Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power

Adivasi societies, ‘tribal’ or indigenous communities of India, are most often portrayed as timeless, isolated, and defined primarily by resistance—to the state, to modernity, or to outsiders. But in his strikingly original reconstruction of India’s Singhbhum region, Umar Khalid demonstrates the centrality of Adivasi political and social history to our understanding of colonial governance and the modern Indian state. 

Fractured Communities tells the story of how British colonial administrators consolidated power not only through force, but by selectively codifying local customs and institutions, and producing new categories of political identity. Independent India inherited many of the administrative structures created under colonial rule, while indigenous political movements drew upon colonial notions of exceptionalism to articulate demands for autonomy and self-government.

This is a powerful account of how states govern through classification, how communities are reshaped through law and administration, and how identities that appear ancient are often products of modern political encounters. It sheds new light on the long afterlives of empire and the ways colonial systems continue to shape contemporary debates around indigenous rights, land, citizenship and belonging.