest only recently (in 1996) by
an Adivasi shaman and priest. Its shrine was built midway between the Adivasi set-
tlements and the village and since then what was first only a small hut of clay and
bamboo has now become a quite impressive small temple attracting an ever-growing
number of clients. Basically its performative pattern corresponds with the Adivasi
rituals described above. At Sanesvara’s shrine the discourse links issues of illness,
suffering and well-being with the morality and correct behaviour of the clients. It also
implies the embodiment of the deity and extended debates between the shaman (resp.
the deity) and ordinary participants serving as arenas where the responsibility for sor-
rowful experiences is discussed. In addition, it serves as a forum where substantial
concepts of what counts as a good and a bad life, where ideas of the person as a social
individual and where the fundamental need to negotiate and argue about those themes
in discourses with the deity are articulated. In this context, however, the deity’s claim
of being able to tell the human beings “how to live in a good way” is mediated in a
totally renewed manner.
First, not only Adivasi people but also other social groups take part. Second, a
whole set of meanings is drawn from heterogeneous cultural environments (so-called
"cultural flows", Appadurai 1996) empowering (third) the priest to address a broad
public. Accordingly, the deity’s clientele no longer consists of Adivasi alone but in-
cludes village people, taxi drivers of the local region and also various types of gov-
ernment employees (local people but also those being transferred from other parts of
Tamil Nadu and even from Delhi). As the shaman/priest proudly points out, the deity
therefore not only speaks the local Adivasi languages but also Tamil, Kannada and
even Hindi (!). In addition he deliberately draws on the contemporary media-plurality
of India to lend new meanings to his performances and to the shrine. For this purpose
he spends most of his time in the tea-shops of the village almost every day. Sitting on
a bench he follows closely the current political events (local, national and interna-
tional) with the help of newspapers read out to him by friends and better-educated
relatives but he also takes part in the political debates that emerge in those tea-shop
contexts. In addition, he keenly follows the TV-news being displayed in the two
larger restaurants which have television sets arranged so that not only the resident
guests but also those passing by or shopping can see the program.
Yet he does not passively reproduce what is heard or seen but actively (and crea-
tively) appropriates media-strategies of newspapers and television in his own way and
translates at least some of the meanings of media that seem relevant to him into the
semantics of his own performances at the shrine. Thus, during his possession at the
shrine, and speaking in the voice of the deity Sanesvara, he interprets, for example,
current political events or natural disasters just as the newscasters do. Indeed, when
we talked about the role of media in the village, he invented for me the slogan "My
temple is my TV" and used that phrase to underline that his messages are not only as
 275

interesting and up-to-date as the TV news but even more relevant because the deity,
as he said, not only talks about the past but also about the future. “Sanesvara’s job“,
he explained to me, is not simply to report events but to explain how people must be-
have and act in order to avoid harmful events and suffering in the future. In other
words, mediating messages for him is not simply an issue of representation but an
existential intervention into the personal life of its clients and also into local politics.
This corresponds neatly with Adivasi and villagers’ local understandings of the power
of deities. In contrast with technical media but also with political parties or the gov-
ernment the deity attests to its superior power through its very ability to prevent or
reduce sufferings and bad experiences. This re-interpretation is only one instance of
how the meanings of trans-local and even global media are actively appropriated and
re-inserted, so to speak, into local contexts of meanings and social praxis. In the case
at hand this semiotic creativity is extending the meanings of an indigenous discourse
on morality – one that was restricted to members of the Adivasi community – and
overcoming its communal limits it outreaches into wider social and political realms
where moral issues of good or bad behaviour are discussed with respect to matters of
statehood, the nation and modernity as well. The following paragraph outlines in
more detail how that actually works.

The Performance at Sanesvara’s Shrine

Once a week, on Saturday, the priest holds a public puja at Sanesvara’s shrine con-
sisting of worship and of offerings to the deity. Worshippers usually approach the god
for healing illness and suffering or to ask for the deity’s support when they go to
marry, when they apply for a job, when they have trouble with relatives or colleagues
at the office and so forth. Most of the time, however, the performance also includes
an oral discourse with the god. Similar to the Adivasi rituals discussed above, the
priest acts as a medium for the deity and becomes possessed by the god Sanesvara.
Embodied in the medium and speaking through its mouth Sanesvara (resp. the me-
dium) addresses the clients one by one, enquires about their concerns, sufferings and
wishes, but sooner or later the medium also addresses the social behaviour of his in-
terlocutors in moral terms. He wants them to disclose what kind of bad deeds they
performed in their immediate social environment, why, for example, they didn’t care
for their relatives. Often, however, the deity extends the moral field beyond the nar-
row community and addresses issues relating to the institutions of the state or to the
behaviour of specific government employees as well. Moreover, the deity not only
talks but also intervenes, giving orders to local officers and clerks, or threatens forest
guards or police personnel. In those cases Sanesvara questions whether its clients per-
formed their duties as government employees to the disadvantage of the local forest-
and village people or whether they acted to their own benefit and for their “own
pocket”. As Sanesvara explicitly claims, it is acting to the benefit of the forest people.
Those enquiries often turn, as in the Adivasi rituals above, into emotional debates
where the speakers are engaged in mutual argument using narratives, memories and
 276

other rhetorical devices.

A vivid example is provided by an incident that was called by Sanesvara itself (in
a performance) the “locking of the forest”. The background was that the forest
authorities had forbidden the Adivasi to enter the forest and prohibited access to the
resources on which many of them live. They collect forest products (honey, soap-nut,
tree-moos, etc.) and firewood either for their own need or for sale. The forest depart-
ment saw no need to explain its act to the local Adivasi nor did it give any reason
when it stopped the entry of the Adivasi. When I asked myself the only reason given
was that “the forest needs rest” and “must come to peace” after people exploited it,
felling trees illegally, killing elephants for ivory and so forth. The forest, it was said,
must recover from the excessive misuse and the illegal tree-felling of which they ac-
cused the Adivasi. In practice this meant that in order to ensure the exclusion of the
Adivasi from the forest employees of the forest department were stationed at the edge
of the forests. They were ordered to prevent any unauthorized entrance by Jēnu Ku-
rumba or Sholega into the forest. If that should nevertheless happen the watchmen
were advised to catch the Adivasi "in flagrante" and arrest the trespassers. Of course,
with Sanesvara’s shrine located just at the forest-edge and with the priest following
closely and keenly political events of all sorts, this did not escape his notice. And in-
deed, when shortly after that order a puja was performed at the shrine Sanesvara, em-
bodied in the pujari, made the incident a theme to discuss. During the performance
the deity/medium asked some of the devotees assembled in the shrine to hasten to the
forest-spots where the watchmen were hiding to catch Adivasi trespassers and call
them in the name of Sanesvara to appear in front of him immediately.
Soon afterwards two watchmen did indeed appear and the deity interrogated them
about why they were “locking the forest” and took them to task. At the same time it
intimidated the forest personnel with words like: “Don’t you know how dangerous it
is here at night, where elephant and bears and tigers wait for you?”. In addition it
shamed them by suggesting their cowardice and, at the same time, underlined the
courage, the competence and the right of the Adivasi people to enter and also to use
the forest. The deity justified that claim and pointed out that the Adivasi belong to the
forest, that they are the “children of the forest” (kādu makkalu), and accordingly,
since Sanesvara is also the Lord of the forest, they are Sanesvara’s children as well.
Sanesvara, the deity claimed, will protect them and take care of them: “This is my
forest, the forest - children and the coolie - people [Adivasi working for daily wages]
are my children”, it announced in front of the forest staff. The consequence of the
deity’s intervention was that the following day both forest watchmen reported ill and
did not appear for work. Moreover, others also refused to do the job by referring to
the great danger of nocturnally-moving elephants (which actually was true enough).
Finally, the “locking of the forest” was cancelled and the deity’s intervention turned
out to be successful.
Another example of Sanesvara’s interventions is represented by a performance
where the well-being of a policeman, himself an Adivasi of the Sholega community,
was at issue. He came to the shrine with his family members (his pregnant wife plus
 277

mother) and asked the deity to protect the forthcoming delivery of his child. After
puja the deity embodied itself in the priest and entangled the clients in a moral debate.
In particular it reminded the policeman of his responsibilities vis-à-vis his own forest
people (the Sholega community), and also mentioned the "locking of the forest" and it
raised further questions regarding justice and the state politics, without, however, go-
ing into concrete details. In rather general terms it told the Sholega policeman to act
in favour of the well-being of the Adivasi and suggested he should resist orders of the
government when they were directed against the well-being of the deity’s children,
"the forest children“, as it said.
A similar debate on morality and modernity occurred, to cite a last instance, in a
séance where relationships between illness, the state and the modern medical welfare
system were made an explicit issue. Some Jēnu Kurumba had submitted a seriously-
ill relative to the local government hospital, where according to law, free treatment is
to be provided to Adivasi people. The Jēnu Kurumba knew this, of course, and ac-
cordingly demanded from the physician on duty a treatment free of cost. Neverthe-
less, they were asked to pay a certain amount. Moreover, the treatment did not im-
prove the woman’s condition (in my judgement because she was treated wrongly) and
instead of becoming better her suffering increased. After waiting for some days her
Jēnu Kurumba relatives went to the shrine of Sanesvara in order to ask the deity for
help, to heal her and also to clear up from where “the difficulties are coming from”.
When the clients had given their offerings the deity raised the issue of the “bad be-
haviour” of the hospital staff. On the other hand, however, the deity also blamed the
weakness of Jēnu Kurumba ancestor-deities whom the Jēnu Kurumba usually consult
for the purpose of healing (see Demmer 2007). Sanesvara questioned those deities’
power, underlined in contrast its own force, demanded that the Jēnu Kurumba clients
should henceforth worship the deity Sanesvara and recognize it as the ultimate power
in the region. Finally, and without the explicit consent of the clientele, it agreed to
help and also to take the hospital employees to task and make them account for their
“bad doingsr” – without, however, identifying any particular persons, names or posi-
tions.
In sum, all these cases show that the deity (resp. the priest as medium) pursues its
own interpretation and its own policy with regard to modernity and the state. At the
shrine explicit criticisms are articulated, being particularly directed against modern
governmental institutions like the forest department or the hospital staff. Thus the
inability of the hospital to overcome the suffering of people and the irresponsible and
arbitrary orders of the forest department, “locking out” the Adivasi from the forest
and preventing them getting an income by themselves, are articulated in a public
arena. In other cases it is the corruption of local policemen and government physi-
cians that is brought up for discussion. Moreover, these case studies also show how
these criticisms are articulated with reference to a “traditional” idea of sociality,
namely the concept of the moral community. Accordingly, issues of illness, suffering
and well-being are linked with moral issues, with correct behaviour and a good way
of leading a proper life. In addition, these quests are related to the power, morality
 278

and demands of the modern governmental state and in particular with respect to its
institutions. Ultimately this discourse argues that it is the deity and not the state that
governs the forest, the “children of the forest” and their well-being, as well as the
other non-tribal clients seeking its support. According to that interpretation the gov-
ernment employees are responsible to the deity as well and they are advised to act in
solidarity with the Adivasi since the latter belong to the forest and to the deity itself.
The political consequence of this idea is that the deity acts in practical micro-political
terms: it intervenes in the politics of the forest department by exercising its authority
over the employees and it takes the local people and government employees to task,
telling them not to forget the Adivasi and not to act against them. Those who don’t
follow the deity’s command are threatened with consequences (e.g. illness or failure
of their forthcoming enterprises).

Conclusion
The paper explored the multi-sited ethnography of a South Indian region and, to use
Sherry Ortner’s term, its political and cultural “authenticity“ (1995:176), in particular
the various modes of political action in a local cultural environment constituted by
multiple and complex agencies. Focusing on relationships between the Adivasi tribal
people and the modern post-colonial state in the Northern Nilgiri region of South In-
dia it described the extent to which modernity, the state and Adivasi communities are
engaged in complex - often tense but also creative - political relationships with each
other. This field does not represent an “arid dichotomy” (Hann 1995) between state
and local cultures or, as it were, between tradition and modernity. Instead, we observe
the negotiation and construction of a specific form of local modernity or, more accu-
rately, the making of a plurality of local modernities, each striving to gain hegemony
with respect to what counts as the best or the most preferable vision of a good life.
On the one hand, two kinds of modernity can be seen to compete with each other.
One version, that of the Indian nation-state, aims at hegemony by means of
governmental strategies and by the various micro-practices described above to
implement among the Adivasi a post-colonial ‚culture of modernity’. Its vision of
modern life largely conforms to the model of modernity as it was first developed in
the West, in the “Province of Europe” (Chakrabarty 2000) and is committed, as
Charles Taylor (1999) has called it, to a basically “a-cultural” imagination of
modernity. Yet this vision of modernity can’t claim complete and already-
implemented hegemony in the sense that it receives widespread consent and thus
dominates the mind of the population.
Instead it has to struggle with the regionally-specific variant of Tamil hyper-
modernity as it was articulated in the political performance of the then ruling party,
the ADMK. That concept of modernity is based on two sets of values. On the one
hand, it stresses values of the modern suburban domain: here the ideal social unit is
the primary consanguine family, living in the suburban metropolis, in the modest but
neat and fully-equipped home of its own, consuming modern consumer-goods and
with access to modern educational institutions. This set of values is supplemented or
 279

‚enriched’ with a second set of values that derive from and relate to the contemporary
global media-plus-high-tech world. Its attractiveness derives from the idea of master-
ing the most modern and sophisticated technologies (helicopter, ecologically-adapted
hydroelectric power plant) and media (above all, the latest variants of television).
Moreover, in contrast to the national vision of modernity it doesn’t regard the tradi-
tional village way of life as backward and mistaken. Instead this ‚hypermodern’ ver-
sion of modernity imagines traditional life in rather neutral terms: village life, so the
message goes, is the base of our Tamil culture, but today it has to be enriched and
modernized. Accordingly, this idea of modernity is incorporating rather than simply
excluding certain aspects of the Tamil villagers’ way of life. Religion and gender
roles, for example, are not depicted as wrong but only as somewhat insufficient: they
don’t provide access to modern goods and lifestyles. In modern life, this vision
claims, those aspects have to be enriched by an approximation to urban modernity
and by a certain redefinition of other key values, e.g. the image of the Tamil mother
that plays such an important role in Tamil culture. Both of the above visions consti-
tute particular imaginations and practices of a governmental modernity.
Local Adivasi communities actively respond to and engage with both visions
through a complex set of activities that range from creative appropriation to criticism
and even to cultural resistance. The political authenticity in the region thus includes
ways of affirmatively appropriating the measures taken by the modern nation-state to
develop Adivasi communities: job opportunities as a result of reservation policies,
free medical services, cooperative stores, family-cards and so forth.
Equally significant, however, are the complex ways Adivasi actors engage with
that modernity in critical and creative terms. These consist of the various forms of
everyday infrapolitics as described above but they also include the continuous at-
tempts to articulate, mainly in ritual performances, what we have called the “tribal
view” and to produce a culturally-specific subaltern consciousness. This vision imag-
ines sociality in terms of the moral community and its communitarian world-view
offers a conceptual basis for the infra-political strategies – in other words, it consti-
tutes a specific form of cultural resistance.
Last but not least, the “tribal view” also provides ground for the establishment of a
new forum - the shrine of the deity Sanesvara - where the regional state and its mod-
ernity is engaged with in creative and critical ways. The religious performances at the
shrine on the one hand attest to the creative and transformative appropriation of new
and partially-global cultural flows and elements (e.g. the format of television news)
while at the same time they expand the discourse community from a primarily tribal
clientele to include a wider range of people from the village, the region and some-
times even from metropolitan centers like Chennai and Delhi. On the other hand,
these performances re-ground, justify and thus defend local identity and the Adivasi
commitment to their own values and concepts against the claims of the modernities of
the states. In other words: a critique of governmental and hypermodern state moderni-
ties is articulated with reference to an idea of sociality in indigenous terms, namely in
those of the moral community as a tradition of engaged argumentation. At the same
 280

time this discourse tries to expand the hegemonic reach of this “tribal view” into the
new and wider clientele of the deity.
As at other socio-cultural sites where global flows, the states’ politics and local
culture meet, mingle or clash (see Friedman 1994) the actors at the shrine of
Sanesvara combine a set of modern, hypermodern and allegedly “traditional” ele-
ments and establish a new discursive forum where urgent contemporary social and
cultural issues are brought up and debated in a creative but also critical and political
way. This newly-invented tradition contributes in a vital way to the emergence of a
specific and local modernity or, as Friedman (ibid.:109) expressed it: “There is a
common core in these different domains of practice. There is an appropriation of
modernity by means of a set of transformed traditional practices.” The religious
shrine of Sanesvara actually appears as a similar space where people are actively en-
gaged in the construction of a culturally-specific form of local modernity.

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