The volume, focused on the rights discourse and the legitimate rights claims of the tribals, is on the new dimensions of tribal movements today that are focusing on forest rights, environmental concerns, and issues of dispossession and development-induced displacement. The articles here discuss tribals’ struggle for livelihood rights, right for dignity and recognition of selfhood. Scholars deal with tribal resistance evident in the Santal insurrection and Ho protests under the British, the Adivasi resistance in the Niyamgiri hills and Naxalism/Maoism to take up issues like tribal self-determination and self-management of resources, industrial encroachments and land alienation. Exploring the status of constitutional safeguards and implementation of Acts like the Forest Rights Act, they delve into the tribal claims in the North-east related to representative democracy, marginalisation, creating dissent among minority tribes, abuse of forest rights, illegal logging and discourse on indigeneity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kamal K Misra
Kamal K. Misra is Professor and Head, Department of Anthropology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. He had his academic training at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; and the University of Kent at Canterbury, United Kingdom. He is also a recipient of commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship and the Fulbright Fellowship. Dr. Misra has taught at Utkal University, the University of Hyderabad and at Austin College, Texas, USA. He specializes in Environmental Anthropology, Anthropological Linguistics and Theory in anthropology. He has extensively carried out fieldwork in Northeast, Central and South Indian tribal and rural communities. His publications include Social Structure0 and Change among the Ho of Orissa (1987), Tribal Elite and Social Transformation (1994), Text Book of Anthropological Linguistics (2000), and Peoples and Environment in India (2001), co-edited with M.L.K. Murty. He has over 50 research papers published in national and international journals, and book chapters. Dr. Misra is on the Board of Editors of Indian Anthropologist, and Man and Life.
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