Adivasi Women of West Bengal: Philosophical Analysis of Social Existence and Roles

Abstract: The lived experiences of Adivasi women of West Bengal, who negotiate the interconnections of gender, ethnicity, and state power that determine their social status and duties, are profoundly philosophically significant. Using feminist existentialism, Hegelian recognition theory, and Tribal feminism, the research argues that Adivasi women are doubly marginalised: as a result of their position as women within specific patriarchal social formations, on the one hand, and as Tribal peoples within modern state and development apparatuses, on the other. Their domestic labour, their life in the forest, and their part in cultural continuation are necessary for social reproduction and yet, also called “invisible labour” — are devalued as structural and epistemological negation. At the same time, Adivasi women (also through rituals, festivals and oral traditions) become the main bearers of collective memory and environmental wisdom. The essay also looks at how governmental policy, commercial pressures, and education have created a dialectical relationship between culture and identity. It reveals universal aspects of justice, dignity, acknowledgement, and self-identity and is published through an intertwining philosophical action.