The Roots of the Periphery is a subaltern history of the Gonds of the Gadchiroli (once Gondwanaland), a region shared by three states - Telangana, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. It is a history of the formation of the periphery, from the point of view of the periphery.
The periphery is that zone or region which exists at or beyond the boundary of the metropolitan centre. In mainstream development theory, as is implied in the work of economist W. Arthur Lewis, the periphery is that which lags, is backward, uncivilised, passive, not yet modern. The periphery calls for tough love – modernise or else be abandoned to whatever forces may prey on you. Counter to this dominant perspective is the argument that the periphery in its impoverishment is created and perpetuated by the metropolis, and that the latter feeds on the former, sucking the life blood, sustenance and spirit of the latter, as sociologist Andre Gunder-Frank proposes. Bhukya’s perspective is allied to the second perspective.
Critical appraisal
Bhukya critiques several mainstream accounts in administrative histories - colonial archival records, sociology and anthropology -not only of the Gonds of the region but of adivasis in general. These accounts range from those which see the adivasis as violent and brutally uncivilised (thus needing to be tamed with state violence), to those which see the adivasis as primitive hapless beings, needing help to modernise (through development). Bhukya’s argument is that none of these perspectives do justice to the Gond demand for self-respect, self-determination and political sovereignty. Working his way through pre-colonial historical records, Bhukya argues that contemporary Gond counter-memory of ancestral heroism remembers the demand, negotiation, agency and struggle of the Gond way of life – something which written records don’t register. He then reads the early and late colonial archives to show how the Gonds were territorially enclosed. First, their lands were enclosed by the regulations that followed the British notion of territorial sovereignty. Then they were pacified, leached of leadership, converted to petty peasants and the children of their elite ‘educated’ into a docile modernity. Thus, organic Gond culture and community were systematically destroyed. Through all this, Bhukya shows the need to be attentive to the voice of Gonds either reflected in the archival material or in the living memory/continuing experience of these marginalising processes. Such a reading can provide a glimpse of how mainstream Gond history and anthropology are predigested in an academic narrative that erases Gond resistance to subjugation. Bhukya thus shows that the adivasi is not simply an ancestral “first resident” of India to be modernised, he is the continuing force of resistance against political oppression, economic exploitation and cultural subjugation that have been exerted on all who don’t conform to the demands of hegemonic power.
Distorted histories
In a late chapter, Bhukya argues convincingly that the mid-20th century struggle led by Kumaram Bhimu against the Nizam’s dominion has been understood as a minor land squabble, rather than as a struggle for political sovereignty — this by no less an adivasi sympathiser than the anthropologist, von Furer-Haimendorf. In the following chapter Bhukya looks at the more recent massacre of Gonds in Indravelli, and again shows how the confrontation occurred because of their refusal to cow down to administrative and local caste power. Bhukya’s history exposes the structural distortion in the known histories and anthropologies of the Gonds, and makes us doubt the truth status of equally ‘believable’ narratives about other adivasis, by governmental and “adivasi-sympathetic” sources. It forces us to think about the significance of adivasi refusal and resistance, the state’s relentless attempt at subjugation by force, and the governmental (and non-governmental) desire to pacify them through moderate, yet hegemonic terms of welfare, service and charity. Bhukya ends by reflecting on the importance of his historical perspective from on the side of the adivasis as a political tool to give voice to the story told from that side.
I must make two observations, critical and appreciative, about this important book: One, while Bhukya says that he draws from many oral sources of the Gonds, there is a regrettable sparseness of the Gond voice in his narrative. Incorporation of peripheral voices in the historical narrative will make it richer, though as it stands the historiography is flawless in conveying the concepts, thoughts, observations and critical conclusions of the adivasi historian. Two, Bhukya draws on the unity of the adivasi predicament as it emerges from the governmental category of the Scheduled Tribe, in his search of a legitimate representativeness to describe Gond (adivasi) life.
Complex politics
There is surely the problem that the ‘Scheduled Tribe’ is an omnibus category of 645 adivasi groups, and these groups are diverse in culture, constitution and identity. Representativeness is fraught with many complex political problems. Yet, the way forward is surely to think collaboratively and representatively as Bhukya does, and see how common governmental, disciplinary and coercive fetters bind these diverse communities together in a common predicament today, most visible in Chhattisgarh.
Several such political analyses of the structural distortion in mainstream knowledge and government are needed. One hopes that Bhukya continues his lucid historiography from the margins, inspiring many other adivasis to counter the smooth narrative of metropolitan academia and administrative convenience.
