"Colonialism and its Nomads in South India" lecture by Dr. Bhangya Bhukya at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 15th February 2012

Time : 3:00 pm

Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)

Place : Seminar Room, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library ( NMML ), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi
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Event Details : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to The Seminar on 'Colonialism and its Nomads in South India' by Dr. Bhangya Bhukya, University of Hyderabad.

Abstract : Under colonial rule, the Lambadas – traditionally a nomadic community of produce carriers and merchants – lost their main means of livelihood.  The British stigmatised the Lambadas – along with other such nomadic peoples – as a footloose and predatory race, uncivilised and with criminal tendencies.  This view had originated in their experience of policing ‘vagabonds’ in their home country.   They sought to ‘civilise’ the Lambadas, by settling them as agriculturists, producing raw produce for urban and international markets.  They imposed a variety of regulations and taxation policies designed to achieve these ends, administered at the local level in a typically high-handed and corrupt way by lower-level officials and policemen.  Many were impoverished, and rather than thriving as owner-sufficient cultivators, were forced to survive in marginalized ways, as bonded agricultural labourers, struggling cattle-breeders and, in some cases, as bandits.   In the process, a relatively autonomous and self-sufficient community became strongly subordinated and exploited.
This process was by no means straightforward.  The Lambadas resisted many of the measures imposed by the colonial rulers, either in serious revolts or, indirectly, by breaching the law.  They also articulated and rearticulated their traditions and spiritual culture, producing in the process a distinct community consciousness and identity.  The central theme of the lecture therefore is to examine how the modern apparatus of state power subalternised the Lambadas’ longstanding practices and livelihood, and how from this subalternity a new form of consciousness emerged, which played a crucial role in shaping a new community identity as a distinct entity within the modern Indian democratic polity.

Speaker : Dr. Bhangya Bhukya is Associate Professor & Head, Department of Social Exclusion Studies, EFL-University Hyderabad.  He is an active historian from India and specialised in modern Indian history from undergraduate to Masters level, in the process developing a strong interest in the history of subaltern and marginalised groups whose history is largely neglected in mainstream history. He did his Ph. D from University of Warwick, UK, on ‘Power, Subalternity and Identity: Making of the Lambada Community (a nomadic/pastoral community) in Hyderabad State’. His research interests are community histories, the effects of power/knowledge, governmentality and dominance on subaltern communities, particularly adivasis; the state and nationalism, and identity movements by forest and hill peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth century. He taught history at Osmania University from 1997 to 2010, and is also associated with adivasi (indigenous) people’s human right association in the state of Andhra Pradesh.  Among his recent publications are: Subjugated Nomads: The Lambadas Under the Rule of Nizams (Hyderabad, 2010) and several articles in leading international social science journals.

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