The panel reflects on the lived aspects of Adivasi religions as Adivasi communities encounter modernity while navigating issues of marginality while maintaining their traditional legacies. It speaks to Adivasis’ agency in adapting their religious practices while being conscious of their interlocutors as they aspire for recognition. The process of recognition also renders transformations, codifications, and systematization of Adivasi religions in response to challenges posed by development and neoliberalism. Despite these transformations, Adivasis maintain an affective relationship with their gods through rich oral and performative traditions, now finding new locations, meanings, and histories as they encounter new audiences and interlocutors. Presenters bring forth the dynamic nature of Adivasi religious traditions, their fluidity in socio-political change, and their critical importance for practitioners.
Adivasis are agitating for constitutional recognition of their religion through the addition of a Sarna Code to the census. Focusing on the Chotanagpur region and the Sarna religion, I discuss the ways in which traditional Adivasi religion is being reformulated and reconstructed in response to political pressures that necessitate solidarity among tribes. I argue that by framing their traditional religious beliefs and practices in ways that appeal to modern concerns and values, Sarna Adivasis make their faith central to their identity and demonstrate their ability to contribute to the wellbeing of society precisely by virtue of remaining a set-apart community.
The paper focuses on the sacred narratives of Bhil religions both as lived modern practices and as a method in Adivasi representation of their traditions. The internal dimension of lived religion and the external dimension of representation are products of Adivasi engagements with their interlocutors and their interactions with the larger South Asian religious world. Here, Adivasi religious practices find new locations for performance and local scholars construct innovative histories to claim indigeneity. Using textual and ethnographic material collected from the Bhil Adivasi communities of Gujarat and Rajasthan, the paper further argues how such new locations and creative histories are inflected by global discourses of indigeneity, Hindu devotionalism, and people’s desire for leisure and consumption.
Pithoras are arguably the most emblematic tokens of Adivasi tradition in eastern Chhotaudepur District, Gujarat, and western Alirajpur District, Madhya Pradesh. They are wall paintings, but they are not just wall paintings; they are also devs. This paper will resist a conception of tradition that sets it in opposition to modernity and steer instead toward a conception of tradition as a process involving “the creation of the future out of the past” (Henry Glassie, Elliott Oring; cf. also Greg Urban). It will examine the ways in which the composition, production, celebration, use, and reception of Pithoras has been changing in the twenty-first century, along with changing material and cultural circumstances, including changes that might plausibly be called modernization. Despite these changes, Pithoras remain recognizable as traditional, as can be seen by contrasting them with works by Adivasi artists that employ traditional motifs in ways that seem modern.
| William Elison | welison@religion.ucsb.edu | View |