The Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India

Description

This book examines the representation of Birsa's political life, memory politics and the making of anticolonialism in contemporary Jharkhand. It offers contrasting features of political imaginations deployed in developing memorial landscapes. Framing of Birsa in the heroic narrative through a grand scale of memorialisation, often in the form of the built environment, curates a selective version. This isolates the scope of elaborating his political ideas outside the confines of atypical historical records and their relevance in the contemporary context. The book argues that everyday politics through affective sites such as memorials and statues produce political visions, emotions, and opportunities. It shows how such symbolic sites are often strategically placed and politically motivated to inscribe ideologies. This process outlines how the state and Adivasi use memory as a political tool to lay claims to the past of the Birsa Movement.

Rahul Ranjan is postdoctoral research fellow at the OsloMet University, Norway. Currently he is working on the collaborative project titled 'The Currents and Consequences of Legal Innovations on the Rights of Rivers' funded by the Norwegian Research Council. His interests broadly encompass the fields of political ecology, environmental studies, anti-colonial politics and South Asia studies. He has also edited the volume titled At the Crossroads of Rights which is forthcoming in Spring 2022 with Routledge, London.

'This monograph is Dr Ranjan's first foray into the realm of memory studies. For him, it is a realm that animates three phenomena: politics, landscapes and beliefs. Dr Rajan is a gifted anthropologist. His capacity to involve diverse voices has yielded a rich series of insights. These pertain to the political and cultural afterlives of Birsa Munda, an infamous Adivasi revolutionary from the pre-independence era. Dr Ranjan weaves together the variously social, ideological, aesthetic, archival and religious dimensions of this freedom-fighter's posthumous significance. He carefully documents cultures of memorialisation and counter-memory, and uses Subaltern Studies frameworks to address issues like identity-assertion, legal pluralism and inequality. How are narratives of Adivasi resistance, power and belonging configured and reconfigured in modern India? To find out, let us now listen to someone who knows how to listen.' Daniel J. Rycroft, University of East Anglia 'An important contribution to recognise the lasting relevance and significance of Birsa Munda for the Indian polity, political science and historiography, a contribution that listens to the subaltern voices rarely heard, and that pays due attention to the politics of memory in the continuing resistance and struggles of indigenous people.' Alpa Shah, London School of Economics 'So much has been written on Birsa Munda and his movement that one wonders if anything new could come from another study on it. Yet the volume dispels this thought. It is an exceptional work that not only provides a fascinating account of the memory of Birsa Munda and his struggle in post-colonial Jharkhand but also contrasts ways and forms the memory assumes in the practices of the state and the life world of the Adivasis. The latter live it in their everyday life and movements. This book, therefore, is a pioneering and fascinating engagement with the hitherto unexplored area of subaltern memory politics in Jharkhand.' Virginius Xaxa, Visiting Professor, Institute for Human Development 'Dr Ranjan is a gifted anthropologist. His capacity to involve diverse voices has yielded a rich series of insights. These pertain to the political and cultural afterlives of Birsa Munda, an infamous Adivasi revolutionary from the pre-independence era. Ranjan weaves together the variously social, ideological, aesthetic, archival and religious dimensions of this freedom-fighter's posthumous significance. He carefully documents cultures of memorialisation and counter-memory and uses Subaltern Studies frameworks to address issues like identity-assertion, legal pluralism and inequality. How are narratives of Adivasi resistance, power and belonging configured and reconfigured in modern India? To find out, let us now listen to someone who knows how to listen.' Daniel Rycroft, University of East Anglia