Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Politics of Symbolism: The Making of Birsa Munda’s Statue in Post-colonial Jharkhand, India

Politics of Symbolism: The Making of Birsa Munda’s Statue in Post-colonial Jharkhand, India Birsa Munda, Adivasi leader (Indigenous people) led a rebellion at the end of the 19th century against the dikus (outsiders) popularly known as Birsa Ulgulan (tumult, rebellion). The movement targeted British officials, zamindars, and missionaries. One of the immediate effects of the movement emerged in the form of protectionary legislation (Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act) and later played an influential role in the making of Jharkhand. In the contemporary social and political landscape, the presence of Birsa Munda in the form of the built environment such as statue is indelible and offers an exciting opportunity to understand the new aesthetic turn. In particular, the author investigates two statues in Jharkhand. These statues that function as “sites of memory” play a significant role in political mobilisation and vote-bank politics. It also offers a possibility to understand the relationship between the state, elites and subalterns. The paper builds upon ethnographic materials collected during the fieldwork and devices a conceptual tool of “material-memory” to offer the specific role of Birsa’s memory as medium of doing memory politics. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Bandung: Journal of the Global South Brill

Politics of Symbolism: The Making of Birsa Munda’s Statue in Post-colonial Jharkhand, India

Bandung: Journal of the Global South , Volume 7 (1): 32 – Mar 13, 2020

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/politics-of-symbolism-the-making-of-birsa-munda-s-statue-in-post-3Iqb2XyRa3

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
2590-0013
eISSN
2198-3534
DOI
10.1163/21983534-00701007
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Birsa Munda, Adivasi leader (Indigenous people) led a rebellion at the end of the 19th century against the dikus (outsiders) popularly known as Birsa Ulgulan (tumult, rebellion). The movement targeted British officials, zamindars, and missionaries. One of the immediate effects of the movement emerged in the form of protectionary legislation (Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act) and later played an influential role in the making of Jharkhand. In the contemporary social and political landscape, the presence of Birsa Munda in the form of the built environment such as statue is indelible and offers an exciting opportunity to understand the new aesthetic turn. In particular, the author investigates two statues in Jharkhand. These statues that function as “sites of memory” play a significant role in political mobilisation and vote-bank politics. It also offers a possibility to understand the relationship between the state, elites and subalterns. The paper builds upon ethnographic materials collected during the fieldwork and devices a conceptual tool of “material-memory” to offer the specific role of Birsa’s memory as medium of doing memory politics.

Journal

Bandung: Journal of the Global SouthBrill

Published: Mar 13, 2020

There are no references for this article.