ADIVASI ART AND ACTIVISM: Curation in a Nationalist Age | By Alice Tilche

Amongst the recent spate of publications on Adivasis, Alice Tilche’s Adivasi Art and Activism, is an important intervention. Little work has been done on Adivasi art, let alone its relationship with Hindu cultural nationalism. This book, reflective of Tilche’s expertise on the anthropology of art and based on over 10 years of fieldwork among the Bhils and Rathavas of Gujarat, is a must-read for researchers and scholars working on South Asia, and more specifically on Adivasi histories, Indigenous Studies, Art History, and Museum Studies.

Tilche has chosen Gujarat as her field of research, a site that carries the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and which, paradoxically, has also been the seat of the rise of Hindu nationalist organizations since the 1980s. Written against the background of economic liberalization and globalization of the 1990s, and the resurgence of Hindu nationalism in India, Tilche’s argument, very broadly, is as follows. Crushed by poverty and marked by social stigma, indigenous groups in Gujarat address their disadvantages in two ways: by reinterpreting their traditions as art, they contribute to museums and produce artefacts that circulate in the global market. At the same time, Adivasis increasingly distance themselves from and erase their traditions, thereby adopting new, largely Hindu, religious and indigenous identities. This tension between preservation and erasure is, Tilche argues, inbuilt in the very category of Adivasi. Ultimately, in Gujarat, she argues, the model of upward mobility based on imperatives of preservation has been overshadowed by an alternate path of upward mobility through aesthetic transformation that is offered by thriving religious sects in the region.

Tilche’s project is ambitious. She sees Adivasi art not as a given—static, awaiting discovery, and to be appreciated or denigrated—but explores it as a category in the making. She focuses, therefore, on the processes of selection, evaluation, and translation that are codified in rituals and everyday objects; in this enterprise, she points out, both Adivasis and non-Adivasis participate. She documents different kinds of curatorial projects in varied spaces: in museums and art institutions; in the realms of the home; on bodily dispositions; and in the landscape. In order to put forward a nuanced argument, she explores museums and museum-like structures, house-building projects, performances, and everyday tastes, habits, and looks. On a cautious note, she acknowledges her “privilege of neutrality” as a researcher and her fraught endeavour to get an “insider’s point of view” (25) from actors who think differently and in ways she could often not understand.

The book has seven chapters, along with an introduction and conclusion. While the first chapter deals with the limitations and failure of Indian museums in depicting Adivasi art, the second deals with social reform movements in Gujarat during the colonial and post-independence periods. Both chapters are descriptive rather than analytical and serve as background chapters for some of the very interesting chapters that follow. Particularly interesting are the third, fifth, and seventh chapters, in which Tilche appears an outsider expert, skilled in the knowledge of curatorial practices. By far, this book includes the most comprehensive account of Vaacha, a museum which was part of the educational project of the Adivasi Academy set up by Ganesh Devy under the patronage of Bhasha, a research and publication centre that also worked as an NGO. And of Pithora paintings where a ritual painting and a deity among the Rathavas (and other communities like the Nayak and Dhanak) gets transformed into an aspect of national culture and occasionally as a form of high art. Interestingly, I found that in October 1999, the Department for Posts, representing a statist perception, issued a stamp on the “legend of the Pithoro” and described it as “a tribal wall painting of the Rathwa tribe”; the stamp was issued as part of the wider “Tradition of Indian folk painting”!

Tilche uses the categories of Adivasi, Indigenous People, Scheduled Tribes, and tribals interchangeably although she is aware of the distinct connotations of these terms. For example, when she writes, “Adivasis make up more than eight hundred communities in India who speak more than three hundred distinct languages” (6), she is obviously drawing upon the legal and constitutional category of Scheduled Tribe. This movement across categories is disconcerting for the reader as are the rambling sentences which occasionally appear and are difficult to unravel. Finally, a few themes that I wish Tilche had addressed: If Adivasis are a differentiated group, how were different perspectives reconciled during debates and discussions around the selection of artefacts for display, or around the understanding of everyday practices? It would also be interesting to know the responses of visitors, Adivasis and non-Adivasis, to the museums and if these responses, in any way, impacted the reordering of displays. Is the story of the Rathavas that Tilche draws for us unique, or similar to what is happening to other Adivasi communities across the country?

Any thought-provoking book brings to mind many questions, and this is indeed a thought-provoking book. Tilche’s arguments are not just interesting but novel, and at times controversial. Adivasi Art and Activism is a book that will keep the reader engaged.

Sangeeta Dasgupta

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi