Decolonial Political Reclamation: Claiming Ownership of the Land and Its Constitution
In the 20th century, anti-colonial struggles created new foundational documents to start an optimistic journey for democracy in a decolonized world. The Indian constitution created in this process, has re-emerged as a symbol and the political normative framework of different people’s movements in India in the last decade. The people’s movements are using the Constitution as a framework to argue for rights and attempting decolonial reinterpretations of ‘modern’, ‘democratic’ values by excavating regional history for claiming cultural ownership and decolonial legitimacy for the Constitution.
In the Pathalgadi movement in Jharkhand, India villagers erected megaliths carved with the Preamble of the Constitution in 2017-18. The ‘Pathals’ (megaliths) also had several laws carved that protect the land rights and sovereignty of tribals in matters of governance and collective resources. These Pathals also present a creative way of finding epistemic tools in regional historiography for asserting identity and autonomy.
Birsa Munda, a leader of the anti-British movement who went on to become almost a mythical figure in Jharkhand, also mobilized people against ‘Dikus’, the non-tribal outsiders including traders, moneylenders, Christian missionaries and Hindu landlords who exploited the Adivasis of the region. The Pathalgadi movement, by claiming ‘our village, our government’ brought Birsa Munda’s political legacy to claim legitimacy from the modern State apparatus by invoking folk history.
Jaipal Singh Munda, an Adivasi leader from Jharkhand representing the tribals in the Constituent Assembly claimed that the modern democratic values that the Constitution proclaims as ‘new’; are already present in the life world of the tribal communities in India: ‘There is nothing that the Constitution has to teach the Adivasis, but Adivasis have a lot to teach to the others’.
This paper argues that Pathalgadi presents a way of decolonial reclaiming of the ‘modern’, ‘democratic’ Constitution for Indigenous people’s identity, autonomy and rights.