Through an ethnohistorical study of the Nagas—a congeries of tribes inhabiting the Indo-Myanmar frontier—this book explores an unusually interesting region of India that is all too often seen as peripheral. G. Kanato Chophy provides a distinct vantage point for understanding the Nagas in relation to colonialism, missionary encounters, identity politics, and cultural change, all seamlessly woven around American Baptist mission history in this region. The book also analyses India's cacophonous postindependence democracy in order to delineate multifaith issues, multiculturalism, and ethnicity-based political movements. Within the West, episodic memories of the "Great Awakening," a significant landmark in the history of Protestantism, have faded into archival records. But among the Nagas of the Indo-Myanmar highlands, Baptist Christianity persists as the dominant religion, influencing the daily lives of nearly three million people. Focusing variously on evangelical faith, missionary zeal, ethnic identities, political struggle, and complex culture wars, Christianity and Politics in Tribal India is an original and major study of how Protestant missions changed the history and destiny of a tribal community in one of the unlikeliest regions of South Asia.

Indian Folk and Tribal Paintings introduces you to one of India s most glorious living traditions its tribal and folk painting. Vibrant and full of colour, it is said of tribal and folk painting that it has no beginning and no end. The rich red earth of river deltas, the fine white paste of crushed rice, the juice of fruits and berries, the wine from the mahua tree, the milk and even the dung, continue to provide the artist in the forest and village with his raw materials, while the floors and walls of his dwelling places, the bark of trees, leaves and, latterly, paper, are his surfaces. Whatever the surface or the medium, these paintings are intrinsically linked with the regional historico-cultural settings from which they arise.

In We Were Adivasis, anthropologist Megan Moodie examines the Indian state’s relationship to “Scheduled Tribes,” or adivasis—historically oppressed groups that are now entitled to affirmative action quotas in educational and political institutions. Through a deep ethnography of the Dhanka in Jaipur, Moodie brings readers inside the creative imaginative work of these long-marginalized tribal communities. She shows how they must simultaneously affirm and refute their tribal status on a range of levels, from domestic interactions to historical representation, by relegating their status to the past: we were adivasis. Moodie takes readers to a diversity of settings, including households, tribal council meetings, and wedding festivals, to reveal the aspirations that are expressed in each. Crucially, she demonstrates how such aspiration and identity-building are strongly gendered, requiring different dispositions required of men and women in the pursuit of collective social uplift. The Dhanka strategy for occupying the role of adivasi in urban India comes at a cost: young women must relinquish dreams of education and employment in favor of community-sanctioned marriage and domestic life. Ultimately, We Were Adivasis explores how such groups negotiate their pasts to articulate different visions of a yet uncertain future in the increasingly liberalized world.

Contributed articles.

The book makes a humble attempt to provide some facets of agrarian situation and their transformation in relation to major tribes at national level with settled cultivation and in relation to primitive tribal groups practising age-old shifting cultivation until recently.

The potential of civil society in interfacing with the government for ensuring good governance has gained currency in academic and policy debates in the recent times. This becomes particularly relevant in an old democracy like India where the State has not been able to meet the need for basic things. However, the State provides space and freedom for people to engage in collective action, to critically evaluate the State’s policies and demand a revision in policy for effective implementation of the laws that are elaborately codified in the Constitution and also to improve the functioning of its institutions. This book studies the level of participation of tribal communities in the new Panchayat Raj dispensation introduced in Andhra Pradesh since the PESA Act. It specifically analyses how much the community has achieved or benefited after the introduction of Panchayat Raj. The objective is to determine how the power structures of tribal communities have been influenced by the socio-political changes and institutional innovations, like the extension of representative democracy at the grassroots level; what kind of changes have taken place in the study area with the institutionalization of Panchayats; and the politicization of the tribal people by the different parties. This book also throws light on the role of civil society actors in influencing governance positively as well as the limitations that have inhibited the impact of their influence. The empirical research highlights that the institution of Gram Sabha has been instrumental in bringing transparency and accountability in the working of local bodies. The author has rightly emphasized the need for an attitudinal change both in the political and administrative machinery at State, district and village level. The inter-relationship of the three Ds, i.e. Democracy, Decentralisation and Development, has been brought out beautifully with the support of field study. While the 73rd amendment and PESA Act of the Constitution has mandated the democratization of local self-governments, the process of decentralisation is yet to take concrete shape through real devolution from Lok Sabha to Gram Sabha.