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Sanjukta Das Gupta, Adivasis aid the Raj: Socio-economic Transition of the Hos, 1820-1932, Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi, 2011; HB, 367 pages, Rs. 695.
With the colonial impact, the adivasi communities of India faced several challenges. These ranged from the right to have access to forest and forest products, local territory, growing influx of outsiders into their villages to the restructuring of the indigenous institutions of authority and their role in the political system around them. The unique features of each adivasi community, as well as their ideologies and the needs of the colonialism over different periods of time and in different regions of the subcontinent, determined the specific course of their trajectories.
In this context, Chotanagpur finds a special mention in the map of colonial India as an area of unceasing tribal uprisings, some of which shook the very foundations of British rule. On account of the concentration of the tribal population, the region is also referred to as the 'tribal heartland' of India. Chotanagpur represents an area which has been subjected to various forces of change and these forces have manifested themselves in terms of colonial intervention which had diverse ramifications. Currently located in the state of Jharkhand, Chotanagpur marks the North-Eastern projection of the Indian peninsula, being one of the major components of the Eastern plateau. There are several different Scheduled...