During the writing of my PhD thesis, every time I grappled with self-doubt, I reminded myself that no one, apart from my supervisor and external examiners, was ever going to read it. That it was important that I simply submit it before the final deadline.
Eight years since its submission, six of which I have spent in prison, its publication as a book fills me with more dread than excitement, for I was anything but satisfied with what I wrote.
But readers should keep in mind that this thesis was written in extraordinary times. A decade ago, in February 2016, three of us — Anirban, Kanhaiya, and I — were arrested in the infamous JNU sedition case and branded “anti-national” overnight. Not in any court of law, but in emotionally charged TV news debates. A decade later, the trial in the case has still not begun.
But back in that winter, frothing news anchors, playing judge, jury, and executioner, would leave their viewers with one question: Should hardworking taxpayers’ money be spent on funding universities such as JNU where “anti-nationals” like us gathered?
In JNU, one learnt as much in the classrooms as at its dhabas, protest gatherings and nocturnal public meetings. We could spend nights at the barricades, as we did in 2015 during the #OccupyUGC movement, demanding student scholarships. But we also put in equally long hours at the library.
A few days after our arrest, the three of us had a coincidental meeting in the lock-up of the RK Puram police station, where we were confined after a day of “joint interrogation”. In that meeting, we promised each other that, irrespective of all the difficulties yet to come our way, we would submit our PhD theses on time.
Any academic failure on our part, we knew, would be used to bolster the narrative against JNU specifically, and public universities generally. We had to push back, not for ourselves alone, but for the student movement of which we were a part, and for JNU, which had shaped us.
But little did I realise that night just how challenging doing research was going to become in the coming days. In the initial years, I had worked a little in the archives and record rooms of Chaibasa, Ranchi, Patna, and Kolkata. But I had planned most of my fieldwork for later years.
After February 2016, however, thanks to all those TV debates, I couldn’t move around to conduct fieldwork. While correcting the proofs, I could see the places where the narrative became somewhat hollow — not because I didn’t have an argument, but because I didn’t have enough primary material to substantiate it.
However, there is a conceptual framework underpinning this work, which I hope readers will discern. I became interested in the histories of Adivasis towards the close of the first decade of this century, a period marked by powerful Adivasi movements resisting dispossession from their jal-jangal-zameen. It also brought debates around development, democracy, and decentralisation in tribal tracts to centre stage.
In several representations during that period — be it in writings, films, or even the imagery popularised by social movements — Adivasis were portrayed as idyllic indigenous communities living in harmony with nature and one another, whose interests were best represented through their village bodies. Their resistance was seen as a valiant defence of their commons against predatory capitalists.
The conflict in the Adivasi areas, whether in the colonial past or in the present, could not, however, be reduced to one simply between avaricious outsiders and idyllic insiders. The Adivasis were not always resisting the state. Sections of them were more than happy to collaborate with the state to enhance their standing.
My effort in this work has also been to explore the social basis of this “collaboration”. What were the ground-level contingencies forcing the colonial and post-colonial states to engage with local structures of authority? And how did this engagement further reshape the local communities?
I am aware of the many shortcomings of this work. I wanted to examine histories of labour, undertake ethnographic fieldwork, look more extensively at the movement for the creation of Jharkhand. But in the end, such ambitious plans had to be shelved. I did manage to submit my thesis, though not without an intervention from the Delhi High Court.
This thesis was written not just for a doctoral degree but as an act of resistance — against lies, propaganda, and the use of state power to silence our voices. Most of all, it was written to honour the promise of completing our PhD on time, made by three seditious souls to one another, in a dingy police lock-up.
Khalid is the author of Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power
Umar Khalid was arrested on September 13, 2020. (File image) 
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