Invisibility, Social Exclusion, Survival

This chapter lays out the canvas of the book, highlighting the destructive impact of colonialism on the socially excluded sections of Orissan society. Colonial agrarian interventions, the emergence of private property, and commercialization of agriculture further impoverished the marginalized sections. Colonization also consolidated upper caste/class dominance in areas where they had been fluid earlier. Critiquing trends in historiography, this chapter argues that till very recently an obsessive focus on the coastal tract and on Jagannath and Puri had continued to shape our understanding of the region. This, combined with the nationalist and imperialist narratives, had a strong impact even on relatively sophisticated, historical works on the region. The chapter concludes that there appear to be distinct continuities between the colonial and post-colonial perspectives on the socially excluded continuing to this day.