A poetic depiction of ancient India The Warli people, who live in ancient India, work hard throughout the year. They plant seeds in the spring so that the summer monsoons will help the plants grow, and they harvest their crops in the fall and store the food for the long winter ahead. But despite the hardships they face, they also find time to celebrate life's joyous moments. This Trade Winds book highlights the day-to-day life in an agricultural society and offers historical information about one of the world's earliest civilizations.

There are many holy cities in India, but Mumbai is not usually considered one of them. More popular images of the city capture the world’s collective imagination—as a Bollywood fantasia or a slumland dystopia. Yet for many, if not most, people who live in the city, the neighborhood streets are indeed shared with local gods and guardian spirits. In The Neighborhood of Gods, William Elison examines the link between territory and divinity in India’s most self-consciously modern city. In this densely settled environment, space is scarce, and anxiety about housing is pervasive. Consecrating space—first with impromptu displays and then, eventually, with full-blown temples and official recognition—is one way of staking a claim. But how can a marginalized community make its gods visible, and therefore powerful, in the eyes of others? The Neighborhood of Gods explores this question, bringing an ethnographic lens to a range of visual and spatial practices: from the shrine construction that encroaches on downtown streets, to the “tribal art” practices of an indigenous group facing displacement, to the work of image production at two Bollywood film studios. A pioneering ethnography, this book offers a creative intervention in debates on postcolonial citizenship, urban geography, and visuality in the religions of India.

Next to Africa, India has the largest tribal population (67.7 million) in the world. Indian tribes, spread over the length and breadth of the country, are concentrated in hilly and forest regions. The tribes of India differ considerably from one another in race, language culture and beliefs, and present a spectacle of striking diversity. It is this diversity marked by varied social characteristics and diverse cultural traditions and linguistic traits that lends lustre to the cultural mosaic of India. Encyclopaedia Profile of Indian Tribes, first of its kind, seeks to present a concise by comprehensive account of the socio-cultural profile of all the tribal communities who have been declared as Scheduled Tribes by the Government of India. The tribes are arranged alphabetically in order to facilitate easy reference. Each profile deals with the geographical distribution of the tribal population, the social structure, the means of subsistence and economic organisation, religious beliefs and practice, the political institutions, and modern social changes sweeping the community. At the end of each profile, there is a short bibliography for the more inquisitive reader. Each entry in this four volume set has been contributed by a scholar who has deep personal knowledge and contact with the community. This classic multi-volume set will be extremely useful to scholars studying tribals in India and abroad and to all those interested in a standard reference work on the Indian tribes.

The need to produce food without the destructive chemical horrors of much modern farming, for an intelligent use of dwindling natural resources and for humane forms of production is universal, the practice is limited. This book is an account of one, large, instance of success in practice. Twenty-five years ago, Winin Pereira, a nuclear physicist abandoned academia to start a co-operative farm at Alonde in a tribal area north of Bombay. The group experienced, and finally discarded, all the false hopes and promises of Western originated forms of development: ploughs that ploughed too deep, irrigation systems that lowered water tables, fertilizers and pesticides which managed the earth and became so expensive that poorer farmers were dispossessed. Instead they learnt from the adivasai, or tribal people, who have nurtured or been nurtured by foresets for millennia, ways of applying popular knowledge to contemporary problems. This book is a combination of Pereira's record of achievement of sustainable livelihoods and an account of the farm and its effect on the India around it by a leading British journalist. Originally published in 1991

On the paintings and ethnomusic of the Warlis, Indian tribe from Maharashtra; includes texts of songs.