Migration and Rootedness in context of Adivasi resistance against Mining in Orissa

Abstract

The debate on rootedness of Adivasi to their lands has generated a long line of productive enquiry. It is critiqued as ecological romanticism of the scholars and activists or considered a form of incarceration of the Adivasi. It is argued that the idea of rootedness tends to straitjacket Adivasi lives to a space and place disregarding their historical and contemporary realities of migration and marginalisation. Posing these questions in the context of Adivasi resistance and dispossession, reveal that experience of migration in the past and it contemporary forms directly feed into a complex, dense and collective understanding of rootedness, development, rights and notion of state sovereignty. This, I show, in context of  Adivasi opposition to mining projects, lead to  multilayered and even conflicting narratives that anti-dispossession movements have to contend with in order to construct the  movement.