Jharkhand

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While the religious code will undoubtedly create an imagined community by identifying common traits of spirituality among the Scheduled Tribes, challenges are bound to appear due to the presence of Adivasis from other religions as well as the plurality in Adivasi discourse. To overcome this challenge, community leaders will require to create a consensus based on grounded realities.

The many provisions granted under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 remain elusive when the absence of a direct employer–employee relationship mars their rights and chances of a meaningful work life. The article reviews the contract labour system as maintained in an iron ore mine in Jharkhand.

Sacred groves are widely recognised for their religious, cultural, and ecological value. They are an intrinsic part of traditional and indigenous practices of forest governance. However, the contemporary sacred forest system is not an autonomous world. Its sociopolitical landscape is not confined only to the village either. Based on extensive fieldwork in Jharkhand, this paper argues that sacred groves have evolved to be dynamic spaces of multilevel institutional interactions and contestations. Their conservation is contingent on the intersectional dynamics of indigenous, state, and institutional processes. Classical approaches of sacrality of the nature and forms of forest worship need to be combined with the concerns of the local environment, democracy, gender, caste, conservation, and culture.

A researcher and activist remembers the time spent with Father Stan Swamy at Bagaicha, a community training centre that was started by the Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist.