The Violence of Recognition: Adivasi Indigeneity and Anti-Dalitness in India

Talk by Pinky Hota (Anthropology, Smith College)

The Violence of Recognition explores the roots of ethnonationalism conflict between two historically marginalized groups—the Kandha, who are Adivasi (tribal people considered indigenous in India), and the Pana, a community of Christian Dalits (previously referred to as “untouchables”). Hota documents how Hindutva mobilization led to large-scale violence, culminating in attacks against many thousands of Pana Dalits in the district of Kandhamal in 2008. Bringing Indigenous studies as well as race and ethnic studies into conversation with Dalit studies, Hota shows that, despite attempts to frame these ethnonationalist tensions as an Indigenous population’s resistance against disenfranchisement, Kandha hostility against the Pana must be understood as anti-Christian, anti-Dalit violence animated by racial capitalism. Hota’s analysis of caste in relation to race and religion details how Hindu nationalists exploit the singular and exclusionary legal recognition of Adivasis and the putatively liberatory, anti-capitalist discourse of indigeneity in order to justify continued oppression of Dalits—particularly those such as the Pana. By showing how indigeneity works as a political technology that reproduces the political, economic, and cultural exclusion of landless marginalized groups such as Dalits, The Violence of Recognition reveals the violent implications of minority recognition in creating and maintaining hierarchies of racial capitalism.

Pinky Hota is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Smith College, with affiliations with the Program for the Study of Women and Gender and South Asian Studies. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren and Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundations, and published in Modern Asian Studies, Anthropological Quarterly, and Political and Legal Anthropology Review. Her research interests lie in caste and race, religion, technology and capital, and extractive economies. The Violence of Recognition published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2023 is her first book.