Claiming Land and (Re) Claiming Identity: Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha and Indigenous Modernity in Kerala

The year 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of the Muthanga Struggle led by Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha (AGMS) in Kerala. Crystallization of the landrights movement under AGMS puts forth a fundamental critique, not only of the known equations of the national modernization in the post-colonial context, but also challenges the wisdom of modernity in South Asia. This paper focuses on the organisational form and ideological contents of AGMS. It argues that the land-rights movement represented a process of collective identity assertion along with a systematised effort for democratic bargaining. At the same time, it was a physical enactment of their autonomy by the citizens under a liberal democratic set-up. By invoking memories of a collective past, and welding them with a concrete social action, AGMS laid out crucial knots- though ephemeral-of an indigenous modernity.