Towards an Indigenous Ethno-cartography: Isolated Indian Tribes and Forces of Globalisation in Nidhi Dugar Kundalia's White as Milk and Rice: Stories of Isolated Indian Tribes

Abstract

Modernity and ensuing forces of globalisation have a marked tendency of making the whole world homogeneous with hegemonic forces of capitalism trying to ignore the essential variety and diversity of indigenous culture. While the networks of globalisation seek to destabilise boundaries, people who choose to remain outside its domain constantly face a kind of threat to their sense of place. Urbanisation and industrial economy tend to invade their territory. Keeping the age-old sense of place uncontaminated is a challenge for many isolated Indian tribes as hegemonic forces of globalisation operate on the machinery of control – over land, knowledge, culture, past, present and future. Nidhi Dugar Kundalia's White as Milk and Rice: Stories of Isolated Indian Tribes (2020) seeks to locate this threatened sense of place of some isolated Indian tribes dwelling across the vast geography of this subcontinent. In this work of narrative journalism based on arduous research, documentation and interviews, Kundalia lets the indigenous people speak for themselves and the result is a rich tapestry of memoirs, testimonios and oral narratives that gives an insider's view of the indigenous ethnic groups. The six communities dealt with in the book – the Halakkis of Ankola, the Kanjars of Chambal, the Kurumbas of the Nilgiris, the Marias of Bastar, the Khasis of Shillong and the Konyaks of Nagaland – live in different regions across India and have their own unique culture and settings. Pitted against the idea of globalisation and economic and environmental control, their age-old rituals, beliefs and knowledge system refer to a kind of ethno-cartography which is distinctive and resistant to the forces of assimilation.