Several decades of research have culminated in the publication of Sangeeta Dasgupta's bold, dense, and detailed book centred on the themes of colonial knowledge systems, the intersection of various social science methods, and a movement that began among the Oraons, specifically among the Tana Bhagats1 around the beginning of the First World War.A historian by training, Dasgupta's mastery over colonial archives, missionary narratives alongside ethnographic vignettes, and reading of contemporary pamphlets weaves together a rich story of the Tana Bhagats of Chotanagpur in the state of Jharkhand.Traversing back and forth between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book takes the reader on a journey of the colonial and post-colonial histories of the adivasis in eastern India to argue that the Tana Bhagat or 'devotees of Tana' led a movement which constituted strands of economic, political, religious, and nationalist orientation within it.A compelling case of methodological newness, the book is an important addition to new adivasi studies.Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, law students, and political scientists will find this book interesting.Through thematic discussions of various categories of identity politics among the Tana Bhagats, the book tries to understand 'how contemporary adivasi protest draws upon the memories of the past' (p.4).In doing so, it critically questions the post-colonial understanding of 'tribe' and its problematic implications.Refuting the understanding of tribe, which is understood as 'bounded', 'unchanging', 'isolated', 'undifferentiated', and depicting a 'strong evolutionist development' (pp.8, 26), Dasgupta privileges the concept of adivasi to 'identify the multiplicity of events, sites, representations through which the concept of the adivasi is constructed and negotiated' (p.27).In its contribution to new adivasi studies, the book examines the rich tapestry of hierarchy, differentiation, and the internal struggles of adivasi worlds, which call for critical social science research.Unlike the older scholarship, which was unsuccessful in breaking the colonial binary of 'adivasi' and 'non-adivasi', this book moves towards a historiographic movement that perceives 'adivasis as a modern subject negotiating the modern state power' (p.17).The book is divided into two parts.The first part deals with 'authentic voices and contending traditions', which begins with a discussion and debate on what
Abhijit Dasgupta (Tue,) studied this question.