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Vimukta: Freedom Stories
Late nineteenth century. Britain, the undisputed master of the Indian subcontinent, looks to control a rebellious multitude. They deem thuggery a hereditary defect, of those considered ‘born criminals’. Over two hundred communities across India are labelled as ‘Criminal Tribes’. They are forced into wired settlements, heavily monitored and subjected to humiliation.
Post-independence, they are rechristened as Denotified Tribes. But the oppression continues. Identifying themselves as Vimukta or the liberated, the tribes that were imprisoned for generations have defiantly storied their freedom. This anthology, for the first time, collects their testimonies and the novel invocations of the Vimukta struggle.
Dakxin Bajrange is a filmmaker, playwright, director and activist born in Chharanagar, Ahmedabad. Besides helming several documentary films and ten plays, he made a feature-length film Sameer: The Perception.
Henry Schwarz is professor emeritus of English at Georgetown University, where he was director of the Program on Justice and Peace from 1999 to 2007. His books include Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India: Acting Like a Thief.
Post-independence, they are rechristened as Denotified Tribes. But the oppression continues. Identifying themselves as Vimukta or the liberated, the tribes that were imprisoned for generations have defiantly storied their freedom. This anthology, for the first time, collects their testimonies and the novel invocations of the Vimukta struggle.
Dakxin Bajrange is a filmmaker, playwright, director and activist born in Chharanagar, Ahmedabad. Besides helming several documentary films and ten plays, he made a feature-length film Sameer: The Perception.
Henry Schwarz is professor emeritus of English at Georgetown University, where he was director of the Program on Justice and Peace from 1999 to 2007. His books include Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India: Acting Like a Thief.
187 pages, Paperback
Published August 31, 2021
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July 22, 2024
A standard leftist critique of capitalism is that while espousing an ideology of free exchange, in practice it is simply the use of state and private violence to create and enforce monopolies so as to take surplus from labor and strip labor of control over commons of means of production. In other words primitive accumulation so that the few who belong to the capitalist and professional classes can engage in free exchange amongst each other.
In the context of British colonialism in South Asia, the Raj and Company both engaged in such primitive accumulation in many ways. One such way was the surveillance, control, and destruction of nomadic ways of life (and then the criminalization of these groups of people). A central theme of south Asian history has been the varied equilibrium between different economic modes of production, in particular sedentary agriculture and semi-nomadic and nomadic economic modes like pastoralist, trade, shifting cultivation, etc. typically sedentary societies generate more surplus, though the workers do not keep it and the society is subject to greater hierarchy and control, while the other societies generate less overall surplus but are more equitable (so a worker may in fact be better off).
The interrelationship between sedentary and nonsedentary societies, at times violent at times not so, and the gradual transformation of the subcontinent from the latter to the former, is the central theme of south Asian history. You see this tension played out in texts as old as the rig Veda.
While this complex interrelationship is old, it took a particular form under the British. Through colonial hegemony and violence that other prior states did not resort to, and to seize control of the nomadic trade routes via the railroad and to control potentially rebellious populations, the colonial state defined these groups as hereditary criminals. This was primitive accumulation. These peoples became captive labor with limited options other than to work in prison camps or for factories. At independence, while de notified, they were not provided with any means of livelihood and often settled into lives of petty crime and dysfunction in urban or rural areas.
This is an interesting set of stories by and about DNTs several decades post independence. They are mainly set in gujurat and maharashtra, which historically had large numbers of such nomadic peoples. The stories are pessimistic as to the gains these people realized from independence or their ability to secure better futures.
like with all stories of marginalized peoples, these have to straddle the line between agitprop and poverty pornography. Broadly, I think the stories do that well, with some, especially those by dakxin bajrange, being quite good. Bulldozer is probably the best of the collection.
For dispossessed people, liberation requires both securing material resources but also defining new narratives around which communities can coalesce. These stories and plays in part try to do the latter.
There is an open question for me of the intended audience of these stories. Some of the times it felt like the stories were for an audience of richer and better educated people to elicit sympathy (so poverty pornography) without simultaneously criticizing such charity or ngos as having a parasitic relationship with the community. Several stories feature characters who are very happy that rich, upper caste characters listen to them. I’m not sure whether the next generation will settle for such crumbs before resorting to more violent tactics.
In the context of British colonialism in South Asia, the Raj and Company both engaged in such primitive accumulation in many ways. One such way was the surveillance, control, and destruction of nomadic ways of life (and then the criminalization of these groups of people). A central theme of south Asian history has been the varied equilibrium between different economic modes of production, in particular sedentary agriculture and semi-nomadic and nomadic economic modes like pastoralist, trade, shifting cultivation, etc. typically sedentary societies generate more surplus, though the workers do not keep it and the society is subject to greater hierarchy and control, while the other societies generate less overall surplus but are more equitable (so a worker may in fact be better off).
The interrelationship between sedentary and nonsedentary societies, at times violent at times not so, and the gradual transformation of the subcontinent from the latter to the former, is the central theme of south Asian history. You see this tension played out in texts as old as the rig Veda.
While this complex interrelationship is old, it took a particular form under the British. Through colonial hegemony and violence that other prior states did not resort to, and to seize control of the nomadic trade routes via the railroad and to control potentially rebellious populations, the colonial state defined these groups as hereditary criminals. This was primitive accumulation. These peoples became captive labor with limited options other than to work in prison camps or for factories. At independence, while de notified, they were not provided with any means of livelihood and often settled into lives of petty crime and dysfunction in urban or rural areas.
This is an interesting set of stories by and about DNTs several decades post independence. They are mainly set in gujurat and maharashtra, which historically had large numbers of such nomadic peoples. The stories are pessimistic as to the gains these people realized from independence or their ability to secure better futures.
like with all stories of marginalized peoples, these have to straddle the line between agitprop and poverty pornography. Broadly, I think the stories do that well, with some, especially those by dakxin bajrange, being quite good. Bulldozer is probably the best of the collection.
For dispossessed people, liberation requires both securing material resources but also defining new narratives around which communities can coalesce. These stories and plays in part try to do the latter.
There is an open question for me of the intended audience of these stories. Some of the times it felt like the stories were for an audience of richer and better educated people to elicit sympathy (so poverty pornography) without simultaneously criticizing such charity or ngos as having a parasitic relationship with the community. Several stories feature characters who are very happy that rich, upper caste characters listen to them. I’m not sure whether the next generation will settle for such crumbs before resorting to more violent tactics.
Displaying 1 of 1 review