A History of Adivasi Women in Post-Independence Eastern India is a path-breaking book that explores the current status of adivasi women in the four states of eastern India with high percentages of adivasis-Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal.
Debasree De engages with the recent paradigm of 'development and displacement and adivasi women's marginalization and cultural silencing. The findings in the book are based on extensive field surveys in teagardens, stone crushing sites, brick kilns and construction industries. Further, the book provides new material on the extremist villages of Jangal Mahal, Koraput, Malkangiri and Niyamgiri Hills.
Linking tribe and gender, the author elaborates how forest economy is women's economy; forcible eviction by multinationals for new industries has led to severe displacement and poverty, apart from intensification of witch hunting and trafficking of girls.
Debasree De is Assistant Professor, Department of History, Maharaja Srischandra College, University of Calcutta. She has a PhD in history from Jadavpur University. She has many contributions in journals and in edited books. Her special interests are Tribal Studies, Gender Studies, Environmental History, Ancient Indian History and Indology.
Bhanmati had on a short plum coloured sari that she wore above her knees, a green and red necklace of hinglaj, and she had a spider lily tucked into her hair. She looked more healthy and comely than when we had last met-her slender body brimmed over with a sweet youthfulness, though the expression in her eyes spoke of the same innocent girl I knew.
THIS MESMERISING DESCRIPTION of Bibhutibhushan's Bhanmati creates a perfect picture of a tribal woman. But this portrayal of Bhanmati gives us a partial notion about a tribal woman. This is no doubt one among the many shades of her life. The rest is unspoken and extremely under-researched.
Seventy years after independence and about the same span of planned development, women's position in India is still grim. Their position has worsened considerably in almost every sphere of life with the exception of some gains for middle-class women in terms of education and employment. The available literature on women in India has brought to light many negative social practices like rape, wife-battering, domestic violence, dowry deaths, prostitution, and working long hours within and outside the home without recognition. All this indicates that women are still perishing at the periphery of the mainstream (read male-stream) society.
This study focuses on the nature and dimensions of changes in the life and status of tribal women, rural and urban, in eastern India. It deals with the changing livelihood pattern of the adivasi women in four states: West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha of eastern India. Gender issues are manifested differently in different locations and hence one should not ignore the sociology of space while discussing such issues. The impact of modern forces and institutions on tribal women are more conspicuous in the urban spaces relative to the rural areas. These changes have exacerbated some new gender and class issues unprecedented in the purportedly egalitarian society of the tribals. Within this con-text, the struggles of Indian tribal women against class and gender inequality acquire particular significance. The notion of 'indigenous' is especially germane here, for tribals are considered India's earliest inhabitants. Moreover, tribal women's resistance has generally occurred quite autonomously from urban feminist movements.
Previously, gender studies was regarded as an addendum and women's movements as a concomitant movement. It is the indigenous women who are leading grassroot democracy. Women have always been doubly colonized. Their stories have always remained at the periphery. Realization of this is evident in the establishment attached to various universities in India. An objective and scientific interpretation of culture from the women's point of view is, however, still lacking. Women scholars have not yet been able to carve out a niche for themselves where their position is secure. There is still a voice in the wilderness; a voice seldom heard even by women themselves. And it is not surprising that not a single woman scholar has ever tried to deal with the status of tribal women. What Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain did on Muslim women, M. Borthswick did on Bengali upper caste bhadramahila and Devaki Jain on working class women; we do not find that extensive research on tribal women by any woman historian.
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