TABLE OF CONTENTS GUEST EDITORIAL GENERAL EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS COMMENT ON WILL INDIA HAVE TO LIVE WITH CASTE FOR ALL TIME TO COME? 11 HARALD TAMBS-LYCHE ARTICLES DOMINATION BY HEGEMONY, OR FORCE COUNTERED BY RESISTANCE? THE INDIAN CASTE ORDER BETWEEN SCOTT AND GRAMSCI 14 HARALD TAMBS-LYCHE FROM REBELLION TO LITIGATION: CHOTANAGPUR TENANCY ACT (1908) AND THE HOS OF KOLHAN GOVERNMENT ESTATE 31 SANJUKTA DAS GUPTA ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHIVES AND ‘CHIASMIC’ TIME IN MODERN INDIA 46 DANIEL RYCROFT THE POLITICS OF ETHNICITY AMONGST THE LIMBU IN SIKKIM: LITERARY DEVELOPMENT, RELIGIOUS REFORMS AND THE MAKING OF COMMUNITY 69 MÉLANIE VANDENHELSKEN GOLDEN HAIR: A TRIBAL MYTH OF KINSHIP DETAILING A HINDU NARRATIVE IN THE NEPAL HIMALAYAS 84 MARIE LECOMTE-TILOUINE THE GLORIOUS DEATH OF KOTI AND CHENNAYA, AND THE RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL INSPIRATION OF THE BILLAYA 98 MARINE CARRIN SYMBOLIC ADIVASI MEMORIES AND THE ETHNOLOGICAL MUSEUM 115 LIDIA GUZY DEATH RITES AND DANCE PERFORMANCE AMONG THE SAORAS OF ODISHA: A FUNERAL MARCH AT THE FESTIVAL OF INDIGENOUS CULTURES? 126 STEFANO BEGGIORA INTERVIEW WITH PAUL HOCKINGS 139 BY MARINE CARRIN AND HARALD TAMBS-LYCHE MESSAGE BOARD 143 IRISH JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY INFORMATION Irish Journal of Anthropology Vol. 19(2) 2016 Autumn/Winter EDITORIAL NOTE LIDIA GUZY, MARINE CARRIN, HARALD TAMBS-LYCHE This special edition of The Irish Journal of Anthropology follows the first issue on Emerging Adivasi and Indigenous Studies in Ireland (IJA Vol 18 (2) 2015) introducing Adivasi and Indigenous Studies in Ireland. The articles of the second Issue largely derive from a workshop in Toulouse in 2013, and thus reflect the close collaboration that has developed between UCC and the LABEX-SMS of Toulouse. The issue addresses, in particular, relationships of dominance and subalternity affecting Adivasi and low caste communities in India and Nepal. In the latter country, the indigenous groups, janajatis, actually form the majority of the population. With over 100 million Adivasis and some 250 million ‘ex-untouchables,’ these groups represent a substantial minority in India. Adivasi, janajatis and low caste groups have developed powerful forms of political imagery that challenge the dominant ideologies of both countries as well as of capitalist modernity. This challenge is not new: numerous tribal rebellions broke out in British India during the nineteenth century. They form part of the ideological heritage of these groups today. Some revolts also emerged in Nepal, where the unification of the country from the end of the eighteenth century brought a heavy pressure towards Hinduization. The authors of this issue look at domination through the lens of marginalised indigenous communities and low caste groups. The articles propose that hegemony must be relativized by the alternative ideologies that emerge through the subaltern struggles. In the context of historical marginalisation, new forms of identity assertions emerge such as literature, religious reforms, ritual reinvention as well as invention of museums. Hegemony and subalternity The historians of the subaltern school (Guha 1982-89) have often referred to hegemony when dealing with the caste order. British rule, on the other, was characterised by Ranajit Guha as ‘Dominance without hegemony.’ In this issue, Harald Tambs-Lyche asks whether dominance in the caste order is a case of hegemony in Gramsci’s sense (Gramsci 1971). In his analyses of hegemony Harald Tambs-Lyche reconsiders Brahmanical textual influence and concludes that the hegemony of the Hindu texts did not conform with local situations of dominance. Criticising Dipesh Chakrabarty for assuming the communitarian organisation of Calcutta’s working class to be a ‘pre-capitalist’ survival, Tambs-Lyche suggests that communitarian values should be seen as dialectically opposed to the dominant capitalist paradigm, as ‘anti- capitalist.’ The argument is that hegemony, in Gramsci’s sense of an overarching ideology that sets the limits for any alternative expression, can never be absolute in the caste order. This is 4 Irish Journal of Anthropology Vol. 19(2) 2016 Autumn/Winter particularly true since subalterns are organised in communities, and: as long as subaltern communities persist, hegemony is a relative matter. Exploitation, land rights, and identity assertion Since the colonial period the question of land-rights has been crucial for Indian Adivasis. Attempts to regain lost lands have provoked successive rebellions from 1832 to 1905. Stressing that these forms of resistance and rebellion, as alternative forms of identity assertion, must be ‘understood and analysed on the basis of the specific histories of individual communities,’ Sanjukta Das Gupta deals with the agrarian claims and insurrections of the Ho of Chotanagpur, as well as with the legal frameworks imposed by the British. She argues that the Chotanagpur Tenancy act intended to protect Adivasi land tenures produced different results for the various indigenous groups of the area. Unlike the Munda and Santal, who continued to lose land, the Ho, with their internal stratification and strong leadership, succeeded in negotiating a settlement through redefining their past, reshaping their identity, and developing a subaltern agency which allowed them to retain most of their land as well as their social organisation and polity. Visualizing memories In his article, Daniel Rycroft addresses the problem of cultural heritage and its construction. Dealing with the cultural interface between Adivasis and post-colonial governance, he redefines heritage as ‘looking both ways’ – from the community outwards as well as the outsider’s gaze. His exploration of this interface between the archive and the portraiture, focuses on representations of Birsa Munda, the leader of the uligan or Munda rebellion of the 1890s. Birsa is perceived both as a prophet by the Munda and as a ‘freedom-fighter’ in the larger society of Jharkhand. Exploring the visualisation of Birsa Munda, he defines the successive representations of Birsa as a chiasmic archive of different encounters and memories. He further shows that this archive, which engages with past rebellion, succeeds in re-invigorating the ethnographic present. This archive has an empowering effect by articulating lost memory to the ethnographic present. Emergence of a new ethnic identity When the kingdom of Sikkim was integrated into the Indian Union in 1975, the old order was disbanded and Sikkim became a state of the Indian Union. These political changes created the conditions for Limbu identity assertion. Mélanie Vandenhelsken explores the emergence of a separate Limbu identity, distancing itself from ‘Nepaliness’ since the Limbu settlement straddled the border between Nepal and Sikkim. She discusses the part taken by the 5 Irish Journal of Anthropology Vol. 19(2) 2016 Autumn/Winter Sikkimese Limbu in the trans-border Kiranti movement, and shows how Limbu activism developed through literature and script. Then, from the late 1980s, as a response to state policy, the emphasis of Limbu activism moved to rituals and religion. Activists succeeded in reforming ‘Limbu religion’ by referring to the teachings of the ascetic Phalgunanda Lingden (1885–1949), and to redefine their religious practice as ‘Yumaism.’ Later, the writer J. R. Subbha furnished Yumaism with a philosophical base, reminiscent of Christianity and Neo- Hinduism. When the Indian government declared all Sikkim ethnic groups to be Scheduled Tribes in 1994, Limbu religious activity shifted from house and village to community temples which became visible markers of the ethnic community. Oral literature as a space of resistance Marie Lecomte-Tilouine writes on the myth of golden hair, as told by the Magar of Nepal. It tells of the marriage of a beautiful Magar girl, and is found in different versions among various groups. In the Magar narrative the girl refuses an alliance which would separate her from her brother, and she leaves this world, ascending to the sky. Lecomte-Tilouine argues that the story stresses the importance of sisterhood and brotherhood by ensuring the endogamy of the group. The Magars still practised matrilateral cross-cousin marriage in the 1980s, which protected the group from losing their female members through marriage to high-caste men. In the Hinduised version of the myth, however, the girl with the golden hair accepts marriage with a stranger, and mistreats and sends away her brother. Tribal identity is comforted by modifying Hindu narratives to take on a mythological dimension. Through these myths the Magar have found a new way to define the symbolic cohesion of Magar society. Among the Magar oral narrative provides a space of freedom and resistance against the hegemony of the dominant group, more precisely against high caste men who had sexual commerce with Magar women or took them as partners in a secondary marriage. The politics of identity deployed by a subaltern caste In South India (Karnataka) the Billava (once Untouchable toddy-tappers), were formerly excluded from the temples and patronised by the high castes. Many Billavas were converted to Protestantism from around 1830: they acquired education and improved their economic status. But in the 1950s, the cult of the bhutas which had declined found a new impulsion, inspiring peasant resistance. Today, the issue, for the Billava and other subaltern communities, is to democratise the bhuta cult, which was linked to the old Tulu chiefdoms. 6 Irish Journal of Anthropology Vol.