Colonialism, Adivasis and Migration: A Study of the Oraons of Ranchi District, 1830-1930

Abstract

From the mid-nineteenth century, colonial anthropologists romanticised adivasi society as an egalitarian or homogenous society. Moreover, they maintained that they managed to remain an egalitarian society due to their geographical and cultural isolation from the non-adivasis.1 However, much before the advent of the British, many adivasi communities of different geographical regions like Oraons, Mundas, Gonds, Bhils, Lambadas have already established direct contact with the non-adivasis. Henceforth, the claims of colonial anthropologists cannot be justified. In reality, egalitarian society was an ‘imperialistic myth’ produced by the colonial anthropologists in the aftermath of the Revolt of 1857 as a part of the state-making project.2 The colonial anthropologist applied this concept to adivasi communities to draw political, administrative, and geographical boundaries between the adivasis and non-adivasis.3 However, the foundation of such distinction was already laid in the late eighteenth century itself.4 From the mid-nineteenth century, an official distinction was followed by the categorisation of adivasis opposite to non-adivasis such as uncivilised- civilised, wild- tamed, ungoverned-