Narrative series
Tribal Odisha
The parallel civilisation — 62 communities, pre-colonial governance, displacement, identity under modernity.
Chapters
- 01 Chapter 1: The Other Country On August 19, 2013, in a clearing in the Niyamgiri hills of Rayagada district, a group of Dongria Kondh men and women sat under a temporary shamiana and voted. There were no electronic voting machines. No party symbols. No candidates. The gram sabha -- the general assembly of eve 7,761 words
- 02 Chapter 2: Before the State Arrived Imagine a clearing in the Saranda forest, sometime in the early nineteenth century, before the year had a number that anyone present would recognize. A circle of sal trees, ancient enough that their canopy blocks the afternoon sun. In the center, a flat stone -- the sasandiri, th 7,964 words
- 03 Chapter 3: The Men Who Came to Study Sometime in late 1836, a young officer of the Madras Army named Samuel Charters Macpherson arrived in the Kondh hills of Ghumsur -- approximately 1,350 square miles of forested mountain terrain in the Eastern Ghats of southern Odisha. He had been sent to survey and investigate a 7,816 words
- 04 Chapter 4: The Paper and the Forest On January 26, 2020 -- Republic Day -- five gram sabhas in Sundargarh district were convened to decide whether their land should be handed to Dalmia Cement Bharat Limited for a mining expansion. The sub-collector had issued letters to the sarpanches of Kukuda and Katang gram panc 7,300 words
- 05 Chapter 5: The Mountain and the Mine On the morning of August 19, 2013, in a clearing surrounded by sal trees in the Niyamgiri Hills of southern Odisha, approximately four hundred Dongria Kondh men and women gathered for the twelfth and final gram sabha mandated by the Supreme Court of India. The question before the 8,841 words
- 06 Chapter 6: The Gun and the Grievance On February 6, 2004, at approximately 5:30 in the morning, a column of nearly a thousand guerrillas emerged from the forests surrounding Koraput town. They moved in coordinated waves. One group hit the district armory. Another attacked five police stations simultaneously. A third 8,555 words
- 07 Chapter 7: Between Two Worlds On a January morning in 2014, three months after twelve gram sabhas in the Niyamgiri Hills had unanimously rejected Vedanta's bauxite mining proposal, a young Dongria Kondh man named Ladho Sikaka stood before television cameras in Delhi and did something that would have been stru 9,120 words
- 08 Chapter 8: The Honest Mirror On June 12, 2024, Mohan Charan Majhi stood in the Lok Seva Bhawan in Bhubaneswar and took the oath of office as Chief Minister of Odisha. He is a Santhal from Raikala village in Keonjhar district -- the same district that holds a substantial share of India's iron ore, that the Sh 5,220 words
Source Research
The raw research that informs this series.
- Reference Pre-Colonial Governance Systems of Major Tribal Communities in Odisha Compiled: 2026-04-02
- Reference Colonial Disruption of Tribal Life in Odisha — Research Reference Purpose: Reference material on how British colonial interventions systematically disrupted tribal societies in Odisha. Covers Meriah suppression, forest legislation, criminalization of shifting cultivation, the "criminal tribe" construct, and missionary encounters. Feeds into ana
- Reference Tribal Rebellions and Resistance Movements in Colonial Odisha and the Chotanagpur Region Research compilation | Date: 2026-04-02
- Reference Constitutional Promise vs. Ground Reality: Tribal Communities in Odisha Compiled: 2026-04-02
- Reference Mining, Displacement, and Resistance in Tribal Odisha Compiled: 2026-04-02
- Reference Maoism, Tribal Identity Under Modernity, and the Contemporary Tribal Experience in Odisha Research compiled: 2026-04-02