Keeping the state away: democracy, politics and imaginations of the state in India’s Jharkhand

Shah, Alpa ORCID: 0000-0003-1233-6516 (2007) Keeping the state away: democracy, politics and imaginations of the state in India’s Jharkhand. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13 (1). pp. 129-145. ISSN 1359-0987 (Submitted)

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Abstract

This article explores why in India's Jharkhand, Mundas, often depicted as poor tribals, participate in elections to keep the state away, seeing it as foreign, dangerous, and juxtaposing its self-interested and divisive politics with a sacral polity, the parha. Munda disengagement with the state results from a complex combination of their contrasting the state with the sacral polity, historical experience of exploitation by state officers, and social relations with rural elites who, seeking to maintain dominance, reproduce Munda imaginings. The article thus draws attention to multiple co-existing notions of politics and the importance of a local political economy in the social production of cultural imaginings of the state.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(IS...
Additional Information:	© 2007 Royal Anthropological Institute
Divisions:	Anthropology
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Date Deposited:	11 Mar 2013 12:56
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2024 14:06
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/49029

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