Human rights workshop: constructions of indigeneity in South Asia

Event details

This human rights workshop is co-hosted by the Centre for Applied Human Rights and the Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies.

Mahmudul Sumon is Professor of Anthropology and current head of department at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka. In this talk he will discuss key insights and questions from 2022 monograph, Ethnicity and Adivasi Identity in Bangladesh. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, his book explores the transitions in the adivasi identity as well as in the political representation of adivasi communities in Bangladesh. It traces the use of categories such as “primitive”, “tribe”, and “adivasi” in post-colonial Bangladesh, both in the political discourse and in everyday life. The volume studies the history of these essentialized categories used for indigenous communities within the hierarchies of power and identity. It also analyses the diverse articulations of indigeneity through ethnographic narratives, exploring the formations of newer traditions and identity. The author highlights the persistence of the terms “simple” and “primitive” in contemporary discourses while also sharing examples of complex mediations and appropriation of these categories by adivasi groups in Bangladesh.

This will be followed by reflections from practice by a CAHR visiting fellow working on indigenous women's rights in India. She will share examples from research into diverse roles adivasi women have played in political struggles and social and cultural life in India since colonial times.

Email Ruth Kelly to register.