Alternative Visions

Abstract

This chapter explores an area that is usually missing in narratives related to the Indian national movement, even though it involves alternative possibilities and visions and perhaps even ways of writing alternative histories. It does this by focusing on the State People’s Movement in the princely state of Nilgiri in colonial Orissa, which was led by the communists. However, it does not look at this movement as being organized ‘from above’, but as one that was guided and shaped by the tribals and peasants themselves. The chapter places these struggles against broader regional and national developments, thus challenging the idea that adivasis and untouchables/dalits were ‘unreflexive’/‘spontaneous’ people who merely fought against their immediate oppressors and had no conception of the wider social and political context.